Salah Ragab

Salah Ragab (1935-2008) was an Egyptian drummer, bandleader and army officer, born in Cairo. He is best known for the Cairo Jazz Band, a big band of military musicians he assembled in the late 1960s and described as Egypt's first big band, and for his work with Sun Ra. Ragab served in the Egyptian army from 1957 and in 1968 became head of its military music department. With the German musician Hartmut Geerken and the bassist Eduard Vizvari he formed the Cairo Jazz Band, which gave its first concert at the American University in Cairo in 1969.