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“The People Are Tired, And Just Want To Have Fun”: Mahraganat Music And The Struggle For Sonic Presence In Post-2013 Egypt, Mohammed Elfeky
“The People Are Tired, And Just Want To Have Fun”: Mahraganat Music And The Struggle For Sonic Presence In Post-2013 Egypt, Mohammed Elfeky
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Building upon Asef Bayat’s notion of the “unintelligibility” of Egypt’s subaltern politics, this thesis investigates how mahraganat music is rendered “unintelligible/nonsense” by influential Egyptian cultural figures and is targeted for censorship. Mahraganat is a musical artform that arose from the lower-working classes neighborhoods in Egypt to become a dominant genre in the country. In 2020, the Egyptian Musicians Syndicate, headed by Hany Shakir, banned mahraganat artists from performing officially in Egypt. Before and after the ban, state media debated the genre's status; its detractors framed the music as nonsensical, “absurd”, “meaningless”, “vulgar”, and a “low-brow” dilution of Egyptian cultural production …