Mohamed Meeda, the master musician and instrument maker who helped document the simsimiyya for UNESCO, has passed away after a long illness. He left behind a small museum in Orabi Square and an unfinished fight to save his beloved instrument from obscurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the summer of 2016, I met him. He had begun dividing the two rooms of his modest home in Ismailia’s railway workers’ housing. One room he turned into a small exhibition of his work and his collection of simsimiyya instruments. The other became his workshop for making the instrument and receiving guests. At the time, he was renewing his demands for government intervention to support his project documenting the history of the simsimiyya in the Canal Cities. He also wanted help to establish a museum and open-air exhibition for the instrument in Ismailia. He would always repeat: “The simsimiyya has a right over the state. They must support it so it does not die.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About ten years after that meeting, Meeda sat in the lobby of the Ismailia Culture Palace surrounded by his instruments, while officials celebrated the simsimiyya’s inscription on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just days before the end of last May, Mohamed Hassan, known as “Mohamed Meeda,” passed away at nearly seventy years old after a battle with illness. He left not knowing the fate of his small exhibition dedicated to the instrument’s heritage in Orabi Square. At the time, he was being asked to pay a usage fee for the exhibition’s land, a space of just three square meters on the pavement of a small garden in the square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Absent recognition and an overwhelming artistic presence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Meeda’s exhibition at the Simsimiyya Gathering received popular acclaim, even though he was not among those honored on the stage. The gathering instead chose to honor prominent figures who had passed away or had withdrawn from the scene. During the ceremony, Meeda sat away from the stage lights, receiving the audience, playing for them, and singing along with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That day, Meeda was demanding something both utterly simple and deeply complicated: exempting him from the “usage fees” the local council was demanding to keep his small exhibition in Orabi Square.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the time, Meeda told Bab Masr in a quiet voice that did not lack pride: “I run the simsimiyya workshop and the exhibition on my pension. I’ve been on pension for seven years now. The council is demanding a usage fee from me for the exhibition. All I need from the Minister of Culture and the governor of Ismailia is for them to waive the fees as a gesture of respect for me. Because I belong to this culture and this governorate. I built this exhibition to preserve the heritage of the instrument and the governorate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n This paradox sums up Meeda’s life: an artist living in the gap between international recognition shaped by major institutions and local bureaucracy hounding one of the heritage makers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About two months later, he received a modest acknowledgment, a certificate of appreciation during a seminar at the Ismailia Folk Arts Festival. The seminar addressed the absence of live musicians with performing troupes and the reliance on recorded songs, and it honored his career as a principal musician with the Ismailia Folk Arts Troupe. With this troupe, he represented Egypt at international festivals and events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The simsimiyya’s role during displacement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For Mohamed Meeda, his relationship with the simsimiyya was neither leisurely nor a mere hobby. It was born from a harsh human experience he lived as a child, when he migrated with his family from Ismailia to Zagazig in Sharqia governorate following the 1967 defeat. In the displacement villages, the simsimiyya played a role that went beyond entertainment. It told the stories of fighters on the front and the daily lives of those who had left their homes because of war. There, Meeda began following these bands at every wedding and gathering, watching the musicians and learning from them by ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After returning to Ismailia following the October 1973 victory, he began learning to play under Abdo El-Osmanly, earning half a pound per night or per wedding. At that time, the simsimiyya was the instrument of wedding songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Meeda’s memory, the simsimiyya cannot be separated from the daily life of Ismailia, a city known for two main things: mangoes and the simsimiyya. Through both, he would always invoke the song “Azima Ya Manga” (Great Indeed, Oh Mango), which he described as one of the greatest works of Ismailia’s heritage. He attributed it to the musician Abdo El-Osmanly, in close connection with Ismailia’s agricultural identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I asked him back then: Why hasn’t any poet been able to write a new song that captures the essence of the mango and the city? He answered with a simple yet profound analysis: “Some things are like fingerprints. They cannot be repeated or reproduced. ‘Azima Ya Manga’ is one of them.” This view of artistic legacy reveals his understanding that folk art is more than mere repetition. It is an expression of pivotal historical moments that, over time, become an inseparable part of an irreproducible cultural identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Orabi Square museum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout his career, Mohamed Meeda worked as a principal musician in the Ismailia Folk Instruments Troupe, affiliated with the Ministry of Culture, and traveled with them to numerous events. When he retired about seven years ago, he invested his severance and pension into a project to preserve the history of the simsimiyya. He displayed his collection of instruments that he had gathered throughout his career or built with his own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meeda ran this exhibition for nearly ten years, turning it into a living space that combined instrument manufacturing, sales, repairs, and the preservation of books and rare items related to the Canal’s musical heritage. The exhibition also became a destination for researchers and students conducting studies on the instrument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember the day I met him when he was sitting with pride because his dream of establishing an exhibition on the simsimiyya’s history had come true, as well as his role in having it inscribed on UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage. But this exhibition faced ongoing challenges from local bureaucracy. The most notable was the local council’s demand that he pay “usage fees” for a public garden pavement in the square. This was a financial burden on his artistic and cultural project, which relied entirely on his individual effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Departure and the enduring legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mohamed Meeda has passed in body, but he left behind a cultural legacy through his exhibition, his collection, and the recordings of his songs. These remain present in the memory of the Ismailia Folk Arts Troupe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps he did not know, as he bid farewell to life, what would become of his exhibition. One of his final dreams was for it to become an official documentation museum for the history of the simsimiyya, the instrument he loved as an official musician and as one of the last makers of it in Ismailia. And so Mohamed Meeda departed, leaving the melodies of the simsimiyya to mourn him, echoing: “So much has passed, oh our country\u2026 only a little remains.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mohamed Meeda, the master musician and instrument maker who helped document the simsimiyya for UNESCO, has passed away after a long illness. He left behind a small museum in Orabi Square and an unfinished fight to save his beloved instrument from obscurity. In the summer of 2016, I met him. He had begun dividing the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":6608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[53,52,349,40,1458,731,1459],"class_list":["post-6607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lower-egypt","tag-culture","tag-heritage","tag-ismailia","tag-port-said","tag-simsimiyya","tag-simsimiyya-forum","tag-suez-canal"],"yoast_head":"\n