• Can you give me a brief background on your band Khayal?

Ezz: We started a year ago; the kind of music we play is rock. The idea of Khayal is that we try through our lyrics to write and imaginary story and deliver it in our own way through music and that’s it. 

 

• Where do you stand between the other underground bands here in Egypt? What is your ranking?

Ezz: like I told we have only started a year ago, but thankfully the place that we are at now compared to the time we began and to other bands is good, but maybe some bands that began before us are a head of us. We are moving at a fast rate.

 

• What Places do you go to play your music? What places agree to play your music?

Mohab: It depends, if we are doing the concert we play in Sakyet el Sawy, or if a university wants to pay a band to play, we go and do the concert for them. We performed in Sakya before and in a place called Alwan, different kinds of venues w have played in. we also performed in AUC before.

 

• Are there some places where they don’t allow underground music? Do they fear some lyrics perhaps? Do they prefer other people?

Mohab: No, in fact the mainstream those days is Underground Music. People want to hear and attend underground music because it began to sweep other genres and became to be the mainstream.

 

• What kind of difficulties do you encounter? How do you advertise for yourselves? How do you pick the words? Is there someone to tell what and what not to say, not necessarily governmental?

Ezz: Look the hardships we face as an underground band as well as others are that most of the underground bands are self-funded. There is no production company to invest in a band. Production companies search for mainstream musicians because they know that they will attain more revenues for them than Underground bands, so that is the first difficulty which is money. The second thing, words are dependent on if someone in the band writes music or not. In our band I write the lyrics, if didn’t write, then we would wait for someone to write for us. I may and I may not find someone to do so and that would make a delay. If the word then have reached a high degree in politics then people may start to get sad and most of the time they way its dealt with is under the tables.

 

• Have you met someone that encountered that problem? [Questioned by police or being dealt with] someone got hurt because of the lyrics?

Mohab: we did not meet a friend but he is famous, Ramy Essam. Since the revolution started he was playing guitar and he always sang in the Square. He has a famous video on YouTube, where the government would take him and torture him but he would go out and continue. He would do a song then be taken to jail and so on. He now immigrated to Finland [Sweden], and does his songs and music videos from there.  They treat him as a political refugee.

 

• Did you encounter any difficulties while doing your music? Have you feared to say certain words or anyone to tell you anything about your songs?

Mohab: No because as “Khayal” band we do not play political songs all our songs are about personal situations.

 

• But since your part of the Underground scenario, if someone played political songs could something happen to them after the revolution?

Mohab: there is Hamza Namira they stopped his syndicate card because he sang political songs.

 

• If someone took you lyrics, can you take action or would it be illegal?

Ezz: any band should register their lyrics and tunes in the syndicate, because if anyone took the words or tunes or anything you can charge them or take them to court. So if they were registered, copyrighted, there wouldn’t be a problem.

 

• Is it easy to register in the syndicate? Is it harder for the Underground musicians than other singers like Tamer Hosny?

Mohab: it is like anything you go and do in the government, like an ID or something. We did not try, but I think it requires money to get one.

Ezz: a lot of the underground bands are not registered in one. Unless they become really famous then they register.

 

• Is your band registered in the Syndicate?

Ezz: No.

 

• Is it easy for someone to do advertising for you on television or social media?

Mohab: it depends on the venue; if we play in Sakya they do the advertising for us. Other than that we do the marketing for ourselves. We once came on Rotana Channel there was no problems.

 

• What other stuff do you encounter?

Ezz: look, what an underground would love to do is go down in the streets and just play their music in a garden or even under their house. If that happened, after a while an officer would come and say that what is happening is wrong, while in western countries that is completely normal. I think that makes the music more beautiful when you just sing in the streets. Sadly that is prohibited here in Egypt.

 

• Could you be arrested?

Ezz: Not to that extent, because it is not that of a crime but they do stop us.

 

• Thank you

Your welcome.