 Bedouin Jerry Can Band
The Bedouin Jerry Can Band play their traditional music on something old, something new, and some things that blew. Simon Broughton met them
Touring the Bedouin Jerry Can Band isn’t an easy option. A small collective of Bedouin musicians from the Sinai desert in Egypt, one of them couldn’t join a UK tour. Some of the older members don’t have birth certificates and had to have their age verified in Egypt by a state dentist; the veteran poet and storyteller, Soliman Agmaan, who has no teeth left after a lifetime drinking sugary coffee and tea, didn’t get his ID or visa, so he wasn’t allowed into the UK.
The Bedouin Jerry Can Band, as their name suggests, use jerry can percussion – specifically, metal oil cans and ammunition boxes found in the desert from the 1967 six-day war and the subsequent Israeli occupation of Sinai. They use these found instruments in Bedouin songs – about love, coffee and camels – along with the magroona double flute and the shimmering simsimiyya, the traditional lyre that is found throughout the Red Sea and Suez Canal region. Before playing at a party in Sinai, Ayman Hassanne, the jerry can player, shows me how the jerkan (as it’s called in Arabic) is played just like a drum, getting the deeper, more resonant sounds from the edge and a deader sound in the centre.
 Airlines are understandably nervous about transporting metal petrol cans and ammunition boxes, so the band’s UK manager, Michael Whitewood, bought a set of Nato jerry cans at an army surplus store in London for the group to play at their last UK tour. But they didn’t quite have the resonant, booming quality of the 40 year-old, Sinai-sand-blasted model that the band was used to. So for their recent UK tour, Whitewood decided to risk the band bringing over a real Sinai jerry can, which involved screwing the cap off, upending it and insisting: “No gasoline! Musical instrument!” to the x-ray security team at Cairo airport. It was worth it – its clanging, desert-distressed tone went down a treat.
Another instrument is a black ammo box that’s hit with two wooden drumsticks. It bears the Dutch words Losse patronen voor wapens (Loose bullets for weapons). During performances, one of the musicians holds it up and says, reassuringly: “Don’t worry, it’s empty!” Alongside these military cast-offs being played on stage are a clay pot and a lyre that dates back thousands of years. Sinai has been a crossroads for centuries.
Once, the Bedouin were nomads, but few remain so today. Most of the members of BJB live in El-Arish, a characterless concrete resort on the Mediterranean coast of Sinai – nothing like the resorts popular with holidaymakers along the Red Sea coast. But Goma Ghanaeim, the lead singer and driving force behind the BJB, chooses not to live in town – to keep some physical contact with the desert environment. He has had running water since 1990, but before that it was a 6km walk to get water from a well. “This makes life much better,” he admits, “but it doesn’t mean we have to forget the songs of our fathers and grandfathers. They tell us about ourselves.”
 After a communal dinner of goat, rice and salad, a few band members come to make final arrangements for the party that night to celebrate the birth of Goma’s first-born son. After evening prayers, the poet Soliman Agmaan starts playing his rababa, a home-made wolf-skin fiddle – a traditional instrument that is getting harder to find. He supports the fiddle against his bare foot, and as he bows repeated phrases intones a song about the campfire – how a big fire shows everyone that it’s a good party.
Then Moussa, another band member, picks up his simsimiyya and starts strumming. It’s a sound that has enlivened palm huts like these for thousands of years. The simsimiyya is an ancient lyre – originally with five strings, although nowadays usually with 10 or more, strung on a wooden frame. It brings a bright, zinging sound to the music and everyone starts clapping.
Goma has been married for 20 years and has four daughters. Did he have a party like this to celebrate their births? “When I had a daughter, I killed a goat, but when I got a son, I killed two goats!” he says. “I am Bedouin. For sure, I love my daughters very much. But in the end my daughters will get married and belong to another family, or another tribe. My son will keep my name – keeping the family name alive is very important.”
Goma earns his living as a full-time musician, singing at weddings in the region. The other band members have day jobs in El-Arish – one has an electrical shop, another is a teacher, another works for the government. The band has been going since 2003 and was created by Zakaria Ibrahim, who runs the Mastaba centre for traditional music in Cairo. He is a rare figure on the music scene, as most Egyptians have little interest in their local music. “Everybody wants to copy the west,” he complains. “They want to appear educated and modern, and don’t appreciate the value of what they have.”
 Zakaria says his Mastaba Centre is trying to forge a third way by reviving traditional music, which imitates neither glossy commercial music nor the government-run folk groups. These groups exist in most of the big towns and perform choreographed music and dances in a so-called palace of culture. “These Ministry of Culture bands have funding and glossy posters,” fumes Zakaria, “but it’s a hierarchy: the musicians are at the bottom and get no respect. They turn the music into a show and what’s sad is that people start to think that this is the tradition.” What makes the Bedouin Jerry Can Band special is its local character. The music and the songs are distinctively Bedouin; you can’t find a magroona (reed pipe) player in Cairo like the Jerry Can band’s. “It’s not just about preserving the music,” says Zakaria, “but connecting it to the local area. That’s the most important thing.”
The party for Goma’s son takes place in a tent brightly decorated with swirling cloths of red and blue. In the centre there’s a fire in the sand, and the band are at one end on a carpet. There are perhaps 60 people, and it doesn’t take long for the Jerry Can Band to get everyone dancing. The men – it’s an all-male event – form two lines shoulder to shoulder facing each other, bowing forward as they dance and clap hands. Through the woodsmoke, the double pipe squeals and the thumping jerry can pushes up the pace of the dancing.
Remarkably, the Bedouin Jerry Can Band seem able to recreate the Sinai party atmosphere thousands of miles from home – even better now with their authentic jerry can. “It’s the real spirit of this music that we mustn’t lose,” says Goma after their London concert as Whitewood sticks a Bedouin Jerry Can Band sticker over the more threatening-looking words on the ammunition box. “Just in case it causes problems at the music festivals,” he says.
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