Tips from the culture desk: Ramadan is not just about TV

Apart from the events we recommend and Andeel's sixth-day-of-Ramadan tips below, visit the show by Lebanese photographer Fouad Elkoury and Kuwaiti artist Tamara al-Samerraei at Gypsum Gallery, go to an iftar with live music at Eish & Malh, and keep an eye out for our upcoming Ramadan TV coverage, which will take many forms.

Hayy Festival two shows - Sunday + Saturday

The Hayy Festival brings live music to Ramadan every year. While previously the festival has focused on female acts, for this 11th edition each night sees a double bill combining a local and a regional player. It starts this Sunday with performances by Mohamed Abu Zekry's nascent traditional band Karkade and Lebanese oud player Charbel Rouhana and his World Music Ensemble. The following Saturday brings super-popular Cairo-based Sudanese musician Asia Madani and her band, along with Brussels-based Tuareg rock band Kel Assouf.

9:30 pm, June 12 and 18 at Geneina Theater, Al-Azhar Park, Salah Salem Road. Tickets available through Tickets Marche or at the door for LE30 (plus LE5 park entrance fee).

Love in the City screening - Sunday

L’amore in città (Love in the City, 1953) saw six male Italian directors, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Cesare Zavattini (who conceived of the project) each choose a news story and use its actual locations and subjects to make a short film essay. A flop on its release, it has since been hailed as a pioneer work in various ways. Zavattini thought of it as the first issue of a new journal aiming for “a new and conscious kind of cinema.” Responding to his umbrella topic of relations between men and women in contemporary Rome, the filmmakers zoomed in on issues such as suicide, sexual harassment, single motherhood and prostitution. Italian with English subtitles.

9 pm, June 12 at ROOM Art Space & Cafe, 10 Ettehad al-Mohamin Street, Garden City. No entry fee but minimum charge in the cafe is LE25. Facebook event here.

Fête de la musique - Thursday

La Fête de la Musique returns to Al-Azhar Park on June 16. Oscarisma Studio and the young people of Al Darb Al Ahmar Arts School open the evening with a show of circus performance and percussion, followed by the Alexandria-reared band Telepoetic and a preview of a piece created by students of the Cairo Conservatoire with French producer/composer Jérôme Ettinger. The concert on the big stage brings together Massar Egbari and French pop rock band Baden Baden. Posters designed by Tok-Tok comics quarterly founder Shennawy.

8 pm to midnight, Al-Azhar Park Admission free, LE5 entrance ticket to the park. Facebook event here.

Mawaweel Festival - starts Thursday

The Cairo Jazz Club Agency and Darb 1718 team up again for the sixth Mawaweel Festival, which transforms Darb’s space into a handicrafts market and a stage for folk and contemporary bands for four consecutive Saturdays. Eritrean-Egyptian musician Ahmed Omar’s group AfriCairo kick off on Saturday with their chilled, cross-cultural, multi-instrumental music, and Thursday features the ever-evolving Nas Makan group, who perform folk music regularly at Mounira's Makan, followed by the Sufi twirl dancing Tanoura show, then a pop-rock reggea concert by Cairo favorites the Sharmoofers. It’s also a chance to check out Darb’s current group exhibition, Bread II.

Darb 1718 at Kasr al-Shamaa Street, Al-Fokhareen, Cairo. Tickets LE50-80, available at the event or beforehand at 3elbet alwan (Zamalek), ROOM (Garden City), Qaf Gallery (downtown), Bikya (Nasr City) or Madar (Maadi).

6th day of Ramadan tips from Andeel

It's the sixth day of Ramadan, which means tomorrow will be the end of the first week, so you better make it end on a high note. One thing Ramadan is good for is challenging the boundaries of what your body can endure and syncing with millions of people doing the same thing at the same time. This could be a good opportunity to play football while fasting for the first time if you haven't done it before, or would like to remember what it used to feel like if you haven't done it since elementary school. An intensely competitive game that ends with the call for prayer as a godly judgment of who won can be such a spiritual experience, especially when your teammates are falling, not because of shin injuries or cramps, but out of dehydration.

The quietness around iftar time is also a remarkable experience in a huge, busy city like Cairo. If you’re not fasting, try going for a walk when other people are breaking their fast and taking pictures of some of the city’s busiest corners when they’re completely empty. Looking at them later might help you calm down when you’re stuck in traffic wondering where all the people go after the traffic is over. You can also record some of the noises you hear walking through a residential area during iftar. The cutlery clinking mixed with a collage of various TV shows playing in different houses at the same time is beautiful. Try not to get arrested when you’re taking pictures or recording sounds.

Ramadan can also be a good chance to visit neighborhoods in your city that you never been to. Find a restaurant or a cafe in an undiscovered part of town (use recommendations from friends who live nearby or the internet), go have a sohour or shisha in a place you’ve never been to before. The atmosphere will probably be overly welcoming and uplifting. You will also watch and learn things about people who share the city with you, the conditions they live in and how that inspires their way of thinking. Try not to get arrested when you’re watching.