Artist's Site: www.hamzanamira.com
Hamza was born in November 1980 into a Muslim family. Although Hamza is Egyptian, he was born and grew up in Saudi Arabia until the age of 12 when his parents returned to Egypt.As with all children, he didn't like school but thoroughly loved the summer holidays! But he considers it had a good impact upon his personality. At school, he was deeply affected by Islamic principles and religious studies was a favourite subject. He was also interested in the Arabic language and Typography.
Upon completion of school, he went onto college and then to University, graduating with a Major in Accounting. Hamza didn't come from a musical background, in fact he notes that his Father is a Doctor who during his youth had some amateur-artistic involvement. Hamza's father supplied his children with private musical education as it wasn't provided at school. The lessons involved memorising rules and theories without actually ever understanding it. This was a complete disaster and made him hate music. He even admits escaping from the lessons! During his teens, a musical interest started to develop and set about learning the keyboard, guitar and Oud (Middle Eastern style Mandolin). He composed his first songs and succeeded in getting a few like-minded friends together and went through what he calls "The Musical Bands Experience". Nowadays he realises the importance of studying music on a professional level.
His main musical influence is Nabil Al Bakly - a relatively unknown musician, Hamza joined his group from 2000 to 2001. This influenced the way music affected him and taught him music. Other than that, he cites influences as Middle Eastern, Arabian Gulf, Egyptian traditional and folk music.
He also likes light rock, jazz and latin music. He admits that describing his music is a difficult question and that the audience would be better placed to say.
He expresses that while not interested in categorisation or description, his main goal from music is to express the way he thinks towards life. Like all the youth in his generation - there are worries, conflicts, issues, thoughts and ideas that come from every direction around us - and he is just trying to express them through his songs.
Currently he is working on his band "Nomaira", doing rehearsals of current songs for up coming concerts and producing new songs, as well as continuing his music studies. All is going to plan so far.
Islam has had both a direct and indirect impact on the music. The music isn't religious, but he makes music about life in general, which of course uses Islam beliefs to create boundaries. These boundaries protect him from making work that supports everything against goodness, humanity and songs that incite immorality.
Also contemporary debates and challenges that Islam faces these days are definitely reflected in some musical works. The message he likes to send out in his work is: "Life has a lot of things that are worth while, things that deserve expressing in music/song, so it's not fair letting musical works just focus on love and romance."
His best achievement to date is gathering friends who share the same dream, because without teamwork and friends who believe in you, you may not achieve your goals and make your dreams real. Another achievement is his first album. In his spare time, he likes to read, play football, travel and socialising.
During 2008, Hamza plans to keep practicing and learning music, perform concerts in Egypt and other countries and to gain audience feedback to help him improve his work. In 2009, he plans to start work on his second album, Insha'Allah.
As for particular goals there are two. In the short-term, he would love to initiate a new wave in the market through presenting new types of songs which discuss all aspects of life, not just romance.
For the long-term, he wants to improve the music industry in the Middle East and guarantee the sustainability, through establishing an association that has multiple aspects. (study, production and theatre for musical performance.) |
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