Rapping the Arab Spring

Rapping the Arab Spring SAM R. KIMBALL UNIS—Along a dusty main avenue, past worn freight cars piled on railroad tracks and Tyoung men smoking at sidewalk cafés beside shuttered shops, lies Kasserine, a town unremarkable in its poverty. Tucked deep in the Tunisian interior, Kasserine is 200 miles from the capital, in a region where decades of neglect by Tunisia’s rulers has led ANE H to a state of perennial despair. But pass a prison on the edge of town, and a jarring mix of neon hues leap from its outer wall. During the 2011 uprising against former President Zine El-Abdine Ben Ali, EM BEN ROMD H prisoners rioted, and much of the wall was destroyed HIC in fighting with security forces. On the wall that re- 79 Downloaded from wpj.sagepub.com at COLUMBIA UNIV on December 16, 2014 REPORTAGE mains, a poem by Tunisian poet Abu al in it for fame. But one thing is certain— Qassem Chebbi stretches across 800 feet the rebellions that shook the Arab world of concrete and barbed wire, scrawled in tore open a space for hip-hop in politics, calligraffiti—a style fusing Arabic callig- destroying the wall of fear around freedom raphy with hip hop graffiti—by Tunisian of expression. And governments across the artist Karim Jabbari. On each section of region are now watching hip-hop’s advance the wall, one elaborate pattern merges into with a blend of contempt and dread. a wildly different one. “Before Karim, you might have come to Kasserine and thought, PRE-ARAB SPRING ‘There’s nothing in this town.’ But we’ve “Before the outbreak of the Arab Spring, got everything—from graffiti, to break- there was less diversity,” says independent dance, to rap. The Tunisian journalist Thameur Mekki, who kids here, they’re specializes in Arab hip-hop. “There were it’s been the talented; they’ve got very, very few hip-hop artists in the media background passion,” says a local or in cultural events.” Yet the presence youth who assisted of hip-hop has existed in the shadows for noise of Jabbari in the prison decades, at least in Tunisia, says Mekki. disaffected wall project. “In the early 1990s, there was a TV show youth whose “In Kasserine, treating social problems facing youth. One poverty is the best of the main characters did break dancing condition is school,” says Hous- and popping,” two of the original hip-hop getting worse. sam Jabbari, Karim’s dance styles. According to Mekki, the first brother, speaking stirrings of a nascent hip-hop movement about the hardship inspiring the work of were found in downtown Tunis’s Théâtre artists who’ve found empowerment through Étoile du Nord around the year 2000. “At this fusion of hip-hop and art. Karim Jab- the time [hip-hop] was still considered a bari, a renowned graffiti artist who recently subculture. Artists were not treated well returned to his hometown after 14 years in nor given much respect,” notes Mekki. Montreal, is one soldier in a battle over cul- After 2008, now-famed Tunisian rapper ture being waged across the Arab world. In Balti gained some notoriety throughout nations where the Arab Spring took root, a Tunisia by addressing social ills in his vanguard of artists is trying to protect the lyrics. “But he never touched the causes gains of the 2011 mass uprisings and draw of the problems. Or he invoked them attention to attempts by new rulers to roll lightly, without pointing at the [political] back those gains. Hip-hop, largely relegat- system,” Mekki points out, since Balti’s ed to the underground before the outbreak summer concert tours were organized by of the Arab Spring, has taken front seat as a the Ministry of Culture. vehicle of political criticism and dialogue. Simultaneously, frustration with grow- There may still be debate over which art- ing inequality, unemployment, and state ists are true revolutionaries and which are repression, a pattern on the rise through- Sam R. Kimball, a journalist based in Tunis, has previously reported from Yemen and Egypt, and is researching the role of rap and graffiti in the Tunisian revolution. 