Watched by many Egyptians, curious to see this American series in six episodes whose director Mohammed Diab and several actors are also their compatriots, Moon Knight tells the saga of a hero who inherited his superpowers from the gods of ancient Egypt.

“The Pharaonic civilization is extremely attractive for a composer, whether Egyptian or not,” assures the composer in his fifties in his studio in Cairo.

But, he warns, there is no question of being locked up in the music of his country.

Already as a child, this engineer who came to music without having gone through the conservatory or music theory lessons knew that he would make it his job, by dint of being delighted by film music himself.

"I wanted to make others feel what I had felt myself," says the man who has some forty films and series to his credit.

Blue Elephant, Isis, Marvel

Among his best-known works, the music for the film "Sahr el-Layali" or "White Nights" in Arabic, the story of four couples who tear each other apart and which was nominated in 2003 for the Oscar for foreign film.

Or that of "Al-Fil al-Azraq", the blue elephant in Arabic, the second part of which generated in 2019 the second highest income in Egyptian cinema with more than five million euros.

Then, in April 2021, his "hymn to Isis" sung in ancient Egyptian found itself on televisions around the world.

So all eyes were on the procession of 22 royal mummies leaving the museum in Tahrir Square in Cairo – where they had been for more than a century – to the great museum supposed to renew the image of the country.

"The reaction of the public was very moving", assures Hesham Nazih for whom this parade has "a special place".

"It's like a football player who takes off his club shirt to wear his national team."

Continuing on his Egyptian momentum, the virtuoso then got down to the Moon Knight series, directed by Mohammed Diab and edited by Ahmed Hafez, two Egyptians.

There, the three men agreed to slip into the ears of Marvel fans around the world of the classics of the Arab world.

Behind the superheroes, including one played by the Egyptian-Palestinian May Calamawy, the voices of the Algerian diva Warda and the Egyptian crooner Abdel Halim Hafez emerge.

"Moon Knight is another level, a workload that I'm not used to: I did a lot of sleepless nights, but I loved it," says Mr. Nazih.

In return, "the reactions are numerous and come from all over the world".

Child's dream

And above all, they bear witness to a change in mentality.

Usually, he says, "the composer of film music is neither recognized as a true filmmaker by directors because he is a musician, nor recognized as a musician by his peers because he belongs to the world of cinema".

But Mr. Nazih has already smashed those boundaries he happily laughs at.

In 2018, he was the first musician to receive the Faten Hamama award, in the name of the famous Egyptian actress, which rewards a film figure each year, but has so far been limited to directors and other actors.

Three years later, he was unanimous in his other universe, music, with a prize for his entire career at the Arabic music festival of the Cairo Opera.

Throughout his career, Mr. Nazih claims to have sought only one thing: to surprise.

In 2014, for example, he provoked his audience by mixing rock and Sufi chants in the soundtrack of the thriller series "The Seven Commandments".

There too, he had drawn on his childhood memories when, at the age of nine, he had discovered these chants escaping from a mosque in Alexandria.

It took him around thirty years to transcribe this "majestic and positive energy" to score.

With the key, a new plebiscite of the public.

© 2022 AFP