Volume 2 of Orient-Institut Studies (put out by the Orient-Institut Beirut and the Orient-Institut Istanbul) recently came out (the journal is published only online). It's the Proceedings of the Conference, "Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region," Beirut, October 4–8 2012. I've not had time to do more than skim some of the articles, but they are all about the Arab uprisings and culture. Since my main area of interest is music, I thought these essays seemed particularly interesting:
Yes, the El Général from Tunisia. I have been going on for more than a year about how the role of hip-hop in the Arab Spring has been way overblown. Here, among other places. But if there is one rapper who has been really and truly integral to the Arab Spring, it is El Géneral. In November 2010 he put out the song “Rais Lebled” which fearlessly attacked the problems that Tunisia’s autocratic president (rais) Ben Ali had imposed on his people. “Rais Lebled” appeared on Youtube immediately before the protests that ensued after Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, and it led to El Général’s imprisonment.Demonstrators in Tunisia are said to have chanted the words to “Rais Lebled” as they called for the release of El Général and for the end to Ben Ali's rule. (The blog Revolutionary Arab Rap posted an excellent account of El Général as well as links to vids and lyrics, in Arabic and English.)
So, this is a major occasion, the appearance of El Général at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and it's not to be missed--if tickets are still available.
Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour has performed several times in the US, but she is well worth seeing too, especially on such a bill. (You may recall that I had my issues--ideological rather than artistic--with her song/video, "The Kufiya Is Arab," but I do admire her work a great deal.)
Also on the bill, Egyptian rapper El Deeb, with whose work I am less familiar, and Malian rapper Amkoullel, about whom I know very little.
Rounding out the bill, advertised as a rap event, is the Moroccan musician Brahim Fribgane. I've seen him over the years playing electric guitar in Hassan Hakmoun's band at the Essaouira Gnawa Festival in 1999; playing 'ud and guitar and doing vocals with La Mar Enfortuna at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music in September 2006; backing up Moroccan jazz singer Malika Zarra at Boom Restaurant in New York City in March 2007; and performing on 'ud with Gnawa artist Majid Bekkas in Fayetteville, Arkansas (yes! my hometown!) in October 2012. Fribgane is an all-around, extremely versatile talent, so you might expect any numbers of musical functions from him at BAM.
Fribgane and Bekkas were here as part of the Fall 2012 Caravanserai program. Caravanserai's artistic director is Zeyba Rahman, and she was here with the musicians in Fall. And she was even interviewed on Ozarks at Large.
It's the same Zeyba who is curating the BAM event. Way to go, Zeyba.
I haven't had a chance to watch/listen to the papers yet, but I wanted to call this event to readers' attention. In October 2012, the Orient Institut Beirut sponsored a very interesting conference on Arab culture called "Inverted Worlds." I of course am particularly interested in the papers on music, but there is much more, papers on social media, graffiti, youth, visual art, humor, and so on.
Here are the music papers; they all sounded interesting to me:
Yves Gonzalez-Quijano(Université de Lyon): Arab Rap: a Culture of Revolution and a Revolution in Culture (check out Yves' excellent blog here)
Mark LeVine (University of California, Irvine): "Scripting" the Revolution: Music, movement, and the Arab Spring’s Auratic Momentum
Jackson Allers (Cultural writer and film maker): Arab Hip Hop – Rhymes and Revolution (Jackson covers the scene in Beirut, his blog is here)
Nicolas Puig (URMIS/CEMAM, USJ): Critical Sounds from the Periphery: Palestinian Electro in Lebanon (a list of Puig's pubs is here)
Ines Dallaji (University of Vienna): Tunisian Rap Music and the Arab Spring: Revolutionary Anthems and Post-Revolutionary Tendencies (Dallaji's dissertation in progress is: "Die Stimmen der Revolution. Tunesisch-arabische Rap-Musik
als Ausdruck des Protests gegen das Regime Bin ʿAlī und die politischen
Umbrüche in Tunesien 2010-11")
Stephan Prochazka (University of Vienna): The Voice of Freedom – Egyptian Revolution Pop: Provocation or Encouragement (a list of Prochazka's articles is here)
Simon Dubois (Université Lumière Lyon II): Street Songs from the Syrian Protests
PLUS: Discussion with members of Hip Hop Project Khat Thaleth, moderated by Ahmed Khouja aka Munaqresh. Participating artists: El Rass (Lebanon), Sayyed Darwish (Syria), Watar (Syria), El Far3i (Jordan), Zeid Khemiri (Armada Bizerta, Tunisia), Ahmed Galai Ezzar (Armada Bizerta, Tunisia).
You no doubt know that Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2011 is "The Protester." The protester who, for Time, set it all off, is of course Tunisia's Mohamed Bouazizi. Read about it here. And check out the photo essay, of protesters from around the world (and especially, of course, from the Arab world), by Peter Hapak. Three of the thirty-six items in the portfolio (some of which juxtapose two persons) feature protesters in kufiya. I reproduce them below:
El Teneen, a prominent Egyptian graffiti artist, wears a homemade gas mask.
