During the 2011 revolution, most Egyptian pop singers said nothing. Now they are back and praising the national martyrs in song. A PR gaffe or more?
One of the pop-culture phenomena coming out of the 2011 Egyptian revolution is the emergence of a subgenre of popular music videos dedicated the memory of the people killed during the eighteen days of protesting that brought down Hosni Mubarak’s government. This is a notable change of pace from the mass-media Arabic-language music industry’s usual stock in trade, schmaltzy songs of chaste romance, for several reasons. First, songs that aired as music video clips via satellite channels in Egypt during the Mubarak era were generally devoid of domestic politics, except for nationalist pablum that either avoided politics entirely or portrayed Mubarak as the legitimate leader of his people. Second, the visual imagery was usually carefully storyboarded and filmed: pretty people in pretty places is the norm in the world of Arabic video clips.
The video clips that memorialize the martyrs differ on both counts, in that simply referring to the revolution in mass media is itself a political act, albeit not necessarily a very clear one. And, in sharp contrast to the elaborate, soap opera-like mise en scène that dominates the field, the ‘martyr pop’ videos tend to eschew studio visuals in favor of news footage. Above all, there is a powerful emphasis on photographs of the martyrs. (For those unfamiliar with the Arabic usage, the term ‘martyr’ (shahid in Arabic) is often used in a secular context to denote people considered to have died in the name of a national cause.) However, despite the inherently political nature of singing about the revolution, most of the singers actually appear to seek a middle path in which their political sympathies are not truly disclosed.
There is much to analyze in these video clips; for present purposes, I will confine my remarks to some of the more striking aspects of the visual and sonic imagery employed.