Music Producer &amp; Composer Hal Rosenfeld, and&nbsp;Singer/Songwriter Nouran Hassan were Nile FM's guests on "The Big Breakfast" And they talked about the impact of&nbsp;SheArts festival &amp; how&nbsp;Musheqa program helps in supporting up-and-coming talents.&nbsp;
Tell us more about your role in SheArts festival
Hal: So I&rsquo;ve been brought here by a wonderful non-profit foundation based in LA, called the Nvak Foundation, and with Nvak, we work with up-and-coming artists, developing them and allowing them to be seen by the public, and eventually, hopefully, take these artists and bring them to major labels.
The program that we are working with here in Cairo is a program of 20 unbelievably talented women artists, who have all written their own music over the course of the program and have worked with major name people in Los Angeles.
So I&rsquo;m here as a music director to sort of help put the concert together and just offer some support and guidance, and I&rsquo;m very lucky to be here and bring all the cool stuff I do in LA and bring it to Cairo.
What&rsquo;s your opinion about the Musheqa program and how it benefits you?
Nouran: I think it&rsquo;s one of the best things to ever happen to me in my music career, cause before that I always wanted to learn about music production, get more into songwriting, and just be in the music industry, but it&rsquo;s really hard since it&rsquo;s a male-dominated industry all over the world, so it&rsquo;s really nice to see this coming and expanding in Egypt.
I feel very lucky and I think it&rsquo;s really important that women in music get this kind of resources and Nvak, the US embassy, and SheArts, really helped artists in various fields, songwriting, music producing and even mixing and sound engineering.
During the songwriting module, we actually worked with some of our favorite songwriters.
What&rsquo;s your opinion on the young women who have participated in the program?
Hal: It is beyond inspiring. We just had our first rehearsal last night.
Yesterday was our first day with half of the women who will be performing at the new Egyptian museum, and I was kind of blown away by what everyone has been doing, everyone seemed to be inspiring each other, like the comradery aspect of the girls so far seems really inspiring to me. &nbsp;&nbsp;
How should these young women develop more in their talent and become more prominent in their careers in the music industry?
Hal: Honestly, it&rsquo;s tough to say because you know whatever &ldquo;make it&rdquo; means is so subjective these days, I mean it&rsquo;s really all about trying to be with your friends and make music that you&rsquo;re really passionate about, and having access to resources, like what Nvak and SheArts have done, I mean the US embassy of Cairo has put in an ungodly amount of money to make this possible.
When I was approached about coming out here, at first I thought &ldquo;Why me?&rdquo;, and the second thing I thought was &ldquo;I wish we had funding like this in the States&rdquo;.&nbsp;
What is your next step after the Musheqa program?
Nouran: I think it has to be releasing music, I really learned a lot about that, like tweaking the songs to be releasable, all of that stuff was really useful and I just feel like I have to work on my original music, and have it out as soon as possible.
When it comes to songwriting, what are your songs about?
Nouran: As a Taylor Swift fan, everyone is expecting me to write love or breakup songs, but I&rsquo;m on the opposite of that side, just like on the other end of the spectrum I think. I mainly talk about myself, my friendships, my family issues, or my issues with work, stuff that is real and happening to me, I do talk about love and breakup but it&rsquo;s usually inspired by other people.
Can you tell us more about your experience working with Harry Styles? &nbsp;
Hal: The majority of what I do is that I record drums and percussion mostly for movies and TV shows, I also record with artists and I tour a bunch, and compose music for movies and TV.
I try to avoid playing drums on camera at all times and sometimes as a musician there are calls for movies and TV shows, like the people playing the violins and cellos and stuff, those were all hired musicians.
Right around the pandemic, I got a call from a very good friend who said, &ldquo;Someone messed up can you please show up to this movie set?&rdquo; and it was for this movie called &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Worry Darling&rdquo;.
Usually, when you&rsquo;re an on-camera musician like this, you&rsquo;re maybe seen for like 3 seconds, which I love, I don&rsquo;t want anyone seeing me, and I am in this movie for an uncomfortable amount of time, for like 10 minutes I&rsquo;m in every shot.
You&rsquo;ve participated in a lot of projects that garnered Emmy, Oscar, and Grammy recognition, what it felt like working on these projects?
Hal: You have to pinch yourself to think, &ldquo;Wow! I&rsquo;m getting paid to do this&rdquo;.
It&rsquo;s crazy that what seems to be sometimes a normal day at work, ends up being nominated for a Grammy or an Oscar, and it&rsquo;s tough because it is a job, and it&rsquo;s been my love that I turned into work, but it&rsquo;s crazy to think that I get to work on stuff that people enjoy.
I was in London working on a movie around that time last year, and I was asked to work on the orchestral arrangements of a new artist whose music I&rsquo;d never heard before, and it was the new artist named Laufey, and the album that we worked on had won a Grammy.
Tell us more about The event that is taking place next Friday
Nouran: It&rsquo;s awesome, we have 20 female artists performing from Musheqa, which I&rsquo;m part of luckily, at the Grand Egyptian Museum on Friday, and we also have another act on the show, which is &ldquo;Tablet El-Set&rdquo;.
Hal: I know we keep mentioning 20 artists, but I want everyone to understand how serious this program is, There were I believe over 200 or 400 applicants that we whittled down to 45 then to the people who are ready to perform, so it&rsquo;s been really an incredible experience for everyone.
&nbsp;

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