Halim El-Dabh - "Wire Recorder Piece" (1944)

This is possibly the earliest piece of electronic music ever composed, or more specifically, the first piece of electronic tape music, also known as "musique concrete" or "electroacoustic" music.

Halim El-Dabh, then a student at Cairo, Egypt, produced this music piece using samples taken from an ancient Egyptian "Zar" ceremony. He edited, manipulated and arranged these sounds to create the earliest piece of electronic tape music. He first presented his piece at an art gallery event in 1944, predating Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrete recordings by four years.

Having borrowed a wire recorder from the offices of Middle East Radio, El-Dabh took it to the streets to capture outside sounds, specifically an ancient zaar ceremony. Intrigued by the possibilities of manipulating recorded sound for musical purposes, he believed it could open up the raw audio content of the zaar ceremony to further investigation into "the inner sound" contained within.

According to El-Dabh, "I just started playing around with the equipment at the station, including reverberation, echo chambers, voltage controls, and a re-recording room that had movable walls to create different kinds and amounts of reverb." He further explains: "I concentrated on those high tones that reverberated and had different beats and clashes, and started eliminating the fundamental tones, isolating the high overtones so that in the finished recording, the voices are not really recognizable any more, only the high overtones, with their beats and clashes, may be heard." His final 20-25 minute piece was recorded onto magnetic tape and called The Expression of Zaar, which was publicly presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo.

This version is a 2 minute sample of the original 20-25 minute piece.

Category:

Music

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• 1944
• electronic
• tape
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• electroacoustic
• Cairo
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• Egyptian
• musique
• concrete
• Arabic
• ambient
• experimental
• noise
• sound
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• chill
• techno
• folk
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• ballad
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• Arabic Language
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• Africa
• African

[TransientWriting]

just read about this on wikipedia, and now im able to hear it! awesome. thanks for posting this. this is fantastic, i didnt know ambient music was sooooooooo old?

[macarthur19]

He is a pioneer in electronic noise/feedback. Congrats, sounds like garbage!

[crnodrik]

Like some people told here, it's definitely not the fist electronic piece ever composed as electronic instruments appeared much earlier than 1944 and it is in no way an electronic piece but some kind of musique concrète and this is not a tape recording but a wire recording (thus made with a wire recorder). Anyway, Halim El-Dabh is one of the multiple pioneers of experimental music and indeed the first one to compose such music in Africa. A great musician and composer.

[isidoromaich]

@keithramer123 I'm with @distprod, the description clearly states: "This is the earliest piece of electronic music ever composed"; there are original compositions for Theremin, Ondes Martenot and Trautonium that predates this piece. So the description is wrong, please @Jagged85 correct that to not produce confusions. Maybe should say: this is the earliest piece of electroacoustic music ever recorded (but I'm not sure about this neither)

[keithramer123]

@distprod He was the first to make an electroacoustic tape. Not electronic music in general.

[distprod]

I'm not sure how one could make the claim that El-Dabh composed the first electronic music composition when the Theramin was created in 1919-1920, which led to many compositions pre-dated this one.

[antonscottgoustin]

I know Halim El-Dabh! I met him here at Wayne State University in June 2011. He rocks! Musicoethnologist.

[ToknikkWaste]

This is great, thanks for posting, been looking for a recording of this. Where did you get the background info on El Dabh?

[heklngjekl]

Magickal

[raymanscape]

great!