Fathy Salama was born by the Nile, when he was a child he swam there with his friends. He grew up listening to the family radio, which played the music of Oum Kalthoum, Mohamed Abdel Wahab and Farid el Atrash. Later, when he could tune the radio, he reached beyond the banks of the Nile to Jazz and to a huge variety of world traditional music. Learning the piano from the age of six was a good beginning and was followed by gigging in Cairo clubs from the age of thirteen.