The medium is the massage | Ahmed Adaweya 2 (1974 or 1975)
Adaweya's phenomenal success, despite rejection by much of the music establishment, owed almost everything to the cheapness and ubiquity of the cassette. Ahmed didn't need to be on the radio.
This is not a criticism of Discogs; it is, however, a caution, especially when it comes to dating key events in the careers of cassette-associated artists from North Africa, our man Ahmed included.
An anecdotal weight-of-evidence: I've been actively consulting and ordering Ahmed's oeuvre via Discogs for the last three or four years; up until this spring, Ahmed Adaweya 2 didn't exist. It simultaneously appeared and went on sale in April 2024 along with another purported 1974 release, Majirah. The pair were being sold by the person who had cataloged them, for $8 each. I immediately snapped both up.
Upon inspection of my copy of Ahmed Adaweya 2, it becomes evident that this is not a 1974 original; the "Digital Press Hellas" logo on the J-card makes that abundantly clear. My copy is a more recent reissue, possibly from the 1990s or 2000s.
To complicate matters, the cassette shell itself is dated 1975, not 1974. And to throw a gigantic wrench into the works, the J-card of my copy of Majirah is dated 1974 whereas the cassette shell is dated 1990.
In the case of Majirah, there is no question that it was not released in 1974, the J-card to the contrary. The tracks feature synthesized keyboards and electric bass, which the artist would not cultivate until the 1980s.
The question of Ahmed Adaweya 2's original release date is, in a way, more complicated. The A Side consists of four tracks: Sitt al-Hawanim and Mawwal Farah, the A and B side of this single from 1974, and two previously unreleased songs, "Taealamtuha Buqaa" and "Mawwal Kalam Al-Awazel." The former also appears on Ahmed's first vinyl LP in 1975; the latter does not seem to exist outside of this cassette.
The B Side includes several tracks by Hany Mehanna that appear on his 1975 Sout El Hob vinyl LP, Agaeb el Rakasat el Sabaa (The Miracles of the Seven Dances). This is what punk and DIY fans will recognize as a "split."
It goes without saying that somewhere out there exist copies of Ahmed Adaweya 1. While we can't say for sure, it is likely a collection of tracks first issued on 45 RPM 7" singles and released in 1974 or '75.
American scholar Andrew Simon's 2022 book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt brilliantly traces Egyptian history from the mid- to late-20th century through the lens of cassette tape.
Simon outlines an historical premise not unfamiliar to readers of Peter Manuel's 1993 now-classic Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India, which argues that the hegemony of Bollywood's Lata Mangeshkar & Co. was unshakable until the introduction of a democratizing technology.
An entire chapter of Simon's book is devoted to Ahmed Adaweya, wherein Simon shows how Adaweya's phenomenal success, despite the hegemony of al-tarab (i.e., Oum Kalthoum & Co.) and the disdain of and rejection by much of the music establishment, owed almost everything to the cheapness and ubiquity of the medium. Ahmed didn't need to be on the radio. His cassettes were widely available and one could, back in the day, almost assuredly hear him in nearly every taxi cab in Cairo.
In this same chapter, Simon identifies Ahmed's first cassette as being a recording of "El Sah El Dah Embo" from 1973; is it possible that this was in fact the lead track on Ahmed Adaweya 1? We can't say.
What we can do is listen to the four tracks included on Side A of the second volume and hear Ahmed's music as many Egyptians might have heard him for the first time, belting sublime sound waves over the tape hiss.
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