The Rhythms of Egypt's Revolutionaries

[Ramy Essam performing in Tahrir Square in January 2011. Photo by Mark LeVine.] [Ramy Essam performing in Tahrir Square in January 2011. Photo by Mark LeVine.]

The Rhythms of Egypt's Revolutionaries

By : Torie Rose DeGhett

Music has been one of the most invigorating and beautiful forms of activism across the Middle East and North Africa during the revolutions and uprisings of 2011. People have rallied around the musicians and their messages, from rappers like Morocco`s El Haked or Tunisia`s El Général to singers like Syria`s Ibrahim Qashoush and Egypt`s Ramy Essam. The music is a lasting and emotionally rich record of the demands and sentiments of protesters and revolutionaries. It expresses the decades of suffering, corruption, and oppression under autocratic rule. France24`s multimedia documentary, The Songs of Tahrir Square: Music at the Heart of the Revolution, is a welcome contribution to the growing discussion about artistic and musical elements of protests in the Middle East. (It exists in a French edition as well, under the name Tahrir, je chante ton nom, which is essentially identical in terms of content and structure.)

This documentary is important in its content, but also in the emotional narrative it presents. In his recently published memoir, Revolution 2.0, Wael Ghonim recounts pairing an activist video with music by Haitham Said. He writes: "people found the fusion of images, lyrics, and music inspiring and moving." The video he made "created an emotional bond between the cause and the target audience." That is what the footage and material presented in this documentary do: create an emotional connection with the music, instead of simply collecting it for its interest value. The Songs of Tahrir Square is interactive and visual as well as musical. The songs themselves are almost as much about seeing the vigor and passion of the performances and the crowds of people who sing and chant along with them as they are about the lyrical content. Not much could replace the sense of popular force behind such sentiments as the sight of those audiences.

Put together by Hussein Emara and Priscille Lafitte, the web documentary presents itself as a journey through the music of Tahrir, allowing the viewer to navigate a map of Cairo`s musical hotspots. At each post, you can watch video clips and read brief backgrounders on the dissident folk tunes of Tahrir Square or the Islamic music of Wellsbox Productions and Al-Noor Mosque. They play with this concept of musical geography well, most notably in the transitions between points on the map. The documentary does not simply focus on Tahrir—in wust el-balad or the center of Cairo; instead, it includes influences scattered across the city. Each move, from mosque to university, is accompanied by footage of driving through the streets of the capital, full of disjointed motion, fleeting and vibrant street scenes, and the sounds of traffic. These transitions are a welcome addition, perhaps technically unnecessary, but an intelligent aesthetic touch that adds to the broader concept.

The lovely part of work like this is that it draws attention to the work of Tahrir`s poets and musicians, many of whom have been active members of the protest movement and have faced the consequences of their dissidence. Ramy Essam, who naturally is featured prominently in Emara and Lafitte`s work, has participated in rallies from the eighteen-day revolution last January and February to demonstrations this fall and winter against Field Marshal Tantawi and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, even being arrested and beaten in early March. His songs are well known for their catchy incorporations of popular sentiment and phrasings, like the ubiquitous shout "Irhal! (Leave!)" transformed by Essam into a musical anthem. He similarly has incorporated other popular slogans like "Bread, Freedom and Social Equality!" into his rhythms and lyrics. Dissident poet Ahmad Fouad Negm, whose satirical poem "The Donkey and the Foal" was put to music by Essam, has been challenging corruption and oppression since before Mubarak came to power. Negm appears in a long interview in this documentary, where he says that his “inspiration comes from the Egyptian people” and their musical talents, as well as their talent for sarcasm. The acknowledgment of the beauty and the storied complexity of the political music heard this year is important.

Ultimately, the musician`s political voice is a voice for freedom of speech and expression. It is one of the most central elements of these protests: the desire and the demand to be genuinely free in that most basic of senses. Emara and Lafitte include a stop at the headquarters of Mubarak`s old party, the NDP, and there document Mubarak’s suppression of alternative and dissenting musical voices in favor of sycophantic tunes and singers who sang in favor of his regime. They interview artists like Ali Al-Haggar and Fathy Salama about being forced to fawn over Mubarak and the extravagance of the shows put on in the former president’s honor. The choice to add this into the mix of protest music shows an attention to the broader story of the political elements of the Egyptian musical scene, and the pressure put on musicians to fall into step with the government.

