Egyptian activist creates music from garbage
“Music has logic, and anything can make a sound,” says Shady Rabab, who received a UN prize for addressing poverty and waste management in Egypt by making musical instruments from trash and training young people in a band.
LUXOR, Egypt — For 7-year-old Mohammed Taha, music can easily flow out of an empty Pepsi bottle or a curtain rail.
Taha is a garbage collector who walks from bin to bin. About a year ago, he met Shady Rabab, a musician and activist who thought that once you understood the principles of making pleasant sounds, music could come out of anything, even dismissed materials from garbage bins. He also went a step further, teaching garbage collectors — a job mostly held by Egyptian children — to make their own musical instruments and play them.
Rabab's Garbage Conservatory Project is one of the seven projects that have been selected for Young Champions of the Earth prize designed by the United Nations for young environmentalists. Rabab will pick up the award Sept. 26 in New York.
Rabab’s band consists of 70 children — mostly garbage collectors. Every week for more than a year now, Rabab has gathered them in small groups at his art collective located right across from Luxor’s giant stone statues known as Colossi of Memnon. There, he teaches them how to fabricate and play the instruments. He often holds a flute with which he teaches the kids how to control the sound by blocking the holes, and he keeps a guitar or saxophone on a nearby table.
