It was Thursday night and I was at El Valenciano with the band waiting to play for Parya and her dancers. The band was our leader Georges Lammam, Gabriel Navia, Ali Paris, Susu and me. El Valenciano brings back so many memories. This is the club where Jacques Al Asmar and I started our Salamat Sundays with the Arabian Knights in the late 1990’s. That seems like so many years ago and also seems like just yesterday. Jacques and I originally formed the Arabian Knights Band so we could train our own musicians to play good dance music for us. Unfortunately that didn’t happen too often because we always needed to fill the stage, be part of the band, run herd with the audience, be bouncer, doorman, roadie, or whatever. Be everything but be a dancer. And so we hardly ever got to dance to our own band, even though so many of our friends or my dance students got to. So here it was about 30 years later, and I’m still on the other end of the stage, playing for other dancers and dreaming of how it feels to dance to these great musicians. Sometimes the drummers tell me that I space out and lose the tempo when there is a really good dancer performing. I probably do - I need to remember to focus and remember that I’m playing in the band and not on stage dancing.
In a couple of weeks - New Years’ Day to be exact - I’m going to Egypt to sort of fulfill a dream. That is, I’m going to Egypt to help facilitate the recording of a piece of dance music and help make my friend Jacques’ dream become a reality. We couldn’t seem to get our band the Arabian Knights to play dance music for us regularly because we were always busy running the show making sure they played great dance music for everyone else. Now I hope to go to Cairo and get something beautiful made for Jacques. He will then finally have his own perfect music. And it will be his music. I’m hoping I’ll do a good job and Jacques is hoping to eventually share it with others.
Actually the original reason for this Egypt trip is that Susu was invited to perform and record with Reda Henkesh of the Henkesh family. That is too exciting and another dream becoming a reality, but that’s for Susu to share with her friends. Since Susu was also a part of the Arabian Knights Band, Jacques and I are planning that she will also be part of our music project. More on all this as it develops.
Not much has changed in all the years since I originally played at El Valenciano. I still dream about music and creating dance pieces, being a better percussionist, being a better dancer and especially being a better dance teacher. Feeling so proud when I see my students dance and also wanting to remember what I see so I can remind them to do this or that (pin those costumes, listen to the music better, hear the drum changes, connect with the audience better and so on and so on). I’m still trying to learn to understand, speak and read and write Egyptian Arabic, I’m still wanting to know the music and understand the lyrics better and I still have a million ideas and plans for future projects. This next one - going to Cairo to work with Reda Henkesh and Susu to create the perfect majensi for Jacques is just one of my plans, but is my immediate next plan. But I question myself. Who am I to be able to make this happen? I can’t really speak Arabic, I’m not trained to play musical instruments. I don’t know one maqam from another. I never studied Arabic music, although I sure did take a awful lot of Arabic percussion lessons for an awful lot of years (and still am studying) from drummers too numerous to mention. Well, I think it’s because I’m a dancer first and know what dancers want. What I would want. What happens to be popular. What is traditional and not just trendy. What Jacques dances like and most importantly, that Jacques trusts me to do this for him. What a responsibility. I sure hope that I do a good job. So now for the rest of 2019 I will be doing nothing else but thinking about music and this or that. But then, of course, what else is there in life?
Salamat Sundays and The Arabian Knights Band at El Valenciano sometime in the late 1990’s. Raed Khawaja, keyboard; Fadi Hanani, vocals; Jacques el Asmar,duf; Noel, tura; Shar Mundy, bass guitar; Amina Goodyear, snare drum with snare removed to replicate a timbale, bells and wood blocks; Reda Darwish, tabla.
More Arabian Knights at El Valenciano Above: Is this Khader Keileh? keyboard; Jacques Al Asmar, riq; Noel, tura; Raed Khawaja, keyboard; Susu Pampanin, duf; Shar Mundy, bass guitar and Amina Goodyear, tabla.