Media of the Masses in Modern Egypt

E564 | The Egyptian revolution of 2011 is one of the most spectacular examples of how social media has played a pivotal role in political movements of the 21st century. However, in this final installment of our four-part series on "The Sound of Revolution in Modern Egypt," we argue that the true beginning of Egypt's media revolution arrived with the cassette tape, which for the first time, made it possible for every Egyptian to be a producer rather than a passive consumer of popular culture. As our guest Andrew Simon explains, this veritable "media of the masses" was not only a means of disseminating commercial music. Western pop music and classics of the Nasserist era mingled with new underground music, religious content, home recordings, and personal voice messages on Egyptian cassettes, which circumvented and subverted state censorship. Artists like Sheikh Imam and the poet Ahmed Fouad Negm produced celebrated political satire that defined the sound of the Infitah era, much to the chagrin of state authorities and the commercial recording industry. In 2011, when Egyptians took to the streets to protest the Mubarak regime, Imam's songs along with a century of sound stretching back to the First World War filled Tahrir Square in Cairo, as a new generation produced new sounds of revolution. We conclude our series with reflections from Alia Mossallam and Ziad Fahmy on the sounds of the square in 2011 and what they reveal about change and continuity in Egyptian politics. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2023/12/simon.html Andrew Simon is a historian of media, popular culture, and the Middle East at Dartmouth College. He was a fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in downtown Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and is the modern history book review editor for the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Andrew is the author of Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2022), which will be made available in Arabic by Dar El Shorouk this upcoming spring (2024). Currently, he is writing a biography of Shaykh Imam, a blind performer and political dissident, and is in the process of making his private collection of cassettes public in a digital archive for anyone to access. Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian and writer, currently an associate fellow of the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. Ziad Fahmy is a Professor of Modern Middle East History at Cornell University’s department of Near Eastern Studies. Professor Fahmy is the author of Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020). Street Sounds was a co-winner of the Urban History Association's 2021 Award for Best Book in Non-North American Urban History. He also wrote Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford University Press, 2011), and is currently writing his third book, tentatively titled, Broadcasting Identity: Radio and the Making of Modern Egypt, 1925-1952. CREDITS Episode No. 564 Release Date: 3 December 2023 / 1 April 2024 Sound production by Chris Gratien Sound Elements: Abbas & Hindia (digitized cassette, courtesy of Andrew Simon); Seyyid Darwish - Salma ya Salama; 18 Days (2011-01-29) at Downtown Cairo (858 archive); Cassette tape sound effects from Pixabay; Hasan al-Asmar - Ana Gay (digitized cassette, courtesy of Andrew Simon); Abdel Halim Hafez - Sourah; Madonna 87 (digitized cassette, courtesy of Andrew Simon); الشيخ كشك و ام كلثوم; Ahmed Adaweya - Haba Fook we Haba Taht; Abbas & Hindia (digitized cassette, courtesy of Andrew Simon); الحمدلله خبطنا; الشيخ امام - همّا مين واحنا مين; Sheikh Imam - Nixon Baba; 18 Days (2011-01-29) at Downtown Cairo (858 archive); Scenes from Tahrir Square: The Revolution Victorious (Aljazeera); Facebook, Twitter Launch Mideast Revolution (CBS); Naima al-Masriya - Ya Aziz Aini; الجدع جدع والجبان جبان ( مع الكلمات) - الشيخ إمام; El Sharq wal Gharb