Syrian activists Abdul Hamid Sulaiman, Rami Jarrah and Mohamed Abazid all fled the country. "I was tortured for three days, and that’s when I became more active and started using a pseudonym," Jarrah says. Right, his damaged iPhone.
An Egyptian protester, left, holds a spent shell casing found after clashes in Tahrir Square. Right, protester Ahmed Aggour, a.k.a. Psypherize, an Egyptian activist, artist and blogger.
A new blog has been started, which focuses on Arab rap and its relation to the "Arab Spring." While I have been critical of journalists who have over-stated the importance of Arab rap in the insurrectionary events of the last month, that does not all mean that I think rap is unimportant, uninteresting, and, in many cases, excellent. A very important and useful new blog has been started, which I recommend highly, called Revolutionary Arab Rap. It has two features: (1) an series of in-depth analyses of important artists and tracks. As of this date, one very good one has been published, on Tunisia's El Général, of "Rayes Lebled" fame. Here's the link. Keep checking back, there is more to come. (2) An archive of videos with transcriptions of the lyrics in Arabic and translations in Arabic. This is a very, very useful resource, and I really wish more people with good knowledge of the language were doing more translations of Arabic song lyrics.
Shirt.woot launches a new original t-shirt design every midnight(central). This shirt design came in third in the Hipster Animals derby.
Along with a posted commentary (October 10), which included these lines:
"Personally, I’m sick of all these button-down mainstreamers giving me static about my scarf. “It’s September,” they say. “It’s basically still summer,” they say. “You can’t possibly be cold,” they say...“What’s wrong in your brain that makes a cheesy, affected fashion accessory seem more important to you than your physical comfort?”
Affected? Pshuh! “Dude,” I always want to say (before deciding to just sneer at them with silent disdain instead), “35% of the surface area of my body is neck. A scarf is essential for maintaining my core body temperature, OK?”
That’s right. Scarf life, y’all. Recognize.
On days when I wear a keffiyeh, though, that’s totally affectation, I’ll give you that."
More tongue-in-cheek hipster bashing. But then there's this. Is this "affected," shirt woot?!
Even New York magazine's cover story (October 24), which the image above thematizes, is much more positive than shirt woot, which tries to be cool. Although it does so in a kind of abashed, rather apologetic, but hopefully post-irony tone: "The Kids Are Actually Sort of Alright." Dude, seriously, let this sixties-era geezer tell you: these kids are way better than alright. Viva #ows.
I really, really, like that the person on the cover wears two, mixed-together scarves: an American flag scarf (we are reclaiming our country!) and a kufiya (we are inspired by the Arab spring and maybe, just a bit, by Palestine).
Please see this piece from Al Jazeera English by Hishaam Aidi, Columbia University, on hip-hop in US diplomacy. One of the points Aidi makes, which is also one of my peeves of late, is that 'the role of music should not be exaggerated: Hip hop did not cause the Arab revolts any more than Twitter or Facebook did. the countries in the region with the most vibrant hip hop scenes, Morocco and Algeria, have not seen revolts. Western journalists' focus on hip hop - like their fixation on Facebook and Twitter - seems partly because, in their eyes, a taste for hip hop among young Muslims is a sign of moderation, modernity, even "an embrace of the US."'
Thank you, Hishaam!
Here is a typical report, by Karl Bostic of NBC News, entitled "How Rap Fueled the Revolution." (It's not dated, but was broadcast in early September 2011, I believe.)
It claims, "Rap music has become the soundtrack of the revolution, and the symbol of resistance." I'm pretty unconvinced by a lot of what Bostic asserts. He presents two rather unimpressive Libyan rappers, who rhyme in English, and claims that Libyan rebels were going into battle inspired by local rap. The so-called "rapper" from Hama, Syria, who did the popular song "Come On Bashar, Leave," was not really a hip-hop artist, contrary to what Bostic states, but rather chanted, in traditional style, to a debke beat. (See Anthony Shadid's report on this song, and how the person who performed it, Ibrahim Qashoush, had his throat cut shortly thereafter, here.) Bostic does at least show that the person he says is Syria's most popular rapper, Murder Eyez, supports the Bashar regime, and that rap's appeal in Yemen is limited. It is true that rappers like Egypt's Deeb were active during the uprising centered at Tahrir in January and February, but I believe that he was of lesser importance in these events than artists working in other musical genres. I believe the only place where hip hop truly played a significant role was in Tunisia, and in particular, the rapper El General and his song "Rais el-Bled."
Hishaam also raises all kinds of important questions about hip hop cultural diplomacy. For a more in-depth look at the issues of race, hip hop, Islam, and foreign policy, please see Hishaam's recent article in Middle East Report (Fall 2012), "The Grand (Hip-Hop) Chessboard: Race, Rap and Raison d'Etat."
Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
