Sam Shalabi

Sam Shalabi is an Egyptian-Canadian composer, guitarist and oud player based in Montreal, who also spends long periods in Cairo. He started out in punk rock in the late 1970s and moved towards a music that combines Arabic maqam and shaabi with free improvisation, noise, jazz, electronics and spoken text. He is best known for the group Shalabi Effect and for Land of Kush, a large orchestra he composes for. Shalabi Effect began in 1996 as a duo of Shalabi and Anthony Seck and recorded for Alien8, including The Trial of St. Orange (2002) and Pink Abyss (2004).