The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh

Denise Seachrist

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781612773445

Biography of an important figure in 20th-century musical history

Egyptian-born composer Halim El-Dabh has studied with the giants of 20th-centruy musical composition and conducting. Although The Musical World of Halim El-Dabh focuses on his career from his arrival in the U.S. in 1950 to his retirement from the faculty of Kent State University in 1991, it also explores his early life in Egypt, its influence on him musically, and his creative life following retirement.

In March of 2002 El-Dabh, who is considered Egypt's most important living composer, presented a concert of his electronic and electro-acoustic works and three concerts of his orchestral chamber music in collaboration with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina String Orchestra at the newly reconstructed Bibliotheca Alexandrina (the famous Library of Alexandria of antiquity, which was destroyed by fire more than 1, 600 years ago).

1

From Childhood to Young Manhood

As a deafening crack of thunder reverberated throughout the heart of Cairo’s oldest section, Balsam El-Dabh gave birth to the last of her nine children. A healthy baby boy, Halim Messieh, was born on March 4, 1921, in a spacious eight-bedroom apartment occupying the entire third floor of an enormous old house on Sharia Al-Gameel, the “Street of the Beautiful.” Weeping with exhaustion and joy, Balsam declared to the midwife that surely the fierceness of the storm had heralded the arrival of a most blessed and special child. After instructing the midwife to prepare the baby for presentation to his anxiously awaiting father, Abdul Messieh (who had been standing like a sentry on one of the house’s several balconies), Balsam summoned her eldest daughter, Victoria, already a mother herself, to come sit with her. When the midwife returned with the baby and his proud father and placed the infant on the mother’s breast, Balsam became convinced that this child was the reason she had so fervently insisted that her husband move the family from central Egypt to Cairo, where the nation’s main universities were, in order for their children to obtain better educations. The move had proved financially beneficial to Abdul Messieh, whose agricultural-produce business flourished in Cairo, enabling him to support properly his large family of three girls and six boys. Victoria, Labeeb, Bushra, Alice, Adeeb, Regina, Michael, and Selim had all been born in Upper Egypt. That only Halim had been born in Cairo was another reason that his mother was certain that her youngest child was indeed special.

Balsam Benyiamin Fam was only fourteen years of age when she married the handsome, nineteen-year-old Abdul Messieh El-Dabh in an arranged ceremony within the small walled city of Zarabi, in the province of Asyut. Abdul Messieh pursued his family’s profession, grain farming, of which Asyut was considered the center. The name El-Dabh can be traced back three hundred years to a great-grandfather who had lived in Zarabi and had, it was said, single-handedly captured a hyena. The hyena had become the family’s symbol, and a gate of the walled-in area had been named in honor of the bravery of the great-grandfather. Sometimes depicted ideographically as a jackal or a pharaoh, the name El-Dabh is found also in northern Egypt, where some Muslim members of the family live. A variant, Al-Dabaa, is the name of a small town in the northwestern part of the country.

Balsam Fam’s Coptic (Orthodox Christian) family, known for its interest in theology, came from Abu Tieg, also in the province of Asyut. Balsam’s parents had promised her in marriage to Abdul Messieh once she completed her education at a missionary school near Abu Tieg, where she was a bright student. The pretty, intelligent, but rather shy, schoolgirl studied English and demonstrated an excellent knowledge of history and Egyptian politics. Balsam’s parents were proud that their daughter had completed the eighth grade, a considerable achievement for a young woman at that time, and the marriage contract with the eligible Abdul Messieh El-Dabh was considered beneficial to both families.

Balsam and Abdul Messieh were married in a double ceremony, the other groom being Abdul Messieh’s cousin Garris, who later became a well-known doctor and the physician to King Fu’ad. On the wedding day, the two nervous young brides were veiled in traditional garb and were brought to the elaborately decorated tent upon a single-hump camel. A file of musicians with flutes, double-reed mizmar¹ pipes, and trumpets, as well as naqqarah² kettledrums hanging from the sides of another camel, played fanfares and festive marches to announce the arrival of the veiled brides and their attendants. Balsam had never seen her future husband, except between heavy window shutters as he rode by on horseback; she now confused Garris for Adbul Messieh and positioned herself beside him. During the ceremony, Balsam’s mother noticed that the two young women were standing beside each other’s intended spouses and interrupted the ceremony to reposition the couples. Following the wedding, the Fam and El-Dabh families began a lavish forty-day public celebration, in which the entire town of Zarabi was invited to partake of lamb and other delicacies.