While the documentary includes figures like Essam and Negm, who have become internationally acknowledged for their music and politics, it also showcases lesser-known bands like Eskenderella or underground electro-sha’bi and hip-hop artists. The Songs of Tahrir Square is a presentation of a wide range of largely under-discussed political music, like Eskenderella`s "NewLeaf" or the moderate Islamist music produced by Wellsbox Productions.

Hip hop remains fairly nascent in Egypt’s political and cultural scenes (in the Arab world, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria have developed fairly strong rap scenes, but this has not been true to a great extent elsewhere), but certainly has a newfound and vocal presence, particularly among the political youth. Electro-sha‘bi, which mixes elements of electronic and rap music with the more traditional sha‘bi, or folk music (sha‘b means people), originated in Algeria. The web documentary covers electro-sha‘bi on its stop in the Cairo suburb known as As-Salam City, briefly showing the youthful vibes of some of the urban DJs and MCs pioneering the new and eclectic genre. The introductory clip demonstrates excellently the way in which the Arabic language is rhythmically suited to the quick poetic beats of this hip hop style: “The people and the government / The machine-guns and the batons / I’m going to speak about the man who stands up / who resists, who dies.”

The documentary does not cover (and perhaps structurally could not accommodate) the broader picture of Arab political rappers, as represented by solo artists like MC Deeb or MC Amin and rap groups like the Arabian Knightz or Revolution Records (all profiled in this Community Times article). These artists were vocally active during the January 25th revolution, and continue to produce songs against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. Revolution Records has recently released a song called "Kazeboon [Liars]," which is posted with a translation at MEMRI.

After I had virtually traveled from Tahrir Square to the suburb of As-Salam city, I wanted to hear and see more. I think this documentary does a thoughtful and complex job of presenting a vibrant look at the context and influences for Egypt`s music of dissent, but I feel there was even more the documentary could have chosen to show and tell: more about the growing rap scene in Egypt, or extra clips of songs for viewers to peruse. This is actually a criticism born out of my appreciation of what this documentary does, and not a criticism that strikes at the function, significance, or overall execution of the work, which presents a beautiful and complex vision of Egyptian political music.

New Texts Out Now: Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Betty S. Anderson (BSA): I always joke that I conceived the project in the pool of the Carlton Hotel in Beirut. In June 2000, I visited Beirut for the first time so I could attend an Arab American University Graduate (AAUG) conference. One day, I walked with some friends all along the Corniche and up through the American University of Beirut (AUB) campus and then back to the hotel. Since it was late June and ridiculously hot, the only option at that point was to jump in the pool as quickly as possible. Two minutes in the pool and the thought occurred to me that my next research project was going to have to be about Beirut in some way. I had fallen in love with the city in just that one day. A half second later, I thought, I should write a history of AUB.

Besides the fact that I wanted to get back to Beirut as soon as possible, I wanted to know why AUB had been so influential in politicizing its students. At the time, I was doing additional research for my book on Jordan (Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State) and a number of the political activists I studied had attended AUB. Their memoirs were filled with explanations and stories about how important those four years were for the development of their political identities. However, I had no idea as I floated in the pool that day that I’d have to do extensive research on Protestant missionaries and education long before I could even get to those Arab nationalists. At the time, I really knew relatively little about the school’s history.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does it address?

BSA: When I finally got back to Beirut in 2004, it was research on the educational systems offered at the Syrian Protestant College and AUB that eventually ended up directing my thesis. I was struck initially by the goals the American founders and their successors set for the school. They talked more about the transformative process they wanted the students to undertake than the course options they were offering. For example, Daniel Bliss (1866-1902) preached about producing Protestants who understood not only the liturgy but the lifestyle required of one converting to this faith; Bayard Dodge (1923-1948) exhorted students to follow the model of the modern American man as they sought to develop new characters for themselves. The former presided over a missionary educational system, the latter the new liberal education system then being formulated back in America. The first half of the book discusses this shift as the American University of Beirut was renamed in 1920.

\"\"
[Main gate of AUB campus. Photo by Betty S. Anderson.]

Liberal education, as American educators developed it in the second half of the nineteenth century, asks its students to be active participants in their educational experience. Before this point, professors taught their students a fixed body of knowledge; students were required to memorize and recite the data to prove that they had learned it. In liberal education, the system asks that professors teach students how to think and analyze so they can produce data on their own.

