by Christina Kata
“Your blood, the government’s shedding it/Your nation, they’ve exhausted it/Your religion, they’ve targeted it/Your portion… they’ve swallowed it.” — Ramy Donjewan’s “Ded El 7koma,” or “Against the Government.”
With his shaved head and horn-rimmed glasses, Mohamed El Deeb resembles more of a bookish college student than an internationally renowned rapper. But Deeb has been writing and producing rap music for nearly a decade. His songs combine samples of American hip-hop with traditional Egyptian music, and his lyrics excoriate the corruption and hypocrisy prevalent in the Egyptian government. On January 25, the “Day of Rage” that marked the start of the Egyptian revolution, the twenty-nine-year-old joined protesters in Tahrir Square. There, his music, along with that of other hip-hop artists, became part of the Arab Spring’s soundtrack.
“A lot of [Egyptians] hadn’t heard about hip-hop before. So it was very interesting to see the crowd react with you and sing with you,” recalled Deeb. “Even in the square, when we meet up with people from an older generation — for example, like my father’s generation or my grandfather’s generation — they’d tell us, ‘Listen, you’ve done something that we’ve never thought of doing.’ Because they were living under fear.”
On March 12, 2013, Deeb came to Brown University as part of a panel discussion entitled “Poetic Forces: Creative Change In and Beyond the Arab Spring,” which focused on the relationship between the Arab Spring and hip-hop. Hip-hop and Arabic might seem an unlikely marriage, but it should not be surprising that the two complement each other so well. Addressing the more doubtful members of the audience, Deeb noted that American hip-hop has long been popular in the Middle East. One reason, he explained, is that rap harkens back to a long history of Arabic poetry. Long before the birth of hip-hop on the streets of New York City, Arabic bards would trade barbs and duel one another with rhymes — an early form of the modern-day rap battle.
Some have attributed hip-hop’s rapid growth to the increased availability of the Internet. In 2003 only 4 percent of Egyptians had access to the Internet. By 2009 that percentage had shot up to 26.3 percent. Not only could more Arabic hip-hop artists listen and sample tracks from musicians overseas, but more artists had the ability to disseminate their material to an ever-growing audience, especially with the relaxing of censors in Egypt and Tunisia from early 2011 onward. The speed with which it can be disseminated to audiences also boosts hip-hop’s popularity.
“The immediacy of hip-hop makes it very useful,” Iraqi rapper The Narcicyst once explained. “You can create music fast, record a song in a couple of hours and put it out right after.”
Hip-hop’s rapid growth in the Middle East also stems from the nature of the genre itself. At its heart, hip-hop is a potent form of social commentary: it provides a creative outlet for disenfranchised youth through which they can criticize the state-sponsored oppression and corruption around them.
“American rappers sing about the same problems many Arab youth endure: disenfranchisement, discrimination, poverty and violence [that are] endemic in their communities,” wrote reporter Wilson Dizard. In January 2011, rappers like Deeb tapped into a wellspring of resentment and frustration in Egyptian society. The music video “Masrah Deeb,” shot in Tahrir Square just days before the January 25 revolution, describes the political disenfranchisement suffered by the average Egyptian. In the video, Deeb strolls down the streets of the capital, Cairo; as he gathers the parts to build a microphone, he calls for his fellow Egyptians, “tired/from snakes trapping the blood of millions,” to wake up and challenge the government’s oppression. The music video drives the point home with close-ups of ordinary Egyptians repeating the song’s hook: “I’m sacrificing my time/waking my people/the mic’s my friend/it appreciates my honesty/I feel at ease/life’s a big joke/welcome to my stage.”
As Deeb acknowledged during the panel discussion, the relationship between Arabic hip-hop and the Arab Spring can get muddled. Did the music catalyze the revolution, or did the revolution create the music? The answer is both. While the Arab Spring gave artists a jolt of energy and plenty of motivation, Arabic hip-hop artists were producing protest music well before 2011. Many of the songs that became part of the soundtrack of the protest movements in Tahrir Square were actually recorded in 2008, or even earlier. It was simply harder to distribute them to a large audience under the Mubarak regime. Once the censors’ powerful grasp began to weaken in 2011, artists seized the opportunity and rushed to circulate their music. Deeb, for example, recorded “Masrah Deeb” before the January 2011 movement; it was not until the revolution was underway that a friend of his suggested he put the music to video. “I never thought I’d be performing (Masrah Deeb) at such a venue,” he said at the panel discussion, referring to Tahrir Square.
