Fathy Salama

Fathy Salama (born March 27, 1969) is an Egyptian musician who was born in Cairo, Egypt. He grew up listening to the radio, which played artists who placed a deep influence upon him, his childhood influences were musicians Umm Kulthum, Mohammed Abdel Wahab and Farid El Atrache.

These artists influenced him so much that he decided to get involved with music, he then started to create his own versatile type music, from playing the piano from the age of six this made an excellent start and was followed by gigging in Cairo clubs from the age of thirteen. Soon the child of Shobra,'Compton of Cairo', made visits to Europe and to New York to learn Jazz with such great artists as Barry Harris, Sun Râ, Malik Osman, Hal Galper, Ossman Kareem and Pat Patrick.

He progressed to making plenty of hits in Cairo during the 80's, he has been touring the world and he has won two prizes for his film sound tracks for Fallen Angels Paradise's and Signs Of April, it is with Sharkiat (his own group) that Fathy is making his dreams come true of merging modern and traditional music together, thus expressing both a message from his home country and his love of music.

His music reflects his experience from the Orient and from Europe. His "success" on the music industry plays a secondary role ; first and foremost he wants to be understood, and so he works tirelessly on this bridge linking traditional and modern music from the Orient.

Fathy has collaborated in electronic music with Kouchari or his meeting with Alix Roy, and sacred music with Egypt, the successful Youssou N'Dour album (Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album and BBC Award).

External links

* [http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/61/Fathy+Salama+in+Morocco,+May+2004 afropop.org]
* [http://www.carnegiehall.org/article/box_office/events/evt_6369.html?selecteddate=10262005 carnegiehall.org]