Cairo Gathers the Arab World’s Musicians for a Congress

In March 1932, delegates assembled in downtown Cairo for the First Congress of Arab Music, which ran until April 3. Its committees began meeting in mid-March, and the French National Library dates the main congress from March 28. The gathering was formally convened by King Fuad I following an idea proposed by the French ethnomusicologist Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger. To manage the extensive proceedings, an official commission had been established by royal decree on January 20 of that year. Muhammad Hilmi Isa Pasha, the Minister of Public Education, led the commission, with d'Erlanger serving as vice chairman and Mahmud Ahmed El-Hefni directing the General Secretariat. The chosen venue was the National Academy of Music, located on Malika Nazly Street in the Azbakeya district.

The congress functioned as a major international symposium and festival designed to examine, record, and document regional musical heritage across North Africa and the Middle East. Delegations arrived from Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia, alongside participants from Turkey. Prominent performers and scholars from the region included Muhammad Fathi, Ali Al-Darwish, Kamel al-Khola'ie, Tawfiq Al-Sabbagh, Rauf Yekta, Khemaïs Tarnane, and Mesut Cemil. Several European scholars and composers also joined the sessions, among them Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Curt Sachs, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, Robert Lachmann, Alexis Chottin, Father Xavier Maurice Collangettes, and Henry George Farmer.