MofA Week 10.
Music and Politics: hegemony, and resistance
Distinguish:
- music of hegemony and music of resistance
- explicitly political and implicitly political
- the music of politics and the politics of music
Shaykh Imam
This Egyptian singer (b. 1918), raised in the singer-shaykh tradition, became Egypt's most well-known political singer after 1962, in collaboration with poet Ahmed Fu'ad Negm.
Song: "Guevara Died" (composed 1967: Ahmed Fu'ad Negm and Shaykh Imam).
Performed by contemporary revival group Eskanderalla.
Guevara has died, Guevara has died
Late-breaking news, all the radios cried
And in the churches
And the mosques
In the alleys
And the streets
In cafes and the bars:
Guevara has died
Guevara has died
Voices ply endless ropes of speech...
Paragon of fighters, now dead and gone
Aah, sign a hundred for the loss of men!
In thickets deep the young swain perished
still atop his firing gun
Dead and giving body to his fight
He did it all in silence
No drummers explode in ragged sound
No communique goes sailing round
What do you think (your wealth and might live long!),
You antique and twisted gnomes?
Your bodies oozing, fed so well
On tasty morsels and trappings
You, sitting comfy, cozily warm
Tho' firing up your heaters still:
Garish showy dopes
With your polished nodding pates...
Music and Palestine
Massad, Joseph (2003). Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music. Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3. (Spring, 2003), pp. 21-38.
Marcel Khalife
Musical activism, musical controversy
Political songs, in collaboration with Mahmoud Darwish (Voyageur)
Music and freedom of expression: "I am Joseph, oh my father"
Criticism from the left: politics of musical aesthetics (Colla, Elliott and Robert Blecher. (1996) A New World Order, a New Marcel Khalife. Middle East Report, No. 199, Turkey: Insolvent Ideologies, Fractured State. (Apr. - Jun., 1996), pp. 43-44.)
