From essays on geopolitics to music sets that highlight hidden Arab talents, Egyptian writer, DJ and radio host Nihal Al Aasar is all about unearthing alternative narratives and capturing the cultural pulse of the region’s diverse communities.
Raised in Cairo and now based in London, she writes in response to the many changes, wars and socio-economic issues sweeping the Middle East over the past 15 years. The self-described "anti-propagandist" felt something needed to be said and, combining that with her love for music, used radio as an outlet that fused both worlds.
“I grew up being a voracious reader and I listened to a lot of music. I think because I was an only child, I had a very rich inner life. I had things that were happening in the world that I wanted to respond to, or be in conversation with and writing came naturally as a way to express myself,” Al Aasar tells The National.
While at a dinner party in 2022, she was playing different genres of music from her phone, from Arab electronic music and Palestinian rap to Egyptian drum and bass, when someone recommended checking out NTS Radio. The music radio platform was founded in 2011 in London by Femi Adeyemi as "an international community of music lovers".
“I messaged them assuming it would be as a guest on someone’s show, but they invited me to do my own live show. So my first gig ever was on NTS and I learned how to DJ whilst live on air. I was literally thrown into it,” she adds. “Then I became a NTS resident and started my own show called Nile to Bank. I did more traditional DJ sets, but also art and experimental-oriented sets.”
Speaking earlier to The National from Vima Art Fair in Limassol, Cyprus, Al Aasar said she had come full circle. As part of The Waves Crashing exhibition, curated by Kostas Stasinopoulos, she delivered an artistic music set, having been invited by Stasinopoulos after they worked together on Peter Doig’s House of Music at the Serpentine Gallery in 2025.
At the Serpentine, Al Aasar presented an immersive selection of traditional Arabic tunes that played when viewers stopped by Doig’s paintings. Her recent performance in Limassol was more experimental, combining left-field hip-hop, drill, drum and bass, indie and electronic music, moving through sounds and rhythms from across the Middle East.
On Nile to Bank, her radio platform acts as a natural extension of her worldview, aiming to eliminate cultural borders through her track selections and inviting guests and activists to discuss regional issues on air.
“I try to highlight the vibrant music scenes from different Arab countries, because sometimes people pigeonhole Middle Eastern music as a monotype, thinking it’s just wedding music or Nancy Ajram – which is still amazing and has its space – but there’s so much more,” Al Aasar says. “I'm quite frustrated in the West when there's an ‘Arab music party’. What does that even mean? In Egypt alone, there's people who only listen to deep industrial breakbeat music, and then there’s techno or Mahraganat.
“There’s an incredible rap scene in Morocco and a lot of electronic and rap music coming out of Palestine and Jordan,” she adds. “My aim was to show that there’s no such thing as an ‘Arab sound’ and I wanted to represent these underground contemporary music scenes.”
Having carved out her niche, she constantly receives new tracks and trends from musicians. For many artists in the Middle East, creative output and political reality go hand in hand, and Nile to Bank is no different, taking the time to unpack regional issues and unrest between numbers.
At a time when mainstream Western media is sorely lacking in authentic Middle Eastern voices and alternative news takes, platforms like Al Aasar’s show offer more than just cultural enrichment. She doesn’t feel the need to keep the different parts of her interests separate and instead operates a multifaceted practice that surpasses borders and labels.
Guests such as writer Mohammed El Kurd and artist-researcher Mohammed ‘Siko’ Tatour have appeared alongside several up-and-coming musical talents such as El Kontessa, Otteswed and Firas Shehadeh.
“I always think about my position and ability to give voice to alternative discourse,” she says, explaining that her platform allows her to draw attention to cultural scenes as well as the wider circumstances shaping them. “Art and music doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”
For her, being Arab also means that politics can be difficult to separate from everyday life. She points to Gaza writer Hannan Writes and her discussions around the idea of having “permission to be frivolous” – essentially, who gets the freedom to pursue interests beyond politics or conflict.
But she believes there is space to occupy both worlds. “You can also have many interests and hats,” she says.
She draws a parallel with artists of the 1950s and 1960s, both in the Middle East and elsewhere, whose creative work was often closely intertwined with their politics. Umm Kulthum, she notes, performed for soldiers and used her concerts to raise money for the war effort.
“My practice is the same,” she says. “I can exist on multiple dimensions.”
