The Playlist of a Revolution

Hi everybody!

As I mentioned the other day, I'm reading Robin Wright's brilliant and insightful book Rock the Casbah which traces the origins of the current Arab Spring protest movement and what she calls the "counter-jihad." I read a great chapter last night called "Hip-Hop Islam" wherein she introduces the reader to Islam's rather surprising alternative/rap/hip-hop music scene and the influence it's had on the young Arabs filling Tahrir Square and beyond.

One of the most striking things is the fact that in the twenty-three countries that comprise the Middle East, the vast majority of the population are under the age of 40. Ms. Wright writes: "The young make up the majority in all Muslim countries, in some places close to 70 percent" (124). Unemployment within this young demographic is rampant, so bad in fact that Queen Rania of Jordan is quoted in the book as saying that it's a "ticking time bomb," telling a group of business leaders that "the number of unemployed people under thirty years old...could increase from 15 million in 2008 to 100 million in 2020..." (125).

The reason for these staggering numbers? It's hard to say. However, one factor Ms. Wright mentions is the fact that a strictly Islamic education does very little to develop practical skills that can be transferred into jobs.  Plus, in many of these countries, the only jobs available go to those who have an in with the government which rules out most of the population...hence the Arab Spring.

As in any culture, music has an amazing ability to communicate and express the soul of a people. This is especially true of the Middle East. In her book, Ms. Wright profiles several Arab musicians who have made an impact. She writes predominantly about hip-hop and the genre's ability to transcend national, religious, and political identity while focusing on the very real needs and concerns of a community. The difference though between Western and Islamic hip-hop/rap is that Islamic hip-hop is still quite devout and is utterly void of the obscenity that has come to define much of the genre in the West.

Ms. Wright writes about a young Tunisian rapper, Hamada Ben Amor, who goes by the name of El General, whose song 'Rais Lebled' became the anthem of the Tunisian protests before going viral on You-Tube and spreading across the entire region. Because the Tunisian government had effectively banned hip-hop from state controlled radio, El General turned to the Internet to get his music out to the public. El General was arrested and imprisoned. His interrogators asked him to stop singing about the Tunisian president before they would release him. But because El General had become such a celebrity among the protestors, his arrest was widely documented and he was released after three days. He then went on to perform in public to major acclaim.

Other artists profiled in the book include the Palestinian rap group DAM whose 2001 song "Who's the Terrorist?" became an international sensation with more than half a million downloads from You-Tube. Ironically, DAM has become immensely popular in Israel among young Israelis whose own rap group Subliminal has performed on several occasions with DAM. There is also, among others, the female Moroccan hip-hop singer Soultana who was nearly killed in the Casablanca bombings in 2003.

So after reading this chapter I decided to do a search on iTunes to see what, if anything, is available. This led to me putting together an entire playlist called The Arab Spring Mix, that features DAM, Soultana, Subliminal, and a number of Egyptian and Lebanese pop singers whose music provides the Western-influenced though very Eastern-infused soundtrack to the current democracy movements.

One of my favorites is an Egyptian singer named Amr Diab. He's been a huge star since the '80s and his latest album was just released a few months ago. His recent single "Ma'ak Bartaah" is a slick, very danceable techno bit of fun that would sound just about as right in any Western nightclub as it does, I'm sure, in the Whiskey Mist Beirut.

I'm loving my new playlist.

Ciao.

QUESTION OF THE DAY: "What musical artist (of any genre) has moved you recently?"