Salah Ragab: The Egyptian army major who became a jazz legend
Jazz is one of the world’s greatest universal languages, defying musical and international borders all across this little blue dot, from New Orleans to the Valley of the Kings. It was within those ancient surroundings of Egypt that one of jazz’s most endearing voices triumphed back in the 1960s, trading in his day job as an Egyptian army major to become one of the greatest percussionists to ever grace the airwaves. For the uninitiated, I am of course talking about the great Salah Ragab.
Born into a military family in the Hadayek El Kobba neighbourhood of Cairo, much of Ragab’s future was already laid out for him. During the 1950s, he received his military training at Egypt’s Military Academy, and quickly rose to the rank of Major, thanks to his commanding glare and military precision. Serving in the army from the late 1950s until the 1970s, Ragab fought in Yemen during the 1960s, and even commanded a tank division during the Third Arab–Israeli War in 1968.
At the same time that he led this prestigious life as a military leader, though, Ragab developed an intense and unwavering interest in jazz music. With its free-flowing ideas, improvisation, and experimentation, jazz is perhaps not the most obvious choice for an Army Major, but Ragab’s radio constantly found itself tuned to English-language radio stations blasting out all the infectious sounds of jazz throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Alongside hearing American jazz artists on the radio, Ragab also found solace in Arabic vocalists like Oum Kalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez in his native Egypt.
Ragab had always harboured a deep appreciation for music and played the drums in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s military band throughout his time in the Army. So, when jazz began to take hold of Cairo’s clubs and bars, the Major decided to get involved himself. It was during the mid-1960s that Ragab’s dreams started to take shape, befriending the Kansas saxophonist Osman Kareem, who had relocated to Egypt as a means of escaping the racist discrimination of the United States at the time.
Kareem eventually returned home, but Ragab’s mind was already set on curating Egypt’s first big band jazz outfit. Luckily, the Army Major had his pick of the forces’ musicians, so he selected around 20 of his troops to form his group, the Cairo Jazz Band – how could they refuse? Along the way, the drummer received assistance from the German musician Hartmut Geerken and Czech bassist Eduard Vizvari, who were essential to the band’s formation and subsequent success.
Once Ragab had formed the Cairo Jazz Band, he quickly set about getting them to perform live, appointing himself the bandleader. Blending expansive original compositions with interpretations of works by the Major’s most beloved American jazz musicians, like Dizzy Gillespie, the group immediately found an audience across Egypt. There had been no Egyptian big band prior to Ragab’s, and their distinctly Arab take on the typically Western sounds of jazz certainly endeared them to audiences.
Another key supporter of the Cairo Jazz Band was space-jazz pioneer Sun Ra, who performed alongside Ragab and the group on multiple visits to Egypt during the early 1970s and beyond. Despite being thousands of miles away from the epicentre of the jazz movement, in America, the Cairo Jazz Band created some of the most inventive and ambitious compositions of the era, bringing an entirely new perspective to the scene.
Ultimately, though, Ragab’s military career got in the way of his musical exploits. Touring the world was out of the question, and, at various points throughout his tenure with the Cairo Jazz Band, the drummer was ordered not to communicate with the likes of Geerken or Vizvari, as the army viewed them as foreign adversaries. The Cairo Jazz Band, in its original form, was thwarted in 1973 by the Yom Kippur War – the Fourth Arab–Israeli War – in 1973.
Called up to action in the conflict, Ragab’s music career was put on hold. After the war was over, the jazz composer retired from the military to focus entirely on music. From then on, he became one of the very few constants within the Egyptian music scene, flying the flag for jazz almost single-handedly within the North African nation.
As well as touring Europe with Sun Ra during the 1980s, he also founded a music shop, Maestro, during his retirement, bringing the joys of jazz to new generations of musicians in Cairo, where he remains incredibly influential to this day.
