How one song got an entire music genre banned in Egypt

The Take podcast explores the history behind mahraganat’s biggest hits, and its biggest controversy.

Mahraganat

Egypt’s low-tech, high-energy mahraganat music blasted out of the shantytowns to top the global charts on SoundCloud and rack up hundreds of millions of views on YouTube. But one slip-up at a massive concert in Cairo threw the entire genre’s future into question.

In this episode, we hear from Mina Girgis, an Egyptian ethnomusicologist based in the United States.

The team:

Alexandra Locke produced this episode with Dina Kesbeh, Priyanka Tilve, Ney Alvarez, Amy Walters, and Malika BIlal. Alex Roldan was the sound designer. Natalia Aldana is the engagement producer. Stacey Samuel is The Take’s Executive Producer and Graelyn Brashear is Al Jazeera’s Head of Audio.

Special thanks to Teresa Cotsirilos.

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Source: Al Jazeera

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