Thread: Music & Egypt's Presidential Race

Interesting radio show! It gives a nice glimpse into current popular sounds in Egyptian music via songs that were used for some of the presidential candidates. This is not belly dance music obviously (erm, unless one of us is hired to dance at a future fundraiser for one of the run-off candidates, which seems highly unlikely, but hey, the world is weird). I know folks here might still find this interesting, though.

Music's influential role on Egypt's presidential campaign

I love the way they opened the piece, and if nothing else this is a reminder of how important it is to at least have a gist of what the lyrics are about before choosing a song. I'm thinking here from a US and also English language centric perspective, but imagine someone for whom English is not a first language and who is in another country doing American folk dances to those opening songs because they have an old-timey American sound. O_o I genuinely fear that happening to me with Egyptian songs!! I mean, that 'Abul Fotouh is Suitable' is pretty darn catchy. Ulp!

Enjoy!

On the bright side, a lot of this music isn't easily accessible to someone who doesn't know any Arabic and isn't actively looking for off-the-beaten-path music. It's not going to turn up on a BDSS compilation or as a related video to a dance clip on YouTube. Dahlal isn't going to be vending it at workshops, and Maqam doesn't even sell the less controversial records like the Ultras one they mentioned, because it's not worth the trouble to stock it--most people who want it will just rip it off the Internet from a site that's probably in Arabic.

Sure, it's not impossible that a student could use "bad" songs by mistake (there have been isolated incidents in the past), and the Internet makes it a lot easier to find this stuff than when the only way to obtain music was by getting your hands on the physical media, but realistically, when is the last time you saw somebody dancing to a fringe record? It doesn't happen that often, because the average student stays to the mainstream, and you'll never even cross paths with most of this if you're not seeking it.

Being conservative about your music choices is not a bad thing--it's good to be concerned that what you're using is appropriate--but teachers sometimes do too enthusiastic a job of scaring students away from listening to what else is out there. Even if you don't perform to this music, you can still learn from it, and it is important to understand that Middle Easterners make music for more than just dance pleasure.