Recommended music: mahraganat and North African vinyl

1. Another very fine radio show from the estimable Toukadime. Broadcast #18. Vintage North African tunes. (But no playlist yet: come on, pals!). And to show how eclectic their tastes are, they conclude the show with Herbie Mann's "Caravan"! Don't miss this show.

Added Oct. 20, 2014: Here's the playlist:

Tazi Boukhari & Aouicha: Comment Faire?
Guerouabi: El Barah
Mohamed Chemoum: JSK
Mohamed Jerrari: Ya Mariam
Mohamed Jerrari: El Karrita
Mohamed Bergam: Farah El Islam
Bouchaib Bidaoui: Khoutna Yal Islam
Albert Suissa: Dar El Baida
Haja Mina el Gharbaouia & Haja Khadouj Bent Barek, Marechal Kibou: Jini Wlanjik
Albert Suissa: Ya Rabi Tsmeh Fli Daj
Mustapha Nainia - Khouya Bouya

2. The latest Middle Eastern and North African playlist from The Guardian's music blog, by John Doran. Souad Abdallah (Iraq), Maurice Louca (Egypt), Fayçal Azizi (Morocco) -- all interesting, well worth a listen and pursuing further. But what really struck me was the live track from E.E.K. feat. Islam Chipsy -- in concert in London on October 12. This is mad mad mahraganat music, and I've http://www.weather.com/weather/today/Fayetteville+AR+72701:4:USblogged about Islam Chipsy in the past. (Here, for instance, though one of the vids has vanished.) Check out what Doran has to say about them, the 'preternaturally talented keyboard player Islam Chipsy, flanked by drummers Khaled Mando and Islam Tata,' who have been driving crowds in Bristol, London and Newcastle wild. "In Cairo, the three-piece are usually hired to play large outdoor wedding celebrations and their sound has developed in tandem with a need to kickstart parties while often contending with battered old PA systems. Now, through playing indoors through really powerful rigs, their sound has morphed into something that is bordering on overwhelming. The tightly syncopated rhythmical assault is in a lot of ways analogous to carnival or marching musical forms such as soca, New Orleans second-line drumming, dancehall and calypso. However, these beats are played at hyperspeed by two drummers who can switch styles and tempos without dropping a beat, adept at providing a rigid framework for a virtuoso keyboard player whose individual technique includes firing out bewilderingly fast blasts of tone clusters deployed by punching, slapping and karate-chopping his keyboard at such a frightening speed that his hands become a blur of movement. A truly unique experience."

And now: check out the vid, and see whether Doran's enthusiasm isn't warranted.

3. John Doran also has a piece in Vice about the Cairo Liberation Front, a Dutch trio who make up a dance party unit that plays mahraganat. The article title describes what they do as "Wedding Dance Rave," which is certainly as good a synonym for mahraganat as the other synonyms in use, techno shaabi and electro shaabi. There's a mixtape of new (at least I guess new) mahraganat here as well, so download, listen, enjoy, start your own dance party unit if you dare.

Even more mahraganat (electro shaabi) photos

This set from David Degner. And focusing this time on the Tamanya Fil Meya ("Eight Percent") crew from Matariya. (And again, no mention at all of the January 25, 2014 massacre in Matariya. Sheesh.)

In any case, great photos. I particularly love the one above, featuring Oka and Ortega at some kind of (staged?) pink wedding.

Mahragan: Excellent photos from Mosa'ab Elshamy

 Sadat and tuk-tuk in Sadat City (Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Mosa'ab Elshamy is one of the best, maybe the best, photographers in Egypt to emerge into global fame since the events at Tahrir in January-February 2011. Rolling Stone magazine has just published a set of his photos on Egypt's mahragan (AKA electro-shaabi) scene, and they are stunning. (There is text as well, unattributed.)

Mahragan in Rolling Stone? Yep, the genre is getting a level of international reputation and cred that is remarkable. It's a testimony both to the creativity and quality of the music as well as the interest that the so-called Arab Spring and its culture spawned in the West. 

I'm not sure I like this description of the phenom: "the country's underground electro-rap uprising." Why "uprising"? Was rap, which Rolling Stone compares it to, an "uprising"? What did it overthrow? This issue, moreover, begs the question, not addressed in the text that accompanies the photos -- what is the relation between mahragan and politics in Egypt today, ever since Rabaa massacre of August 2013, the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the military coup, and the emergence of the Sisi phenomenon? What about the fact that, on the third anniversary of the launch of the January 25 (political) uprising, 21 people protestors were killed in al-Matariya, one of the strongholds of mahragan, the popular quarter of the Eight Percent crew (Wizza, Ortega and Oka)? 

Really, you'd think that at least some readers of the mag would want to know...

One more quibble: I keep insisting that the genre should be called mahragan (sing.) not mahraganat (plural). Someone please tell me why I'm wrong.

In any case, the photos are great, take a look. 

And you can see more of Mosa'ab Elshamy's photos on flickr, and follow him on twitter via @mosaaberizing.

"I'm Stoned" by MC Sadat and Figo (Mahragan)

I'm stoned, I'm drunk...Stoned, drunk...Dear Mr. weed dealer/Give me two bags/Cuz I invited my friends/For a beer and two joints.

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.

mahragan (electro cha3bi) mixtape

Courtesy Cairo Liberation Front, who call the genre Electro Cha3bi. If I could read Dutch I could figure out more about who these folks are. Generation Bass says they are "two dudes from Tillburg." Names: Joost Heijthuisen and Yannnick Verhoeven.

They like to wear kufiyas, it seems, when they DJ.

Check them out on Facebook. If you read Dutch, tell me more.

I also wish I knew more, or anything, really, about the artists on the mixtape. Maybe someone will do that work too. (Except #26, Oka and Ortega, of the famous Eight Percent crew, straight outta Matariya.)

You can access it 3 ways.

1: on Soundcloud.

2. on youtube:



 3. and best of all, as a download. Here.

Enjoy.

DJ Islam Chipsy live (mahragan)

Great short vid of mahragan (AKA 'techno shaabi' or 'electro shaabi') artist DJ Islam Chipsy working his keyboard magic, in a popular quarter in Cairo.





This is a great one too.