The marriage proved a most fruitful union, and Balsam thrived in her role as wife and mother. Her firstborn son, Labeeb, displayed a bright and curious mind at a very early age. Until the birth of her youngest child, Balsam favored Labeeb, encouraging his intellectual curiosity and exulting in his decision to attend medical school and become a physician. A fastidious and meticulous housekeeper, Balsam overlooked Labeeb’s obsession with human and animal skulls. He had a collection of the latter in his bedroom; she voiced displeasure only when he was caught teasing his youngest brother with them. Bushra, however, was openly acknowledged as his father’s favorite son; although Abdul Messieh supported his intention to study philosophy and literature in college, he was thrilled when Bushra agreed to become his assistant and enter the family business.

The third son, Adeeb, also pursued business and commerce in college; however, realizing that he could never measure up to Bushra in their father’s eyes, Adeeb pursued a career with Egypt Air. He was ultimately to be the most accomplished and commercially successful of the El-Dabh siblings. He would be responsible for opening a direct line between Cairo and Moscow, and he was to visit TWA’s headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri, becoming the first of the El-Dabh children to visit the United States. Eventually, Adeeb would leave the airline and enter the maritime travel business, out of the port of Alexandria. Michael, the strongest of the sons, was the only one to earn his living relying on physical prowess rather than mental aptitude. He was to become famous throughout Egypt as a championship figure skater. Although an injury ended his dream of competing in the Olympic Games, his reputation enabled him to earn a living as a coach to aspiring figure skaters and ballet dancers as well. As for Selim, like his oldest brother Labeeb he demonstrated a keen intellect at a very young age. He would study engineering in college and become an employee of the British Shell Company, a subsidiary of Dutch Royal Shell. Selim would travel throughout the Arab world supervising the drilling of oil wells.

Victoria, Alice, and Regina, the three daughters of Balsam and Abdul Messieh, were afforded elementary educations equal to those of their brothers. All three were instructed in foreign languages, history, and the piano; however, none was encouraged to pursue a college education. Although Victoria, a strikingly beautiful and vivacious young woman, was acknowledged to be the intellectual equal of her brothers Labeeb and Selim, she and her two sisters as well appeared content to fulfill their predetermined roles of marriage and motherhood, of which Balsam had provided the perfect example.

Notwithstanding her apparent submission to her role as a woman, Balsam exerted tremendous power and influence on her children and also on her husband, who grew to adore her. One area in which she did so was religion. As was true in many prominent families in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century, some members of the El-Dabh family retained the ancient Coptic religion, while others chose to practice Islam. When the family moved (at Balsam’s insistence) to the large house on the Street of the Beautiful, Abdul Messieh’s brother, after working in southern Sudan, announced that he had joined the Reformed church, and he urged his brother and sister-in-law to leave the Coptic Orthodox tradition and convert with him. Abdul Messieh was a deeply religious man who gathered the family to pray and sing every day prior to leaving for work across the Nile; however, tradition compelled him to follow his older brother to the Reformed church. Balsam, not wanting to cause a rift within the family, acquiesced and attended services with her husband and the children; however, she remained steadfast to her own beliefs and soon began attending the Orthodox church as well. The children attended church primarily with their father, but on occasion they accompanied their mother, whose dedication to her convictions greatly influenced them, especially her youngest child Halim.

