Hamo Becca, a festivals singer, found himself completely incapable of doing anything, and eight hours had passed him at the Musicians Syndicate without paying any attention to him and his requests. Pika did not deliberately knock this place.He forced him to crack down on the state apparatus.Due to the state's imposition of permits to hold any concert and especially restricting those singing that color of music, he had no choice but to come to the syndicate to ask for permission. After eight hours of disregard, the result that lost his temper: he would not be allowed to hold concerts. At the time, he addressed the mobile camera and recorded a video in which he attacked the syndicate. The video spread strongly on social media platforms and followed by a major media controversy, to re-fuse the controversy between the singers of festivals songs and the state in flare, and put the official media platforms again in the spotlight.
This debate between the state and its institutions and the songs of the festivals and those who are responsible for a long history, due to the beginning of that type of singing, which makes us stand in the case of institutional rejection of the music and condemnation of the state and its representatives for the existence of that singing at all. This state of condemnation is manifested in the language used by the official press in its handling of festivals, making its spread a sign of what it calls the "decline" of public taste, [1] and seeing it as a "danger" on which the state must wage a "war." This is what happened. In July, the Council of Music Guild issued a decree prohibiting the holding of festivals in the North Coast. [3] The decision was soon circulated one month later by the musicians' union Hani Shaker and made dealing with non-union festivals singer. Musicians are punishable by up to three months in prison. [4]
This state of hostility to a genre that is ultimately harmless on the ground makes us wonder: Why is the state and its institutions fighting festivals so harshly? To answer this question, we will have to go back fifteen years, precisely to 2004, when the first chapters of the story began.
Hustle coming from the outskirts of the city
| "Amr Haha" the most famous composers and distributors of festivals (networking sites) |
The teenager, the son of Ain Shams, used to make a living in a small shop for the maintenance of mobile phones and computers. As a side activity in all mobile stores at the time, Amr used to turn famous songs into impulses into mobile phones and sell them as corners. One day, instead of playing well-known melodies, Amr decided to create his own melody. His melody was very popular in the region, until Amr found a popular singer one day offering to buy it from him and turn it into a popular song; hence, the festival was born, and Amr was born with him again, to turn from an ordinary young man to "Dr. Amr Haha," as the title Himself, one of the most famous composers and distributors of festivals to this day. [5]
Like all other folk music, festivals do not have a clear genesis story agreed upon. The previous story was one of a few other stories attempting to date the festivals. These stories differ among those who are credited with creating that music, and do not necessarily agree on the origin of that genesis. While the previous story returns him to Rannat Mobile from a store in the Ain Shams neighborhood, in other stories the first festival was sung in a popular joy in Salam City. [6]
All of these stories are the same: the festival came into being at the hands of teenagers from slums, which allowed them to spread cheap forms of technology from computers and mobile phones to easy access to pirated sound engineering programs to create their own music. It was the same technology that facilitated the spread of the music, first distributed by mobile stores in informal areas on mobile phones, and several years later, those songs found their way to the Internet where they became available to an unlimited number of people.
The festivals robbed the state and its institutions of their ability to control and control the final music product.
These features point us to an important point: festivals in their origins and spread have been circumvented and circumvented all the usual stages of the music industry, in which the recording and distribution of any song depends on the existence of a large capital, and obtain the approval of regulators. In circumventing festivals at these stages, they also necessarily circumvented the state and its institutions. Unlike other songs, the festivals have not relied on the official and unofficial channels of the state from radio and television stations.
This circumvention robbed the state and its institutions of their ability to control and control the final music product.It came into being and spread a kind of singing and words that were not given by the instrument of approval, from the marginal areas and districts where the state never saw anything but a place for potential criminals and undesirable people at all. Hence, one of the most important reasons for the state's enmity for this type of music was born. The Authority necessarily hates all that it cannot dominate.
