Band of the week: Aya Metwalli

Folk, anti-folk, pop, anti-pop, avant-pop, electronica, noise? It’s hard to decide exactly which cookie-cut little genre singer/songwriter Aya Metwalli might fit into. Having begun singing publicly and releasing songs digitally in 2008, Metwalli has already garnered a wildly impressive 12,000+ followers on SoundCloud, far surpassing more widely discussed Egyptian bands and musicians, ranging from Cairokee (2,472 followers) to Grammy award-winning Fathy Salama (131) and Ramy Essam (10,440).

Well, that is if you consider Ramy Essam a musician. I tend to find that while his lyrical content is important and revolutionary, his songs are often almost entirely void of melodious music.

Metwalli, on the other hand, is something of a musical enigma. Looking at her SoundCloud song history, it’s clear that she doesn’t stick to one musical style. Instead she seamlessly drifts through genres with a curious sense of sonic experimentation. Her songs oscillate between anti-folk numbers like “SabahulKhayr” (Good Morning) and ultra-abstract, evocatively avant-pop tracks like “Dakhlet al Sheta” (The Beginning of Winter), which fills the listening space with a poetic and anachronistic ambience through lyrical conundrums and angsty guitar-jangles.

But what gives Metwalli’s songs an emotional resonance beyond the walls of her own sonic imagination is the way they emblemize something universal about present-day life in Cairo — a feeling of still motion that emerges in an anachronistic and lawless environment. It’s found in both her music and her city.

The other interesting aspect of Metwalli’s music is her sophisticated lyrical craftsmanship. She writes her own words or pulls and reworks text from her friends’ blogs and travel diaries (“Daftar Safari” [My Travel Log]), and somehow turns the most non-rhythmic lyrics into melodies through classical intonations and a vibrato that later blend into more abstract and contemporary vocal chimes. Her songs manage to be clever and touching in diverse contexts, and she has substantial vocal prowess.

While Metwalli might not be everyone’s cup of tea, when listening to songs like “So'aal Wel Salam”(Just a Question), which currently has over 53,000 plays on SoundCloud, it’s impossible to deny that she has a growing cult following. With each new sound style she creates and releases online, she transcends her limitations.

That being said, it would be interesting to see Metwalli change up her live performance style from just girl-and-guitar to a fuller sound that better reflects her digital persona. It would also be a nice experiment to hear Metwalli incorporate more percussive elements into her works. Both of these evolutions will likely come over time, as she better acquaints herself with different performance or recording tools, and collaborates, hopefully, with other musicians in live shows.

But at only 25 years of age, Metwalli is doing just fine. She knows how to write simple and effective chord changes. She’s clearly experimental. And her music continues to capture the particular brand combining longing, weathered resignation, and sandy streaks of sunlight known to post-revolutionary Cairo life.

Aya Metwalli will be playing at Vent, 6 Qasr al-Nil Street, downtown Cairo, on Tuesday January 7.