Rango: Time for Action Replay

(This article , written by me, was published in the 'HORUS' magazine, the in-flight magazine of Egypt Air)

At the last crossing just before the Abdeen Palace, in a poor and unassuming neighborhood in downtown Cairo, is the Tanbura Hall that hosts the last-known exponent of Rango every Thursday evening.

Rango is a musical instrument and its music was brought to Egypt by the Sudanese people- first when they came in as conscripts into the Egyptian army in the 1820s and then later by those who were brought in to work on the cotton plantations in the 1860s. These reluctant exiles settled in the cities of Alexandria, Cairo and Ismailia, bringing their folk melodies and instruments with them, and sought solace from the loneliness and the harshness of their lives in music.

At the Tanbura Hall, we are treated to this repertoire of songs created in exile-songs of longing to return to their homelands, humorous marching refrain and the Sudanese wedding songs.

The Rango ensemble, fresh from their triumphant one-month long tour of UK in July this year, set the mood with their songs performed to simsimiyya and tanbura lyres, with percussion provided by shakers made of recycled aerosol cans.

Their performance has a new exuberance; they have just heard that their debut album, Rango:Bride of theZar, has been selected as one of the 10 best albums of 2010 in the respected London-based Songlines magazine.

But the piece de resistance of the performance is yet to come, when the 190-year-old Rango is unveiled-literally –to an appreciative audience. The instrument deserves the ceremonial unveiling-after all; it is one of the only two that can be found in Egypt.

Xylophone-like, with wooden keys and resonators fashioned out of Sudanese vegetable gourds, the Rango music had faded into oblivion after the death of the last of the old masters in the year 1975.

The Rango was traditionally played along with the tanbura at the soul cleansing and healing Zar rituals and gradually evolved to being performed at wedding celebrations and other social events. However, it could never quite shake off the stigma of being a trance-inducing and spirit-invoking music and was shunned by the Egyptian society.

Ibrahim Zacharias, founder and director of El Mastaba, the Center for Egyptian Folk Music was determined to bring back the Rango into the public realm and to rescue it from the brink of extinction.

“I first heard about the Rango in the year 1994 from my friend, the veteran Ismailia musician El Wazery,” recalls Zacharias. El Wazery had fond memories of the beautiful Rango nights in Ismailia before the war of 1967 and particularly remembered Hassan Bergamon. Hassan had moved to Cairo and taken up playing the more versatile Tanbura. Consequently, no-one knew that that Hassan could play the Rango.

Zacharias finally traced him in the year 1996. “When I met him, the first thing I asked him was whether he still could play the Rango and second whether he owned any,” says Zacharias.

Since Hassan did not own a Rango, the battle was only half won. Zacharias visited the homes of the old masters and over a period of time won the trust of their families who entrusted the last two Rangos xylophones to him.

21 years had elapsed since Hassan last played the Rango, but when he laid his hands on the instrument again, it was like “I had found myself again,”

The Rango instrument and its player secured, the next step was to organize the band. With veteran drummers, Zar singers and ritual dancers wearing mangor belts made from goat horns, Hassan’s rango ensemble made their stage debut in Egypt in 2001. Energetic and frenzied, alternately foot tapping and soulful, the Rango music is a cacophonous symphony.

The efforts of Zacharias and Hassan have revived the Rango in Egypt but the road ahead remains rocky. The gourds out of which the Rango is fashioned can be found only in the south of Sudan and with the passing away of the old masters; knowledge to assemble the Rango has also faded. The old Rangos are fragile and may not survive the relentless pounding for a long time.

However, there is a ray of hope-the El Mastaba has recently discovered an English musician, who is a specialist Rango maker and has commissioned a brand new Rango, likely to be brought to Cairo at the end of November.

But again, the bigger hiccup is manifesting the spirits of the old masters from the gourds of the old Rango into the new one. “The musicians and players of Rango believe that every player who plays the Rango leaves a part of himself inside the gourds and the invisible spirits are moving around the gourds hoping for a communion with the spirits of the old masters,” elaborates Zacharias. And the implications of this belief in an instrument that has been passed on from generation to generation, are huge. 

And what about the next generation of Rango players? Hassan, who is 62 years old today, is extremely passionate about music-he kept at it despite family opposition. In fact, as a child, he stole out of his house clandestinely on a number of occasions to play music.

But, surprisingly, none of his children play the Rango. Quiz him as to why did he not share his talent with his offsprings, he answers simply “I saw the Rango and I fell in love with it; I did not see the same love in my children.’