The Egyptian intellectual Mohamed Naeem went in his interview with Meydan , where he said: "The state is generally sensitive to any artistic work that does not have the ability to control it, to censor it, to prevent it, or to grant its stature to become the ones who raise them." This stems from the modern state's general definition of the concept of appropriate art, where it sees itself as the guardian of the general taste and promotion of people: the masses do not understand, who will make them genuine singing, polite singing, fine singing at the level of musical aesthetics. Until recently, she already had the tools to help her play that role Radio, and for almost sixty years, the radio is the only area that is known through vocalists, and the right of the cinema and television. " But all this changed violently. "The emergence of the cassette posed the first threat to that control. With its emergence, folk or non-official singers had no ability to distribute tapes outside of works or distribute tapes after bribing works. "The phenomenon of falling singing has begun. With the advent of the Internet and YouTube, it is completely out of control."
This also created what Adham Hafez called a “split in the sound empire” that happened when “the country, which boasts a huge music industry as part of its“ symbolic ”position in the Arabic-speaking region, faced a changing cultural product: festivals music. Which boasts lucrative pop products, nostalgic classical oriental works that point to the days are over, or even to strict, very popular secret music. ”[7]
With this schism caused by the festivals, a musical genre has come into being that gives its owners complete freedom to express their thoughts, dreams, fears, concerns and all the situations in their daily lives. This freedom came out of the song of festivals away from the space of canned words and ready-made templates in which the commercial pop stream poured his songs for decades, and away from the polite flowery language that does not bother anyone, to give it a degree of impudent honesty and unlimited freedom that the authorities abhor.
The authority, as we all know, hates freedom and sees it as a direct threat to its authority, hence it is hostile to any art that does not glorify it in general, which Naim said: "I see that the state in its current stage is hostile to the arts at all. Whatever smells of freedom and expression This vision applies to many things, from festivals to independent cinema. ” While that enmity is already withdrawn on art in general, as Naeem says, festivals have a special class of enmity.
The singers of the festivals have a great awareness that their singing represents a destitute class that had never had a voice on the art scene and was not represented by anyone.
Egyptian writer Ahmed Gamal Saad El-Din holds that vision. “It is natural for everybody to produce music that reflects their living environment, and it is also natural that it attracts the people of that environment themselves,” he said. This kind of art and singing is strongly linked to the cultural context that it produces, a closed cultural context that is physically and economically exhausting, so people will choose to listen to music that reflects their environment and problems. ”
"Therefore, the state's denial of festival music is only a direct result of the state's renunciation of the music produced by that class. Nobody in power would like to listen to what they say or give them their right to act. They refuse to listen to this kind of singing," Jamal said. As an expression of a particular moment and a particular way of life they originally deny. "
The singers of the festivals have a great awareness of the points Jamal talked about, they know that their singing represents a destitute class that had never had a voice in the art scene and was not represented by anyone, and they realize that singing freely with no limit to everything that represents their class is a headache in the head of power. To this effect, singer Oka and Ortega went in their dialogue in the documentary "Who Loves Our Lord Raising His Hands Above", which documents the genesis and spread of this type of music when they said: "We are from the rain, from the popular areas, and we talk about who we see and Hussein." Diab, for example, will tell you that I am originally from a popular area, you were from a popular region, but you do not live in a popular area, your ue speaks of love, about the wound.We have four classes, the poorest of the poor, the middle class, the upper class, we We want to remain among those who are under poverty, but we do what we want. ”[8]
Alaa Fifti himself, the famous singer of the festivals and one of the first singers of the musical genre, said in an interview: "I was afraid. Zee Zee no limit. Any popular youth in the days of Hosni Mubarak was Bishop, police chief said:" Nahar Aswad "and he is not a factor of need. He saw the government want to dig in the ground and walk in it. Although he has no need for mistake, no need for mistake and no age, he entered the oath, and Ma'arfesh I take my freedom only in the song." [9]
This hostility came from the state and its enactment of laws that make concerts of this genre a crime punishable by law in an attempt to reclaim its patriarchal authoritarian role, which was shaken by festivals the moment it came into existence. But it often seems that the state is doomed to defeat in that war on festivals. Today, more than ever, it finds an unprecedented spread that has stepped up from its humble origins in popular neighborhoods to middle-class cars and loud wealthy parties, which in itself is a mystery to many.