While hip-hop has resonated across the Middle East, Arabic hip-hop is not a monolith; the genre adapts to local dialects, political conditions and degrees of censorship, and as a result has seen varying levels of success. A burgeoning hip-hop scene in Syria was choked off by political censorship and the violence of the civil war. The hip-hop scene in Egypt is still in its infancy, according to Deeb, despite the influence of the Tahrir Square protests. But in places like Morocco, Algeria and Palestine, it has been flourishing for many years. This does not mean that the genre has not faced challenges in these countries. Moroccan rapper El-Haqed (“The Enraged”) is evidence of this. In 2011, he criticized the corruption he saw crippling his nation in his song “Kilab al-Dawla,” or “Dogs of the State.”
El-Haqed excoriated Morocco’s infamously corrupt police force: “You are paid to protect the citizens, not to steal their money/…Did your commander order you to take money from the poor?” His music found an eager audience in Morocco’s disenchanted youth, who made up the bulk of the participants during the February 20 protest movement. The Moroccan authorities, though, were not fans. El-Haqed was imprisoned for four months in 2011 after fighting with a regime supporter in Casablanca on what were widely decried as trumped-up charges. In 2012 he was arrested again after authorities found a YouTube post of “Kilab al-Dawla” showing an image of a donkey’s head superimposed on a picture of a police officer. El-Haqed stated that he did not make the video, but the government claimed the rapper had displayed contempt for the police and posed a risk to public order. He was fined 1,000 dirhams (U.S. $110) and handed a one-year prison sentence.
As the movements that initiated the Arab Spring have morphed, or in the case of Morocco, faded away, the hip-hop scene has also changed. Some artists have decided to remove themselves from political activism. After being released from jail on March 29, 2013, El-Haqed stated in press releases that he would prefer to focus on his studies rather than dive headlong back into protests: “I am just out of prison, and I’m still tired, so I need a bit of time to answer this question about how I will assess the situation of [the February 20 movement] in the country.” But many other artists are still active and continue to clamor for the goals of the protests: political enfranchisement, dignity and freedom. They are reminding the people that their work is not yet done.
In the music video for “Maw3ood,” which was released by Deeb last year, the rapper’s lyrics take on a more frustrated, jaded bent. He meets with ordinary Egyptians as he highlights the failings of the current Egyptian government, and declares: “A call to all the liberals, Islamists, womanizers or judges/…one year and a half passed since Mubarak stepped down and still my people are not satisfied.” Deeb takes the current Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government to task, criticizing what he views as their failure to keep their promises to the Egyptian people. He specifically brings up the issue of women’s rights, pointing out the sexual harassment women in Cairo face: “The current government is complacent and not addressing the real issues/…harassment is still an everyday issue in our streets, ask our sisters.” And yet, the overall tone of the song is hopeful and brims with the promise of change. At the end of the music video, Deeb unfurls an Egyptian flag and repeats the song’s hook: “Promised a better life, because the one we’re living today isn’t rosy…/stand by me, or else we die, shout out loud:/No to the ruling of monkeys, this is the time of lions.”
The end of the music video for “Maw3ood” captures the spirit of the ongoing revolution in Egypt as well as in other Middle Eastern nations. Like many activists in Egypt, Deeb has been disappointed with the current trajectory of the Morsi government, but he stresses his faith in the democratic process. Change needs to take place, but activists needn’t start from scratch. They can work within the democratic framework they fought to establish.
“This is the democracy we asked for!” Deeb told the audience at Brown. “We just got to hope that in four years we can vote again and correct ourselves.”
Christina Kata ’14 is a Human Biology and Middle East Studies concentrator and Interviews Associate at BPR.