Fathy Salama believes it. The new project of this Egyptian musician is to break, for the first time, from the tendancy to use arabic music soley as a bank for samples to serve the purposes of electronic music.

He wants to do just the contrary, to give back, through electronics, the first place to arabic music. A music that is more and more forgotten even in its mother land, although the muscical forms that were born centuries ago on the banks of the Nile, particularly the ones from Saeed (the South of Egypt) and Sudan, are a unique source of discoveries for those who love peculiar rythms and unusual sounds.

Since 1994, Fathy Salama is keen on exploring these resources and works on percussions, with concerts, especially in France, that usually turn into raves of traditionnal music.

Recently, Fathy met Kamel Tenfiche, singer and percussionniste of the Orchestre National de Barbès. Pushed by the desire to party, both men have decided to put their talents in common to incorporate into KOUCHARI this new ingredient that is the rap stemming from Parisian and Algerian suburbs.

Fathy wants to develop this new project, inhabit these constructions with dance and images and to cook a savvy kouchari, this popular Egyptian dish that mixes lentils, rice, pasta and grilled onions.

For the image, Fathy joined to the collective of video directors Ya-K and to the photographer Guillaume de Rémusat who also assures the coverage of all concerts... Or almost.

For nearly one year now, Ya-K, an association of image manipulators of all kind of breeds, is giving a new light to trendy Parisian parties by creating a strong link between the crowd and the music. Using all the space let free by the musicians, these pictures DJs play with the rythms to create an extraordinary mix between sounds and images.

A computer graphic designer, a film editor in cinema, a pop artist, a gallery owner, a student in journalism, a producer and an information officer meet in studio or the other place laboratory to be made films, elaborate their receipts, to hypnotize us finally by an explosion of musical pixels.

They use recorded video pictures, which they scratch or paint, and live images taken through infrared cameras or Super 8, project them on fixed or moving screens or on the faces of the people around. There is no limit to their imagination, as long as technical means are available.

Eager to experiment anything, Ya-K plays at concerts, techno parties or exhibitions, bringing them its joie de vivre. Its name (which means : let's do it) symbolises its spirit.

Two years ago, he met a young Egyptian DJ, Mutamassik, who grew up in New York where she learnt hip hop and drum'n bass . Together they build new sound architectures, mixing scratches, dufs, derbukas and keyboards.

Talented and endowed with a rare artistic sense, she multiplies the productions and the collaborations with, among others, Arto Lindsay, King Chango, Graham Haynes, Butch Morris...