5 Videos from Egypt: Suspended Realities of the Now

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Dreamlike states, magical realism, and suspended reality. Enjoy a new mind-bending list of music videos from rural and urban Egypt ranging from light-hearted pop to grim electronic dance music.

This list of videos highlights the diversity of sounds and visuals in Egypt’s underground music communities. They represent myriad production models, visual perspectives, and aesthetic visions. Though all distinctly different, in this collection one could venture to trace a continuity, an ethos that hints at the shared reality of living and creating in contemporary Egypt, and of suspending that reality. Most videos are from Cairo, however, this list also incorporates artists from other cities including Minya and Ismailia.

It has become trendy to portray Egypt’s urban environments in music videos, with an emphasis on popular neighborhoods and grittier aesthetics; although undeniably alluring, there is much more to the visual world of Egypt and its artists. That is not to say that the metropolis of Cairo, in all its vastness and intricacy, is not an admirable source of inspiration for creative generations of past and future – surely it is. It is a hallucinatory clash of eras past and future, electricity weaving through crumbling ruins.

Indeed, some of these videos allude to that. Others are less implicit, reflecting more on inner worlds or more divergent sources of inspiration. Some edge toward irony, or reject notions of budget in favor of simplicity and capturing time and place as is. Through this aesthetic and directorial diversity, we can identify consistent themes of etherealness, dreamlike states, magical realism, and suspended reality.

Music: ABOsahar
Track: Msh 7az Laa Shatara (HIZZ, 2019)
Direction and Camera: KZLK
Editing: Donia Fares

A producer and wedding MC from an agricultural community in Minya, a Nile-side city south of Cairo, ABOsahar entered the Cairo underground scene via HIZZ, a Cairo-based collective and record label. Since then, the mysterious and eccentric character has risen from the bizarro nooks of the Egyptian internet and HIZZ parties to playing upper-class weddings, music festivals, and international collaborations. That rise hasn’t kept him from his regular Instagram Live improvisational broadcasts from his rural studio.

ABOsahar’s music is an intriguing take on Egyptian chaabi, which he produces on a desktop computer. Riding on tastefully minimal beats, ABOsahar joins trancelike chaabi keyboard melodies with generously reverbed wedding MC (nabatshi) vocals, performing live with a QWERTY keyboard. «Msh 7az Laa Shatara», from his album The Caveman (2019), shows him in the verdant farmlands from where he hails in Minya, interspersed with revelers at a chaabi wedding.

Music: Kahareb
Track: Laila Matina (2019)
Art Direction and Design: Ahmad Hammoud
DOP: Haya Khairat
Director: Aida El Kashef
Photography: Rania Shereen
Production Manager: Amina Allam
Choreography: Mirette Michael

Kahareb is a band from Cairo led by music scene veterans Youssef Atwan (songwriter, previously of Like Jelly) and bassist Mokhtar El Sayeh, and backed up by many more familiar faces. They produce light-hearted, often comedic pop with various influences, including currents of Arab rhythm and melody. Kahareb began to gain popularity largely through their spectacularly glittery, colorful, and whimsical videos, of which no two are the same.

«Laila Matina» is about a lively night with a loved one, and the video portrays a constantly moving portrait of wedding guests, each one executing their own repetitive, minute choreographies in a sort of festive glitch. While this is a single, their debut album Malhamet Debba came out in 2021.

Music: MOUSV (Prod. Mohaimen)
Track: GHOYOUM (2021)
Direction: Marwan Morsy (FOTOMETRO)
Cinematography: Tarek Effat
Editing: Marwan Morsy and Tarek Effat
Coloring: Ahmed Elshafey

Mousv Sam (MOUSV) is one of the artists riding the tidal wave that has been the rise of trap in Egypt. His more moody, introspective style makes him stand out against the bravado that is predominant amongst his peers. In fact, he partially gained notoriety for rapping about personal issues and mental struggles when acknowledging such issues was still rarely addressed in Egyptian rap. This is especially showcased on his mixtape OV. While still indulging in shadowy malaise, his debut album ELSAHABA (2021) sees MOUSV taking a more self-assured step into the limelight, cementing his artistic notoriety.

