Music Without Borders: Tamino and the Collision Between Middle Eastern and Western Music

Tamino, a new voice in Belgian music, brings his Middle Eastern heritage to his songs, exploring both the challenges and pleasures of life.

Music has the power to transport listeners to cultures and places different from their own. In Music Without Borders, our writers introduce you to international artists, bands, and genres that explore the sounds that bring us together.

Written by Natalie Weinberg

Photo courtesy of DIY Magazine

The music video for Tamino’s “Indigo Nights” opens with a bird’s eye view of Cairo, Egypt. The music video alternates wide shots of the Belgian singer standing in front of buildings across the city with shots of a boy riding a horse and women wearing hijabs and dancing in the dabke style. While nodding to Tamino’s Arab heritage, this imagery also relates to the song’s narrative about the traveler who encounters young women that remind him of the beauty of life.

As exemplified in “Indigo Nights,” Tamino (born Tamir-Amir Moharam Fouad) brings his Lebanese and Egyptian heritage to his music with grace and beauty. As the grandson of famous Egyptian singer and actor Moharam Fouad, who was known as “The Sound of the Nile,” Tamino wears his heritage with pride, from playing concerts with his grandfather’s guitar to regularly incorporating elements of Middle Eastern folk in his music.

The sound of his music is ethereal and soul-crushing. In the background of his songs, you can hear the drums beat hand-in-hand with Tamino’s slow fingerpicking of the guitar, creating a syncopated rhythm with an Arabic flair. Percussion in Middle Eastern music is of great significance, as well as stringed instruments. In fact, Tamino played the 11-string oud on the album Amir. The oud, as Tamino explains in a DIY interview, gives the opportunity to play quarter tones, which “are essential for playing Arabic scales.” Tamino’s vocals call back to “rast, bayati and hijaz,” which are Middle Eastern vocal techniques that invoke a wide range of octave melodies.

Tamino’s Middle Eastern influence is especially clear with the title of his 2019 album Amir, which means “prince” in Arabic. The title track “Habibi,” is a term of endearment that can also mean ‘dude’ or ‘friend.’ Tamino reportedly used this song title since he was “familiar with [that term] because people in my family use it a lot. It’s a beautiful word and it [went with] the melody.”

Image courtesy of Communion Records

Tamino’s Middle Eastern influence also permeates his collaborations. For instance, Brussels-based orchestra Nagham Zikrayat, which features refugees from Iraq, Syria, Morocco, and Tunisia perform the instrumentals for his songs “Sun May Shine” and “So It Goes.” Nonetheless, there is also a lot of Western influence and involvement in Tamino’s music. Sometimes called the Belgian Jeff Buckley, he has opened for Lana del Rey and collaborated with Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood in "Indigo Night." Yet, Tamino himself does not like the Jeff Buckley comparisons, because he believes that their music is quite different since his music is embedded in his Middle Eastern heritage. In an interview with Paste Magazine, he points out that he was not aware that he was singing with the Arabic scale when he recorded Amir.

Lyrically, Tamino’s songwriting skills can only be described as divine. Although English is not his native language, he is able to dissect and exquisitely explore complex topics, from love and heartbreak to the sense of feeling lost or numb. In “w.o.t.h.” Tamino describes love as life-saving and necessary, by comparing it to water found in a desert —  a reminder of the deserts in the Middle East. The fast-paced drums add to the central point of this song regarding love being an important part of life, as it creates a manic feeling in the song akin to running toward or frenziedly searching for love. Percussion is crucial in adding to the Middle Eastern sound in this song, as well as Taminos’ exquisite Middle Eastern vocal technique, as his voice quivers to the word “heart.”

However, Tamino also acknowledges a darker side to love. For example, “Cigar” delves into the challenging quest of finding and keeping love, as he sings,  “You, look at me now / With those hollow eye sockets and smile / And it seems all a lie, what they’ve told me so far.” In “Tummy,” Tamino also explores the uncertainty of love, singing longingly, wondering whether he was in love: “Like we almost were in love / Can’t you help it, thinking of me? / Think you love me.” In the aforementioned track, doubting the feeling of loving someone further relates to the sense of numbness and loss of identity that can come with substance abuse and sex addiction. The narrator seems to be lost, and to cope with this he turns to sex (“I’m no longer found / Sex got all my pride”) and drugs (“Acid went right for me”). The somber lyrics juxtapose with the calming and tranquil music. 

Identity plays a big role in Tamino’s music as in the media, his Middle Eastern identity is often emphasized, which is crucial to understand his music. However, it is not the only part of his identity. In an interview with Arab News, he points out that, “When I write a song, I cannot really force it anywhere it doesn’t want me to go ... It leads me.”

Nonetheless, he gloriously embeds his homage to Middle Eastern culture in his most-streamed song, “Indigo Night.” The track describes “a traveler’s son” who arrives in a new town, in which girls express interest in him despite his dissatisfaction with life. This boy is numb, for he has “seen the world’s most beautiful places / Still I feel as if I’m a walking machine.” The girls he talks to are his polar opposite, for “They all sing / About the pleasures of life.” There is the clear juxtaposition between the traveler and the girls: being lonely and therefore desensitized to emotions, while the girls view life as exciting and do enjoyable activities. The slow and syncopated drums and bass add a sense of sorrow and despair to the boy’s nihilism. 

These two contrasting views of life are highlighted by the title of the song, “Indigo Night.” Tamino describes the setting as an “indigo night” not just to suggest the color of the sky, but also to represent the boy’s daydreams, as the girls help him feel again in a freeing adventure. Tamino relates his lyrics to Moharam’s homeland of Egypt by using an Arabic vocal technique that reinforces the traveler’s melancholy. When describing that the boy is crying because of the numbness he feels, the Arabic vocal technique magnificently expresses that sadness: Tamino’s voice quivers and goes higher in pitch, as though professing the boy's desolation.

However, as Tamino points out in a 2018 BBC interview, there is “a lot of sadness in Arabic music and a lot of melancholy but it progresses to something majestic.” Likewise, as “Indigo Night” progresses, the boy changes because these “girls are so kind” for keeping him company. The girls seem to revitalize him, as though their sweetness makes him understand that he too can feel like this: Tamino sings, “There was no more despair / Maybe the girls, they … made everything right / ’Cause he’s never been / More alive.” There seems to be a shift in the journey of the boy, of him understanding that life is worth living. He starts overcoming the numbness and sorrow. He is able to smell “the grass and the air. (...) There’s no more despair.” 

This transformation is marvelously accompanied by Tamino’s slow and calm melody, along with the shifting of the tone of his voice. It helps us understand the boy’s sadness, numbness, frustration, and then finally his will to change and embrace life. He ends with the word “alive,” elongating it and thus letting it fade out with the music. When the song ends, you can still hear the word lingering. His voice trembles to the word “more,” which comes right before “alive” to emphasize how strongly his feelings toward living have changed in a positive way. The ending of the song echoes the ending of other Middle Eastern songs, such as Nassif Zeytoun’s “Majbour” or Fairuz’s “Bektoub Ismak Ya Habibi." 

Tamino is for many an important figure, because he represents two worlds: the Middle Eastern percussion and quivering voice, and the Western’s longing for meaning in life and pursuit of love. In an interview with The Guardian, he points out that people have come up to him after concerts in Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey telling him that his “representation of [the] world coming together … [is] important because they don’t see it much.” Tamino has talked about how people in the Western world have a reductionist view of Egypt as a place with pyramids and pharaohs — the singer has been referred to as a “pharaoh” in the European media). But through his music, he is able to break these stereotypes and make his Lebanese and Egyptian descent proud.