Among the popular international and Arab crooners lined up to perform at the September 4 –10 event, scheduled for the Cairo Opera House as well as venues in Sinai and Alexandria, are Argentina’s Generation Tango, singer Laila Nazmy, Syrian superstar Nour Mehanna and Lebanese sensation Nancy Agram.

A gala performance will follow the opening ceremony, which as always will be aired live on national television.

“The variety show will last two-and-a-half hours and will have something for everyone. Each performance will be between 15 and 25 minutes long, so hopefully nobody will get bored,” says Amb. Salah Selim, the chairman of the festival’s executive board, who notes that Minister of Tourism Ahmed El-Maghrabi has included the Ministry of Culture in the planning of this year’s festival in a bid to widen its appeal not just to tourists, but to Egyptians and foreign residents.

Generation Tango, the internationally acclaimed troupe directed by composer Danial Macava, is set to be the festival’s featured attraction, fresh from performances in Taiwan, Brazil, the US, Spain and Italy.

“We’re sure this will be a star attraction for our foreign audience as well as for Egyptians. We here may not understand the language, but there’s always the visual aspect: the choreography, the dancing and the costumes,” says Selim. “Besides, tango is familiar to our eyes and ears because the late singer and actor Farid El-Atrash, in many of his songs, gave us an Arabized, Egyptianized version of tango music. I’m confident the tango performances will be well appreciated.”

Special awards will go to Nazmy for her folkloric songs and, some might be surprised to learn, to Nancy Agram, among others. “It’s not as if I went and got Haifa Wahbe who has an exceptional figure, but absolutely no voice to speak of,” says Selim. “Nancy will be singing a song for Egypt as well as two others at the gala show.”

Other big names should include Portuguese singer Katia Guerreiro, a musician and vocalist who has traveled the world playing concerts in France, Morocco, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, Greece and Japan. Guerreiro has had such an impact on her native Portugal that she has been nominated by the government to represent Portuguese music at official receptions organized for presidents and ministers from all over the world.

Selim says that though the festival “is of great importance for the promotion of tourism,” it is not only for tourists, but also for foreigners who live in Cairo and for the local hoi polloi.

“This festival was conceived as an added boon to visitors who have come to Egypt for leisure tourism,” he says. “[What attracts tourists to] the Red Sea is not just sand and water, it’s the nightlife as well. So we thought of taking our troupes and singers to tourist resorts in order to give visitors a good time and promote tourism.

“Foreign nationals don’t have much access to international culture here,” he adds. “Of course the Opera House puts on a lot of shows, but most of them are in Arabic. They can appreciate Yehia Khalil, but not so much Mohamed Mounir. That’s not to say we should abandon our Arab heritage and disregard masters like Sayed Darwish, but there has to be something for those who cannot grasp the language.”

Selim points out that he is not out to bring in the masses. “If I wanted to do that, then I would have gotten Shaaban Abdel-Rehim or Hakim. People would have come in droves. But we are looking to break from all that sound pollution out there and draw in a discerning audience that is looking for something of value. The product we offer does not appeal to the masses and, since we are not commercial — satisfied just to break even — we don’t target that sort of audience or even want to bore them with what we have.”

Selim welcomes the participation of the Ministry of Culture in the event’s organization. “The Ministry of Culture has helped us a lot,” he says. “They have such professional, specialized cadres working on production, printed materials and so on. The executive board is mainly from the Ministry of Culture, with respected names such as Walid Aouni, Abdel Moneim Kamel and Farouk Abdel-Salam, as well as Salma El-Shamma, Tarek Sharara, Mona Ragab and Ammar El-Sherei. We will also be able to make use of the Ministry of Culture’s venues, foremost among them the Cairo Opera House. These venues are naturally frequent haunts of the cultural elite. This is why we decided to move the opening ceremony from the Cairo International Conference Center, where it was previously held, to the Cairo Opera House. Undoubtedly, the combined efforts of two strong ministries will make a huge difference.”

And lest you miss it, the chairman is launching an unprecedented ad campaign to make certain the festival is noticed: “We’ve taken out TV spots on Channel One, the Egyptian Satellite Channel and the Variety Channel. Among posters, flyers, handouts and billboards, it’s known that TV is the most effective tool and we air twice a day. All the papers write about us in the lead-up to the big day. It’s not my problem then if people don’t listen or read. There is nothing more I can do.”

Selim’s only concern is that today, even the cultured elite is not as discerning as it once used to be. “Today, everything is just ‘mashy.’ Before, we used to have good films and we had flops. Today there are no flops and everything is, ‘mashy.’ It’s true that, as we say, the bad coin squeezes out the good because quality cannot compare with commercialism, but it’s also true that only works of value live on. In a few years, no one will remember these new songs, singers and performers, but the classics are here to stay. The audience may not feel the difference in this year’s offering, but the media certainly will. The media and the critics shape our opinions and it’s up to them to convey a positive picture.”

As a final touch to the festival’s preparation, Selim’s team is currently putting together a short film — a collage of shots from songs and video clips by each of the honored singers — to be shown while they receive their awards.

“Celebrities are very moved when we offer them something like this,” he says. “I remember the year before last. We commemorated Saad Abdel-Wahab. We drove him here from the hospital and he was so frail I was worried he would collapse before the party. As it happened, we’d invited some of his old friends, who stirred poignant memories. When Nadia Lotfy came to greet him, he told her how he’d always wanted to marry her. He has since died, but I truly believe that night gave him a new lease on life.”  et