11. Dissenting Voices of Cairo

This paper is the outcome of fieldwork carried out in Cairo over the months that preceded and followed the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak (February 2011). It provides an analysis of political songs by Sheikh Imam and Ahmad Fu’ad Negm and addresses their legacy in the production of contemporary artists.

Sheikh Imam (1918-1995) was a blind ‘oud player and singer trained in Qur’an recitation. Along with the poet Ahmad Fu’ad Negm (1929-2013), who wrote most of the lyrics for his songs, he was at the forefront of an underground cultural movement that derided the political establishment and denounced the social problems of the country.

Imam and Negm’s cultural movement drew inspiration from the work of Sayyed Darwish (1892-1923) and Bayram Tunsi (1893-1961), and it was led by poets such as Salah Jahin (1930-1986), Fu’ad Haddad (1927-1985), who challenged the official mainstream fusha (classical Arabic) poetry by composing poems in colloquial Egyptian. According to Booth, this new poetic movement did “raise controversial issues about the political role of poetry in a neo-colonial context, the boundaries of community/nation and the meanings of marginalities” (Booth 2006). Indeed, by using idioms and words that belong to everyday life, these poets dealt with topics that had been hardly treated before. Thanks to their irreverent humour and satire, Sheikh Imam and Negm were considered as the symbols of the Egyptian popular culture, and despite many years of imprisonment and heavy censorship, they were (and still are) well known in several Arab countries.

The main scope of this research is to highlight the thread that links together different artistic expressions of dissent in Cairo - from vernacular poetry of the early 20th century against British occupation, through Imam Negm’s songs of the 60’s-70’s and 80’s against Nasser and Sadat, to the songs of contemporary artists who took part to the demonstrations in Tahrir square in 2011. Many of these contemporary artists, such as composer Mustafa Said, choir director Salam Yousry, and ‘oud player Hazem Shaheen, have adopted Imam Negm’s artistic and cultural legacy to denounce political and social problems. This shows that Imam-Negm’s legacy is still living matter and that contemporary dissident songs are the product of a century-long tradition of vernacular poetry put into music that connects the grievances of several generations of Egyptians.

Moreover, this research claims that old and new dissenting songs of Cairo do not necessarily draw inspiration from imported genres, such as rock and rap - as some scholars (e.g. LeVine 2008) and journalists tend to highlight. Indeed, as products of renewed local forms of music and poetry, the selected contemporary songs challenge what the Egyptian poet Tamim Barghouti calls “the false dichotomy of innovation versus heritage in arts production” (2015), according to which innovation means westernization, and heritage represents the return to a supposedly timeless and retrograded tradition.