Life Is Hard For Those Who Dream

Mellow, thoughtful and entertaining are the first three words that come to mind when you listen to Shady Ahmed’s music. His music takes you back to that day you always remember with a smile. Yes, he’s not trying to create a new genre of music, and he doesn’t experiment with a million sounds, but when it’s just him and his guitar delivering such soulful tunes, what else do you need? Often found strolling the streets of Cairo playing his music, this singer/songwriter plays a blend of original pop/rock music with just the right touch of indie and a dash of folk. Though he only sings in English, Ahmed still reached the Egyptian audience at large because he decides to play where they are, rather than bringing them to him. A veteran of the music scene, Ahmed plays just for the love of it. He feels what he says in his lyrics, and his songs don’t need the catchy choruses that make music so popular now. Currently finalizing his album Life Is Hard For Those Who Dream, 25-year-old Ahmed talks to Egypt Today about the life of a musician in the underground music scene. Edited excerpts: How did your journey with music begin? And is it the only thing you focus all your energy and attention on?  I started playing music about 10 years ago and haven’t stopped since. But I took the really hard way with music. When I was in my last year of university I was singing in a hotel, playing for three hours to no one. That was the last time I relied on music to bring me any form of hard cash. I’ve worked in advertising for the better part of four years now and I love it. Of course if I can come to a point where I can just do music and I’d be making enough money to get by, I’d just focus on my music. When I started playing music it was mostly acoustic based pop rock. I couldn’t play covers when I started because I couldn’t even play the guitar. I was self-taught by ear, so I invented chords that I thought sounded good, wrote some songs and that’s basically how my music started. It’s actually really hard for me to play some of the songs that I played 10 years ago now because I can’t figure out what I was doing at the time. I teamed up with a friend and we formed a band called Kravin. We played rock n roll, which was a very bold venture for me since I come from the school of Jason Mraz, John Mayer and Jack Johnson, and all of a sudden I’m doing Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Hendrix. It was a like a quick crash course in rock n roll for me. The band stayed together for about five years but we had to break it up because half the band members were leaving Egypt. That’s when I started focusing more on my own stuff. I contacted Kotob Khan to play there when it was such an alien thing to play music in bookstores. I liked the idea of free shows, because I wanted to play more frequently and have my music be more accessible to people. This is the way you build a fan base. I started playing there once a month for a whole year. But with Egyptian audiences it’s a bit tricky because if you’re accessible they become lazy. Still, for an underground musician it’s great to play in a place where you see new people enjoying your music. Tell me more about your upcoming album. Was it difficult to do it on your own? Of course it’s hard, that’s why I called my record that. No one wants to support an Egyptian singing in English. You have to set really smart goals in order to achieve anything if you want to get started. I was lucky because in 2010 I won a regional competition on www.triplew.me, a platform for musicians in different genres. The prize was to go to Dubai and record my own album in a recording studio for five days. But I didn’t just want to record acoustic and vocals, I did that before on my own. I had formed some sort of band at the time, so when I got the news I had won I decided to fly out with the band, which meant I would record fewer songs but I would have them with me. Some of the members in my band were also with other bands that have gained a lot of popularity after the revolution, so I told them to go with it. The album is going to be released next month hopefully. I’m done with the music; it’s just a matter of packaging and distribution now. I’m actually working on putting a band together now, which I’m really excited about it. I have a hunger for rock n roll. With music you need to leave what I call a ‘leave-behind’ with people. It’s hard to play acoustic music for three hours, it’s just exhausting for both you and the audience. As soon as the audience is involved it becomes a different show, and that usually happens with a band and rock music. I honestly prefer a mix of both acoustic and rock music with a band. There’s a lot of freedom when you play acoustically, while with a band there’s a whole sense of hearing your music through other people, which is ultimately what you want. I want that for the people, which is why I recorded the album with a band and multiple instrumentations. You started a trend with your street music. How did that come about?  I wanted to try something different, and I wanted to reach people outside my social circle. So I decided to start playing in the street with my concert poster behind me to get more people to come to my shows. And I got a lot of people to come to my shows because of these street performances. It also got a lot of media attention for all the wrong reasons, because it focused more on the spectacle of street music, not the idea of it and what I was playing. I got disheartened, even though I got a lot of calls to do TV interviews. I didn’t go on any of the shows. I wanted the attention from people on the street, not the people who wanted to host me on their shows because it was something new to them. Playing in the street is such an informal thing and that’s why it’s beautiful. Anyone can come up to you and talk to you. The best compliment I’ve ever got was a thank you because there’s a whole story behind that thank you. I do my street shows without advertising them. I have my guitar in my car and decide to start playing when I feel like it. It is challenging to sing in the streets of Cairo in English. If I’m being naïve I would say my music is targeted to only 1% of Egyptians, I know it’s less but I can’t package my music in a different way to gain more people and popularity. Thankfully people still enjoy my music, it’s about the music and the feeling of it. And in that aspect, music is universal. My music is meant to be accessible to everybody. Apart from the street, I do a lot of free shows at different venues, where I’m just playing my acoustic guitar and singing. That’s not really something I want people to pay money to see. I want people to pay money and see me when I have a band behind me and I’m doing something special. How do you feel about the music scene in Egypt now? And do you have dreams of making it abroad like many of the other underground musicians and bands?  I think it’s a bit naïve to think about making it abroad or even to want something like that. Abroad is something Egyptian musicians don’t know, and people tend to gravitate to what they don’t know out of fear or fantasy. For me, it’s a bit farfetched. If I have any sort of edge here it’s because I do what I do and I’m good at it. If I leave and go somewhere else where there are millions of people who do the exact same thing as me or do it better than me, it’s just not really smart. And you really can’t make it abroad if you don’t make it in your own country. Yes, by being abroad you may have better chances and you’ll be more challenged, which forces you to be better. You really don’t have a real challenge here. You can get by here by just playing your popular songs and adding a couple more every few shows. But I challenge myself by constantly playing new stuff with the old stuff. The music scene here has definitely grown but not necessarily for the better. I try to get away from it when I can. When I wanted to play music just for the sake of playing, I used to go play at open mic nights in front of people who had never seen me play, and it was awesome. I listened to people who had never performed before and it was so inspiring. But bigger names started going so it became a platform for them. But this isn’t the place for them; it’s a place for people who don’t have the chance to play anywhere else. I would only perform there if I had something new and wanted to get a sincere reaction from the audience. It’s a great reminder of why you do what you do.