Donia Massoud will present a collection of Egyptian folklore songs in an intimate a cappella performance. These songs, once on the brink of disappearing, reveal captivating stories through their music.

Donia Massoud: Folk Gossips A Cappella From Egypt
10pm - Thursday October 17th 2024 
Barbes - 376 9th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 
$20

Donia Massoud is a singer, actress, and music researcher from Alexandria, Egypt. She’s renowned across the Arabic-speaking region for her contributions to music performance, ethnology, documentation, and rearrangement of almost disappearing folkloric songs from across Egypt. During the early years of her career, after joining the renowned El Warsha troupe in Cairo, Massoud travelled to several Egyptian villages, collecting a nearly lost heritage of sacred and profane songs and music material. Coming back to Cairo, she formed her band “Fyonkat Donia” to perform these songs from across the country to her audience, reintroducing the younger Egyptian generations and the rest of the Arab region to those folkloric gems after adding her unique story-telling flare.

Discovering theatrical and choreographic material related to that musical heritage, Donia’s renditions of this collection took a performance-based turn, staging these works into unique works that straddle the format of concerts, plays, and performance art.

Her work has toured extensively in the Arabic Speaking World and Europe for almost two decades and was presented on reputable world stages including Kammerspiele (Munich), Cairo Opera House (Cairo), Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Bastionen (Malmo), Jerash Amphitheater (Jerash), Museo Egizio (Torino), Zanzibar Castle (Zanzibar), Odeon Theater (Amman) among many others. 

To shed more light on the story-telling aspects of the songs, Donia transformed the project into a cappella format, aiming to draw greater attention to the compelling stories embedded in these songs.