Nazli Reda is Passionate About Sound, the Forgotten Field of Music

Nazli Reda has many friends. But when they see her at a concert, iPad in hand, they say a brief hello and move on. She doesn’t have time to talk; she’s busy making sure the sound is perfect, probably accommodating an artist's last-minute special requests and dealing with some other disaster that the audience doesn’t know about.

“Sound is always the forgotten field of music,” Reda tells OkayAfrica one late night in Cairo, during Ramadan, the only month of the year that she gets to relax a little.

Reda is one of the most chill people I’ve ever met; introverted, amused by life, and happy to joke about almost anything. She exudes the aura of someone who has it together. And yet, as she talks about her job as a sound engineer, her blood starts to boil.

The irresistible world of live music 

Reda studied Music Technology and thought she’d end up working in a studio someday. “But you have to socialize and be really sensitive, and I didn’t want all that emotional labour,” she says and laughs. “So when I graduated, I was really lost. I wanted to be a sound engineer, but had no idea how to do it.” 

She’d call up other graduates from the same program and find that they were underpaid and overworked. “All of the jobs sounded horrible, and everyone was miserable,” she remembers. “I was like ‘God, what have I done?’” 

A few months later, exactly ten years ago, her former professor recommended her for an internship with The Nile Project, an initiative that fosters cross-cultural collaboration among people living along the Nile River. Reda was thrown into a world of artist and tour management, legal and translation work, event planning, and sound engineering. 

“The tasks they were giving me were impossible, and I just had to do them,” she says. “But when I went to Aswan, I was blown away by the musicians and the exchange that was happening. That’s what made me love live music. Once you get the bug for the impact it has on people, you get addicted to the energy.” 

She would go on to tour the US with the musicians, experiencing “the craziest four months of [her] life.” Back in Cairo, she began working in bars, then moved on to bands, and eventually founded her brand, Nazli’s Noise, a hassle-free speaker-rental and sound-engineering service. 

A woman amongst men

Reda’s job requires her to live in a way that directly contrasts with what Egyptian society expects: she works in bars and clubs, drives around at night, and is surrounded by men all day long. 

“It’s not like I needed the permission of my family, but it definitely helps that they’re extremely supportive,” she says, pauses, then laughs. “I had no idea that this was a male-dominated field until I started working and people kept pointing out that I’m a woman.” 

“You always have to prove yourself to everyone; you can’t just start your work day,” she says. Her strategy is to throw around some technical terms and show that she knows what she’s talking about as soon as she arrives at the work site. “Is the cable the XLR, and are we doing this in that way?” she mimics. “You have to be friendly, but not a pushover.”

Once the men make what she calls “the offering,” a cigarette, a cold drink, or tea, she’s good. She follows this procedure with people at every level, no matter if they’re lower than her in the hierarchy. In turn, male colleagues will call her “banouta” (little girl), comment on her looks, and make her pay for a mistake a hundred times over, even when it wasn’t her fault. 

“The weight of representing an entire gender is not fair,” she says. “These things follow me, so I put a lot of pressure on myself, because I have to be exceptional.” 

As a single woman, she doesn’t have dependents and is expected to eventually marry and have a man carry the financial burden. She has to fight for the salary she deserves, regardless of her assumed financial responsibilities.

On the upside, Reda gets a lot of support from the older generation of sound engineers who recognize her hard work. Additionally, her no-bullshit attitude leaves little room for men to mistreat her in ways they do other female sound engineers.

“The guys are in check with the way they speak to me,” says Reda. “I’m never going to get into a fist fight with someone.”

The importance of mentorship

At university, Reda had no compass to navigate the industry, which underestimates women and puts them up for the easiest, often boring roles. “It drives me insane how little they consider technical jobs for women,” she says. “We always push women into the motherly roles, like the manager who has to baby a man-child and pick up after him.” 

Now that she has established herself not only in Egypt but also in the wider region, Reda gives workshops and has started mentoring aspiring sound engineers. They intern with her, and she helps them get into any field they like, provided they’re serious and hardworking. 

“Mentorship is the most essential thing in this job,” says Reda, who’s always on the lookout for young talent. “I really needed a Nazli when I’d just graduated and didn’t even know what I could do. You just need someone to push you in the right direction.”

Through XP Hunna, she has also found a brilliant mentor, Sana Romanos. “We talk about the personal as much as the professional stuff,” she says. “As a woman, you can’t have the same approach that guys have.”

Romanos encouraged Reda to move from sound to system engineering. She currently designs how live sound fills and reacts in a space. She’s still learning to tune systems, to find out what bothers her when something sounds slightly off. While she’s proud to have worked her way up to big-scale events, her heart lies with the art of the craft itself. “I like getting into the creative side with the artist and translating that live,” she says.

If you can make it in Egypt, you can make it anywhere 

At the intersection of patriarchy and Egypt’s lacking infrastructure, Reda has resigned herself to a life of extremely hard work. “The job really breaks you at times. The days are long, you need to be prepared with sunscreen, electrolytes, and pain killers,” she says. 

Sometimes, however, she can’t drink too much water, because she’ll arrive at the work site and there will be no bathrooms or, if it’s a festival that requires an overnight stay, accommodation for women. In her car, she has a chair, a foot massager, protein bars, and digestive medicine. In Egypt, Reda is ready for anything. 

Abroad, she’s pleasantly surprised by the easy working conditions. “Something that was amazing when I travelled was ‘lunch breaks,’” she says with an ironic smile. “You finish your work before the show’s supposed to start so that you can eat food which they bring you.”

However, she also benefits from the Egyptian mindset, which has taught her ultimate troubleshooting skills. “Abroad, I’m like a rockstar,” she says. “Super calm about the ‘problem,’ because here we’re dealing with disasters, so [their] little inconsistencies are nothing.” 

Reda is one of the few punctual Egyptians, and she’s had to get creative trying to get others to show up for soundcheck. “I started giving musicians stickers when they arrive on time, and I'd post their picture on Instagram, saying ‘this one was on time,’” she says. 

Sound engineering is an incredibly difficult job, which is why Reda struggles to convince her mentees to choose it over working in a studio or on sound design. “People ask me, ‘Do you love what you do?’” she says and pauses. “If I didn’t love what I do, I’d be the craziest person ever to do this to myself.” 

To Reda, sound engineering live music is more than chasing the rush. She especially loves working with traditional music from Egypt and Sudan, which keeps culture alive. She chooses to be a sound engineer to feel something, not simply to get work done. And that feeling makes it all worth it.