About this project

Cairo Rising Recording Project

We are planning on documenting the democratic protests and revolutions in the Middle East by creating a collaborative music project and a series of short documentary films. We hope to humanize the changes in the Middle East through the presentation of music and youth culture of the region.

The musical component of the project will be will be a compilation album of revolutionary Arabic fusion artists in collaboration with other Arabic musicians and American and European remixers and producers. The project will focus on young Arabic rock musicians, rappers and singer/songwriters. We seek to find musical artists who express their desire for a more just and democratic world through music and song. We plan on recording mostly in Cairo, Egypt and the project will include artists from Tunisia, Algeria and the Arabic disaspora as well. 

Using mobile recording technologies, we will set up temporary recording sessions in cafes, private homes and schools to quickly capture songs and performances that express the desire for freedom in the Middle East. Once the sessions have been recorded, the files will be brought back to San Francisco for editing, arrangement and final mixing.

Once the mixes are complete, the album project will be pitched to larger cultural institutions for world wide distribution. The list of organizations we plan on contacting include: National Geographic, Peter Gabriels Real World label, Six Degrees Records, Sterns Africa, Wrass Records, etc. In the event that one of these larger organizations does not pick up the project, the Embarka Record label, owned by project founder Jef Stott, is prepared to release the project world wide.

We will also be creating an elaborate website to document the projects progress and it's results. The site will include interviews, blogs, photos, video clips, artists biographies and music excerpts from the new recording sessions.

Additionally we will be producing a series of short films to further document the creative process and insights into the artists point of view on the current situation in the Middle East. These short films could be compiled into a longer feature length film, but that would be another project for a future date.

The project coordinator and producer will be composer/producer Jef Stott, who has been working with Arabic and Northern African musicians (as well as Turkish, Persian and Balkan artists) for many many years and has released dozens of musical projects. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology and is an accomplished Middle Eastern musician in his own right. Mr. Stott will handle all recording duties, editing and final mixing of the projects musical compositions. His reputation in the world music industry will be an asset to the success of the project. He has a wide professional network of colleagues at large record labels, journalists, film producers and cultural institutions and Universities.

All profits will be shared evenly with the participating artists. All performances and artistic contributions will be documented through contracts and written agreements to ensure payment and transparency of accounting. Pre-existing songs used in the project will be non exclusive to the project allowing the artists to maintain control of there compositions. Collaborations between Arabic artists and the project producers will be co-published by both parties.

Financial contributions to the project will be used for the following:

transportation of the producer to and from Egypt

producer accommodations in Cairo for 3-4 weeks

initial contributing artist payment 

recording session fees in Cairo (if any)

additional recording and editing in San Francisco

mixing fees in San Francisco

We sincerely hope that you will be able to help us with this project. It seems extremely timely and important that the artistic expression of post revolution Arabic culture is documented at this time.

Thank you in advance for your interest in the Cairo Rising project!

~Jef Stott

 San Francisco, CA