Ma’azef: Reclaiming History More Important than History Itself

    “Spineless” by Egyptian musician Maurice Louca begins with no introductions floating over sentimental swamps. It immediately commences with the amplified sounds of the oboe, keyboard and different type of drums. 17 seconds into the piece, we hear the voice of “Ala 50” if it were a surplus yet necessary burden. It sends messages through short, disconnected sentences that do not relay a story but protect percussion from collapse: “life is a forest, and it’s mighty…..” 
Louca, whose album “Salute the Parrot” was released on Ma’azef last year, represents a generation of Arab musicians who seem to have decided at once to toy with the sacred nostalgia. They chose, instead, to immerse themselves into the aesthetics of daily life details that manifest themselves in the feeling that everything could collapse all of a sudden. This feeling is, however, accompanied by a consciousness that there is no way to prevent this collapse other than relinquishing the privilege of imitating reality and believing that they are actually part of this reality. So, it is possible to regard those musicians as though they are floating in a cold meadow, only their heads surfacing as they try to breathe.