The WORDS
The lyrics to our music come from our two poet wizards: Mohamed Abdallah (“Sony”) and Khaled Helmy. Their words and stories are as diverse as the band members and backgrounds, extending from love to tales about the Nuba. Sony and Khaled are old friends who understood what we wanted to do and where we wanted to take the music. They write the words that connect with the music we make and bring back that African spirit home.

About HAWIDRO
HAWIDRO in Nubian means the ‘return’ and has become the philosophy of what we do—we wanted the return of our heritage, particular our African side that has long left behind. We’d all probably agree that there isn’t really a genre out there that describes what we do. But, if we had to choose two words that portrays our music, it’s Afro-Egyptian—unique, boundless, and encompassing everything different and creative about where we live.

Our Story: We are 8 guys who’ve known each other for years from other collaborations and other projects, who one day got together and discovered that we all have been experimenting with a lot of African music. Each of us came with a long list of influences and musical backgrounds, but we collectively loved Egyptian music and wanted to somehow connect it with our interests in the African side of our identity. Even though Egypt is properly in the African continent, there really weren’t many groups that were playing African music that wasn’t folklore, traditional, or some mainstream experiment. Basically, no one was bringing much of Africa into Egypt. So, the idea for initiating a project like this has been floating for a while between us…but this story is definitely not as interesting as what we’re doing now.

Our Music: The simple side of our complicated vision is that we are adapting and creating a sound that links our African heritage and our Egyptian identity. We are NOT A FUSION group. But, we are focused on creating/recreating, inventing/innovating, and everything in between to produce stuff that’s original. The sound of our music is the combination of A LOT of instruments and our different backgrounds that reflect both our individual character as musicians and our multiple identities—as African and as Egyptian. But, the uncomplicated truth is that we’re really about challenging everything in the reality we live. And, we just want to make great music!

In five years…? We want our music to leave a footprint on that global stage.