{"id":127326,"date":"2023-11-15T00:44:02","date_gmt":"2023-11-14T22:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=127326"},"modified":"2023-11-15T16:08:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T14:08:47","slug":"egypt-cassette-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/egypt-cassette-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"The “vulgar” icons of Egypt\u2019s cassette culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\u201cStay here! If you walk away, I\u2019ll call for you<\/em>\u201d, sings Hassan Shakosh to the neighbour\u2019s daughter in his 2019 hit \u201cBent el-Geran<\/em>\u201d (The Neighbour\u2019s Daughter). \u201cYou\u2019re mine and I\u2019m yours, we\u2019re stuck together. If you leave me, I\u2019ll hate my life. I\u2019ll drown my sorrows in alcohol and smoke hashish.<\/em>\u201d While the song garnered more than a half-billion views on YouTube alone, its reference to alcohol and hashish became the lightning rod of a culture war that has been raging between Egypt\u2019s self-proclaimed custodians of heritage and the working classes. The culture in question, mahraganat<\/em>, that hypnotic mix of folk rhythms, electronic synths, high energy autotune-rap, and controversial lyrics, is but a mere era in the debate of what kind of music Egyptians should consume and produce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBent el-Geran<\/em>\u201d\u2019s alleged vulgarity prompted the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate to ban mahraganat<\/em><\/a> from public spaces in February 2020. This kind of music must not be played on television, radios, or in clubs, they decided. It is vulgar and cheap and it spoils public taste, they said. However, degradation and censorship is nothing new to working class musicians whose songs continue to be celebrated in buses, cars, cafes, restaurants and at weddings and parties all over the country. Since its inception, sha\u2019bi<\/em>, or \u201cpopular music\u201d, and the genres it inspired have become synonymous with the kind of vulgarity that reflects, rather than obscures, modern life and art in Egypt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A truthfully vulgar soundscape<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In his book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt<\/em><\/a>, Andrew Simon traces the social life of cassette tapes, which emerged in Egypt in the 1970s. His research shows that cassette technology enabled an unprecedented number of people to create culture outside the confines of state-controlled media, and to consume music that reflected their realities and experiences more authentically than state-sanctioned high culture. In other words, anyone could press record<\/em> on a cassette recorder, make a song, and inject their voice into Egypt\u2019s soundscape. The radio might not play it, but inexpensive, small audiocassettes could let it resound in the homes of any class, anywhere around the country. \u201cIt was in this transitory climate that audiotapes carrying content cultural gatekeepers considered questionable, most notably sha\u02bfbi (popular) music, became public enemy number one for a wide range of critics who held the everyday technology accountable for poisoning public taste,<\/em>\u201d writes Simon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who gets to decide which music is worth listening to? The endeavour to censor sha\u2019bi<\/em>, vilified as the \u201cdownfall of music\u201d and \u201cthe death of taste\u201d, began in the 1980s. Then-President Anwar Sadat issued a series of decrees that made \u201cnoisy\u201d cassette recordings illegal; radio stations were tasked with \u201cmolding model citizens\u201d by way of elevating refined musicians, such as Umm Kulthum and Abdel-Halim Hafez, and relegating uncultured amateurs. Against this effort to enforce an Egypt of high culture as envisioned by an elitist government, Simon asserts that \u201caudiotapes and their users posed the single greatest obstacle to those tasked with securing the perimeters of public culture<\/em>\u201d. The masses loved sha\u2019bi<\/em> and through audiotapes, its vulgarity was spreading like wildfire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Merriam Webster<\/a>, vulgarity refers to a lack of cultivation and good taste. It can also mean morally crude, offensive in language, or plebeian. Bearing in mind that Egyptian conversations around vulgarity are held in Arabic, in which Simon translates vulgar as habit<\/em>, sha\u2019bi<\/em> music ascribes to some of these definitions. It is of the common people, it might be considered crude, and one\u2019s appreciation of it as an art form depends on one\u2019s aesthetic preferences. However, sha\u2019bi <\/em>music, as well as mahraganat<\/em> and Egyptian rap<\/a>, displays a much higher level of linguistic sophistication and socio-historical consciousness than its critics admit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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