In the spring of 2012, Youssra El Hawary wrote a song about something new in her neighborhood. She uploaded a video onto YouTube of her singing the tune, accompanied simply by her accordion.

“I started my musical career a few months before this song,” El Hawary recalled last week by phone from Cairo. “I didn’t have a big base of fans. I thought just one or two hundred [viewers were] going to see it.”

But the then-fledgling singer’s neighborhood is near Tahrir Square, focal point of the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Her song was about the tall concrete barricades that had been erected to contain protesters. The video of “El Soor,” which means “the wall,” was an instant sensation; six years later, it’s been watched more than 600,000 times.

Now El Hawary is headed to Washington, where she and her five-person band will perform at the Kennedy Center and the U Street club Tropicalia. The tour, the musician’s first in the United States, was organized by the nonprofit Center Stage, which for the past six years has brought notable international performers to this country for month-long tours. Its 2018 lineup features two additional acts from Egypt and two from Ukraine.

This year’s program begins with the group Mohamed Abozekry and Karkade, the most musically traditional of the three from Egypt. They will perform Saturday at Bossa Bistro and Sunday at the Kennedy Center. El Hawary and vocalist Dina El Wedidi will appear the following week.

The Ukrainian acts — the musical group Kurbasy and the cabaret-theater troupe Teatr-Pralnia with CCA Dakh — will visit next month.

Center Stage is a collaboration between the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which picks the countries, and the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), which selects the performers. It sends participants to big cities and small towns, to marble-clad arts centers and colleges, churches and libraries.

“This is not one gig a night for 30 days. They’re in communities for three or four days,” says NEFA executive director Cathy Edwards. “There are meals in people’s homes and panel discussions and workshops. This isn’t for the artist who doesn’t have a genuine interest in connecting.”