Mahmoud Fadl

Purveyors of the myth that trance music germinated in Detroit in the late Seventies or on the beaches of Goa, India, sometime after that had better hope that not too many Day-Glo-sporting members of the trance nation get their hands on Egyptian drummer Mahmoud Fadl’s new The Drummers of the Nile Go South. That’s because if they do, they might discover trance is anything but a recent invention. When master drummer Fadl leads his ensemble — consisting of percussionists playing everything from bongos to Egyptian drums like the duhala to dinner spoons — through these captivating tracks, it’s only the latest link in a chain of organic and thoroughly ecstatic trance music that stretches back thousands of years. The music is anything but antiquated: Drum tracks like “Satis” and “Jirk” are downright funky, and the lone electronica-enhanced track, “United Nubians, Saidi Style,” seamlessly mixes modern tribal house beats with traditional drumming.