Rhythm does not care about anyone
Folk festivals are not the only musical genre that has managed to circumvent the usual channels of production to create their own creativity; this is also accompanied by the underground music that this gimmick has given them as much freedom as the festivals. Like festivals, underground music took advantage of their freedom to go uninhibited areas of expression, but nevertheless failed to find the same amount of diffusion as the festivals found. This brings us to one of the main reasons for the spread of festive music compared to other alternative vocals: language. Whereas underground music is based on colloquial, or even classical, poems, the recipient sometimes assumes a certain amount of culture, the festivals go against the opposite and formulate their songs using spoken language.
Alaa Fifi says about this: "For example, if Jeet talk to one of the owners of Maqloush, for example," Eh, my friend, "by saying" Yala. "I put this in the song. This is what happened, I got them on the street, I walked them into a song, and I didn't say anything, and when I spoke I spoke frankly, I mean, for example, what I said. “My heart, my feelings and my feelings,” no, what is not like that! Because of this, festivals carry a high degree of sincerity, free from the costly poetic layers of the traditional song, which puts them in a position close to everyone.
The songs of the festivals are characterized by music with light rhythms that rotate in your head once you listen to them and do not easily abandon them, which also contributed to the ease of their spread, which is what the author and music distributor "Ahmed Younis" when we talked to him in the " field " where he said: The reasons why the music of festivals reach all classes is because they already contain a lot of aesthetics, the most important of which is the coarse and very distinctive rhythmic materials used by the festival distributors and organized on the circulating oriental rhythms in Egypt such as the divisor with increasing tempo and with very elaborate rhythmic intervals.
All of these elements make people sway at the rhythms of the festivals and interact with them, in addition to using some flashes and beautiful sounds, which is shown in particular in the "Festival of Alexandria". The use of spoken language by festivals and the use of rhythmic rhetoric explains its spread technically, but also behind an important social / political aspect. Unlike the usual everyday situations in which festive music usually plays, from seeing and flirting with a beautiful girl to complaining about the treachery of a friend, the festivals go to another area where they express frustration at the social and political system, which has helped to resonate with those affected by Those systems.
Ben Habor, a New York Times journalist, went on to explain this in his 2013 article on festivals: “The rapid spread of this kind of music, from marginalized neighborhoods in Cairo to car recorders and high-end weddings to television commercials, reflects the profound transformations that have hit Since the revolution, a growing number of people have been looking for open discussions on societal issues, and he is ready to cross the class barriers to find them: Like the revolution, this music came from young people who looked at their lives and found nothing to look forward to, making noise and spreading their ideas through the media. The Continued social caught in the result. "[11]
| Famous Sadat Festivals Singer (Links) |
This is what the famous singer of the festivals Sadat himself said in his interview with Habur: "May I speak at the festival my people and dance, and be a step on the situation we are in and the need that we feel. Not necessary politics remain for the candidates, the chair and the talk. This social situation is not a policy? I describe the situation of the people on the street as a policy? "In this, of course, we find another reason why the state is so hostile to festivals. [12]
But the sweeping spread of festivals has made the state, capitalist institutions and commercial art makers lately go in another direction away from the language of contempt, blocking and blocking that they have long faced. After the festivities imposed themselves as a fuss adopted by everyone and will not disappear any time soon, the three are trying to absorb and adapt them for their purposes, of course after cutting their feathers and trim their nails to suit them.
We are increasingly hearing the rhythms of festivals in "patriotic" songs, and telecom operators and various capitalist organizations are now using festival singers in their advertising campaigns in order to attract a wider segment of consumers who will like them. Now, a commercial mainstream artist like Mohamed Ramadan is using distributors and composers of festivals such as Alaa Fifty, Bauer Al-Aali, Artillery, and Rami al-Masri in making his songs. [13]
A superficial reading of the situation may make us see this as a victory for these forces over festivals, but looking deeper, all these large institutions could not prevent the young people of the neighborhoods who had long marginalized them and ignored them from making their own voice. Manual everywhere, they eventually borrowed that voice compelled to tacitly admit defeat of the flow of power embellished in front of the loud festivals. The state will continue to criminalize and fight that voice on the other hand in order to preserve its prestige, but this is a war that will not last forever, and its consequences are already known to all. [14]