Rubbish bin street concert drums up support for the environment

Young people in Egypt have picked up the cause of the environment….through street music! Check out these rag-and-bone men and their bric-a-brac band.

The young musicians produce sounds using skips, plastic bins, water and milk bottles, and bits of metal and wood. Their purpose is to encourage young people to stop throwing rubbish on the ground and use recycle bins instead. 

The group, which now consists of seven members, was formed in June 2010 on International Earth Day. They began in different neighbourhoods of Cairo, and as luck would have it, success was not far off.  

Only 20% of rubbish is recycled each year in Egypt. The country produces 20 million tonnes of rubbish per year, or 57,000 tonnes per day.

Post written with France 24 journalist Hasnae MALIH.

Another “Rag-and-Bone” performance

Video posted on YouTube by "haidycool"

“Someone posted a video of us on YouTube and nicknamed us 'The Rag-and-Bone Men.' We decided to keep it.“

Naeyr Oussama Elmamoune, 19, is a student at the American University of Cairo and a member of “The Rag-and-Bone Men."

 

When we played for Earth Day, we thought it would end there. But from our first performance, the crowds loved it. There were representatives of a German school who asked us to come to Germany. Things took off from there and we played at a lot of different places. 

 

The nickname “Rag-and-Bone Men” came from someone who filmed us and put the video on YouTube. He named it “El Zabaleen.” (The Rag-and-Bone Men). We liked the name and we decided to call ourselves that.

The group is composed of a guitarist, a saxophonist, and a singer who writes his own lyrics. Now we have all sorts of instruments: skips, bottles of hand gel, iron or wooden bars... we also take tin cans and fill them with rice or beans to achieve a maraca effect. We don’t always use the same instruments; we always try to make up new ones out of things we find in rubbish bins.

It’s true that people here throw things on the ground very often. But the state also has to take some responsibility. In certain neighbourhoods, there are practically no bins.”