Swinging rhythms and improvised riffs, an exclamatory “Ah!” followed by a series of syncopated beats that should sound discordant but somehow don’t. Audiences propelled to their feet, tapping and jiving along to the ecstatic music. This is the portrait often painted of jazz music resonating through North American cities in the first half of the 20th century and still alive today. Others may recall the sultry sounds of Frank Sinatra or the cosmopolitan grooves of Japanese jazz, or even the conservative instrumentals of YouTube videos offering “Jazz for studying” or “Jazz for sleeping”. However far one’s imagination may extend, it is unlikely the mention of jazz music strikes up the image of 1960s Egypt. Or does it?

Enter Salah Ragab. Born in July 1935  to a military family, he was the youngest son amongst five siblings and was bestowed with the obligation to follow in his father’s footsteps by joining the Egyptian armed forces. He ended up rising to the rank of Major before his retirement from service in the early 1970s, and he even fought during the Six Day War against Israel in 1967. In an interview, his nephew expressed that this sense of obligation likely forced Ragab to disregard his personal desires to pursue a life in music as a percussionist . However, interestingly enough, it may just have been Ragab’s position in the army that enabled him to become Egypt’s first jazzman.

We do not know what first inspired Ragab, but he began performing to audiences with his band, the Nile Diamonds in 1958. It was a five-piece ensemble consisting of a pianist, a clarinet and tenor saxophone player, a guitarist, an acoustic bassist, with Rabab on drums. The band played western and Latin American dance music as a forerunner of the jazz band Ragab would form next. According to his nephew, Ragab’s first exposure to jazz music was in 1954, when jazz tunes of the Lionel Hampton big band were broadcast on the radio. For readers unfamiliar with the term, a big band is a kind of jazz orchestra traditionally made up of more than 10 musicians. But it would take another decade for Ragab to attend his first live jazz performance and begin cultivating dreams of forming his own Egyptian jazz big band.

Cut to 1966, when the American jazz pianist and composer, Randy Weston, came to perform at the American University in Cairo’s Ewart Memorial Hall as part of his “History of Jazz” concert series. Weston was well known for espousing pan-African views and advancing his narrative that put African influences at the core of jazz music. It appears this message made a significant impression with one audience member, the army officer-cum-band leader Salah Ragab. As a dedicated military man who both expressed allegiance to President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s vision of pan-Arab and pan-African unity and had a family history that made him sympathetic to pan-African sentiments, Ragab became enamoured by the cause—the cause of jazz, that is.

At roughly the same time, perhaps even at the concert, Ragab was introduced to two figures who would change the trajectory of his music career: Hartmut Geerken and Eduard “Edu” Vizvari. Geerken was a German musician and composer living in Egypt and working at the Goethe Institute. Vizvari was a Czech bassist and music teacher. These Europeans shared Ragab’s aspirations of creating a big band and, together, they worked on making that happen. Ragab had already experienced a brief stint as the drummer for a jazz band, working with the Mac X Spears’ jazz quartet. That was the stage name of American saxophonist Osman Kareem, who had travelled to Egypt to study Islam and escape the anti-Black racism he encountered in his native Kansas City. Unfortunately, this promising venture was cut short by the Six Day War, which brought about an increase in anti-American sentiment in Egypt and drove Mac X. Spears and other expat musicians out of the country.

By 1968, Ragab received a promotion to head the Egyptian Military Music Department which proved to be game-changing. Now, Ragab’s dreams of forming a big band alongside Geerken and Vizvari became more tangible, having at his disposal around 3,000 of the country’s best musicians and all types of musical instruments imaginable. And indeed, around 20 musicians conscripted in the Egyptian army ended up recruited to form the Cairo Jazz Band. None of the musicians had any background in jazz music but it wasn’t an issue for Ragab. He was fully committed to providing them with the necessary jazz education, so much so that it’s said prospective members of the jazz band faced a spell in military prison if they disobeyed their orders and refused the call-up to join its ranks.

Under Ragab’s command, the headquarters of the military music department in Heliopolis earned the nickname of “the Jazz House”. The band required about a year to settle into the groove of the newly learned jazz idiom, and by February 1969, they were ready to play their first concert. Also held at AUC’s Ewart Memorial Hall, the same venue Ragab first experienced Weston’s live performance, the band played original compositions by Ragab, Geerken, and Vizvari as well as tunes by Dizzy Gillespie, Nat Adderly, and Count Basie. Their performances were well received and they went on to perform at venues like the Cairo Opera House and Il Capo Jazz Club in Zamalek.

