Halim El-Dabh facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Halim El-Dabh
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Halim El-Dabh at a Cleveland festival in 2009
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| Born |
Halim Abdul Messieh El-Dabh
4 March 1921 |
| Died | 2 September 2017 (aged 96) |
| Occupation | Composer, musician, musicologist, educator |
| Spouse(s) |
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| Children | 3 |
Halim El-Dabh was an Egyptian-American composer, musician, and teacher. He lived from 1921 to 2017. He is famous for being one of the first people to create electronic music. In 1944, he made one of the earliest pieces of tape music, also called musique concrète. Later, he did important work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. His career lasted for over sixty years.
Contents
Early Life and Musical Beginnings
Halim El-Dabh was born and grew up in Sakakini, Cairo, Egypt. His family was Coptic Christian and came from Abutig in Upper Egypt. The family name "El-Dabh" means "the hyena" in Arabic. In 1932, his family moved to Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo.
He studied agricultural engineering at Fuad I University (now Cairo University) and graduated in 1945. At the same time, he also studied, played, and composed music. Even though he worked as an agricultural consultant, he became well-known in Egypt in the 1940s for his new musical ideas and piano playing.
Pioneering Electronic Music in Cairo
While still a student in Cairo, Halim El-Dabh started experimenting with electronic music. In the early 1940s, he used wire recorders to change sounds. By 1944, he created one of the first pieces of tape music ever, called The Expression of Zaar. This was four years before Pierre Schaeffer did similar work.
He borrowed a wire recorder from Middle East Radio. He used it to record sounds from the streets, especially an old zaar ceremony. This was a public exorcism ritual. He was fascinated by how he could change recorded sounds to make music. He believed he could find "the inner sound" within the raw audio of the zaar ceremony.
El-Dabh explained his process: "I just started playing around with the equipment at the station." He used tools like reverberation, echo chambers, and voltage controls. He also used a special room with movable walls to create different reverb effects. He focused on high-pitched sounds that echoed and clashed. He removed the main sounds, leaving only the high overtones. This made the voices in the recording unrecognizable.
He realized that sound recordings could be used as raw material for composing music. His final piece, about 20–25 minutes long, was recorded on magnetic tape. The Expression of Zaar was shown to the public in 1944 at an art gallery in Cairo. After a successful performance in 1949 at the All Saints Cathedral, he was invited to study in the United States.
Moving to the United States
In 1950, El-Dabh moved to the United States with a Fulbright scholarship. He studied composition with famous composers like John Donald Robb, Ernst Krenek, and Aaron Copland. He studied at places like the University of New Mexico, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Brandeis University. He became a U.S. citizen in 1961.
El-Dabh quickly became part of the new music scene in New York in the 1950s. He worked with other creative composers such as John Cage and Edgard Varèse.
He composed four ballet scores for the famous dancer Martha Graham. These included her well-known work Clytemnestra (1958). Many of his compositions used themes or texts from Ancient Egypt. One example is his music for the Sound and Light show at the Great Pyramid of Giza. This show has been performed every evening since 1961.
El-Dabh mainly played the piano and the darabukha. The darabukha is an Egyptian hand drum. Because of this, many of his pieces were written for these instruments. In 1958, he played the solo part in New York City for his Fantasia-Tahmeel. This piece was for darabukha and string orchestra. It was likely the first orchestral work to feature this drum.
Working at Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center
By 1955, El-Dabh had been experimenting with electronic music for ten years. In 1959, Otto Luening and Vladimir Ussachevsky invited him to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. He was one of the first outside composers to work there. He became very important to the early development of the studio.
El-Dabh had a special way of mixing spoken words, singing, and percussion sounds with electronic signals. This helped create new electroacoustic techniques at the center. Some of his pieces also used the RCA Synthesizer, an early programmable synthesizer. He worked there until 1961, creating many tape works. He even worked with Otto Luening on some pieces.
In 1959 alone, El-Dabh created eight electronic pieces. One of these was his multi-part electronic musical drama Leiyla and the Poet. This piece is considered a classic of its kind. It was released in 1964 on the LP record Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.
His musical style was different from other composers at the center. He was interested in ethnomusicology and mixing folk music with electronic sounds. This made his work unique. He believed that "The creative process comes from interacting with the material." His experimental electronic music was more "shapely and rhythmic." It included traditional stringed and percussion sounds, inspired by Egyptian and Native American traditions.