Abdul Messieh and Balsam El-Dabh created an environment that exposed their children to a variety of people and to different ways of thinking and of experiencing the world around them. This was particularly true by the time the youngest child was born. For instance, Abdul Messieh’s mother lived with the family until she was ninety-seven years old, and often Balsam had the toddler kiss his grandmother’s hands and receive her blessings; having the revered matriarch of the family living with them was considered an honor. It was also considered an honor to be visited by relatives, and the young boy relished the frequent presence of members of his extended family, who brought many village products with them. Laden with pomegranates, oranges, lettuce, live chickens, and turkeys, they came from Asyut, Tell El Amarna, Luxor, and Aswan. These visits implanted the notion that life was connected to the earth. Also, the child spent untold hours talking with his mother, as he ground wheat into flour for her between granite stones, about history, America, and happenings in the world. Often the conversations were quite political, as she told him stories of the king, of Arabia, and of Islamic development in general.

Because the family was large and because Adbul Messieh was affluent enough to afford their salaries, there were many servants who lived with the family. The doorman, the two cooks, and several maids were considered a part of the household. The staff would bring their own musical instruments to join in the festive family gatherings. At the end of the day, the doorman played his lyre in front of the door, singing traditional songs from Nubia, Upper Egypt, and Central Egypt—one of the first musical exposures for the youngest El-Dabh child.

Every Wednesday his mother laundered the family’s clothes in the basement, with two or three maids assisting her. Balsam would boil the water over a small burner to prepare to wash the garments. Then she would distill the essence of orange blossoms, jasmine, and roses, whose sweet fragrances she kept in small decorative bottles, to flavor the strong Turkish coffee she enjoyed each morning sitting at her balcony. Her youngest child later in life would regard these moments with his mother as an invaluable part of his education; he would consider her to have been the first, and one of the more essential, of his informal educators.

Another of El-Dabh’s informal teachers was the man known only to the young boy as the “Orange Man.” Once every two weeks he would walk six miles from downtown Cairo to the El-Dabh house, a huge basket containing three bushels of oranges adeptly balanced atop his elderly head with its mane of long white hair. The Orange Man would stay with the family for the entire day, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, before returning home with an empty basket. Occasionally, he stayed so late that Balsam would insist he spend the night in a spare room. The days the Orange Man came were major events for the household. The youngest El-Dabh would eagerly anticipate the moment the ancient figure, with his gnarled hands and weathered face, would appear with the fruit and the wonderful stories of happenings at the palace and around the country.

Others of El-Dabh’s everyday instructors were street puppeteers. Traditionally in Egypt there were two types. A puppeteer of the first kind toted on his back a bench and a box, resembling an Islamic citadel;³ he was often accompanied by a man playing a long trumpet and another beating a drum. A troupe would go into the crowded streets as the children were dismissed from school and set up on a street corner. The blaring trumpet and pounding drum drew the children, who would scurry to find places on the bench to watch the show. The puppeteer’s “citadel,” the stage, had scrolls on two sides and a cloth over the front. When the cloth cover was opened, three screens of transparent glass were revealed, with the ends of the scrolls beautifully illuminated with pictures between them. As the audience watched the pictures passing between the glass panes, the puppeteer would begin an elaborate tale—often biblical, koranic, or historical—and the squirming children quickly quieted into calm fascination. Often a little monkey came around collecting money. If the children did not have any money, which was often the case, they paid for the performance with glass bottles they had brought with them—the clearer the glass, the more valuable.

The other kind of puppeteer carried a triptych, or three-sided framework, which would be opened to form a makeshift stage. Covering himself with a cloth, the puppeteer would manipulate hand and stick puppets to enact the plays. Old-time puppeteers placed metal swazzles⁴ in the roofs of their mouths to create a puppet’s voice. There was a great deal of political allusion in the puppeteers’ tales, so though the performances were mainly for children, adults also enjoyed them.

El-Dabh’s first formal education occurred at the school across the street from his house. He was enrolled when he was just four years old. The close proximity of the school was very appealing to his parents, who were overly protective of their youngest child. However, when the boy came home one day speaking Hebrew, Abdul Messieh and Balsam decided to remove him from that school and find another. Everyone had opinions regarding which school the ninth child should attend, but eventually it was determined that he should enter the Jesuit school, Khouranfish—where he stayed until he was eleven years old and where he first learned to speak French. Young El-Dabh often was transported to the Khouranfish school by his own driver in a horse-drawn carriage; however, the boy preferred to ride the school bus along with the other children. He enjoyed the social interaction with his classmates, but mostly he enjoyed traveling by school bus, because the thirty-minute trip went over the Red Mountain, Mukatam, and he loved the scenery.

