#kufiyaspotting, Tahrir Square, 10 years ago

 courtesy Rasha Latif

Ramy Essam in Fayetteville, AR (Jan 22)

Ramy Essam was at the University of Arkansas campus on January 22, courtesy The House of Songs Ozarks (based in Bentonville). He did a jam and Q&A session with students, a lecture/Q&A, and a concert in the evening. I had the pleasure of running the lecture/Q&A session with Ramy. I spent about 9 days in Egypt in December, where I purchased the red hat, which has the logo of the Ahly Football Club. I guessed Ramy might be an Ahly fan, and I was right!

More on the visit later, inshallah.

MTV documentary on Egyptian 'rebel music,' the massive June 30, 2013 demonstrations against Morsi, and the aftermath

This is a quite interesting documentary, from MTV, about the period running up to the Tamarrod-organized demonstration of June 30, 2013, and the role of musicians in that movement. Ramy Essam, Karim Adel Eissa of the rap group Arabian Knightz, and Nariman El Bakry, a music promoter, are all strong supporters of Tamarrod and critics of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. After the coup, Karim Adel Eissa expresses support the army, who he says he did not support previously. [Addendum from just a couple hours after this was posted. I posted more or less the same thing on FB. A FB re-posted, and within minutes a comment from Karim Adel Eissa, who says, "my stand openly and publicly changed shortly after that tho."] Nariman seems to shut down emotionally. Ramy got alienated by the crowds expressing support for the army at an event the night before the June 30, and so did not play at the June 30 demo. He says he was glad that Morsi got tossed out but not with the coup.

Good resource that is not always terribly accurate -- claims that 33 million Egyptians demonstrated against Morsi on June 30. Its estimate of 1200 killed in the Rabaa massacre of Muslim Brotherhood supporters on August 14 is more sound. Human Rights Watch estimates at least one thousand.

Middle Eastern artists (El Haqed, Salomé, Ramy Essam, etc.) do Fela's "Zombie"

Rapper L7a9ed (El Haqed, rapper from Morocco), Ramy Essam (singer from Egypt, who raps here), Karim Rush, Egyptian rapper from the group Arabian Knightz, Refugees of Rap (Palestine/Syria), Salomé MC (Iranian rapper), Palestinian Rapperz (Gaza), Armada Bizerta (Tunisian rappers), and Moe Hamzeh (Lebanese rapper) all appear on a new version of Nigerian singer Fela's immortal "Zombie." The rhythm track is provided by Voodoo Sound Club (Bologna), and the song opens with a segment from Fela's son Seun Kuti. Producers are Reda Zine (Morocco), Mark Levine, Anton Pukshansky and Andrea Deda. They plan to produce several more Fela re-visions over the year.

It's great, give it a listen (download here) -- I particularly like the segment from the one female rapper, also the only Iranian rapper, the super Salomé. Read more about it here from Freemuse.

El Haqed in Aljazeera

The Moroccan rapper, El Haqed, recently released from prison for the third time, published an opinion piece today (October 6) in Al Jazeera (English) -- it's translated from French and English by Mark Levine.

He writes:

In 2007, a new kind of rap began to spread, with roots in groups like H-Kayne who rapped about social but not quite political issues. It was authentic rap, not imitating anyone. These dangerous ideas led the system to try to shut us down, put us in a big prison so to speak, a prison for ideas and freedoms to try to hem in our dangerous ideas...
 
And so we called our rap ar-rab muhabsi - "prison rap" - rap that expresses reality and sings about freedom, breaking down the borders and chains. We need to understand the power of prison rap in the context of most rappers being little more than marionettes, wholesale puppets of power. You can count the number of truly political rappers on one hand. And yet, the small number makes our music that much more powerful. The intellectual and cultural prison only made our music more powerful. The state still doesn't get that.

I learned at a workshop this past weekend that, in fact, you can in fact count the number of Moroccan political rappers on one hand. In fact, there are three--El Haqed, Hoba Hoba Spirit, and Muslim--who truly support the Moroccan revolutionary movement. The rest, while they deal sometimes with social issues, scrupulously avoid politics.

Thank gods for El Haqed!

P.S. October 7. Hisham Aidi adds (via twitter) that perhaps there is one more 'revolutionary' Moroccan rapper: Sí Simo of Fez City Clan -- but he raps more about poverty than politics.