In «GHOYOUM», he paints a picture of being dazed and in a fog, confused about right and wrong, and lacking foresight. The video places MOUSV in the contrasting though equally lonely environments of a cluttered and neglected bedroom, an abandoned police station in Ismailia, and a desert canyon, perfectly capturing the feeling of being lost in a haze.

Music: Rozzma
Track: Sheyaka (Acid Arab Records, 2017)

Alter-ego of producer Hussein Sherbini, Rozzma is a time traveler who was last on Earth 7,000 years ago. His sound is a sort of demented chaabi filtered through left-field electronics. In the past, he has labeled it Cairo rave bass.

Since 2015, Rozzma has released some pretty electric videos, and though difficult to choose one, «Sheyaka» is a personal favorite. A spin on the Cairo street scene trope, we see a hallucinatory version of the city where Tutankhamun’s 22.5 karat gold mask is ubiquitously projected, theoretically in protest of its modern-day relegation to the increasingly worthless 1-pound coin (rozzma means «stacks» in Egyptian colloquial, as in stacks of money). Rozzma dances and taunts from rooftops like the mischievous psycho he is.

Music: Nadah El Shazly
Track: Mahmiya (2018)
Composed and arranged: Nadah El Shazly and Maurice Louca
Story, visual design, and direction: Marwan Elgamal
Painting: Marwan Elgamal
Editing: Marwan Elgamal, Mazen Elgamal
Animation: Marwan Elgamal, Mazen Elgamal
Additional assistance: Yamen Elgamal

Nadah el Shazly is an artist from Cairo. She is a vocalist, songwriter, producer, and sound artist who drinks from the deep wells of Arabic music to fuel her surrealist sonic wanderings. «Mahmiya» is off Nadah’s album Ahwar (2017), a marvelous, seminal work of contemporary Arabic music that incorporates a complex tapestry of musical input from many musicians, most notably Maurice Louca and Sam Shalabi. Both key characters in contemporary Arabic avant garde music, Maurice is best known for his solo work and his role in groups Lekhfa, The Dwarfs of East Agouza, and many more. Sam Shalabi is an Egyptian Canadian composer and major player in music scenes in Montreal and Cairo, and is also a member of The Dwarfs of East Agouza.

The video for «Mahmiya» was done by painter Marwan Elgamal. The eerie song, seeing Nadah’s mysterious, rich voice float over a lilting saz melody, slide guitar, and piano, speaks of a protectorate. A girl traverses a chimerical dimension, and as she interacts with her surroundings, they oscillate, as does she. The girl, the world, and the music breathe in and out of each other, contracting and swelling in a dance of transformation.

Biography

Tucker M. Wiedenkeller is a writer, musicologist, and musician focusing on the Middle East and Mediterranean. He has spent several years living in Egypt, studying, working in the music scene, and writing about its music both as a journalist and as an academic researcher. He is particularly interested in the confluence of traditional and contemporary styles and the manifestation of trance and ecstasy in modern, technological contexts. He studied musicology and has been a part of multiple applied ethnomusicology initiatives. Additionally he works as a copy editor for Norient. If not in Cairo or Istanbul, he is likely in the Sonoran Desert.

Published on April 27, 2023

Last updated on May 31, 2023

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Popular spaces to listen to loud funkot: angkot bus in Indonesia, 2017 (photo: Pxhere).

Funkot, Gabber’s Distant Cousin from the Far East

Short Essay

by Gisela Swaragita

One day, when sitting in an angkot minivan in Bogor, our writer had a weird encounter that made her ears ring; it was funkot, a mix of gabber and Indonesian folk. An essay inspired by the music of Animistic Beliefs who performed at MUTEK festival 2023.

Let me tell you about funkot, a mind-bending sonic concoction that will make your whole body shake in a hellish tremor just like a caffeine overdose would.

My first encounter with funkot was in 2011 in Bogor (West Java, Indonesia). I was visiting the town and had to go around on an angkot – one of the aggressive minivans that is the backbone of Bogor’s public transportation – because it was too expensive to take a taxi. I was crammed into the corner of the angkot, my knees bent and touching other passengers’ limbs. The rear window was decorated with empty liquor bottles. The driver was smoking a kretek cigarette, filling the air with clove- and tobacco-flavored smoke. He pressed play on his stereo, and suddenly this upbeat, thumping rhythm of bass and percussion, high-pitch synth, and lusty vocals blared through the cheap loudspeakers installed at all corners of the vehicle.

