Sayed Mahmoud ponders on the significance of shaabi songs in Egypt's artistic scene Although most Egyptians think of shaabi as any of the numerous variations on folk songs, a few of us know a bit more about the lives and culture of the songwriters, many of whom still live in virtual obscurity and far as the mass media. In the backstreets of Cairo, however, some of the shaabi, or working class, singers have achieved cult status. People play their CDs at home, their cassettes reel out on minibuses and DJs at street weddings know their songs by heart. Some shaabi singers see themselves as the heirs of the musical tradition once upheld by the likes of Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb, Shafiq Galal and Mohamed Rushdi. But many trace their genre to a more recent origin like the phenomenal Mohamed Adaweya, who took the music scene by storm in the 1970s. Many consider Adaweya to be the towering figure of shaabi music. It used to be that the radio had a listening committee. This committee was the final arbiter of good taste. It decided who would go on air and who could not, and it even graded singers according to how refined and classy they were. The same committee also vetted lyrics to decide which were suitable for the general public. When Adaweya appeared, he could not make it past this committee. His songs were never approved for radio, but they made their way through every nook and cranny of Egyptian pop culture. Soon Adaweya was a phenomenon, a figure of controversy, idolised by thousands and jeered by the elitist few. His popularity disturbed many of his contemporaries and shook the assumptions that the intellectual elite used to make. His tradition lives on to this day. The story of shaabi has been told in a documentary recently screened at the Film Culture Centre on Sherif Street in Downtown Cairo. The documentary, entitled simply Shaabi, was made by the young director Ahmed Rahhal. Perhaps fittingly, Rahhal has not undergone formal cinema training. Still an undergraduate at the College of Commerce, Rahhal attended some free lectures about filmmaking at the Cinema Cultural Palace in Garden City, a facility run by the Ministry of Culture. Speaking after the screening of his documentary, Rahhal told the audience that the lectures were "utterly useless". However he acknowledged that they gave him the chance to have useful discussions with successful directors, including Samir Seif. Shaabi features encounters with contemporary backstreet singers Mahmoud El-Leithi, Mahmoud El-Husseini, Nasser Saqr, El-Arabi El-Saghir, and Abdel-Baset Hammouda, as well as commentary by mainstream musicians including Mohamed Nouh and Moudi El-Imam. The film was produced on a shoestring budget, with Rahhal practically begging for voluntary help from his artist friends. Consequently, there are some flaws in the audio and editing, especially in scenes of street weddings. And although the film could have benefited tremendously from archival footage, there is nearly none. In the whole, the film comes across as a piece of investigative video journalism. Rahhal says that he was not able to find a producer to finance his project, and maintains that the technical flaws add to the film's charm. Interestingly, all the shaabi singers he interviewed seem to have a sense of mission. They all claimed to care more for the "moral message" of their songs than for financial gain. And they resented the haughtiness with which they are generally regarded. They know that they are not as successful as, say, Amr Diab, but they believe that their genre of art is at least as relevant. One well-known musician who made it to the top on a blend of pop and oriental music is Mohamed Nouh, and he is not willing to give the shaabi singers the credit to which they aspire. In the film, Nouh says: "Pop singing always existed in Egypt, but the defeat of Egypt in the 1967 war spawned two genres of singing: one that aimed to lift people's spirits and restore their confidence, and one that tried to take people's minds from the defeat." Nouh believes that his song Madad Madad (Come and Help) and the Sheikh Imam collection were of the first type, while Adawiya's Habba Foq We Habba Taht (Little Above and Little Below) was basically an exercise in escapism. Moudi El-Imam, another famous pop musician, disagrees. He believes that current shaabi singing can be traced back to Sayed Darwish, the great early 20-century singer and composer. Darwish sang for all strands of society, rich and poor. He even wrote songs about drugs, ridiculing them but without condemning their use altogether, El-Imam notes in his filmed testimony. The film introduces us to the songs of shaabi crooner Abdel-Baset Hammouda, a man who claims to bear the mantle of the Adaweya tradition. Hammouda boasts of his musical feats, saying that he was the first to record his music from live wedding performances. The 20-something Mahmoud El-Leithi, another shaabi singer who appears in the same film, says he feels uncomfortable in a studio, and does not like to be restricted to the formalised manners of singing. His songs fuse the religious singing tradition with romance, Algerian Rai music and Indian music. Through this music, he says, he is trying to entice the young to explore the "meaning of Sufi love". Hammouda scoffs at this idea, saying that religious singing and pop love songs should be kept apart. The film evokes the musical revival of the 1980s mood, when madih nabawi (praise of the prophet) became particularly popular. In this genre of singing, musical instruments are used mainly as wallpaper, not to distract the listeners from the virtuosity of the singer. Quite a few religious singers became prominent doing this type of singing, including Yassin El-Tohami and Ahmed El-Barin in southern Egypt and El-Arabi Farhan El-Belbeisi and Youssef Sheta in the Delta area. There is a sense of affront, however, that people experience once the shaabi singers start remixing the oldies, which they often do. Nasser Saqr, one of the singers interviewed for the film, remixes Umm Kolthoum songs in a way that some may find unappealing. Hammouda and El-Arabi El-Saghir are against tampering with the music of such an icon of Egyptian singing. Having seen shots of shaabi weddings, in which crowds of young people dance to the remixed tunes of Hadhihi Laylati (This is My Night) by Umm Kolthoum, singer Mahmoud El-Leithi says that the remix was quite acceptable. But Mahmoud El-Husseini, the man who released the hit Al-Abd Wal Sheitan (The Slave and the Demon) on U-Tube, says that those who want to listen to Umm Kolthoum should listen to the original. Saqr says he is remixing the oldies to bring them closer to current taste. The film ends with Nouh saying that singing is in crisis, and that this reflects the deterioration and deconstruction of Egyptian society as a whole. In the seminar held after the film, the audience agreed with Nouh's rather elitist assessment. Some among the audience noted that the film ignored the production side in the industry. Others said the film should have interviewed the real lovers of shaabi songs; namely the taxi and minibus drivers. Rahhal maintains that the film is only a part of a bid to explore various forms of grassroots singing.
