Hamza El Din -

Hamza El Din (July 10, 1929 — May 22, 2006) was an Egyptian oudist, singer, and composer who made the 1964/65 Vanguard albums Music of Nubia and Al Oud. He returned with the 1971 Nonsuch release Escalay: The Water Wheel, followed by the 1978–82 titles Eclipse and Songs of the Nile.

Background

Hamza El Din was born Hamza Ala’a El Din on July 10, 1929, in Toshka, Aswan Governorate, Egypt. El Din first encountered the oud through the student music association at King Fouad University in Cairo, where he studied electrical engineering. He graduated in 1948 and joined the Egyptian State Railways as an engineer in Cairo.

El Din left railway engineering to study muwashshah at Ibrahim Shafiq’s Institute of Music and oud at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music. He responded to the planned Aswan High Dam with field trips through Nubian communities in Egypt and Sudan. El Din collected songs from village residents and observed local performance practices. He received a government grant to extend his collection of Nubian songs. El Din reshaped his oud technique around Nubian rhythmic patterns and composed songs for Nubian audiences.

He received an Italian government grant to study Western music and classical guitar at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. El Din met American student Geno Foreman in Rome, and Foreman carried a tape of El Din to contacts in the U.S. folk scene. Foreman passed the tape to Joan Baez, who took it to Vanguard Records. El Din reached New York in October 1962 to record the material that became Music of Nubia.

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