Disco Arabesquo's New Party Series is NOT an Arab Nostalgia Night

I first met Moataz Rageb (or as most people know him, ‘Disco Arabesquo’) back in April 2025 when he headlined NoiseSessions’ all-day party in Cairo. We went on a cassette digging spree through Zaza Mazzika’s stash at the party, and at one point, he excitedly waved a ‘Hammam fi Amsterdam’ cassette to my face and exclaimed that 'Ayyeh' was his all-time go-to track to mix in his eponymous club nights. In Amsterdam, he has been causing quite a stir with these Arab nostalgia parties, carving out a space for Middle Eastern pop and shaabi edits into a European clubbing scene that regulates them to a background texture.

When we caught up several months later, he happily revealed that he would be participating in the Amsterdam Dance Event program this year with his new party concept, Third Culture Club, on October 26th in collaboration with the Dubai-based collective Paradisea, with DJ Plead, Cascou, and himself on the lineup. It made sense because Rageb has always been restless and on the lookout for different ways to belong as a third culture kid who has always been living in-between worlds.  "I kept meeting these DJs abroad whose mixes I really love, but they didn’t quite fit the Disco Arabesquo formula that has Arab sounds at its core,” he tells me. “Their mixes are usually layered with stories about who they are, blending various cultures, experiences and genres. I needed a new concept to hold that. That’s where Third Culture Club came from.”

The name is, of course, borrowed from the sociological term describing kids raised between cultures who stitch together their own hybrid identity in their own way. For Rageb, it’s the perfect metaphor for the sound he’s chasing with for the series, one that doesn’t sit neatly in ‘Arab’ or ‘Western’ boxes, but rather moves fluidly on the peripheries of both, and is influenced by other cultures they come across as well. “Third Culture Club centers those different cultures, but it also brings in the people who live them,” he explains. “The ones who already developed an ear for different musical worlds because of how they grew up.”

At its best, the party series feels like standing at the crossroads of a dozen different dance floors at once. Rageb recalls one moment that still shakes him: when Amsterdam crew Chamos put a punchy techno spin on dabke., “I looked out and saw some people dancing dabke, white kids shuffling, others bellydancing, all to the same track. It felt like the future I wanted to see.” That future is loud, sweaty and borderless, and it happens in a room like Parallel, where a glowing light cube hangs above the booth, casting the DJ in sharp focus like they’re mid-ritual. “You just need to experience it to fully understand it!” Rageb says.

In a city as mixed as Amsterdam, audiences have the ears for such a type of music; they’ve grown up switching between languages, musical tastes and worlds. Rageb knows a night like this wouldn’t resonate everywhere. That openness of the city is what allows him to take risks, like booking Cairo-based rising talent Karamell, who is known for dancy synth-driven mahraganat with Bedouin voices from Sinai. “I would say Third Culture Club (TCC) is like Amsterdam’s radio station FunX, but more clubby and with an emphasis on sounds from the Global South. Or in Cairo, it’s like a Tarab 3alami fil klubbat.”

At a special edition of TCC, curated by London DJ Saliah, the crowd got so hyped that dancers literally climbed into the booth to break into dabke with her. “Chaotic, but fun,” Rageb laughs as he remembers the incident. For him, chaos is the point; it resembles the sound of people recognising pieces of themselves on the dancefloor, even when they don’t share the same background. “We don’t really try to define our crowd as locals and diaspora, but as third culture kids with unique, layered lived-experience who, like us, are looking for exciting new sounds.”

As much fun as it can be, however, there are pitfalls. The nights that feed off the diaspora community can easily slip into nostalgia traps, selling back a frozen image of heritage for easy thrills. “We always try to invite DJs who are pushing sounds forward, rather than just recycling what already works,” Rageb tells me. “It is never going to be another Arab nostalgia night. That’s what Disco Arabesquo is for. TCC is way broader than that; it’s for those who dare to bring something new and unexpected.”

Despite the immense ambition he holds for his new baby,  Rageb refuses to look too far ahead into the future. “As long as there are DJs who have exciting new sounds, there will be Third Culture Club. So it’s up to the DJs and, of course, if the crowd keeps loving it, then we will keep on doing it.”