Raqs Nerd: but is this art?
I don't really do hot takes and quick reactions, it's not how my brain works - I need a lot of time to process and assemble my thoughts.
So today's email is a slooooooow response to a hot topic in the online bellydance community from last year:
Is Egyptian sha'abi music art? Or is it just fun? And if we accept that it is art - is it real art?
First of all, let's get everyone on the same page: What actually is sha'abi music?
The word sha'abi / شعبي literally means "popular", "of the people" - and basically this is music made by and for Egypt's everyday people, often described as urban folk music. With deep roots reaching back into much older folk traditions, sha'abi music exploded in the mid 20th century as an expression of ordinary people's lives, hopes, fears, frustrations and desires - with an unstoppable momentum and popular appeal that spread like wildfire through mass-produced cassette tapes, even at times when sha'abi singers were banned from state radio and TV stations.
One thing you really need to appreciate as a dancer is that sha'abi is incredibly danceable, for an important reason: We can't meaningfully separate Egyptian sha'abi music from what we English speakers tend to think of as baladi music... And we also can't separate it from the world of traditional musicians and dancers who historically lived and worked around Cairo's Mohammed Ali Street.
The musicians involved in the birth of sha'abi music as we know it didn't just appear from nowhere in the early 1970s! They are the very same traditional musicians who were already playing at weddings and mawalid, playing for singers and for bellydancers - now bringing their considerable skills to a new movement, with cutting edge energy.
Sha'abi music is built around dance rhythms, and driven by the tabla - the goblet-shaped hand drum that has always been associated with dance (in contrast to the riq, historically the main and often only percusison instrument in "for listening" music)
Now we start to see the tension - sha'abi music is inherently closely related to dance music (already not really considered "respectable" compared to music meant only for listening).
And, it's music made by lower-class artists, for a fan base of ordinary lower-class people, expressing (or more often, metaphorically alluding to) things that the government and ruling classes would really rather that ordinary people didn't talk about (poverty and inequality, criticism of the government, dancing, sex, drugs), as well as relatable commentary on daily life. And it's not just in Egyptian Arabic rather than classical Arabic (already kind of edgy, at the time), it's in the language of very colloquial everyday speech and full of puns, wordplay, and playful semi-nonsense words... shocking! 😲
So, no wonder the Egyptian government and the arbiters of "high art" have always had some issues with it, to put it mildly
WATCH - Ahmed Adaweya with Fifi Abdou in 1982 - two legendary Egyptian artists from lower-class backgrounds, working at the absolute top of their fields (and yes, there were also plenty of people at the time who thought Fifi represented the downfall of Egyptian society, or that she wasn't an artist)
Now let me take you on a little tangent:
Last November, I hosted the second Raqs Roots Intensive here in Manchester, with all of our classes co-taught by Egyptian percussionist Reda Henkesh - who is a traditional artist from Mohammed Ali Street, from a famous family of musicians - and by Nisaa, the pioneering bellydance researcher who has been on a mission to make the voices of traditional Egyptian artists heard within the bellydance community.
Our classes last year all revolved around the music and dance of Egyptian baladi weddings in the late 20th century - which of course meant baladi and sha'abi music!
And I have to bring this up because as soon as you actually hear an artist like Reda Henkesh talking about sha'abi music, the idea that it isn't art, or isn't real art somehow, just starts to sound ridiculous - when somebody astoundingly skilled and dedicated, who has spent a lifetime immersed in traditional music and embedded in the culture that surrounds it, tells me earnestly that this is true art (فن حقيقي)... I know who I am going to listen to.
(though in any case my own personal view of art is a broad one - humans transmitting feeling through creative expression? Art!)
And that's before you even get into the facts that were dropped that weekend (like the existence of musicians who played in the ensembles of both Oum Kalthoum and Ahmed Adaweya).
But this also sent me down a reading and listening rabbit hole... Because like most (I think!) of this year's Raqs Roots attendees, I came out of the weekend with "Ya Leil Ya Basha" playing on loop in my head, and an absolutely insatiable obsession with the songs of Ahmed Adaweya - inarguably the most iconic voice of Egyptian sha'abi music.
My own obsession took two paths: firstly, a continuing mission to systematically listen to every single Adaweya recording I can find (this is a really big project, because he was an incredibly prolific recording artist), assisted by "the world's most feral Adaweya fanzine", a delightfully nerdy blog which catalogues all of his releases up to 1981.
And secondly, re-reading one of the books which has been the most important to my entire ethos as a dancer and music lover: "Making Music in the Arab World: the culture and artistry of Tarab", by A. J. Racy.
Now, you might think that this book isn't in any way relevant to sha'abi music - after all, it is explicitly about the "art music" tradition, the world of Oum Kalthoum and Mohammed Abdelwahab, of Sabah Fakhri and Wadih El Safi... A world of complex rhythmic cycles, ornate ottoman-era instrumental genres, and a world in which the tabla, saxophone and electric bass guitar generally do not feature alongside the ney, qanoun and riq!
HOWEVER, what it does contain is a thorough and detailed exploration, from an author who is a very accomplished musician in his own right, of exactly what it is in Arabic music that enables it to have such a profound emotional/spiritual impact, and to create ecstatic states of Tarab (طرب) in attuned listeners.
In the entire book, Egyptian baladi and sha'abi music is only mentioned once, in a single small paragraph and footnote. But, that tiny mention actually points us to something deeply important.
Because it's mentioning that Egyptian "tet baladi" music - closely related to sha'abi music - actually retains a traditional playing style (heterophony) which has a powerful Tarab effect, and which has become increasingly less and less common in mainstream Arab art music.
As I kept on reading, and kept on working my way through the recordings of Adaweya (including his incredible mawawil - the plural of mawal, meaning a vocal improvisation based on poetry) it became clear to me that what I was hearing, was completely embodying a great many of the features Racy discusses in the context of "high art" Tarab music (and that I've heard for myself in listening to a lot of old-style / qadim art music in the past).
A rich and ever-shifting texture, made up of instruments with very different sound qualities, playing semi-improvisationally together
A sense of spontaneous creation and energy in the moment, and a rapport between the musicians that shines through in how they play
Modal improvisation within the maqam system, in the form of taqasim and mawawil
Lyrics that invoke an atmosphere both of celebration and community, and of intense bittersweet longing, with themes of separation from the beloved, and the suffering of lovers (especially in the mawawil)
Melodies and vocals that loosely weave in and out of the tempo of the music, rather than sticking to it rigidly (this one tends to hit me especially hard)
Slow builds of emotional and musical intensity
To name just a few
All of this is absolutely present in traditional Egyptian folk music styles, in 20th century sha'abi music, and a lot of it in the ashra baladi too - and this is the stuff that Tarab is made of. This is music with a profound power to move, to delight, to create ecstatic states.
Is it exactly the same as "high art" music? Of course not. But the artistic values, the musical and emotional techniques, the intense impact on listeners, are very closely related. Look at what's actually happening, with an open mind, and it's clear that these musics are siblings - much as they might sometimes try to disown each other.
Different audiences, different priorities, but with shared musical/cultural DNA that runs deep below the surface.
And when someone chooses to declare that one of these musical siblings - the one created by and for everyday lower-class Egyptians - is not really "art"... What is the agenda there, exactly? 🤔
With Love,
PS - if you missed last week's Raqs Nerd, you can read it here! Raqs Nerd: Ya Leily, Ya Ainy - and so we begin
PPS - every part of this newsletter is written by me, a flesh and blood human being, using my own thoughts, feelings, opinions, and writing style - now and always. This is a generative AI free zone 🚫🤖
