Zakaria Ibrahim (1952-2024)

Zakaria Ibrahim, who founded the wonderful Egyptian band El Tanbura, has died of a heart attack. He was born in Port Said where his father worked on the Suez Canal. Ibrahim’s first love was the plucked simsimiyya, the popular lyre of the canal region. There he saw “how the simsimiyya was like a glue, bringing people together and how it was critical to preserving values and cultural identity.” He started El Tanbura (a loose collective of singers and musicians) in 1989 when he felt the instrument was declining due to the commercialisation of traditional music. And he collected more than 20 hours of traditional songs. He called the simsimiyya “the spirit and identity of the people” and said, “The main aim for me was to revive this music in its home and make a relationship with the people who miss this music and want to hear it.” Zakaria Ibrahim wrote songs for El Tanbura – named after a larger type of lyre also featured in the band – and sang in their weekly performances in Port Said. As well as the resistance songs of Port Said, their repertoire included songs about the simsimiyya and Sufi religious subjects.

El Tanbura played in Cairo in 1994, won financial support from the Ford Foundation and performed at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 1996. They performed live from Suez for the BBC Today programme in July 2006, had a showcase at WOMEX and did several UK tours. Their album Between the Desert and the Sea was a Top of the World in 2006 and Friends of Bamboute likewise in 2009. They also performed in Tahrir Square in 2011 during the Arab Spring.

Zakaria Ibrahim ran El Tanbura through the Mustafa Center in Cairo as well as other Egyptian folk groups like Rango, featuring the pentatonic spiritual music from Sudanese communities and the Bedouin Jerry Can Band playing music from Sinai.