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On Protest Songs and the Rise of an Alternative National-Popular Consciousness in the Arab World

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On Protest Songs and the Rise of an Alternative National-Popular Consciousness in the Arab World The Young Sing Back: On Protest Songs and the Rise of an Alternative National-Popular Consciousness in the Arab World A Master’s Thesis Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature Faculty of Arts, Cairo University by Rowa Mohamed Nabil in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the M.A. Degree Under the Supervision of Professor Maha El Said 2020 ii Acknowledgement I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor Professor Maha el-Said for her support, guidance, and patience throughout the years. Many thanks to Professors Shereen Abuelnaga, Randa Aboubakr, and Walid el-Hamamsy for guiding me during the initial stages of this research project. I am indebted to my colleagues and teachers at the Department of English Language and Literature, Cairo University for their incredible love and motivation. To my AIESEC CU family who heard me talk about this project over and over. Yara, Ghada, Salma, and Nahed, I have made it, girls! I’m grateful to Mosheera and Mohamed Galal for making it possible for me to get access to the resources I needed during this project. To my best friends, who spent years looking forward to the day they see my ideas on paper. Sahar, Christine, Shereen, Marwa, Hussam and Ayman, I would have never done it without you. To Mrs. Amira Morcos and Mr. Raouf Aziz, for everything you have taught me in school, and for all the days I spent in your loving home, this project is dedicated to you. iii Abstract The present study examines the dynamics of youth artivism -artistic activism- in selected countries of the Arab World as manifested in protest songs, produced by young singers and bands during the popular uprisings between 2010 and 2013. The study analyzes the stylistic, linguistic, and aesthetic features of protest songs, and their function as instruments employed to articulate collective defiance, grievances, and aspirations. The study, also, investigates the political engagement of young Arab protest singers in the homeland and diaspora, by analyzing their role as activist-artists in generating songs that represent an alternative national consciousness reflective of the popular masses. This national-popular consciousness is represented and documented in the protest songs accompanying the eruption of popular political contention. Central to this research is the assertion that the cultural phenomenon of Arab artivism is best understood within its social, political, and historical contexts. Presenting a critical discussion of neo-Marxist and post-Marxist approaches, the study is informed by Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘national-popular’ in an attempt to highlight the cultural paradigm of subversive artistic activism. Keywords: protest songs, artivism, artistic activism, Arab youth, national-popular, national consciousness, Arab uprisings, political contention, movement culture, hegemony, nationalist ideology, collective action frames iv Table of Contents Introduction ……………………………………………………………………...…..........1 Research Questions……………………………………………………..…..........10 Limitations of the Study………………………………………………………….10 Tentative Chapterization……………………………………………….…...........11 Chapter One: The National-Popular and the Location of Power: Theoretical Framework…..13 1.1 Hegemony and Spontaneous Consent …………………………..…………….13 1.2 Hegemony and the Ideological State Apparatuses ……………….………......16 1.3 From the State-National to the National-Popular ………………………….…17 1.4 The (Dis)Location of Power …………………………………………….……20 1.5 Artivism: Art as a Defiant Gesture ………………………………..………......23 1.6 Popular, Folk, and Protest: Songs in Movements ……………….………...….25 1.7 Protest Songs: Between Political Art and Activist Art …………………….…27 1.8 Conclusion………………………...……………………….………………….35 Chapter Two: Arab Protest Singers as Movement Intellectuals under Repression............36 2.1 The Intellectuals: The Traditional, the Organic, and the Popular........................36 2.2 The Arab Artivist: The Movement Intellectual …………….…………………..49 2.3 The Arab Context: Protest Singers Under Repression …….…………………...51 2.4 The Arab Context: The Digital Stage …….…….....……….…………………...58 2.5 The Digital Stage: Bridging Diaspora ………...….....……….…………………64 2.6 Street Politics: Collective Struggle, Collective Singing ………….…………….66 2.7 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..71 Chapter Three: Protest Songs and the Movement Culture…………………………..........72 3.1 Protest Songs: Cultural Recoding………………………………..……………..72 3.2 Features of the Movement Culture: Creative Articulation of Dissidence………75 3.3 Features of the Movement Culture: Blame Attribution ……………...................81 3.4 Features of the Movement Culture: Motivating Hope and Responsibility..........86 3.5 Features of the Movement Culture: Peaceful Dissidence……………................91 3.6 Features of the Movement Culture: Pan-Arab Camaraderie……………............96 3.7 Artistic Activism: An Alternative National Archive ………...