El-Dabh used all ten Ampex tape recorders at Columbia. His goal was to create immersive electronic music. He smoothly blended vocals, electronic tones, and tape tricks like changing speed and music looping. This gave Leiyla and the Poet an "unearthly quality" that inspired many composers. Musicians like Frank Zappa were influenced by his recordings. The "organic textures and raw energy" of Leiyla and the Poet especially inspired early electronic music composers.
Other works he created there include "Meditation in White Sound" and "Electronics and the Word" (both from 1959). He also made "Venice" (1961), which reminds some of Steve Reich's field recording experiments. El-Dabh also brought an "Egyptian folk sensibility" to Western avant-garde music. A collection of his electronic work, Crossing into the Electric-Magnetic, includes his early wire recordings.
Later Life and Career Achievements
Like the composer Béla Bartók, El-Dabh traveled to many countries. He recorded and documented traditional music. He used these findings to improve his compositions and teaching. From 1959 to 1964, he explored music in Egypt and Ethiopia. Later, he did fieldwork in Mali, Senegal, Niger, Guinea, Zaire, and Brazil. In the 1970s, he researched traditional puppetry in Egypt and Guinea for the Smithsonian Institution.
El-Dabh taught music at Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia. He was also a professor of African studies at Howard University (1966–69). From 1969 to 1991, he was a professor of music and Pan-African studies at Kent State University. He continued to teach African studies part-time there until 2012.
He received many awards and honors. These include two Fulbright awards (1950 and 1967) and two Guggenheim Fellowships (1959–60 and 1961–62). He also received two honorary doctorates from Kent State University (2001) and New England Conservatory (2007).
El-Dabh is perhaps the most famous composer of Arabic descent. His works are highly respected in Egypt. In April 2002, a festival of his music was held at the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt. Most of the pieces were heard by the Egyptian public for the first time.
Many of El-Dabh's scores are published by the C. F. Peters Corporation. His music has been recorded by Folkways and Columbia labels. His biography, The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh by Denise A. Seachrist, was published in 2003.
He often performed and spoke at festivals like WinterStar Symposium and the Starwood Festival. In 1997, he performed with his friend, master drummer Babatunde Olatunji. In 2005, he performed and led workshops at Unyazi 2005 in Johannesburg. This was the first electronic music festival in Africa.
Ancestry and Identity
A 2003 biography by Denise A. Seachrist talks about El-Dabh's mixed background. As a young student in Egypt, he liked the ideas of Gamal Abdel Nasser. But he became unhappy with Arab identity when Nasser did not stop unfair treatment against Egypt's Copts.
When he moved to the United States, El-Dabh faced racism. He noted that his skin was darker than most Egyptian immigrants because he was from Upper (southern) Egypt.
El-Dabh was known for supporting the African American community. He was active in civil rights, which he said was because of his own experiences with racism. In the late 1950s and 1960s, he helped or marched with various civil rights groups. His connection to African American culture grew stronger when he taught music and African American studies at Howard University.
Personal Life and Passing
Halim El-Dabh was married twice. His first marriage to Marybelle Hyde ended in divorce. His second marriage to Deborah Jaken lasted from 1978 until his death. He had two daughters, Shadia and Amira, with Marybelle Hyde. He had one son, Habeeb, with Deborah Jaken.
Halim El-Dabh passed away at his home in Kent, Ohio, on September 2, 2017. He was 96 years old.
Discography
Audio Recordings
- 1944 – The Expression of Zaar
- 1957 – Sounds of New Music. New York: Folkways.
- 1959 – Leiyla and the Poet
- 1961 – Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. New York: Columbia Masterworks.
- 2001 – El-Dabh, Halim. Crossing Into the Electric Magnetic. Lakewood, Ohio: Without Fear.
- 2006 – Fan, Joel. World Keys. San Francisco, California: Reference Recordings. Includes "Sayera" from Mekta' in the Art of Kita', Book 3.
- 2016 – El-Dabh, Halim; Ron Slabe. Sanza Time.
Films Featuring His Work
- 1960 – Yuriko: Creation of a Dance. Shows a rehearsal of The Ghost, with music by El-Dabh.
- 1967 – Herostratus. Directed by Don Levy. One scene has audio from El-Dabh's Spectrum no. 1: Symphonies in Sonic Vibration.
Images for kids
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Halim El-Dabh at a Cleveland festival in 2009
