Cairo’s accordion playing darling Youssra El Hawary has just made her grand comeback, reentering the Cairo music scene with a well-composed and energetic new album, No’oum Nasyeen. Beyond being an accordionist, Youssra is a singer, songwriter, composer and actress.
As a child in Kuwait, Youssra began to play piano, and after returning to Egypt she began to study music at the Cairo Music Centre. Later, she attended the Faculty of Fine Arts, earning a degree in cinema design and theatre. Following this, she performed with Salam Yousry’s El-Tamye theatre troupe, later touring the Arab world with him and The Choir Project.
Youssra’s foray into her own musical world began in 2011, with the upload of some of her songs to SoundCloud, followed by her first performance in 2012. Though she was steadily gaining an audience with her narrative songs about her personal life and political perspective in Cairo, the release of her first music video “El Soor,” showing Youssra in the early morning playing along the cumbersome and prohibitive Cairo walls, pushed her career to the next level. The video won her the anti-corruption themed Fair Play International Music Award and an invitation to perform in Brazil.
Read full article here