In 2021, Mophradat invited children’s writers Ahlam Bsharat, Hadil Ghoneim, and Yosra Sultan, along with musicians Huda Asfour, Rehab Hazgui, Maurice Louca, Aya Metwalli, Sam Shalabi, and Aalam Wassef, to collaborate on producing an album of progressive songs for young children. The music is made for children around the ages of four to six, the moment where their acquisition and understanding of language as form and meaning starts to take shape. The process, which took place online across countries, led to Affratta, an album of children’s music comprising six tracks.

Lead track Kalbi Balady (My Balady Dog) sets Hadil Ghoneim’s endearing text about a playful one-eyed rescue dog, belonging to the ubiquitous Egyptian Baladi breed, to an off-kilter Arabic pop composition. Kalbi Balady features Aya Metwalli’s enchanting vocals against a backdrop of rhythmic swirl and spellbinding psychedelia-imbued arrangements, guaranteed to charm the hearts and minds of listeners, children and grown ups alike. 

Mophradat Songs for Kids is a project that is looking for ways for children to be offered joyful, nature-loving, non-patriarchal, imaginative, and evocative music that encourages them to be kind, curious, adventurous, and loving. Music and song are one way children learn, express emotions, hear and tell stories, and get to know their bodies. The Arab world, unfortunately, has limited offerings of musical production for children, and this project is one of Mophradat’s first attempts to engage some of the region’s most exciting musicians with this genre.

Tracklist:

1. Kalbi Balady
2. Girani
3. Elteneen
4. Affratta
5. Beit Teta
6. Sha7rour

• Mixed by Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Hotel2Tango, Jerusalem in my Heart)
• Mastered by Katie Tavini (Emeli Sandé, Nadine Shah, We Are Scientists)
• Artwork by visual artist Jumana Emil Abboud and designer Joud Toamah.

The Songs for Kids retreat was made possible in cooperation with the Allianz Kulturstiftung.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT SIMSARA MUSIC 

sarah@simsara.me | +44 (0) 7526704546 

Notes to Editors

About Mophradat
Mophradat creates opportunities for artists from the Arab world through an inventive approach to funding, commissioning, collaborating, and gathering. Our way of working is imaginative and ambitious, inclusive and hospitable. We recognize the Arab world as a loosely-defined geography that is called home by people of diverse ethnicities, gender identities, religions, ideologies, and languages. The name Mophradat is an (eccentric) transliteration of the Arabic word meaning vocabulary. Our name speaks to the uniqueness of individual elements in a collective, but also to the way in which, brought together, they generate shared meanings and understandings.

About the Artists

Ahlam Bsharat

Ahlam Bsharat is a Palestinian novelist, poet, and children’s author, as well as a teacher of creative writing. She is a prominent and highly regarded author of YA novels in the Arab world.

Hadil Ghoneim

Hadil Ghoneim is an award-winning children’s books author. She writes in both Arabic and English, and her essays have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Arab Lit Quarterly, Zone 3 among others.

Yosra Sultan

Yosra is a feminist, mother, and a native of Cairo. Her research focuses on the history of discourses on childhood, medicine and family life in late 19th and early 20th century Egypt. She also loves children’s literature and has two Arabic children’s books forthcoming.

Huda Asfour

Huda’s formal training in music began in Tunis at the age of 13; she later studied in Gaza, before joining the Edward Said Conservatory in Ramallah, where she received her formal training under the supervision of Khaled Jubran. Huda has released two studio albums, Mars... Back and Forth in 2011 and Kouni in 2018, and has written music for film and multimedia. In March of 2019, she was nominated for the Aga Khan Music Awards for the Performance category. Currently, she is developing her improvisational practice as a musician and educator, with a focus on Arabic music aesthetics.

Rehab Hazgui

Rehab Hazgui is a multimedia artist, composer and improviser of electronic music. Using the analog synthesizer and handmade audio devices, she explores the endless movement of sound, repetition and the use of silence as a third space on the boundary to navigate between different forms of listening. Much of her work is informed by her deep adoration for sound, and her grounded relationship with the analog synthesizer, a tool she has applied herself to not only as a composer and player but also as a designer and builder.

Maurice Louca

Maurice Louca is an Egyptian musician and composer born in Cairo, and a co-founder of bands Bikya, Alif and Dwarves of East Agouza. A prolific and adventurous figure on Egypt’s thriving experimental arts scene, he has in recent years garnered a global reputation through several solo albums and an expanding, evolving lineup of genre-defying collaborations.

Aya Metwalli

Aya Metwalli is an Egyptian singer/songwriter, composer and sound artist who grew up in Cairo and is currently based in Beirut. She started fiddling with the upright piano they had at home around the age of four, and soon after got her first solo singing gig on the pre-school stage and hasn't stopped singing since.
 She was also a kindergarten teacher for seven years prior to her professional music career.

Sam Shalabi

Sam Shalabi is an Egyptian-Canadian composer and improviser living between Montreal, Quebec and Cairo, Egypt. Beginning in punk rock in the late 70s, his work has evolved into a fusion of experimental, modern Arabic Music that incorporates traditional Arabic, shaabi, noise, classical, text, free improvisation and jazz.

Aalam Wassef

Aalam Wassef is an Egyptian visual artist and musician whose work has been exhibited and broadcast internationally. His artwork is featured in three anthologies, notably MIT Press's Art and Conflict in the 21st century. From 2006 to 2012 one of his aliases has released over 20 Arabic, satirical and anonymous songs that have rallied over a million listeners.