The second half of the book examines how the students reacted to this shifting pedagogical focus. The American leaders of the school repeatedly stated their goals for the students, and most books and articles on AUB focus on only those voices. However, that stance leaves out an important element of the AUB story, because only the students can truly determine whether the programs are effective. AUB is famous for the many student protests that have taken place on campus, starting with the Darwin Affair of 1882, leading to the Muslim Controversy of 1909, and then on to the large protests of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. As I discovered when I delved into the archives, students used dozens of newspapers to explain why they were protesting. The catalyst was always a particular event, on campus or off, but the students always framed their arguments around the freedom they felt the liberal education system promised. They fought against any administrative attempts to curtail their actions and frequently accused the administration of not following the guidelines set by American liberal education. This issue became increasingly contentious as students worked to define an Arab nationalism that called on them to be politically active while on campus. The administration continually opposed this position, and many of the student-administrative conflicts centered on the differing definitions of freedom put forward on campus. I put “Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education” in the subtitle of the book because by the twentieth century, these were the two dominant elements defining the relationship between the students and the administration.

J: How does this work connect to and/or depart from your previous research and writing?

BSA: Most of my work has centered on education in one form or another. In my book on Jordan, I wrote of the politicizing role high schools in Jordan and Palestine, as well as schools like AUB, played in mobilizing a national opposition movement in the 1950s. I have published a number of articles analyzing the narratives the Jordanian and Lebanese states present to their students in history and Islamic textbooks. Moving on to a comprehensive study of one particularly influential school was a natural progression. The difference was that I now had to study American education in the same way I had previously examined the influence of education in the Middle East.

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

BSA: I hope AUB alumni want to read the book and, equally, that they find something of their story in it. I did not want to cite just the Americans who founded and ran the school; I purposely wanted to write about the students themselves. Typical university histories leave out the words and actions of the students in favor of hagiographies about the founders and their famous successors. I also hope that scholars and students interested in studies of education and nationalism will be interested. This is a book that addresses both Middle Eastern and American studies.

\"\"\"\"
[Assembly Hall and College Hall, AUB Campus. Photos by Betty S. Anderson.]

J: What other projects are you working on now?

BSA:
I have a contract with Stanford University Press to publish a book called State and Society in the Modern Middle East. Like with anyone who undertakes to write a textbook, I am frustrated with those that are currently available. Textbooks of the modern Middle East typically focus just on state formation, the actions of the chief politicians, and the political interplay between states. My text focuses instead on the relationship between state and society as it developed over the last two hundred years. The states in the region centralized in the nineteenth century, faced colonialism in the early twentieth century, and then independence after World War II; these stages created new roles for state leaders. Civil society, in the broadest definition of the term, emerged from the eighteenth century forward as people sought new ways to organize within and against the states now intruding on their lives. They took advantage of the new institutions the states built to establish for themselves new class, national, and gender definitions, while frequently opposing the states that had introduced these very institutions. My text examines how schools, government offices, newspapers, political parties, and women’s groups constantly negotiated new relationships with their respective states.

Excerpt from The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education

From Chapter One:

"The great value of education does not consist in the accepting this and that to be true but it consists in proving this and that to be true," declared Daniel Bliss, founder of Syrian Protestant College (SPC; 1866–1920) and its president from 1866 to 1902, in his farewell address. President Howard Bliss (president, 1902–1920) said in his baccalaureate sermon in 1911, "In a word, the purpose of the College is not to produce singly or chiefly men who are doctors, men who are pharmacists, men who are merchants, men who are preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen; but it is the purpose of the College to produce doctors who are men, pharmacists who are men, merchants who are men, preachers, teachers, lawyers, editors, statesmen who are men." Bayard Dodge (1923–1948) stated at his inauguration as president of the newly renamed American University of Beirut (AUB; 1920– ), "We do not attempt to force a student to absorb a definite quantity of knowledge, but we strive to teach him how to study. We do not pretend to give a complete course of instruction in four or five years, but rather to encourage the habit of study, as a foundation for an education as long as life itself." The successors to these men picked up the same themes when they elaborated on the school`s goals over the years; most recently, in May 2009, President Peter Dorman discussed his vision of AUB’s role. "AUB thrives today in much different form than our missionary founders would have envisioned, but nonetheless—after all this time—it remains dedicated to the same ideal of producing enlightened and visionary leaders."

