At Home with Abo Sahar: The Shaabi Innovator Breaking Every Stereotype

Electricity was a rare commodity in the Upper Egyptian village of El Minya when Abo Sahar was growing up. There were no computers, no instruments - just a longing to create and entertain. Entering the world of music as a street wedding performer, he now stands as one of the most unique producers on the Egyptian music scene, a man whose nebulous and sometimes abstract use of sound has taken him from the streets of El Minya to the stages of Cairo.

His is a remarkable story, an example of how, in the world of independent music, ingenuity and originality can come from the most unlikely of places. His music - which he calls ‘Trobby’ - has been, rather wrongly, classified simply as shaabi, but his use of everything from trap to Sufi paints him as much more. This is a man of vision, of musicality, of imagination - and it all happens from the comfort of his home in El Minya, which SceneNoise infiltrated and lived a day with the man that has come to be known as ‘The King of Trobby Music’.