Nancy Mounir
Nozhet El Nofous
Simsara Records
Nozhet El Nofous translates from Arabic as “promenade of the souls,” which is a good description of what Nancy Mounir has achieved on her debut album. Mounir is a contemporary Egyptian composer and performer with a deep interest in her nation’s musical heritage. She is particularly fascinated by the microtonality and non-metered rhythms of singers who recorded before Egyptian music became standardized in the 1930s. To explore this anachronistic music, Mounir decided to collaborate with long dead singers who recorded at the beginning of the 20th Century. Nancy Mounir is collaborating with ghosts.
Mounir has composed new music to unobtrusively complement the century-old vocal recordings. If you didn’t know what was going on, you couldn’t be blamed for assuming this is an Excavated Shellac or Dust to Digital collection of rarities. The newly composed elements blend with and enhance the ghostly vocalists.
