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When a Professional Dancer Produces Music: An Interview with Jalilah

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Discover Belly Dance Journal, When a Professional Dancer Produces Music: An Interview with Jalilah >>

by Sheri Waldrop

 

At times, the best CDs aren't produced by professional musicians. I nstead they are produced by those with a deep rapport with the music's intended audience. The Raks Sharki series of CDs is one such example. These outstanding albums were produced by a professional dancer who knew what her audience was looking for, and in them she shares with us her favorite dances and melodies.

 

These CDs are not examples of the latest "techno" virtuosity so common with modern artists determined to follow the latest musical fad. Synthesizers and other modern instruments are minimized on the Raks Sharki CDs. Instead, the rhythms of a smoky nightclub in Cairo are produced with full traditional orchestra; and favorite tunes from the great dance scenes in the black and white classic movies of the 1930's and 1940's are recreated with great care.

 

The dancer behind it all, Jalilah (Lorraine Zamora Chamas), has created a highly creative and traditional series of albums that incorporates tunes that range from Egyptian to Lebanese, and plans to produce more in the future. She graciously granted Discover Belly Dance an interview in which she discussed dance, music, and the inspiration behind her CDs.

 

Discover Belly Dance (DBD): Jalilah, how did you fall in love with music? Did your family play a part in your desire to become a musician?

 

Jalilah: To be honest, I didn't really start dancing until 1984.  I was raised in California, and lived there until 1979. As a teenager, I first heard this type of music while taking an international folk dance class. Anything Middle Eastern gave me the chills (in a good sense!). While I had never seen real "belly dance", I imagined it must be wonderful to dance to music like this.

 

The first LP of Middle Eastern music that I owned was Aisha Ali's music of the Ghawanzee. I dreamt of doing what she did, traveling to exotic places and learning how to dance. At that time, I took a few dance classes with Bert Baladine in 1977. But I was young, and shy, and didn't take any more lessons until 1983 (I was living in Germany then and had gone there to study theater and film). I got interested again, in part because I loved the music and took a trip to Tunisia where my interest in the dance, the music, and Middle Eastern culture were reawakened.

 

I've danced in a variety of countries over the years, and learned something from each one.

 

After starting out dancing in Germany (in the early 1980's) I starting going to Egypt to study and dance. I first went to Cairo, Egypt in 1984 for nine months. I met my husband in Egypt in 1996. My husband is a Canadian citizen originally from Lebanon, and after our marriage, we moved and lived in Yemen until just a few years ago. We then moved to Montreal, lived there for four years, and two months ago moved here to Vancouver, BC.

 

DBD: What were some early influences on your dance and music? Did you study with any special teachers or mentors?

 

Jalilah: In Germany, I went to several people for teaching, but there weren't many teachers of regular classes back then. I took classes with Rita, a German dancer who had studied with Bert Balladine when I was first starting. Balladine was the first American to come to Berlin and teach belly dancing there during this time, and he gave workshops twice a year. Rita left town after six months

 

After that, I didn't have anyone to study with formally. I did meet some Arabic musicians from different countries, whose group was named "Al Shark," who let me go with them to Arabic weddings that they performed at. I would go and watch the people dancing, who were not professional performers, and learned. Al Shark would play several times a week, and eventually asked me to perform with them as I improved. Performing several nights a week, several times a week, was in itself a learning experience, but I wanted to learn more.

 

In 1984, I made my first trip to Egypt, where you could see a lot of the big names, such as Sohair Zaki, Nagua Foaud, Nelly Fouad, Sahar Hamdi, Nadia Hamdi, FiFi Abdou, Hanan, and many others who inspired me. I realized after watching them that I had a lot more to learn. Back in Berlin, by chance, I met Mo Geddawi who helped me choreograph for the first time (before then, I didn't realize you could choreograph your routine and had always improvised!)

 

I also met some Turkish bands in Berlin about then, and performed at Turkish weddings as well as Arabic ones. During this time, Oriental dance was becoming quite popular in Germany, and both American and Egyptian instructors started giving lessons there.

 

I performed quite a bit in Berlin. I studied some with the European dancer Feyrouz, along with the Egyptian teacher Momo Kadus. I met him in 1987 and started working with him quite a lot, and he became a major influence on my dance development.

 

In 1989, I went to Egypt and studied with Ibrahim Akef, a cousin of Naima Akef, a well-known dancer. I also worked with Raqia Hassan, a famous Egyptian dancer from Cairo. I would fly from Germany to Egypt several times a year, and studied with excellent teachers. I especially studied more with Raqia and have always said there is a "before Raqia" me and an "after Raqia" me.

 

From 1990 to 1996 I toured Europe regularly with the Musicians of the Nile. I learned a lot just by performing with them, and visiting and hanging out with them in Luxor as well as seeing the few remaining Ghawazee dance.

 

DBD: Your decision to produce musical CDs came in the late 1980's. How did you come to produce your "Raks Sharki" CDs? What has influenced that decision?

 

Jalilah: Around 1989, I was studying and performing a lot, and going to Egypt quite a bit. I worked with Piranha, an agency for artistic talent. They were booking tours for me, and I knew that they produced records and CDs as well.

 

They started sending me samples from records sent to them by new artists to ask my opinion about them. These tapes were often heavily synthesized, even the violin and the qanun on them weren't real, and I didn't like most of them. This was the type of music that was very popular in this genre in the late 1980's and early 90's: lots of synthesized sound.

 

I told Piranha that I liked the style of music that I heard in Cairo during the real dance performances, with full orchestra and violins, including the oud, qanun and ney. There were some older albums produced in the 1970's in this style, but no newer ones coming out at this time. After listening to all these new synthesized music tapes, I asked myself, "Why don't I produce my own music, in the traditional style that I like?"

 

I approached Piranha, and while they were hesitant at first, they decided to give me the go ahead. It took two trips to Cairo in 1990 to find and interview people to work with. I was up against a huge barrier: I was a woman, a dancer and from the U.S., who was not a musician. This made them assume that I didn't know much about music. People would come up to me, with tapes from old productions that had been already done years ago, and try to pass them off to me as original. Or would ask me to pay them outrageous sums, assuming this is how much they paid in the West for this type of music. It was unreal. But I finally met Mokhtar Al Said, and knew I could work with him.

 

Anyway Mokhtar Al Said completely understood what I wanted. He was easy to work with, so I decided that he would be the one to help me with the album, and I returned to Germany to make the arrangements. In October 1990 I returned to Cairo for the recording. I was in the recording studio the entire time of the production as well as during the post production, mixing and so on. The result was the first CD "Raks Sharki- Mokhtar al Said." 09/01/03 >> go there
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