Fathy Salama is a well known Egyptian composer, arranger and musician. Fathy is the former creator of jeel music. He composed all hits during the 80's in Cairo. He is also involved in the revival of the Egyptian traditional music.

Fathy Salama was born by the Nile. When he was a child he swam there with his friends. He grew up listening to the family radio, which played the music of Um Kulthum, Abdelwahab and Farid el Attrash. Later, when he could tune the radio, he reached beyond the banks of the Nile to Jazz and to a huge variety of traditional world music.

Learning the piano from the age of six was a good beginning and was followed by gigging in Cairo clubs from the age of thirteen. Soon the kid of Shobra, the Harlem of Cairo, made it to Europe and to New York to learn Jazz with such great artists as Sun R? and Ossman Kareem.

Salama created many hits in Cairo during the 1980s. He toured the world and won two prizes for his film soundtracks. With Sharkiat (his own group) Salama is making his dreams come true of merging modern and traditional music together, thus expressing both a message from his home country and his love of music. His music reflects his experience from the Middle East and Europe. His "success" in the music marketplace plays a secondary role. First and foremost he wants to be understood, and so he works tirelessly to bridge traditional and modern music from the Orient.

Could electronics be the savior of the oldest rhythms in the world? Fathy Salama believes it. The new project of this Egyptian musician is to break, for the first time, from the tendency to use Arabic music solely as a bank for samples to serve the purposes of electronic music.

He wants to do just the contrary, to give back, through electronics, the first place to Arabic music. A music that is more and more forgotten even in its mother land, although the musical forms that were born centuries ago on the banks of the Nile, particularly the ones from Saeed (the South of Egypt) and Sudan, are a unique source of discoveries for those who love peculiar rhythms and unusual sounds. Since 1994, Fathy Salama is keen on exploring these resources and works on percussion, with concerts, especially in France, that usually turn into raves of traditional music.

In 2000, Salama settled down in Paris and started an artistic collaboration with Youssou N'Dour.

In 2001 Salama worked with the collective of Parisian VJs Ya-K and the photographer Guillaume de R?musat. He created the first multimedia show around electronic music and traditional Egyptian rhythms.

The following year, while still researching electronic music, Salama worked on the preservation of traditional music with the creation of a new group The Rango Tanbura Group with which he gives a series of workshops for professionals and the public.

In 2003 Salama signed with the French label Les Disques S?rieux.

Official Web Site: www.fathysalama.com

Camel Dance (Face Music Switzerland, FM 50006, 1991 /US: Cross Currents Music USA, CM 50014-2, 1997)

Color Me Cairo (ENJA Records Germany, Enjacd 9083-2, 1994)

Camel Road (Face Music Switzerland, FM 50014, 1996)

Don't Climb the Pyramids, Maniacs & Sharkiat (Barbarity, 1998)

Maqsoom, feat. DJ Mutamassik (Les Disques S?rieux, 2003)

Mashy El Hal, feat. DJ Mutamassik (Les Disques S?rieux, 2003)