Tamino with People Museum
The arrival of Tamino is enough to make even an agnostic ponder predestination. The grandson of one of Egypt’s most famed singers, the great Muharram Fouad, Tamino came to the guitar as a teenager only after finding a rare resonator in his late grandfather’s attic. He plays it now alongside the oud, dual links to his cultural past that he uses to understand and articulate his emotional present. And when Tamino, whose jawline could make Euclid blush, sings of mystery and wonder, romance and surrender, worry and hope, you see that he’s been to those places, returning to share what he’s witnessed in a voice as strong as it is delicate, captivating as it is comforting. That is precisely how Sahar, his spellbinding second album, sounds—as though Tamino were born to sing these songs, and we were meant to witness.
Five years ago, Tamino became an unsuspecting star in his native Belgium, catapulted to major stages after winning a national radio contest. He had always expected to write intimate songs for small audiences, but here he was in front of ecstatic crowds that soon included Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood, such a fan he began touring and recording with Tamino. His debut LP—2018’s enormous and immersive Amir—galvanized his emerging star, its musical dynamism and sweeping vocal range netting comparisons to Jeff Buckley and, of course, his grandfather. In this singular and especially sensitive set of exquisite songs, Tamino had bound together European and Arabic folk traditions, creating wholly modern beauties.
The international frenzy that followed, though, surprised Tamino—shy and sensitive, a self-described recluse. He knew he would need a long step out of the spotlight if he were going to write the follow-up. So late in 2019, he acquired his own Antwerp apartment, cozy but spacious enough to accommodate a piano (his first instrument), a small recording rig, and his guitars, including that rare resonator. Though long praised for his vocal acrobatics, he barely needed to push his voice past a whisper in this new little room, allowing him to sit still with his ideas, to dig deeply into the words and moods. And alone at home, he explored the oud, the Arabic lute he’d long heard but only started playing after a Syrian refugee, Tarek Alsayed, agreed to teach him. The oud became a new way to channel his heritage into his moment.