Concert in collaboration with SoundInMotion.

The Dwarfs of East Agouza was established in Cairo by Maurice Louca (Alif, Bikya), Sam Shalabi (Shalabi Effect, Land of Kush) and Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls, Alvarius B.). The trio creates free improvisation music that blends elements of jazz and krautrock with influences from Arabic music and Egyptian shaabi. This results in exciting concerts that can head in all sorts of musical directions.

The band was formed in 2012 when the musicians lived in the same apartment building in the Agouza district of Cairo. They have released six albums together since then, on labels like Akuphone, Unrock and more recently Sub Rosa.

Through a freeing process based on improvisation, they have developed a mysterious, almost mystical kind of understanding. The trio’s dynamic improvisational approach embodies the emancipatory spirit of free jazz, with Louca on electronica and synths, Shalabi on electric guitar and Bishop on guitar, bass, alto sax and vocals.

They fuse the repetitive hypnosis of krautrock, pulsing rhythms, the energy of Egyptian shaabi, and Arabic scales into a continuous flow that never feels forced, but rather organically interweaves these diverse impulses.