In dozens of publications, SPC and AUB students have also asserted a vision of the transformative role the school should have on their lives. The longest surviving Arab society on campus, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa, published a magazine of the same name during most academic years between 1923 and 1954 and as of 1936 stated as its editorial policy the belief that "the magazine`s writing is synonymous with the Arab student struggle in the university." From that point forward, the editors frequently listed the society`s Arab nationalist goals. In the fall 1950 edition, for example, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa`s Committee on Broadcasting and Publications issued a statement identifying the achievement of Arab unity as the most important goal because "it is impossible to separate the history, literature and scientific inheritance of the Arabs" since "the Arab essence is unity." Toward this end, al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa pledged to accelerate the "growth of the true nationalist spirit" among the students affiliated with the organization. In describing education as an activist pursuit, the statement declares, "To achieve political ideas which are aimed at our nationalism it is necessary for we as students to seek information by many different means." In this call, the AUB Arab students must take on the task of studying the Arab heritage as thoroughly and frankly as possible so that when they graduate they can move into society with solutions to the many problems plaguing the Arab world.

Since the school`s founding in 1866, its campus has stood at a vital intersection between a rapidly changing American missionary and educational project to the Middle East and a dynamic quest for Arab national identity and empowerment. As the presidential quotes indicate, the Syrian Protestant College and the American University of Beirut imported American educational systems championing character building as their foremost goal. Proponents of these programs hewed to the belief that American educational systems were the perfect tools for encouraging students to reform themselves and improve their societies; the programs do not merely supply professional skills but educate the whole person. As the quotes from al-`Urwa al-Wuthqa attest, Arab society pressured the students to change as well. The Arab nahda, or awakening, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries called on students to take pride in their Arab past and to work to recreate themselves as modern leaders of their society; the Arab nationalist movement of the twentieth century asked that students take a lead in fighting for Arab independence from foreign control. The students streaming through the Main Gate year after year used both of these American and Arab elements to help make the school not only an American institution but also one of the Arab world and of Beirut, as the very name, the American University of Beirut, indicates. This process saw long periods of accommodation between the American-led administration and the Arab students, but just as many eras when conflict raged over the nature of authority each should wield on campus; the changing relationship between the administration and the students serves as the cornerstone of this book, for it is here where much of the educational history of SPC and AUB has been written.

From Chapter Five:

The 1952 April Fool’s Day issue of Outlook (called Lookout on that day) satirized the proliferation of student protests that had dominated campus life for the previous few years. In the paper’s lead article, the author declared, “A School of Revolutionary Government, designed to equip AUB students with a wide knowledge of modern techniques of conspiracy and revolution, is to be opened during the fall semester, a communique from the President’s Office announced late Friday.” Continuing the same theme, the article reports, “All courses will include a minimum of three lab hours to be spent in street battles with gendarmes and similar applications of theories learned in classrooms.” President Stephen Penrose (1948-1954), the article stated, gave a Friday morning chapel talk on the new school motto: “That they may have strife and have it more abundantly.” In a further announcement, the paper described the day’s protest.

There will be a demonstration this afternoon at three in front of the Medical Gate to object against everything[.] All those interested please report there promptly five [minutes] before time. The demonstration promises to be very exciting—tear gas will be used, and the slogans are simply delightful. If all goes well, police interference is expected. If not to join, come and watch.

This, of course, had not been the first era of student protest; the difference by the 1950s was the widespread and sustained nature of the conflict between the administration and the students. When Lookout published its satirical articles in 1952, students had been organizing demonstrations in support of Palestinians and Moroccans, and against any and all things imperialist, since 1947; these events only petered out in 1955 as the administration banned the two main groups organizing them, the Student Council and the Arab society, al-cUrwa al-Wuthqa. Students engaged in these exercises explicitly as Arabs, proud of their past, and striving toward cultural, political and economic unity in the future. In their actions, students sought to integrate their educational experiences at AUB with the real-life events taking place outside the Main Gate, for only then did they feel they could be trained to function as the vanguard initiating the necessary changes in their society.

[Excerpted from Betty S. Anderson, The American University of Beirut: Arab Nationalism and Liberal Education. © 2011 by The University of Texas Press. Excerpted by permission of the author. For more information, or to order the book, click here.]