The music sneakily seeped through the humid air, enveloping and suffocating me, making my ears ring. It woke up all of my senses unlike any kind of drug could. The only way to get out of the trap of the superfast BPMs was to dance. But of course, I couldn’t dance inside the crowded angkot, so I just shook my head following the beat and let my right leg tremor.

The Global Rise of Funkot

Decades after my bumpy ride with the party-on-wheels minivan, I learned that funkot has climbed the social ladder. Once considered a grassroots form of entertainment, stereotyped as the music of angkot and truck drivers during their long intercity rides, funkot is now an anticipated act in every high-end music festival in Indonesia. All popular festivals at home – Synchronize Fest, Pesta Pora, and Joyland, to mention a few – would have at least one designated party-hard, warehouse/dungeon-vibe electronic music booth where the attendees ignore the main stage and simply dance their hearts out to the DJ blasting funkot.

Record labels such as Yogyakarta’s Yes No Wave, which has an incredibly diverse catalog of experimental music, helped to catapult Indonesia’s funkot to international stages. The global scene, however, would make sense of the astonishingly localized funkot by associating it with gabber, a similarly heart-pumping hardcore techno that was once the pride and joy of Rotterdam. It is funny that Indonesia, a string of spice islands in the Far East that was once under Dutch colonial rule, has come up with its own version of party music.

Despite having similar sound principles, funkot and gabber are not imitations of each other. Instead, they are direct descendants from the globally popular electronic dance music. The street says funkot was born in the hazy underground clubs in Jakarta’s touristy neighborhood of Kota – hence the term «Funky Kota» which was then abbreviated into «funkot».

MUTEK, a festival celebrating talents with avant-garde and original artistry in electronic music and digital art, will have an upcoming festival in Montréal this year. Excitingly, this year’s MUTEK Montréal will celebrate gabber in one of its sessions and invite the best artists of the genre, including the untamed duo Animistic Beliefs, a project of Linh Luu and Marvin Lalihatu. The two will perform with visual artist Jeisson Drenth, who has been a regular collaborator in their shows, to add more experimental nuance to the set. With playful visuals and a sound that evokes wild animals and primordial rites, recordings of their set always remind me of the overstimulation of the party-like angkot ride. Although based in the Netherlands, the unit also enjoys great admiration in Indonesia’s niche EDM scene, especially due to Marvin Lalihatu’s ties with their ancestral roots in the archipelago’s Maluku Islands.

Indonesia, an extremely large country that is very under-represented on the international stage, easily congratulates everything that increases the country’s visibility offshore. However, Animistic Beliefs is not overrated. With colorful makeup and playful costumes, their appearance is as loud as their music. Almost all publications about them say that the duo always fills rooms with wild partygoers, who treat the set as if it is a rite of passage. However, the two are openly queer, and due to the homophobic sentiments that still populate the mindset of the majority of the country, only a niche group of Indonesian youngsters celebrate Animistic Beliefs as the peak of local representation.

Furthermore, I’m not sure that any DJs from Indonesia’s rural towns recognize funkot’s international fame, or even profit from it. Popular grassroots music in Indonesia’s small towns – such as dangdut and koplo – are typically spread the same way as folk songs: no credit for the creators, but everyone knows the songs. Also, everyone is welcome to perform, record, remix, or butcher the songs in any way and even profit from it.

A MUTEK article says that gabber is taking over Montreal. I can’t help but wonder, will the involvement of Animistic Beliefs, and other artists with diverse backgrounds in this year’s event open the gate for more interesting electronic music that is yet to be discovered by the global audience?

Norient is media partner of MUTEK 2023 in Montréal, Canada.

Biography

Gisela Swaragita is a journalist for Indonesian national newspaper, «The Jakarta Post», focusing on music, film, art, literature, travel, and other related topics. Born and raised in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, Gisela started writing from an early age, and has strong connections across pop culture, media, and activism. She also plays bass, sings, and writes songs for dreampop band Seahoarse. Follow her on LinkedIn, and on her Website.

Published on August 15, 2023

Last updated on October 17, 2023

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Filmstill: Singeli Movement: Greed for Speed (Jan Moszumanski, Poland/Tanzania 2022).

