Mahraganat music emerged in Cairo from the brief convergence of Egypt’s 2011 uprising and its bitter aftermath
He had been detained and tortured by central security officers in the chaotic 18 days preceding the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi. In that period,existed as a club of sorts; a clearly defined area with its own border controls and unifying ideology, and multiple platforms for a wide array of musical acts flourishing on and riffing off the commonalities that had united the most disparate of audiences.
Deemed a new sound for a new nation, not intended for any particular venue, but dominating the ones in which it was played, the mahraganat phenomenon saw its performers, who had shaped the genre out of their frustration at being marginalised, lifted to the peak of national cultural exposure. Despite the connotation thrust upon it, mahraganat was the sound of the extreme political apathy felt by an overwhelming segment of the young Egyptian population — a sound that happened to burst through its bubble as the nation’s institutions caved in on themselves.
The fact that live performances were not held in ambassadors’ residencies or downtown clubs, but in the back alleys and outer, informal neighbourhoods that originally inspired such furious sounds, showed this. Much like the combination of heavy autotune, ear-piercing sirens, distortedly deep bass lines, and synthesised drum rolls sums up a total disregard for any basic rules of musical composition, the concerts in which these sounds were unleashed represented, and celebrated, a total disengagement from the wider cultural and political, scene, and then, a triumph over it — a burst of confidence that was certainly reinforced by the absence of authority that followed the uprising.
In other spaces, such as Prince 2 in Giza’s Mohandessin district, a different sort of dissonance could be seen. This mirror-walled venue, which exists after hours in an otherwise wholesome commercial shopping mall in the heart of a middle-class suburb, is an example of the profit-friendly, anything-goes approach of post-revolutionary Egypt.
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