Not a compilation, since only one track was ever released and by no means a reissue, since the original record didn’t exist, the 2006 Art Yard release “Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band present Egyptian Jazz” is a debut album in its own right. It just took over thirty years to be discovered.
The story of Salah Ragab’s Cairo Jazz Band is one unexpected meetings. In December 1966, enthusiastic jazz drummer and Major in the Egyptian army Salah Ragab spent an evening at the American University in Cairo to hear Randy Weston Sextet’s “History of Jazz” concert. In the reception afterwards, Ragab found himself at a table with two unfamiliar faces, czechoslovakian bassist Edu Vizvari and german musician and author Hartmut Geerken. It was within a few hours of their meeting however that Salah Ragab had found collaborators for his groundbreaking project: the creation of the first ever egyptian jazz band.
It was Ragab’s promotion to Chief of the Egyptian Military Music Department in 1968 that turned the project into reality. The department not only gave Ragab access to every instrument he could desire, but also left around 3,000 military musicians at his disposal. Commandeering a military building for the project, Ragab hand picked the twenty-five finest musicians, as he, Vizvari and Geerken set about moulding military marching band professionals into improvisatory jazz musicians. Geerken remembers in his liner notes that while all were accomplished musicians, many could really only play marches and national anthems. It is this rigorous training which underpins the band’s unique sound, giving the whole record a percussive, majestic urgency. A meeting of strident improvisation and the strictest discipline.
Despite their daily rehearsals and numerous concerts, the Cairo Jazz Band recorded very little of what they played. By the time Geerken left Cairo in 1972, the band had released only two records; a 45rpm of “Egypt Strut” on the Sono Cairo label, and a small contribution to an unglamorous compilation released by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. However, the record we are left with, released for the first time in 2006 courtesy of Art Yard Records, gives a glowing representation of a group whose music has finally been rescued from obscurity.
Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band – “Egypt Strut”.
It begins with the fantastically titled “Ramadan in Space Time”, hinting at the groups’s debt to the music and ideas of the great Sun Ra. Guttural tribal chanting erupts into a fierce percussive groove, reminiscent of Charles Mingus’s raw intensity. And yet, the sweeping horn lines are tinged with the arabic exoticism of the running Baza drum, shifting the rhythmic emphasis towards the east once more.
As the title of the first track suggests, this is musical melting pot which surprises at every turn. On the one hand, we have the military influence heard in the medieval heraldry of “Dawn”, or the triumphant march “The Crossing”, composed in celebration of the Egyptian Army’s crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973. On the other is the western jazz connection. “Egypt Strut” is roughly based on Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man”, while “A Tribute to Sun Ra”, is a self-conscious pastiche of Sun Ra’s “Kingdom of Not”.
Sun Ra – “Kingdom of Not”.
The success of this unique sound is in large part due to the relationship between the rhythm section and the melodic lines, which in the spirit of the whole project, flourishes through experimentation. “A Farewell Theme”, composed after the funeral of King Nasser fuses a 16-bar groove with an African rhythm section. Likewise, in “Oriental Mood”, described by Ragab as a ‘pure oriental tune’, the cultural counterpoint is provided by the Hogaz Arabic Scale, or ‘Malam’, contrasting with traditional european instruments like the piano and the double bass.
Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band – “Oriental Mood”.
While they might as well have come from different planets, the meeting in 1971 between Sun Ra, the interplanetary messenger, and Salah Ragab, the Egyptian Army Major was one of kindred spirits. “Ramadan in Space Time” – where the cosmic world of Sun Ra’s luminary jazz meets ancient arabic tradition. This is however, not as big a surprise as it may seem. Sun Ra’s development of Afro-futurism finds its roots in a fascination with ancient Egypt and its iconic symbolism. Twelve years later, Ragab and Ra did record an LP together entitled 
Sun Ra and his Arkestra play “Oriental Mood”.
This very rare record also included two original compositions performed by Salah Ragab and the Cairo Jazz Band, both of which appear on the Art Yard collection. Since its 2006 release, Salah Ragab has quite rightly received significant attention, with tracks appearing on compilations as varied in content as Jazzman’s “Welcome to the Party”. This is dance music for body and soul alike. Before his death in 2008, Ragab and his newly named “Afro-Egyptian Ensemble” also recorded two tracks on Honest Jon’s for a 12” by Afro-beat drum legend Tony Allen.
Rescued from obscurity by one of the most important releases of the last decade, Major Salah Ragab, the unknown innovator, can now finally take his place high up in the echelons of North African jazz.