The Dance Floor Is My Office

Short Essay

by Lutivini Majanja

Singeli is a genre of fast-paced electronic Tanzanian music born out of a fusion of taarab, bongo flava, and mchiriku music. In this essay, our author takes a closer look at Polish filmmaker Jan Moszumański’s film Singeli Movement: Greed for Speed and uses it as a starting point for a reflection on the genre’s grounding in the digital age and the dissonances embedded deep in its music.

The first time I listened to singeli music, I became nostalgic about a popular Kenyan practice called disco matanga (funeral disco). During night vigils and following burials, mourners break into song and dance either accompanied by musicians or any popular recorded dance music blaring from vibrating loudspeakers. Disco matangas are both embraced and reviled; at best they are positively cathartic and uplifting for those who grieve, but they can be sites of excess – drunkenness, lasciviousness, and misconduct. Singeli music has a unique tone and rhythm, but to me, singeli serves a similar function, marshaling dissonant performers and their audiences – all of them disenfranchised – to a place of connection and surprising harmony.

The dissonance in the sound of singeli music is striking. In the film, it is best articulated by producer Jay Mitta, who, discussing the relationship between performers and audience, says that as the music is played, «we both get crazy; me when playing, and you dancing». I experience singeli as a generation’s response to multiple ruptures.

This Show Is for All of You

A few minutes into Singeli Movement: Greed for Speed we meet MC Makaveli, proclaiming in Kiswahili to his audience at an open-air concert in Dar es Salaam, «this show is for all of you, it’s for all of us, the children of uswahilini neighborhoods. Singeli Movement will play singeli music. This is the place of singeli, from Mburahati to Manzese. The others are only copying us». His words ring true throughout this 60-minute documentary, delving into singeli’s roots, creators, and reception in Dar es Salaam, as examined through close-up encounters with artists, producers, and enthusiastic fans.

Artists like Anti Vairas, Memory Card, and Kadilida (card reader) have names that point to the necessary accoutrements of urban life; the little bits one hassles for to create this music, to make oneself legible and build a fanbase. These names also contextualize singeli’s grounding in a digital age unlike that of previous generations’ social and economic environments. Though singeli carries musical influences from the past, there are neither western nor local traditional instruments used directly in the music. Digital equipment and electronic sound are bridges where barriers to making music are overcome. In these musicians’ worlds, proximity to modern technology is a significant determinant of one’s ability to progress.

Singeli has emerged from the bare minimum; through Moszumański’s lens we see how singeli music is produced using well-worn keyboards, dated computer monitors, and rasping loudspeakers. A cameraman improvises a professional lighting umbrella with a shirt resting atop his head, gently wrapping the handheld camera to get the desired shot. Though these artists work under incredible resource constraints, these aren’t limitations; they are the sauce that catalyzes the resultant music and music videos.

Sites of Entertainment

Connections between singeli performers and their audiences can be tenuous. Even though singeli has been associated with uhuni1 and other negative anti-social behavior, the focus returns to the strong positive testimonials of the achievements singeli music has enabled. These musicians’ growing global appeal is one example. In the film, Nana, a dancer, expresses her frustration by saying, «people look down on dancers to a point that it hurts. They should respect me and the fact that this is a job like any other. For anyone who leaves their home and goes to work, the same goes to me… For me the dance floor is my office». Listening to Nana, I recognize the conflicts arising from the fact that her and other dancers’ bodies are sites of entertainment.

I imagine even now, as people move along the streets of Mburahati Dar es Salaam, Sisso and other studios are abuzz with continuous recording sessions, launching careers and churning out new songs. When dusk sets in, chirping crickets layer their sounds, easing the transition to nighttime and contrasting with the day’s up-tempo beats. I’m curious to see how this music evolves and how these streets will be changed as more of its creators find prominence in Tanzania and globally.

1. Swahili term that refers to aimlessness, hooliganism.

«Singeli Movement: Greed for Speed» has been officially selected for the 12^th Norient Festival 2023 and celebrated its world premiere at the festival in Bern, Switzerland.

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Biography

Lutivini Majanja is a writer from Nairobi, Kenya. She has fiction and non fiction published in various publications. She participated in Sound of Nairobi’s City Walk’s 2019 workshop. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Follow her LinkedIn, and on her Website.

Published on January 04, 2023

Last updated on March 13, 2024

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