The 24th Arab Music Festival and Conference, held over nine days from 1 to 9 November at the Egyptian Opera House theatres in Cairo, Alexandria and Damanhur has announced the prize winners and the resolutions of the conference.
The festival featured 23 concerts with 61 singers and musicians from Egypt, Morocco, Yemen, Tunisia, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain and Palestine. This round of the festival is dedicated to late poet Abdel Rahman al-Abnoudi (1938 – 2015), for his exceptional contributions to the festival’s successive rounds. The opening concert will be a tribute to him.
The contests featured 56 contestants. The first prize in the young people’s contest was suspended, while the second was divided equally between Omar Hamdy and Karim Hussam. Lu’ai Ahmed Muhammad won the first prize in the children’s contest. Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz won the prize for the Arab takht (band).
The research conference committee issued resolutions that focused on four aspects. First, it was recommended that more effort should be put into coordinating between musicians and poets, especially where Arabic classic poetry was concerned, as well as into training singers and performers in the intricacies of translating and interpreting classic Arabic into musical works.
The second aspect concerned Arab musical heritage and folklore, and Arab musicians were encouraged to delve more into the wealth of these music genres to create contemporary works with distinct character capable of retaining the Arab music identity in a world of globalism and cultural invasion.
The third and fourth aspects concerned musicals and child theatre; in both cases it was recommended that the institutions concerned should adopt a renaissance movement that would bring these musical works to the fore of public attention.
Watani International
8 November 2015