Cairo Pop: Youth Music in Contemporary Egypt

(Paperback)

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Cairo Pop is the first book to examine shababiyya, the dominant popular music of Egypt that plays incessantly in Cairo, even while Egyptian youth joined in mass protests against their government. Daniel J. Gilman, who lived in Cairo at the time of the revolution, analyzes the relationship between massmediated popular music, modernity, and nationalism in the Arab world.

Reviews

"Ignored by scholars and disdained by the local intelligentsia as fluff, Egyptian pop (shababiyya) videos are streamed nonstop on local satellite television and loved by millions throughout the Middle East. Daniel J. Gilmans is the first serious scholarly account of Egyptian pop, and it is a tour de force. Based on interviews with Cairo fans, he manages to convince us of shababiyyas significance, explain its position in the music hierarchy, and explain why young listeners so appreciate its sincerity and its modernity. An essential read." Ted Swedenburg, University of Arkansas

"An erudite examination of the interplay among pop culture, society and national identity."George de Stefano, Pop Matters

"Gilman succeeds in taking on a huge task, parsing out at an exceptional level the relationships found between a variety of musical styles and their fan bases. Indeed, by querying What is Egyptian music he is in truth raising a far greater question, namely: What is Egypt (p. 127)."Middle East Media and Book Reviews Online

"This books timeliness and relevance to contemporary Egyptian social and political forces make it an essential read for anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists interested in the contemporary Middle East."Ethnomusicology

Author Bio

Daniel J. Gilman is assistant professor of anthropology at DePauw University.