P.S. October 11. Please check out this article in Jadaliyaa (Oct. 7) by Jessica Rohan, on the Mawazine Festival. She provides a discussion of rappers, including El Haqed and Muslim, and their positioning in relation to pro-regime rap stars like Bigg and Cheikh Sar. And she provides a link to a song by Sí Simo called "Kilimini," a song about social inequality in Morocco. Rohan tells us that kilimini  man is a "recently-coined slang term for wealthy Moroccans." It literally means “he eats from me,” "suggesting the elite gained their wealth through corruption" and also connotating shallowness.

http://youtu.be/bEV0s0tWZ6E

Revolutionary rap from Egypt: Katiba (Batallion) 101

A friend passed this on to me awhile back and I want to recommend it to you. It's from Egyptian rap group Katiba ("Batallion") 101. The title is "Shaytan wa Malak" (Demon and Angel). It proposes that the battle in Egypt is between the good or angelic forces, the forces of the revolution, and the demonic force of the authorities. According to the notes on youtube, the song was recorded two years ago (summer 2012), and is only now released.

I hope someone with better translation skills could translate the Arabic. The lyrics are there, on the youtube notes, so have at it. Katiba 101 also rap in English, and make a pretty good go of it. And it is really a slamming track. Have a listen. And I will try to learn more.

Walls of Freedom - Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution

This looks like a terrific book.

 

According to the publisher: 

This book is a crowd-sourced and crowd-funded collaboration of 100 Photographers, 50 Artists and 20 Authors.

“Walls of Freedom” is a powerful portrayal of the first three years of the Egyptian revolution that began on January 25, 2011.The story is told through striking images of art that transformed Egypt's walls into a visual testimony of bravery and resistance. Created in close collaboration with artists on the frontlines of the battle, the book documents how they converted the streets into a dynamic newspaper of the people, providing a much needed alternative to the propaganda-fueled media. 

Go here to purchase and for a preview. The visuals really are stunning. This is one of my favorites. It dates from January 2012, when the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) was in control, and it says "The Army Above All." In the rubble with the skulls is a poster with one of the chief slogans of the revolution: "Bread. Freedom. Social Justice." The piece was very apt at the time of production and it was also very prescient, considering the political direction that Egypt is currently headed.

 And here is a vid about the project.

Kufiyaspotting remembered: Tahrir in the New York Times

Today's (December 15) New York Times featured this photo (in both the print and the online versions) from Jehane Noujaim's very well-received documentary on the Egyptian uprising of January-February 2011, The Square ("Al Midan"), and its complicated. (From Manohla Dargis' article "The Festival World, and What's Beyond." Online, it's photo 14.)

Noujaim Films

Almost three years later, Egypt is a total mess. But those were glorious days on Tahrir, in early 2011, it is important to remember, and it ("the revolution" or whatever it is) is not necessarily over. And the kufiya was and continues to be an important sartorial symbol of those days. And of coming ones.

<Here are some earlier Tahrir kufiya posts.>

Meanwhile, here's a trailer for the film. And more kufiyas.

Orient-Institut Studies 2 (2013) - Inverted Worlds: Cultural Motion in the Arab Region

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:

Yves Gonzalez-Quijano: Rap, an Art of Revolution or a Revolution in Art?

Ines Dallaji: Tunisian Rap Music and the Arab Spring: Revolutionary Anthems and Post-Revolutionary Tendencies

Stephan Procházka: The Voice of Freedom: Remarks on the Language of Songs from the Egyptian Revolution 2011

Simon Dubois: Street Songs from the Syrian Protests

Nader Srage: The Protest Discourse: The Example of “Irhal” (Go/Get Out/Leave)

And there are more articles on graffiti, poetry, jokes and more. All the articles are online. Please check it out.

Good reads: Ellis Goldberg on Egypt's democratic transition

The title is: "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Democratic Transition."

It's one of the best things I've read about Egypt recently.

Here are a couple teasers:

The dominant concern in Egypt today is the high, and increasing, level of polarization. It seems to be common in the US and Europe to describe this a conflict between the country’s minority urban secular middle-class and its religious (Islamic) majority. That Egypt has become increasingly polarized is apparent but it is doubtful that the polarization that paralyzes the country is between the secular middle-class and the rest of Egypt. Much of the violence in the streets today is occurring outside of Cairo in the Canal Zone and the provincial cities of the Delta, places not known for their large, secular middle-classes. The violence is often specifically between the Muslim Brotherhood, its direct supporters and its occasional allies on specific issues, and the restive lower middle and working classes in these cities. 

and

Today’s polarizing conflicts in Egypt are far from limited to differences between the MB and a secular, middle class (or Facebook) opposition. It is possible that, for example, many of the young people who showed up to dance the “Harlem Shake” in front of the Muslim Brothers’ national headquarters were engaged in middle class mockery. If that were the opposition with which the MB had to contend they would be in a very different situation than they find themselves. The dock workers who have several times shut down the port at Ain Sokhna (most recently in mid-February 2013) were interested neither in embarrassing the MB nor in line dancing. Nor are industrialists like Magdi Tolba dancing for joy: the weakened pound is causing nearly as many problems as it solves for textile exporters like him.

