{"id":58651,"date":"2020-09-07T16:03:15","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T14:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/?p=58651"},"modified":"2020-09-07T17:57:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T15:57:42","slug":"skrrt-skrrt-habibi-introducing-egyptian-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/skrrt-skrrt-habibi-introducing-egyptian-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"Skrrt Skrrt Habibi! Introducing Egyptian trap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Joined by Abyusif and Abo El Anwar, PAM revisits the advent of the Egyptian trap movement; the sound which took over the musical landscape of the country, from Alexandria to Cairo.<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo not look any further. Trap is the sound that rules in Egypt today.\u201d<\/em> For rapper Abyusif, a leader for the Egyptian movement, it\u2019s very much clear: this sound, that continues to create waves across the world, has just opened up two new camps: in Cairo and Alexandria. The current rise of Egyptian trap is, however, the result of a journey across a troublesome path, taken by a historically abused musical underground scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s take a flashback to the 1940s. The Egyptian music scene \u2013 much like the film industry it is closely tied to \u2013 put Cairo in the spotlight for the entire Arab world thanks to Oum Kalthoum, Abdel Wahab and Abdel Alim Hafiz, among others. When the great voices of the golden age of Egyptian music began to fade out in the 1970s, Egypt\u2019s cultural scene began to quickly decline. What the jazz scene* managed to keep afloat in Cairo, the \u201990s would tarnish with the advent and the dominance of \u201cdance music\u201d: half macarena, half oriental flamenco, and completely lacklustre mainstream pop \u2013 often with an accompanying music-video \u2013 and almost always for the worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meanwhile, in the underground<\/strong> culture<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Kept afloat with the remnants of the jazz scene, the Egyptian underground would come back to life with the influence of Mohamed Mounir. A key figure in Egypt\u2019s scene who performed alongside the Cairo Jazz Band for almost half a century, who was able to satisfy mainstream audiences whilst taking a more activist and refined approach to catch the attention of Cairo\u2019s intellectual elite. Fathy Salama and Georges Kazazian, two figures from the jazz-fusion scene also played a part in the movement. While in Europe the \u201990s were dominated by rock \u2013 and its metal\/grunge\/pop variations \u2013, the Egypt scene was keeping a low-profile: on January 22, 1997, around a hundred young rockers were arrested by the police in the Heliopolis district, and consequently imprisoned for “satanism”. Despite the continued work of pioneers like DJ Lethal Skillz, hip-hop had little following in this part of the Mediterranean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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