A journey into the Samaii Rhythm

On Friday, October 31st, I attended a concert at the Culture Wheel in Zamalek. The featured band was a group of musicians originally from Alexandria called the Samaii band. This concert was a showcase of songs all played in the darb Samaii, which is a 10/8 rhythm used in Middle Eastern music. The Samaii rhythm is most recognizable in the West by the Lebanese song Lamma Bada Yatathana. The concert lasted for only one and a half hours, and there were a total of 17 songs performed, with only one or two featuring a different rhythm. Below I will try to recount the songs I heard with the help of the program notes. The entire concert was in Arabic, as well as the program, so translations may not be correct. The band was quick to start its set right at 8 PM…a rarity that you see in Egypt!

The band itself consisted of five musicians. They sat in a semi circle with the main singer sitting in the middle of the musicians. To the far left of the stage was the violinist, whose name was not included in the program list. Next to him was one of two oud players, Abdu el-Qadr el-Amir. After Mr. el-Amir, the main vocalist, Fajr el-Jazawy was seated in the middle. The next musician and the second oud player named Hassan Aly was seated next to Ms. El-Jazawy, and finally on the far right of the stage was the riq player and only percussion for the ensemble, Daha el-Jazawy, Fajr’s sister.

The program notes for the concert was a huge help to my Western ear to decupher each song. It contained the name of each song, the maqams for each, the darb (if it was different form the Samaii), and the composers and lyrists for each. The songs were labeled into four different categories. The first was “musiqi” which referred to a piece that had no vocals. The second was a “mushaa” which, from what I could find, is a more poetic song. The literal translation from my Arabic dictionary was “a post-Classical Arab poem made of stanzas”. For these songs, the chorus, verse, and instrument solos were much more apparent than the non-vocal pieces. The next category was simply songs, no exact label, just the title of the song. I was not familiar with any of these songs, but they seemed to be more modern. The last category was the arrangement, which is called “tanweyat”. There were two of these pieces throughout the night. Again, I could not decipher the different pieces from each because I was not familiar with the songs, but it was noticeable through the number of choruses and verses.

The first piece played for the evening was simply entitled “Samaii Musiqi” and featured no vocals. I think this was the equivalent to a longa in that it set the tone for the rest of the evening’s songs. The piece was played in Hijaz maqam and lasted only a couple of minutes and featured stops between darbs to accent the Samaii rhythm. The second piece was Lamma Bada Yatathana. I was personally very excited because I recognized this piece, the one of only two that I recognized throughout the night. The maqam for Lamma Bada was Nahawand and the Samaii Thaqil rhythm was featured in this piece. I’ve heard many versions of Lama Bada, and this one was very classical. The singer had a very sweet voice, but I couldn’t help but compare her voice to Fairuz. The song was said to originate in southern Spain under Moorish rule, so I’ve heard Spanish versions as well as Arabic versions.

The next piece in the program was called Beyyah el-Huy which was one of the only songs of the night that featured a different darb, malfouf. The darb changed into Samaii for the chorus and changed back to malfouf for the “kubles” of the song. The fifth song also featured a maqsoum rhythm, to be honest the rhythm changes shone through each of the songs because the music changed so much. The next couple of songs were very similar to each other to my untrained ear. It was hard to decipher especially because the darb was the same. The last song of the first portion of the night was another instrumental song. This piece featured improvisations from each of the musicians minus the vocalist. I don’t think these were true taqsims in that there seemed to be more of a play between the musicians and each had solos for very short periods of time. Each musician was able to show off their instrument, and the audience was appreciative of each solo with clapping and even some whistling.

While the number of songs in the second set was 8 instead of 9, the length of the second set was much shorter. The first piece was a song about Alexandria, the vocalist explained a little about the song before they played it, the only interaction the band had with the audience besides playing. The second song, Saalama ya Salaama was the second song of the night that I recognized. This must have been the classical version of the song because it took me until the chorus to realize that I knew the song. The tempo was much slower than the pop rendition that I am familiar with. The sixth song of the set, Ya Salaah el Zain got a great response from the crowd. I even heard a zaghareet! The closing number of the evening was a piece by Farid el Atrache. This again got the crowd excited, partially I think because it was a song the crowd recognized. After the last song was through, the ensemble stood, bowed, and left the stage. It was a quiet ending to a quiet evening that explored the Samaii rhythm through classical pieces, poetic songs, folkloric melodies, and more modern pieces.