While shaabi rocked Cairo slums in the '70s, the lighter, more polished sound of al jeel developed as an Egyptian alternative to foreign pop. Spitting in the eye of reverent, old-school classicism, producers programmed synthesizers to play quarter-tone scales and sought out lyricists who could spin a romantic yarn, and singers who could both charm with sweet voices and look cute on cassette jackets. People called the music al jeel--"the new wave"--emphasizing its new spin on Nubian, Bedouin and Egyptian roots. Seminal al jeel producer Hameed Sharay came from Libya in the wake of Qadhafi's 1974 crackdown on foreign culture. In Cairo, Hameed developed stars like Hanan and Ehab. Classically trained, and a rare woman in al jeel, Hanan's shrill, wild voice bursts with exuberance--they call her "Egypt's smile."

Al jeel's simplification of scales, vocal nuances, and texts left highbrow radio programmers cold. But the predominant, under-25 crowd, embraced the sound as their own. Handsome Amr Diab topped the Egyptian scene in the late '80s, breaking traditionally sedate stage conventions to romp and jump around for crowds of 50,000 or more. Other new artists include shaabi defector Abdel el Musree and his group Salamat, who produced a whimsical Nubian al jeel release Mambo El Soudani in 1994. Feeling that al jeel had lapsed into stale imitation by the mid -'80s, multi-faceted producer and composer Fathy Salama broke from the scene to play more rocking, dry-eyed pop with his band Sharkiat. One of the newest on the scene, Alexandria's Mustafa Amar has become a top-selling teen heart-throb.