David Dalle
Thursday September 19th, 2019 with David Dalle
Tribute to the master percussionist Hossam Ramzy; Ensembles Constantinople and Caprice together

Today we saw farewell to the master percussionist Hossam Ramzy died on Sep 10th, aged 65 years. Born in Cairo, Hossam Ramzy was introduced to the Egyptian tabla at only 3 years old which he immediately took to, he grew up learning Egyptian as well as Bedouin rhythm and percussion when his family moved to Saudi Arabia. Ramzy moved to the UK in the mid 70's to pursue a musical career and worked as a percussionist with jazz and other musicians, but he always had a very deep love for Raqs sharqi (Eastern dance) and traditional dance rhythms from Egypt and this became the focus of his career. He recorded many albums for the ARC label with a focus on music for dance. One aspect of this focus was the music was primarily instrumental, instead of the focus of the instruments being the accompaniment of a singer, the focus is on accompanying dance. With this in mind, he recorded many instrumental arrangements of famous Egyptian songs by composers such as Farid el Etrache, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and others. Though probably the majority of his output were his own compositions. In the late 80's he drew the attention of Peter Gabriel and became a regular collaborator most successfully with the "Last Temptation of Christ" soundtrack. He also performed on many recordings with various popular musicians, however my interest has always been on his own music and collaborations with other great Egyptian musicians such as the trumpeter Samy El Bably. We will hear an hour or so of music from his long career.