'Mahraganat', the young music of the Egyptian suburbs that worries the authorities

Islam Chipsy, one of the fashionable musicians thanks to the 'mahraganat' David Degner / GETTY

Despite its immense popularity in Egypt, the origins of

, a

popular

music

that sparks all manner of passions in the country and region, remain a mystery.

His first known clue, however, came in 2007 in an internet café in Medinat El Salam, a working-class suburb of Cairo, where the youth of the neighborhood went to drown their free time.

It was there that Dj Figo, now an icon, discovered a

free music

with which he could begin to experiment and create new very basic rhythms influenced by

music.

, another popular genre with a strong incitement to dance, and marked by the pressure and daily struggles of the punished youth of the periphery of Cairo.

His first score has already caused a sensation.

“Suddenly Dj Figo discovered that the track had traveled to all the internet cafes in the neighborhood, and that all the boys wanted to have it,” recalls Mahmoud Refat, founder of a small independent production company 100 Copies, who has collaborated with the

most famous

singers

in the world. country.

• The music that dodged the noise of the Arab Spring

Spurred on by the test of Dj Figo, another more poetic artist from a nearby neighborhood, Amr Haha, then produced a more elaborate track, Refat evokes.

But not wanting to leave his neighborhood behind, Dj Figo wanted to go a step further and realized that he could use the cyber's precarious microphone headphones to record voice in the

.

The result,

, is the first

known

.

The genre was born in the same working-class neighborhoods of the Egyptian capital that gave birth to

music

in the difficult 1970s, marked by the aggressive neoliberal policies of the Anwar El Sadat regime.

But its singers intentionally distance themselves from this genre to claim their own as belonging to their generation, with a

different

, faster music, simple voices and particular motifs.

Its turning point came in 2010. At that time, the genre was deeply rooted in its neighborhoods, and it was thanks to the commitment of producers such as 100 Copies that its compositions began to become more sophisticated and its singers began to appear at festivals.

The revolution of 2011 further favored its emergence.

"This was the future, and we had to work on it as the music that it is, not just as something social, reserved for celebrations, punctual", Refat considers.

As the

has become popular, it has inevitably attracted the attention of suspicious Egyptian authorities, who with their usual paternalistic attitude have launched various campaigns to discredit and silence the genre under the pretext of being vulgar, denigrating and out of touch. they consider the "Egyptian values".

On the opposite spectrum, there are also those who criticize the genre for its apparent lack of political awareness.

The

is neither the legend of the Arab song Um Kalthum nor the Cairokee group.

But it has no intention of being.

Official Puritanism

"You can't say that

singers

are apolitical because their life is very political," observes Mariam Diefallah, a feminist activist and blogger who closely follows the scene.

"Living in working-class neighborhoods, wandering around trying to find work, dealing with not being able to marry your girlfriend because you can't afford it, talking about drugs and erectile dysfunction, all of this is definitely political," he adds.

"They are criticizing their conditions and they are recovering their neighborhoods and they are saying that these are important and influential, and they force many people to know about these problems," he slides.

The regime's last major campaign against

was launched in February, when the ruling Musicians' Union tried to ban it in some establishments after two popular singers sang, during a packed Valentine's Day party in Cairo, the lyrics of the song

(the neighbors' daughter), who prays that if the girl leaves them they will start drinking alcohol and smoking hashish.

An unacceptable reference in the eyes of the purist union, which this September has returned to the load with a list of

songs

that it wants to ban on the radio.

One more example of the persecution and censorship of art and artists by the regime of Abdelfatá al Sisi.

“Before singing, [they] have to respect the law and go to the union to be told if they are valid.

From then on there is no problem, ”says Saad El Metwally, the union's legal advisor, who adds, yes, that the lyrics have to respect“ the limits of morality ”.

The proof of the movement's success took just a month to come.

In March, another popular

singer

, Hamo Bika, won YouTube's creator award by reaching 1 million subscribers.

And

has already accumulated 410 million views.

“If you look at the music and the lyrics, you can find parallels with other genres from other parts of the world, like rap or

.

This music, often associated with working-class neighborhoods, is easy to put aside [and consider] that it is not music or not real culture, ”says Diefallah.

"But

music

not be controlled."

“I have a lot of respect for elitist culture, very conceptual art,” Refat says, “[but] now, if I don't have an impact on my culture, I think we are doing something wrong, and to have that impact a certain reality is required, especially in Egypt, where life is very hard ”.

"So

not be pretty," he adds, "but it is what it is."

"This is the language of the street, and if we turn our back on it, we will not understand the future and we will not understand where we are."