SHAGARA by Hello World Choir

Shagara translated as tree from Arabic, is the culmination of a one year-long choir collaboration featuring a Sudanese female choir of seven girls & women between 11-27, an Egyptian volunteer and a Greek artist. The choir, initiated in November 2015 in Cairo, through the Tadamon Community Center (Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council), was originally formed on a voluntary basis to explore in weekly workshops the way a female foreign body expresses itself through music and language in contemporary Cairo.

Taking influences from traditional Sudanese folk, pop & electronic music, Shagara draws the listener in a tapestry of English & Arabic text that was written and translated together with the choir. This EP unearths that lived experienced by these girls & women, and a shared language emerges. Shagara locates itself in a contemporary moment of social & political flux, and emanates hopes of women’s emancipation. It combines recorded & mastered choral techniques with synths, electronic beats, oud, gambri, percussions, guitars & flutes and densely-layered vocals. This EP starts with a traditional Sudanese song that takes the listener into a dreamy world where children "…like the freshness of a good smelling tree branch everyday getting greener...", could be softly but surely taking over the world.




"whatever will come for me / will come for you all "

©Hello World 2017


Shagara has been developed in partnership with the Tadamon (Egyptian Refugee Multicultural Council) in Maadi, Cairo. This project was originally initiated through a residency with Townhouse Gallery from October to December in 2015. Conceptualized by artist Maria Sideri, the group collaborated in Cairo and composed these four songs under the name Hello World.

After working together until the end of the 2017 summer, followed by a second longer recording and mixing process, Hello World are now proud to release Shagara EP as the outcome of their collaboration. 

During my stay in Cairo, I was inspired to collaborate with a local female community and explore notions of 'the foreign' or 'the outsider''. Through a continuous body of artistic work that encompasses music, performance and writing, my investigative dialogues with a small part of the Sudanese community of Cairo, brought us to rethink notions of this small sudanese community and how it manifests in the rich and complex diversity of this immense cityscape. Through composing this music and the texts with the choir, an empowering space for a young women’s collective emerged. Through sharing our personal experience we found strategies to challenge the presence through concerts and performances, making and marking ourselves visible from the hidden neighborhoods of Hadayek in Maadi.

From its inception, through creation, mastering and release, this project to-date has received no financial resource. With your contribution of purchasing the Shagara EP, we will be able to pay artists, technicians and all those involved for their contributions, and continue to work with this choir as an ongoing collaborative process. We will ensure that its members continue to receive workshops, training and further artistic opportunities within the grassroots community.

Supporting this project also supports me to continue developing my artistic practice and understanding of contemporary issues relating to feminism, the foreign body, notions of migrancy, and the issues and experiences facing women whom move across and between cultures.

Hello World would like to continue to create contexts that open up space for conversations and collaborations; catalyze female emancipation, and gently challenge the status quo around representations of the female Sudanese population living in Egypt. Your support of Hello World through purchasing this EP also pledges much welcomed support of the unique positions of young African women. It can contribute positively towards shifting perceptions whilst also celebrating unique talents and their distinctive collective 'voice'.

Hello World Choir is a project based choir in Cairo, initiated by Maria Sideri in December 2015.