RE-ISSUE DATE: APR 2025
Magnetic recorder wire was an early form of audio recording technology used primarily from the 1940s to the early 1950s. Instead of using tape, it recorded sound onto thin steel wire through magnetic induction. The wire recorder offered improved fidelity over earlier acoustic methods and was used for broadcasting, military purposes, and home recordings. Though eventually replaced by magnetic tape, wire recording played a key role in the transition to modern audio technologies.
This is the earliest recorded piece of electronic tape music, also known as "musique concrete" or "electroacoustic" tape music. Halim El-Dabh, then a student at Cairo, Egypt, produced this music piece using samples taken from an ancient Egyptian "Zar" ceremony. He edited, manipulated and arranged these sounds to create the earliest piece of electronic tape music.
He first presented his piece at an art gallery event in 1944, predating Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrete recordings by four years. Having borrowed a wire recorder from the offices of Middle East Radio, El-Dabh took it to the streets to capture outside sounds, specifically an ancient zaar ceremony.
El-Dabh’s contributions, emerging from Cairo and rooted in North African ritual, were overlooked, dismissed, or exotified
Intrigued by the possibilities of manipulating recorded sound for musical purposes, he believed it could open up the raw audio content of the zaar ceremony to further investigation into "the inner sound" contained within. According to El-Dabh, "I just started playing around with the equipment at the station, including reverberation, echo chambers, voltage controls, and a re-recording room that had movable walls to create different kinds and amounts of reverb."
He further explains: "I concentrated on those high tones that reverberated and had different beats and clashes, and started eliminating the fundamental tones, isolating the high overtones so that in the finished recording, the voices are not really recognizable any more, only the high overtones, with their beats and clashes, may be heard." His final 20-25 minute piece was recorded onto magnetic tape and called The Expression of Zaar, which was publicly presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo.
Despite his pioneering work in electronic and tape-based composition, Halim El-Dabh has long been marginalized within Western music history. His 1944 piece The Expression of Zaar—arguably the first known work of musique concrète—predates the experiments of Pierre Schaeffer in France, yet El-Dabh's name is often omitted from canonical narratives. While French composers were celebrated for innovating with recorded sound and tape manipulation, El-Dabh’s contributions, emerging from Cairo and rooted in North African ritual, were overlooked, dismissed, or exotified. This erasure reflects broader patterns of cultural gatekeeping, in which non-Western voices are excluded from authorship over genres they helped define.
TRACK LIST
From a set of 6 parchments described by German musicologist Hans Hickmann in his 1956 book Musicologie Pharaonique, or Music under the Pharaohs, as dating from the 5th to 7th centuries C.E. Colors are presumed to indicate pitch and size to indicate duration. Writings on the parchment are in Coptic with indications like “Spiritual Harmony” and “Holy Hymn Singer”. This manuscript had a profound influence on Egyptian composer Halim El-Dabh's music notation and paintings when he discovered a reproduction in Vogue magazine in 1952.
The Zār ceremony is a traditional healing ritual practiced in parts of North and East Africa and the Middle East, especially in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia. It is rooted in ancient spirit possession beliefs and is performed mostly by women to appease spirits believed to cause illness, misfortune, or emotional distress. The ritual combines rhythmic drumming, chanting, incense, and trance-like dancing to create a cathartic and communal space for release and healing. Though often viewed as marginal or superstitious, Zār reflects a deep cultural expression of collective trauma, resilience, and the body’s role in spiritual experience.
RELEASE
NO.02
HALIM
EL DABH
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