Arab Rap's Arab Spring
What do Arab rappers think of the term "Arab Spring"? In reflection, many view it as inaccurate, others a western construct, and some prefer to refer to the "Arab Winter". Nonetheless, away from semantics, almost all reflect that their music has been heavily influenced by cataclysmic changes, uprisings, failed revolutions, and conflicts brought about by waves of protests that shook the Arab world in late 2010, early 2011. This feature article published in October 2013 is based on first hand interviews with Syrian, and Lebanese rap musicians based in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
In Metro Al Madina, a subterraneous theatre in the West Beirut district of Hamra, El Rass (Mazen El Sayed) reclines backstage leafing through a book of psychology lying idly on a nearby sofa. The heavy base of Munma’s (Jawad Nawfal) production rattles through the metallic frame of the theatre’s ventilation system as the bespectacled DJ goes through his soundcheck out front. Flicking through the book’s pages El Rass picks a passage at random, reads a few sentences – no more than non-sequitors –in flawless English before returning it to its place and pouring a glass of Jamieson’s. This is the first time I have interviewed El Rass, one of the foremost MC’s in Lebanon’s small but impassioned hip hop community. Two previous arrangements have resulted in no-shows.
“We are witnessing a social explosion in all directions,” says the Tripoletan MC reflecting on events in Lebanon, neighbouring Syria and the wider Middle East over the last couple of years. “Of course as writers, musicians, and individuals when critical events are taking place in our society we are going to be influenced by them. At the same time it has brought all these lights and cameras from the western world. The real question is not how local media and facebook and twitter helped in propagating our music, it’s about how much we became a more interesting topic for the West."
"I think the oriental bias fucks up a lot of things, it has the power to create an evaluation shaped by criteria we do not want to be defined by. This is the real point I am prioritising here. I am rapping in Arabic, it is oriented towards Arab people,” continues El Rass – a journalist by day and former employee in the banking sector. We are at a threshold now where either it is going to be able to go further or it’s just going to be a short lived phenomenon. So far the evolution in the genre has been noticeable. Out of the realm of the usual copied flows, topics, and attitudes, you now have people rapping over acoustic guitars, with choruses in a Bedouin style, sampling “turud” music, others rhyming over electronic beats. There are people rapping in fusHa (formal, written Arabic) and in various Arabic dialects creating a soundtrack that will serve as an archive to this critical time.”
Arabic rap remains a young beast. In general, alternative music struggles to gain a mainstream following in the region, home to a music industry dominated by the prominence of male and female vocalists and music labels that would rather stick clear of socio-politically motivated invectives. Whilst the events of the Arab Spring have certainly contributed to greater interest in homegrown rap in the region a disproportionate percentage of column inches written on the emergence of the culture appear in the Western press. Often written by author’s who struggle to grasp precisely what is being said and writing for an audience with far less of a clue.
For their part Arab rappers – often promulgating an agenda critical of the West’s role in shaping current socio-political realities in the Middle East – sometimes struggle to unshackle themselves from the perception that doing so with a form of music that originates in the West somehow compromises its authenticity. Now almost 20 years since its emergence in Palestine with groups such as DAM Arabic rap is striving to crystalize a self-definition and home-grown identity against a backdrop defined by socio-political uncertainty. No more so than in Beirut, a city with a palpably schizophrenic identity crisis perched on the precipice of Syria’s ongoing civil conflict...
(To continue reading please follow the link: http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/17449/1/arab-rap-s-arab-spring)