It was a very different world for him at the French school, where the students, dressed uniformly in black tunics, were very regimented. The priests, also attired in black tunics, were strict disciplinarians who required the students to silently walk two by two, in pairs of files. This was an aspect of the education for which El-Dabh did not care. Once while walking in the file outside in the school’s courtyard, he noticed through the school’s entrance several large posters on the theater across the street. The posters advertised the theater’s attractions; one depicted women with their legs exposed.⁵ Transfixed by the sight, El-Dabh forgot he was in the file, forgot about the priests, and ran straight to the movies for the remainder of the day. The next day a priest stood waiting for the impetuous youth as he arrived at the school. The priest gruffly escorted the boy to a corner of the classroom and, pointing an ebony stick at him, sternly demanded, “Cinéma! Qu’est-ce que vous vue?” “What did you see?” In particular, had he seen women?

“Oui, mon pèie, oui,” the frightened boy replied. “Yes, Father, yes.”

The priest continued to hold that threatening stick over the boy’s head until, apparently, he received some satisfaction through the fear in the youth’s eyes. After hearing what he wanted, the priest commanded, “Don’t do that again. Don’t leave the line.”⁶

Nonetheless, El-Dabh flourished at Khouranfish, where he excelled in many sporting activities including fencing and barrel running. He dominated in stilt walking; eventually he was a member of a team that played a type of kickball on stilts. Academically he was at the top of his class as well. Because he showed such great aptitude in the second grade, he was promoted early to the third grade, where he also continued to thrive, so he was placed in the fourth grade. (However, that move pushed him too far; he could no longer keep up and found himself at the bottom of the class. The bright boy became frustrated; in tears, he demanded to return to the third grade.) For his scholastic achievements, El-Dabh was given special privileges and duties. One such duty was the moulin, or “wind-mill.” Students who had been caught misbehaving were forced to walk around a fountain in the middle of the school’s courtyard for the entire recreation period; as his reward, the young El-Dabh was selected to supervise the activity. However, he was not fond of the job, nor was he well suited to it. Instead of ensuring that his peers were toeing the line, the outgoing boy would stand at his post and engage in conversation with them. Eventually, he was removed from his position of authority.

In 1932, the El-Dabh family moved from the Street of the Beautiful to the Street of Ismailia,⁷ in Heliopolis, the “City of the Sun,” and the eleven-year-old El-Dabh was placed in a public orientation program to prepare him for entrance into the regular government school for the remainder of his Egyptian education. When he first entered into the program, El-Dabh felt that his time among the Jesuits at Khouranfish had been a detriment to his progress; however, he soon realized that his varied educational experience had been very beneficial, because in addition to learning French, he had been exposed to Catholics, Protestants, Copts, and Jews.

El-Dabh was very close to his wide assortment of friends, a trait he would possess throughout his life. Although reared Coptic, he was to be comfortable in the company of his Muslim friends, and he was welcomed by Islamic society in Cairo. As long as he was with his friends, he would be equally at ease in a mosque or a church. His exposure to many religions and his eclectic education enabled him to adapt to a variety of situations of the multifaceted society into which he had been born. He would often join in the prayers of any denomination or religious group; it did not make any difference to El-Dabh. Later, as he worked in the villages, he found that the mosque was the best place to find clean water when he wanted to bathe.

Following his orientation program, in 1932 El-Dabh entered an Arabic middle school where he was exposed to intensive study of geography and mathematics. It was also in 1932 that the eleven year old discovered his passion for music.

The El-Dabh house contained an old, upright monstrosity of a piano, on which all the siblings learned to play. However, Halim, as the ninth child, was often pushed aside by the others when it came his turn, and this treatment made him more determined to play. He credits his brothers Bushra and Adeeb for encouraging his musical talent. Bus...