Across his music career, Ragab managed to collaborate with many notable musicians but perhaps his most famous and influential collaborations are those with Sun Ra and the Sun Ra Arkestra. Sun Ra, born Herman Poole Blunt, was an African American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader. He was known for weaving together afro-futuristic aesthetics and ancient Egyptian symbols and mythology, resulting in a sonically and visually experimental jazz music. It is quite curious that the psychedelic aesthetics of Sun Ra should pique the interest of a military band leader like Ragab, but the connection sparked a memorable collaboration. Although there are mixed accounts regarding exactly how Ragab first encountered Sun Ra, there are some things we know for sure.

The first is that Sun Ra and his Astro-Intergalactic-Infinity Arkestra, which was made up of 22 musicians, visited Egypt in 1971 and performed at the pyramids on 12 December. On the same trip, Sun Ra also conducted a series of live sessions that were recorded and released as the album Egypt 1971. The sessions took place in two locations: firstly, the Balloon Theatre in Agouza, which still operates today hosting an array of theatrical performances accessible to most audiences; and secondly, at the home of none other than Hartmut Geerken who had formed the Cairo Jazz Band with Ragab and Vizvari. This link between Geerken and Sun Ra provides us with a clue as to how Sun Ra and Ragab ended up collaborating. Geerken is also credited with taking most of the photographs that document Sun Ra’s landmark 1971 trip to Egypt.

Despite these close affiliations, it took another 10 years for Sun Ra and Ragab to release their joint album. By that time, Ragab had already released an album with the Cairo Jazz Band called Egyptian Jazz which contained six songs: Oriental Mood, Dawn, Mervat, Ramadan, Kleopatra, and Neveen. The album was released in 1973 on the Prism Music Unit label, which fell under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. Production was handled by the Egyptian state-owned record company, Sono Cairo, which also managed the recordings of Umm Kulthoum. The year after, in 1974, the same album was re-released but under the name Egypt Strut with the original track list unchanged except for the renaming of the song “Ramadan” to “Ramadan in Space Time”. That being said, it is not exactly clear why the album was re-released under a new name given that the parties involved remained the same. The jazzed-up title may have attracted the attention of US musician Frank Zappa, who released an instrumental track called “Regyptian Strut” on his 1979 album Sleep Dirt, although there is no evidence of a direct link.

The Ragab/Sun Ra collaboration is a striking and fearless attempt at constructing a specifically Egyptian jazz. Classified under the genre of “free jazz” which denotes an experimental, avant-garde approach, the album relies on traditional Arabic rhythms and harmonies but completely transforms their sonic trajectory. With traditional instruments like the ney (a flute-like instrument of ancient provenance that is prominent in traditional Egyptian music) and the baza (the drum beaten in the street during Ramadan nights to signal the onset of daybreak), combined with instruments more familiar to the jazz repertoire like the saxophone, trumpet, and piano, the album acts as an exciting medley of cultures and sounds. A reissued version released in 2021 features additional songs including “A Farewell Theme” which was written to commemorate the death of Nasser and supposedly played during his funeral, and “The Crossing”, dedicated to President Anwar Sadat and the events of the October war.

Sun Ra returned to Egypt with his Arkestra in 1984 and the album Sun Ra Arkestra Meets Salah Ragab in Egypt was born. It features the songs Egypt Strut, Dawn, Ramadan, Oriental Mood, and A Farewell Theme and brings together around 35 musicians from both the Arkestra and the Cairo Jazz Band. Ragab and Sun Ra also collaborated on another, lesser-known album entitled Sun Rise in Egypt also released in 1984. Consisting of six songs mostly written by Sun Ra except for one by the great jazz pianist, Thelonious Monk, Ragab features as the drummer across the album. 

The story of how Salah Ragab became Egypt’s first jazzman, and the creator of a sonically distinct Egyptian jazz is riveting and slightly weird, especially when you consider that neither Ragab nor the genre of jazz as a whole enjoys any great popularity amongst Egyptians today. Most people have never heard of Ragab, who died in 2008, or listened to his beguiling melodies. Internationally, jazz fans are hardly more likely to be familiar with Ragab’s discography, unless through his collaborations with Sun Ra. Such a lack of renown is an even larger source of curiosity when one recalls that, during Nasser’s presidency, the Cairo Jazz Band was the military band with all the resources of the state at its disposal. This was very far from an “underground” movement but rather a creative endeavour entirely produced and distributed by a centralized, state-owned recording company.

We may never truly get to understand how the trajectory of jazz music in Egypt unfolded the way it did; however, Ragab’s story illuminates the kind of cross-cultural collaborations and inspirations that were integral to its making. Although localized in Cairo, Ragab’s collaborators came from all over the world and even all over Egypt with the Cairo Jazz Band musicians hailing from both Upper and Lower Egypt. Although it is unclear if jazz has any future in Egypt, it certainly has a glorious past and Salah Ragab’s story and discography might just provide us with the insights necessary to navigate the unknown road ahead.