Shababeek Album | A Revolutionary Album in Egyptian Music | Elsayed Ahmed
The album "Shababeek" (Windows) is considered one of the most groundbreaking musical phenomena in Egyptian music. Although it was Mohamed Mounir's third album, it was the one that achieved immense success and established him as a singer for the intellectuals.
Despite some claims that the period (the late 1970s and early 1980s) witnessed a negative change in the tastes of listeners, the album "Shababeek" dispelled that claim and achieved great success, becoming one of the best-selling albums to date.
Mohamed Mounir's music was distinguished by its new form, a wonderful blend of jazz and Nubian music, and the use of Western instruments to play this unique music. It was like a revolution against what listeners had been accustomed to from Sayed Darwish to the emergence of Mounir.
Mohamed Mounir is considered the first to introduce jazz music to Egyptian music, which emerged in the United States in the late 19th century. This was something that Egyptian listeners were not accustomed to in the music they had been used to hearing since Sayed Darwish.
This masterpiece was released in 1981 and contains eight of the most beautiful songs:
1. Shababeek (Windows)
2. Al-Layla Ya Samra (Tonight, dark-skinned beauty)
3. El Kon Kollo Beydoor (The whole universe revolves)
4. Shagar El Lamoon (Lemon trees)
5. Ashki Lmen (To whom should I complain)
6. Ala Al-Madina (To the city)
7. Crescendo
8. Ya Zamani (My time).
As mentioned, the music was revolutionary and was completely new at the time, but the lyrics were also some of the most beautiful and deeply profound, even carrying implications for topics and figures such as President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the song "Shababeek" which bears the same name as the album.
Mohamed Mounir's brilliant performance was accompanied by his intelligence and acumen in choosing the elements of the project. It is worth mentioning the names of the elements that added a lot to Mohamed Mounir's artistic project, namely the artist Ahmed Khalil, the musician Yehya Khalil, the mix that could only result in a masterpiece like Shababeek.
In recent times, some clips from the music of the album "Shababeek" have been circulating on social media as a kind of nostalgia and longing for that wonderful music, despite more than forty-three years having passed since its release, reflecting the quality of this music.
Finally, we would like to mention that Mohamed Mounir did not settle for being a singer for intellectuals,he also produced Egyptian pop songs in the 1990s with simple lyrics that made him more popular with the masses, even if those albums were not devoid of Mohamed Mounir's deep flavor.