 | Courtesy Sherif Sabri | |
| Shaking Up the Airwaves
| | Brooke Comer finds out what it took to make a star out of Ruby. With additional reporting by Sarah E Sirgany. | |
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| Standing at the center of the frame, wearing a fluffy red dress, she glances at you as she moves her hips - her name plastered on-screen in capital letters: Ruby. She changes outfits several times, most notably into white pants and a skimpy top, as she lifts her bottom and even dances on the exercise bike, ambiguously smiling. Later on, she walks through the streets, gets excited at the hairdresser's salon and ends up in the recording studio, where director Sherif Sabri sits in the control booth. |
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| This is "Leih Beydary Keda" (Why is He Secretive, 2004), Ruby's second video after "Enta Aref Leh" (You Know Why, 2003), where she gyrates her body through the streets of Prague in a belly dancing costume. In her third video, "Eb'a Abelny" (It Will Never Happen, 2005), Ruby dances inside a pharaonic temple and in one scene a snake is wrapped around her neck. But it was with her second clip more than the previous one and the one that followed that Ruby danced her way into the Egyptians' hearts. Today, according to a 2005 survey by London-based daily Al Hayat, she is more popular than any political or intellectual figure in the country. But the video for "Leih Beydary Keda" also clearly reveals the reasons of Ruby's success and its flip-side. |
| Her voice, her dancing skills and her typical Egyptian looks certainly aided her. But without Sabri, who directed all her videos and produced her first album, Eb'a Abelny (2004), would she ever have made it big? As for the corollary of Ruby's success, Sabri sold her as a singer but also as a provocative sex symbol, and as a result of these choices she has become a star, but has also had a taste of controversy and harsh criticism. |
| There was a time when Ruby could not attract an audience. Her gazes were only directed at herself in her bedroom mirror. Born Rania Hussein on October 18, 1981, in a working class Cairo neighborhood, as an adolescent Ruby did not dare hope she could become a star. "I was shy," she tells Carnival Arabia. "I didn't think of myself as a singer. I was too scared to even think of a career like this. In school, people told me I had a nice voice, but I had no idea what kind of voice I had. I never dreamed it was enough to make me famous." |
| Also, such a career was not really an option. "... It wasn't allowed. My family would never have permitted it, and I knew this. So I put the idea out of my head. They wanted me to become a doctor." But by 16, her shyness had faded away and Ruby imposed her dreams against her parents' will. She began to audition for parts in TV commercials and found work first as a model and then as an actress. |
| Ironically, her cinematic debut was completely opposite to the provocative role she has in her video clips. In a five-minute appearance in Film Sakafi (Educational Film), she portrays a schoolgirl who lectures the movie's porn-obsessed characters on Islam's view of men-women relationships: Ruby explains that there is nothing wrong or religiously prohibited (haram) in innocent love. Then, from such an absolute purity she moved on to more liberal views as the supporting actress in Youssef Chahine's film Sekout Hanessawar (Silence, Action). On the beach, dressed in a swimsuit, she kissed her boyfriend, but that is as far as the sexual imagery goes. After all, Chahine (who also gave Ruby her stage name) had noticed the girl for her inner beauty: "She had an inner life, a quality you don't forget," he recalls. But Chahine's film was a box office flop. The director's art-house movies have the habit of grossing much less than Egyptian comic movies. |
| Chahine did not make Ruby a star. Sherif Sabri did. |
| Ruby met Sabri on the set of his cinematic debut, Saba' Warakat Kotsheena (Seven Playing Cards, 2004), where she was originally cast as a minor character. While shooting the movie in Prague, however, Sabri noticed that Ruby could not stop singing. "During rehearsals or during meals, she'd be singing. She was singing all the time," he says. This gave him an idea, which consisted of having Ruby sing and dance through the streets in a belly-dancing costume as seen in the "Enta Aref Leh" video. He told her that it would make her so famous that she wouldn't be able to walk down the street. |
| Before becoming a film director, Sabri, a civil engineer-turned-commercials producer, was a musician. In the 1970s, as a teenager, he played guitar for a band called Honeypot, covering Motown hits. He had to put this passion aside when he moved to Canada for his PhD, but back in Egypt, after working as a successful engineer, he managed to revive his old passion in commercials. In the 1990s, he started catching the attention of TV viewers through his ads and jingles, familiar melodies that people instinctively hummed. He also started directing video clips such as Amr Diab's "Wala Ala Balu" (Not In His Mind) and Samira Saeid's and Cheb Mami's "Youm Wara Youm" (Day After Day). Then, he met Ruby. |
