A child plays musical instruments made by garbage in an art workshop in Luxor, Egypt, on Oct. 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Ahmed Gomaa)
by Marwa Yahya
LUXOR, Egypt, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- "One man's trash is another man's treasure," said Shady Rabab, 27-year-old founder of the Garbage Music Band.
"Music could come out of anything, even dismissed materials from garbage bins," Rabab told Xinhua.
In an art workshop, overlooking the west bank of the Nile River in the heart of Upper Egypt's monument-rich city of Luxor, Rabab was drawing markers as a guide for drilling holes, turning a glass bottle into a flute.
He came up with the idea after discovering that people were not able to afford instruments in Egypt.
"Instruments are too expensive for young students in Egypt," Rabab said, adding that creating musical instruments out of garbage was a good solution.
Rabab said that the idea behind his project was teaching children aged from 12 to 16 how to create and play musical instruments, and then he formed a musical band.
Inside his workshop, people could find not only disposed waste like nails and plastic pipes, but also hammers, saws and other tools which help them make the musical instruments.
"I collect the garbage from my own trash and my friends' trash. Here in Luxor, there are so many tourists, who are hosted in my friends' houses. All are good sources for garbage," he said.
Based on that, Rabab has been running a program called "Rabab Luxor," which was selected by the United Nations Environment Program as "Young Champions of the Earth Project" in 2018.
Rabab described his project as an "out of the box" idea because it uses art and music to effectively recycle waste and also raise awareness on the elimination of pollution, empowering communities to reduce consumption.
Turning plastic bottles into a drum kit, Rabab said, his focus was to prevent waste from entering the sea and rivers, and he expressed his hopes that the project will "spread the awareness of recycling."
According to official statistics, Egypt uses 12 billion plastic bags annually which not only causes an economic strain as raw material for plastic bag productions are imported, but also an environment crisis.
In September, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli reviewed measures suggested by the country's Ministry of Environment to reduce the use of single-use plastic bags in a bid to reduce plastic in the country for the upcoming six months.
Banning the usage of disposal plastics was applied in June, in South Sinai province that hosts a large number of tourist resorts, according to official statistics.
In the garbage workshop, Malik, a 6-year-old boy, was practicing on a plastic drum happily, while his older brother was playing on another instrument made up of cans.
The two brothers said that it was very easy to learn from the recycled materials as their parents could not afford buying real musical instruments.
The band composed of 14 boys and girls has launched its first music video called "Belle Mama."
A volunteered music teacher come routinely from another province in Upper Egypt, Sohag, to teach them the bases of percussion, blowing and string instruments.
The older boy, Aly, said that he enjoyed making his own instrument and learning the mechanism of creating the sounds by the help of Rabab and he also saw some videos on how to get music out of vegetables.
Aly stressed that music could be made out of many things, adding that keeping "the environment clean is the most important lesson."
Playing music among the ancient statues and in Nile boats add unique flavor to the video, said Rabab, noting that his main problem was how to convince the parents of the participants of his idea.
Some parents found it absurd to play music with recycled trash, he added.
He expressed his hopes to set up a school to pass on his skills to children.
"Now, I keep my workshop for visitors with some music from my garbage instrument," Rabab said, adding that he started to make profits from selling some Digeridoo, an Australian primitive instrument, which is made of wood with "marvelous" voice.
