Hostname: page-component-669899f699-chc8l Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-05-02T22:37:55.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Musicians’ Syndicate and the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Sophie Frankford Open the ORCID record for Sophie Frankford [Opens in a new window]
Sophie Frankford*
Affiliation:
Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques, et Sociales, 23 Gamal Al Din Abou Al Mahasen, Qasr El Nil, Cairo Governorate, 4272023, Egypt
*
E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo with musicians who perform a musical style known as shaʿbi, this article unravels the complex role that the state-affiliated Musicians’ Syndicate plays in musicians’ working lives in order to investigate the contradictions of state control over music in Egypt. Focusing on moments of encounter between musicians and Syndicate officials, I consider why my interlocutors’ time was split between evading the Syndicate and its restrictions, and embracing the Syndicate by calling for it to implement harsher interventions. Doing so not only sheds light on the reality of cultural production in an authoritarian state, but also prompts a broader reconsideration of scholarly approaches to popular music censorship, requiring us to move beyond dichotomies of ‘state vs. society,’ ‘censors vs. censored,’ and ‘resistors vs. oppressors’ that have tended to dominate scholarship on music censorship.

Type
Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2023 , pp. 292 - 309
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Abd al-Hamid, A. 2015. ‘مصر.. قرار رسمي بمنع ظهور المطربات بملابس عارية’ [Egypt: An official decision to prevent the appearance of female singers in revealing clothing]. Al-Arabiya.Net. https://www.alarabiya.net/ar/culture-and-art/2015/08/31/مصر-قرار-رسمي-بمنع-ظهور-المطربات-بملابس-عارية-.htmlGoogle Scholar
Abd al-Hamid, A. 2016. ‘مصر.. ملحن معروف يطلب رشاوى جنسية والنقابة تفصله’ [A well-known composer demands sexual bribes and the Syndicate expels him]. Al-Arabiya.Net. https://www.alarabiya.net/ar/culture-and-art/2016/10/02/مصر-ملحن-معروف-يطلب-رشاوى-جنسية-والمقابة-تفصله.htmlGoogle Scholar
Abdelmoez, J. W. 2020. ‘Performing (for) populist politics: music at the nexus of Egyptian pop culture and politics’, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, 13/3, pp. 300–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abrams, P. 1988. ‘Notes on the difficulty of studying the state’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1(1), pp. 58–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akl, C. 2015. ‘الضبطية القضائية ومستقبل الموسيقى في مصر’ [Judicial Control and the Future of Music in Egypt]. Ma3azef. https://ma3azef.com/الضبطية-القضائية-ومستقبل-الموسيقى-في/Google Scholar
Armbrust, W. 1996. Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar
Atef, A. 2016. ‘نقابة الموسيقيين تلزم الـ«دي جي» بالحصول على تصاريح للعمل’ [The Musicians’ Syndicate requires ‘DJs’ to obtain work permits]. Vetogate. https://www.vetogate.com/mobile/2109636Google Scholar
Bastian, V., and Laing, D. 2003. ‘Twenty years of music censorship around the world’, in Policing Pop, ed. Cloonan, M. and Garofalo, R. (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press), pp. 46–64Google Scholar
Bouchard, M. 2011. ‘The state of the study of the state in anthropology’, Reviews in Anthropology, 40(3), pp. 183–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, D. 2003. ‘Censorship as a vocation: the institutions, practices, and cultural logic of media control in the German Democratic Republic’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(3), pp. 511–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cloonan, M. 2003. ‘Call that censorship? problems of definition’, in Policing Pop, ed. Cloonan, M. and Garofalo, R. (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press), pp. 13–29Google Scholar
Cloonan, M., and Drewett, M. (eds.). 2006. Popular music censorship in Africa (London, Ashgate)Google Scholar
Cloonan, M., and Garofalo, R. 2003. Policing Pop (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press)Google Scholar
Colla, E. 2012. ‘The people want’, Middle East Report, 263, pp. 8–13Google Scholar
Danielson, V. 1991. ‘Shaping tradition in Arabic song: the career and repertory of Umm Kulthum’, PhD thesis, University of IllinoisGoogle Scholar
Danielson, V. 1997. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darnton, R. 2014. Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature (London, TJ International)Google Scholar
Ezzat, A., al-Haqq, S., and Fazulla, H. 2014. ‘Censors of creativity: a study of censorship and artistic expressions in Egypt’, The Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression. https://afteegypt.org/en/freedom_creativity-2/2014/09/09/8151-afteegypt.htmlGoogle Scholar
Farouk, M. A. 2020. ‘Egypt bans “music of the slums”’. Al-Monitor. https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/02/egypt-bans-street-music-singers-following-controversy-over.htmlGoogle Scholar
Fazulla, H. 2017. ‘لماذا لن تستطيع الإبداع في مصر’ [Why can't you be creative in Egypt]. Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression. https://afteegypt.org/freedom_creativity/2016/10/24/12588-afteegypt.htmlGoogle Scholar