………….........99 3.8 Conclusion……………………………………..……………………………..102 Conclusion………………………………………………………………...…………..104 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..111 Discography…………………………………………………………………...………120 v Introduction Why did the people in the Arab World wait for a street vendor to set himself on fire to start a revolution? Living in any country around the Arab World, we all know worse has happened. Yet, with all the horrors this question entails; is this all it really takes to end decades of autocracy in the region? Edward Walsh refers to such incidents as the suddenly imposed, and suddenly realized grievances (Walsh 1981, 2). They are the unexpected events that cause abrupt collective resentment, or reveal the serious weight of long-standing injustices. Such unexpected realizations or imposed injustices emphasize the significance of shared discontent in generating defiance. Hence, they stimulate social action, and precipitate civil disobedience. Along with rising poverty and unemployment rates, and the constant disregard for human rights and basic human dignity, police brutality and state corruption have been long-standing grievances in the Arab World. However, they were suddenly and undeniably manifested with the murder of Khalid Saeed, and the self- immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi. In June 2010, the Egyptian police brutalized Khalid Saeed. The young Egyptian man was stopped on the street, to be beaten to death in his hometown, in Alexandria (Sika 2017, 41). In December 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi refused to pay the daily bribe to the police inspector, which often robbed him of his earnings for the day (Wright 2012, 15). The young Tunisian fruit peddler was beaten by the police, and his cart was confiscated. The next day, he stood on the street, poured gasoline on his body, and set himself on fire. These incidents mark the “local tipping points,” piloting the explosion of protest and popular contention across the Arab region against economic deprivation, contempt of human dignity, and state corruption (Beinin and Vairel 2013, 22). Such violent incidents trigger a sudden realization of the weight of tolerated injustices, transforming the frustrating individual experiences into shared resentment. In turn, they trigger collective dissent against the repressive police and the autocratic regimes. The insight of tipping points triggering a volcano of existing grievances is more reflective of the Arab popular uprisings than Tilly and Tarrow’s view of these uprisings as a form of “radicalization” (Tilly and Tarrow 2015, 139). For Tilly and Tarrow, the starting point was “a low-level conflict between corrupt police and a street vendor” that radically escalated to reach national and transnational scales (Tilly and Tarrow 2015, 139). However, this view overlooks the impact of decades of police violence, repression, and corruption in various 1 Arab countries. So does the phrase “Arab Spring” appearing in 2005 to describe the rise of democratic calls for reform in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine, which resurfaced in 2011 to describe the Arab popular uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco, “as though these [Arab] societies were frozen in a long winter or slumber” (Beinin and Vairel 2013, 8). The strength and impact of the Arab popular uprisings have been surprisingly successful in toppling authoritarian regimes, and attaining democratic reforms. Nevertheless, the eruption of masses of demonstrators calling for civil rights did not come as a surprise, in light of the long-standing grievances against the regime’s security apparatuses and state corruption across the region. It is important to note that the reason why Bouazizi set himself on fire was not entirely because he was harassed by the local police for the daily bribe, which he was used to paying. Bouazizi reached out to appeal his injustice at the local town hall, after the police inspector had attacked him and confiscated his produce. He, then, appealed to the governor’s office, and to the state officials, all while pushing his empty cart (Wright 2012, 16). It was after his official complaints had been rebuffed over and over again by the official authorities that he let the flames feed on his body. His vehement attempts to stay in course within formal normal politics failed. This includes resorting to the official authorities to implement the laws, and demanding constitutional rights via formal channels. The failure of normal politics is when certain groups in society are denied adequate representations, or even excluded from normal politics, and when the dominant group fails to maintain the established social
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