Editing Musique concrète (section)

===Halim El-Dabh===
As a student in [[Cairo]] in the early to mid-1940s, Egyptian composer [[Halim El-Dabh]] began experimenting with electroacoustic music using a cumbersome [[Wire recording|wire recorder]]. He recorded the sounds of an ancient ''[[Zār|zaar]]'' ceremony and at the Middle East Radio studios processed the material using reverberation, echo, voltage controls, and re-recording. The resulting tape-based composition, entitled ''The Expression of Zaar'', was presented in 1944 at an art gallery event in Cairo. El-Dabh has described his initial activities as an attempt to unlock "the inner sound" of the recordings. While his early compositional work was not widely known outside of Egypt at the time, El-Dabh would eventually gain recognition for his influential work at the [[Computer Music Center|Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center]] in Manhattan in the late 1950s.<ref>{{harvp|Holmes|2008|pp=156–157}}</ref>