| Not only did he direct her first video clip, he even produced her first album. At the same time, he reworked the script of Saba' Warakat Kotsheena to give Ruby's character more space and importance in the plot and a chance to sing. The movie, heavily censored in cinemas, was a flop: It grossed only LE 1.2 million in 2004 and it has been suggested that the few people who went to see it were looking for explicit sexual content. This allegation cannot be proved, but when Showtime's Home Cinema released an uncut version, many people paid to watch the movie. Showtime's PR and customer marketing manager Vida Rizq says it was aired for four weeks and it was the channel's best selling home cinema movie ever. |
| This was the real beginning of Ruby's career, which not only brought great success, but a bad reputation as well. Her actions are constantly scrutinized and easily become fodder for the media. Allegedly, she had to be escorted out of Cairo University in Beni Sueif, where she is studying law, because she was not appropriately attired. Sabri is quick to refute this allegation, but Ruby is less prone to answer another question: Are she and her director a couple? "None of anybody's business," the singer says. |
| But rumors about her personal life are not her only problem. In 2004, the Egyptian Syndicate of Musical Professions tried to fight the new trend for explicit music videos that have spread on uncensored satellite TV channels through a campaign against non-members who sing publicly without a permit. Ruby was their prime target. Last year, news circulated about the syndicate's intention to take the singer to court in May. People started wondering: Will Ruby be fined or is she facing a prison sentence? Will she be banned from singing forever? But in June 2004 she was accepted as a member of the syndicate, to which she made a donation of LE 50,000. Many people suggested that the donation was nothing more than a legalized bribe, another allegation Sabri refutes. |
| Last July, however, the singer faced more problems. Invited to perform at the Shabib Arts and Culture Festival in Jordan, Ruby faced a fierce campaign organized by conservative members of the Jordanian parliament and by several local newspapers. They all demanded that Ruby and the Lebanese sensation Maria be denied entrance to the country. But Ruby was not banned and gave two sold-out concerts in Jordan. |
| Sabri says Ruby's success only comes from her own magic and unique style: "When people say that Ruby is trying to be sexy, they don't really understand her or who she is. She's a good girl. She doesn't drink. She has a natural rhythm and she expresses it with R&B-style body motions. Anyone who knows Otis Redding and the genre behind rhythm and blues artists will understand Ruby. She's got a rhythmic, off-beat style. Her style is not about sex. It's about soul. She responds to the bass line, which nobody in the Arab world does, though it is very common in R&B and it creates a distinctive musical style. Ruby can certainly dance and, in some of her videos, she combines a unique blend of old and new school belly-dancing, Dina's choreographed movements and Fifi Abdou's erotic hip-shaking. But Ruby also captures the viewers with clear sexual innuendos. She is the Egyptian answer to the seductive Lebanese singers who also appear on uncensored satellite channels: She stands between Nancy Agram's cute and playful attitude and Naglaa's more aggressive seduction. Ruby's innocence, which she has displayed since her debut in the entertainment world, has become an erotic tool and thus her selling point. |
| Though Sabri insists he is not in the business of managing talent, he seems to be managing Ruby very well. Some are disappointed at how he uses his talent, producing sexy and allusive images rather than quality videos. But is this really any different from what he used to do before: promoting products? It could be argued that now he is only using his wit and social intelligence to put a person in a form which appeals to consumers. With his experience in the entertainment field, Sabri knows what people like and want to see and is giving it to them in the most alluring form. He knows when to let Ruby appear on TV and when to make her disappear, when to have her on magazine covers and when to make people wonder what happened to her and, most important of all, he knows how to present the young singer in a way that will keep the public interested in her all year long. |
| However, Ruby does not see it that way. She knows her success mainly comes from Sabri's video clips, but she insists she will make more movies and pursue a career as an actress. "I'm not writing my own songs yet, but I'm not controlled by anyone," she says. "I'm shaping my own style, my look and my music. And I want to start playing the harmonica." But Sabri quips, "It's difficult. There are so few good harmonica players in the world." |
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 | Courtesy Sherif Sabri | |
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