Leila Fadel of NPR on mahragan

I missed it, she covered mahragan (which she calls electro shaabi), as well as rocker Ramy Essam and graffiti artist Ganzeer, on September 4, 2012. She mentions Alaa Fifty, Amr Haha (7a7a) and Ahmed Vigo [the NPR transcript says: "Achmed (unintelligible)"]. It's a very short report, it doesn't tell us much we don't already know (other than the fact that mahragan vocalists are called "mike men" -- I need to check this), but it's basically on target.

And folks, there is more mainstream media coverage of mahragan in the offing. I can feel it.

"Inverted worlds" - Congress on Cultural Motion in the Arab Region

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).

Check it out here.

Port Said: general strike & dancing to simsimiyya music

As of today, Friday February 22, Port Said is in its 5th day of a general strike. As James Dorsey tells us, the leading forces in the strike are organized labor and soccer fans, in an unprecedented collaboration.

And as this Youtube footage shot today, residents of Port Said are not just striking, but they are dancing as well, to the distinctive strains of their local music, in which the simsimiyya (lyre) is the lead and the most significant instrument.



I've posted in past about Port Said's leading simsimiyya group, here and here. (Although in the latter post, I've misidentified the song I saw performed, and at some point in future, need to make some corrections on the post.)

And I've written about Port Said and El Tanbura and the Egyptian uprising, in the latest issue of Middle East Report, here. Much respect to Port Said. I hope they manage to shut down the Canal.

shameless self-promotion

That's what a personal blog is for, right? Three items.

1. My article, "Egypt's Music of Protest: From Sayyid Darwish to DJ Haha," was published in the new issue of Middle East Report (#265, Winter 2012). The issue theme is, Egypt: The Uprising Two Years On. Please buy and read the entire issue. And then subscribe to MER, if you have not already.

2. My article, "Palestinian Rap: Against the Struggle Paradigm," has appeared in a new volume from Routledge (December 2012), Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook, edited by Mounira Soliman and Walid El Hamamsy. The volume is expensive ($125), so I won't urge you to buy it but I will urge you to get your library to order a copy.

3. I just turned over several old Palestinian resistance movement posters to the Palestine Poster Project Archives, collected in Beirut in 1970 or 1971. You can view them here.

I particularly like this one which, I learned from the Archive curator Dan Walsh, was designed by Ghassan Kanafani himself. It says: "destroy the enemies of the people."

Revolutionary music from Port Said

Check out "Heela Heela," from El Tanbura's album Friends of Bamboute: 20th Anniversary Edition. You can listen to it and buy it (you must!) here.

El Tanbura describe the song as follows: "Traditional worker’s song from Port Said popularised by local fishermen. The “Heela Heela” (Do More) chorus takes the form of a motivational refrain to be sung by encouraging fellow workers to tackle the job in hand with vigour when engaged in their daily activities, be it fishing or working in agriculture. This rendition includes additional lyrics from ET’s oldest member Abul Adel for verse 3 in which the fish become a metaphor the countries (Israel, Great Britain and France) attacking Egypt and the activities of the resistance movement during the [1956] occupation of Port Said."

You can also find El Tanbura's "Heela Heela" on the new Rough Guide to Arabic Revolution. (Alas, it's not a great collection, but "Heela Heela" is certainly one of the better tracks.

You can learn more about El Tanbura and its role in the Egyptian Revolution in the article I recently wrote for the latest Middle East Report (#265, Winter 2012), "Egypt's Music of Protest: From Sayyid Darwish to DJ Haha."

promo release of politically conscious Arab rap

courtesy Stronghold Sound, this:



"Advance promo release of Khat Thaleth 23 tracks compilation of politically conscious Arab hip-hop. CD and vinyl release coming up on Stronghold Sound." Includes tracks from Touffar (Lebanon),  Narcicyst (Iraq/Canada), LaTlateh (Syria), and others with whom I was not previously familiar. Be sure to listen.

Zeid Hamdan, The People Want the Fall of the Regime

everywere, says Zeid (ex-Soap Kills). including Bahrain.

Occuper Tahrir en chantant

Music from the Egyptian revolution. Eskenderella, Ramy Essam, rapper Mohammed el-Deeb. Shaikh Imam and Sayyid Darwish. Ahmad Fouad Negm. Great stuff, courtesy France 24. French subtitles.

Interview with the poet Ahmad Fouad Negm

This is quite wonderful. Negm talks about his poems, his career with Sheikh Imam, and about the January 25 revolution in Egypt. We see a number of contemporary Egyptian artists (including Eskenderella) interpret his and Sheikh Imam's songs. Subtitled in French. From the France 24 web documentary, "Tahrir, je chante ton nom" (http://tahrirmusique.france24.com).

Cairo Graffiti: Nefertiti in teargas masks

Courtesy El Zeft.