80 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL Downloaded from wpj.sagepub.com at COLUMBIA UNIV on December 16, 2014 TUNISIA out the Arab world at the time, was push- until recently were under lock and key, ing other rappers to create more confron- controlled by many of the autocrats in the tational work. In 2006, Tunisian rapper Arab world, who felt themselves threat- Ferid El Extranjero, living abroad in Spain, ened by the potential it carried for mass released the damning critique of Ben Ali’s protest. “It’s been the background noise regime “La3bed Fi Terkina” (People in a of disaffected youth whose condition is Prison), directly denouncing arbitrary po- getting worse,” concludes Fredericks. lice violence and arrests. He also issued the provocative song “Warqa Stylo” (Paper and OVERTHROWING THE DICTATOR Pen). “Here he began to speak clearly about Bizerte, Tunisia’s largest port, was a center liberty of expression. This was the brick in of unrest in the uprising which overthrew the wall that opened up the whole issue of former Tunisian dictator Zine El-Abdine government oppression,” says Mekki, be- Ben Ali and two subsequent provisional fore launching into the rap: governments in the early months of 2011. An hour’s drive from Tunis via a louage, or shared taxi, it seems more of “Liberta! Speak out loud, discuss! a gentle seaside city than any hotbed of We are living in a strange society. political resistance. Massive freighters are Where is our justice? docked neatly in the canal that bisects the We were born free, you won’t city, under a drawbridge which must be stop us if you arrest us! traversed quickly before it opens to bring The press is the source of freedom, in yet another freighter. The October breeze It’s the light in the darkness, coming off the canal is chilly, and the center Democracy is saying the truth. city is animated with taxis and young A paper and pen against the wind, people in fashionable outfits and sunglasses. Everything will be told.” Graffiti from local soccer fans dot the walls, mixed with the occasional scrawled political scream: “Fuck the system!” Rosalind Fredericks, a professor and Gal3y appears to be just an average scholar of hip-hop at New York Uni- young Tunisian. He rarely answers his versity, explains the attractiveness of phone before one in the afternoon, because hip-hop in the developing world and its he’s sound asleep in his mother’s house power for protest. “Hip-hop has been ex- tucked away in a breezy alley. The stocky plicitly a language of youth,” over the guy in sandals with an unkempt beard and last several decades, she says, “as youths baseball hat perched unevenly on his head, have been the casualties of the political however, is the acclaimed hip-hop artist breakdown.” Fredericks notes that part whose name is on the lips of fans across the of the appeal of hip-hop forms like rap nation. Passing through a small gate, a path come from its accessibility and confronta- gives onto the tiny yard beside his house, tional nature. “There is something about and then behind a dirty white window the sound of rap, its harshness, its serious, curtain hung over a door frame, is Gal3y’s that’s part of its potency,” she adds. As studio—a toolshed-like space with enough for graffiti, she points out that it’s played room for a computer, keyboard, turntables, a role in occupying public spaces, which beat machine, and a couple of plastic chairs. WINTER 2013 / 2014 81 Downloaded from wpj.sagepub.com at COLUMBIA UNIV on December 16, 2014 REPORTAGE Gal3y is now one-half of Armada Bi- Armada Bizerte’s song “It’s The Sound zerta, a hip-hop crew hailing from Biz- Of Da Police,” produced early in 2011, erte. Armada Bizerta puts out tirelessly is a merciless attack on Tunisia’s police political tracks criticizing everyone from force—long hated for its brutality toward IM FOUNDATION former president Ben Ali’s cronies to the poor, accused of arbitrary arrests, beat- H A Tunisia’s current ruling party, Ennahda. ings, and killings. But the music video it- IBR Gal3y plays video after video on the desk- self is a work of art. Black and white foot- O M top computer in his studio, some from age shows riot police firing tear gas into Armada Bizerta, others with different mass protests, in January 2011, along Tu- artists whose beats he has produced. He nisia’s Avenue Habib Bourguiba. Mixed rocks heavily from side to side with every seamlessly are what appear to be scenes song, rapping along with the lyrics when from the Indignados protests in Spain, he knows them. A riff on the classic inner- which touched off in May 2011, and were city track from Bronx rapper KRS-One, accompanied by more police violence. 82 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL Downloaded from wpj.sagepub.com at COLUMBIA UNIV on December 16, 2014 TUNISIA After a second view- The lyrics are perhaps more hard- ing, it becomes clear that hitting than Tunisian rapper El Général’s none of the footage was celebrated anthem “Rais Lebled,” a loud selected at random. Each critique of the inequality and corruption scene was carefully chosen in President Ben Ali’s Tunisia, which went to illustrate the “interna- viral on YouTube weeks before protests be- tional movement” that nu- gan in late 2010.

Load more