STEREO VS STEREOTYPE ; The Story of Turbo Tabla

In 2001 I performed my first show as TURBO TABLA. The name was born from my love of alliteration. "Tabla/Tublah/طبلة" is what we Egyptians call the goblet drum, a.k.a. Darabuka/Derbeke/Dumbek, yet different from the Tabla/Baya 2-drum instrument found in India, Pakistan & Bangladesh. "Turbo" represents the big, overdriven, electrified and amplified sound I love, like a car with an extra powerful and voluminous engine. In these first performances, I performed to my favorite classic Arab songs, adding my raucous amped drumming over the top, while dancing and remonstrating emphatically.

In 2003 I recorded a debut album in my own home studio on an 8-track digital workstation and an AKAI MPC sampler/sequencer. I decided early-on that the basis of this music would be my own recordings of my Arab and Pan-Eastern ensembles, plus field recordings from my travels. It would have a dance-remix vibe, with techno and house back-beats and electronica flourishes.

That first album 'Arabic Music Re-Imagined" was the exact distillation of how I felt at that time. It was 2 years post-911; Arab and Muslim people like myself were incessantly vilified and bullied in the USA. This profiling was never acknowledged as prejudice, but instead justified as security posturing. My loud and boisterously bold album was my amplified defiant voice. It blared my pride in identity. The drum was more than a percussive megaphone, it was a dance catalyst. My goal was to create dance where there was consternation. It was the party to disrupt the profiling, the stereo versus the stereotype.

My second and third albums were recorded in professional studios and distributed by Universal Records 2006-2009. It was a thrill to find them in the listening booths of Tower and Virgin records. It was exciting to see them in the bins of Borders and Barns Nobles. This was before MP3’s were ubiquitous, and long before the days of streaming. These were the “salad days” of CDs. They were physical, touchable, displayable, collectable, valuable, and valuate-able.

My music had a look in addition to a sound. I designed my own album artwork, which made my songs have a matching portrait. It was futurism, before futurism has a genre. I wove authentic imagery with technological phantasm. I used the same computer to mix the music on ProTools and mix the artwork on Photoshop; it was a hybrid flow. Later the stage show grew to mirror the sound. My dance crew and I would wear custom costumes and original choreography, all mirroring that TT aesthetic.

There was a healthy pause before album #4 in 2013. In that pause, CD usage began to evaporate, stores began to be dismantled. It was the foreshadowing of the now commonplace digital era. Music was losing its quality as a physical product. Philosophically it makes sense: music is intangible by nature. And speaking of nature, let’s save it with less polluting plastic musical discs. Yet it was not yet clear how to replace the revenue of the disc… and still isn’t.

That 4th album in 2013 was titled ‘Unregulated’. It represented an attitude that was neither renunciatory nor forced. The goal was to create, to do, and to allow it to happen, without creating paths nor barriers. Being “unregulated” was the best way to (un)navigate one’s way through a time when they have less control over the surrounding world. Rather than be regulated with the fervor to express identity, I felt adventurous to explore different versions of myself. It was my last, and favorite Turbo Tabla album, which of course prospered the absolute least, appropriately.

Turbo Tabla did not have an overt genre at the time. It was not perceived as Techno because it used authentic instruments instead of synthesizers. It was not perceived as World Music because it used technology and was not purist. It was not designated as House Music because I was performing as a musician not a DJ. It was not assigned as Arabic Music because it was multi-cultural. But over a decade later, none of those genre have retained their monolith rigidity. Various poly-genre-isms and non-genre-isms are now rampant. Now there is Arab-Trap and Folk-Punk and all types of nebulous & porous declassifications that can only be navigated by the ears of bots. Algorithm versus Rhythm.

Perhaps there will be no #5 TT album. But I still continue to make music, seeking motivation from sources other than streaming checks in cents, or my song titles being replaced by the social handle of the account holder. The motor of creativity is compulsory, an engine that rarely requires fuel. Every song, album or collection I have ever made was unavoidable. Since TURBO TABLA I have made a sonic storytelling album DETOUR GUIDE, an ARABIZED poly-cultural album, and an original Arabic music portrait HUZAM. All of them will hopefully land into posthumous genre a decade from now.

And that is my trend; always un-trendy. I create music from a rampant motor, who’s engine is hopefully loud enough to hear on the drive-by. Each song is a portrait of thought. I am grateful to all of you who engage in these songs, and who appreciate me with the attendance of your ears.

- Karim Nagi : December 1, 2022, Chicago USA

TURBO TABLA Compilation 2003-2013
albums "Re-Imagined, Overdrive, And The Beat, Unregulated'
(c) KMP LTD Karim Nagi ASCAP