Frankford, S. Forthcoming. ‘The history of the Musicians’ Syndicate in Egypt: continuities and transformations’, Egypte Soudan Mondes Arabes.Google Scholar
Ghannam, F. 2013. Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt (California, CA, Stanford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grippo, J. R. 2010. ‘What's not on Egyptian television and radio!: locating the “popular” in Egyptian shaʿbi’, in Music and Media in the Arab World, ed. Frishkopf, M. (Cairo, American University in Cairo Press), pp. 137–62Google Scholar
Hall, P. (ed.). 2018. The Oxford Handbook of Music Censorship (New York, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Ismail, S. 2006. Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press)Google Scholar
Jones, M. 2003. ‘Marxists in the Marketplace’, in Policing Pop, ed. Cloonan, M. and Garofalo, R. (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press), pp. 100–12Google Scholar
Kirkegaard, A., and Otterbeck, J. 2017. ‘Introduction: researching popular music censorship’, Popular Music and Society, 40(3), pp. 257–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korpe, M. 2004. Shoot the Singer!: Music Censorship Today (London, Zed)Google Scholar
LeVine, M. 2012. ‘Music and the aura of revolution’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 44(4), pp. 794–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LeVine, M. 2022. We'll Play till We Die: Journeys across a Decade of Revolutionary Music in the Muslim World (California, CA, University of California Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohman, L. 2011. Umm Kulthum: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967–2007 (Middletown CT, Wesleyan University Press)Google Scholar
Manabe, N. 2016. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music after Fukushima (Oxford, Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mazzarella, W. 2013. Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Michaelson, R. 2017. ‘Egyptian singer Sherine Abdel Wahab to face trial over Nile comments’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/15/egyptian-pop-singer-sherine-abdel-wahab-to-face-trial-over-nile-commentsGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, T. 2006. ‘Society, economy, and the state effect’, in The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, ed. Sharma, A. and Gupta, A. (Oxford, Blackwell), pp. 169–86Google Scholar
Puig, N. 2006. ‘Shaʿabî, ‘populaire’: usages et significations d'une notion ambiguë dans le monde de la musique en Egypte’, Civilisations, 53(1/2), pp. 23–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramadan, S. 2019. ‘“Long live the degenerate art”: The old state faces Mahraganat songs’, Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression. https://afteegypt.org/en/freedom_creativity-2/publications_freedom_creativity_en/2019/08/29/18097-afteegypt.htmlGoogle Scholar
Reid, D. M. 1974. ‘The rise of professions and professional organizations in modern Egypt’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 16(1), pp. 24–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shakir, H. 2016. Hani Shakir, Capital TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QunCIcHBzlo&feature=youtu.beGoogle Scholar
Sharma, A., and Gupta, A. 2006. The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Oxford, Blackwell)Google Scholar
Simon, A. 2019. ‘Censuring sounds: tapes, taste, and the creation of Egyptian culture’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 51(2), pp. 233–256CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sprengel, D. 2019. ‘“Loud” and “quiet” politics: questioning the role of “the artist” in street art projects after the 2011 Egyptian revolution’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(2), pp. 208–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swedenburg, T. 2012. ‘Egypt's music of protest: from Sayyid Darwish to DJ Haha’, Middle East Report, 265, pp. 39–43Google Scholar
Swedenburg, T. 2019. ‘From Sayed Darwish to MC Sadat: sonic cartographies of the Egyptian uprising’, in Making the New Middle East: Politics, Culture, and Human Rights, ed. Hoffman, V. J. (Syracuse NY, Syracuse University Press), pp. 394–454CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thelen, T., Vetters, L., and von Benda-Beckmann, K. (eds). 2018. Stategraphy: Toward a Relational Anthropology of the State (New York, Berghahn Books)Google Scholar
Valassopoulos, A., and Mostafa, D. S. 2014. ‘Popular protest music and the 2011 Egyptian revolution’, Popular Music and Society, 37(5), pp. 638–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Nieuwkerk, K. 2019. ‘Manhood is not easy: Egyptian masculinities through the life of Sayyid Henkish (Cairo, American University in Cairo Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wahdan, D. 2014. ‘Singing the revolt in Tahrir Square: euphoria, utopia and revolution’, in The Political Aesthetics of Global Protest: The Arab Spring and Beyond, ed. Werbner, P., Webb, M., and Spellman-Poots, K. (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press), pp. 53–66Google Scholar
Walters, M. R. 2016. ‘Censorship as a populist project: the politics of managing culture in Egypt’, PhD thesis, Georgetown UniversityGoogle Scholar