Intersectionality and Injustice in the Wartime Economy of Aleppo (2013)

Here is an essay I wrote last year for my "Power, Privilege, and Oppression" class at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. I think it's worth sharing, so have a look and see what you think.  

Intersectionality and Injustice in the Wartime Economy of Aleppo

by Sean O’Keefe, May 10, 2013

Introduction 

The countryside is the heartland of the Syrian Revolution. Between the first protests in Dar‘aa in March 2011 and the beginning of the armed anti-regime insurgency in October 2011, the uprising’s primary mode of resistance was mass protest and civil disobedience in rural areas and outlying suburbs. By the time the insurgency began, according to the UN, President Bashar al-Asad’s regime had killed over 3,000 Syrian civilians (BBC, 2011). Yet only two of Syria’s seven largest cities, Hama and Homs, experienced sustained popular resistance in 2011. By May 2012, when the Houla Massacre and the breakdown of a UN-sponsored truce signaled the beginning of full-scale civil war, there were already 10,000 civilian dead and 60,000 refugees in neighboring countries. In the past year, about 60,000 Syrian civilians have died, according to UN estimates (Khera, 2012). Today, 1.4 million Syrians are refugees and even more are internally displaced inside Syria itself. By the end of 2013, the UN projects, three million Syrians will be refugees and 4.5 million will be displaced inside Syria itself (UNCHR, 2013). The result has been one of the greatest human tragedies of the twenty-first century.

Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

Dear Readers,

I started this blog as a hobby in early 2011 to bring the voices of the Arab world's young people, who were calling for dignity, social justice, and a brighter future, to the widest possible audience. I’m happy to announce that I will be continuing these efforts as the Program Manager of the Munathara Initiative at its new headquarters in Tunis, where I will be moving to from Amman at the beginning of August.

Why Munathara? Most Arabs are under the age of 35, but the voices and perspectives of Arab youth are only rarely broadcast on mainstream Arabic news channels. Munathara, an independent, nonprofit, pan-Arab NGO, seeks to change that. The organization brings Arab youth together to debate important social and political issues and broadcasts these debates to audiences on the internet and satellite television. The vision is to create “an open, fair and representative Arab debating forum in which anyone can take part and voice their opinions, regardless of their social status, education or location” and to build a new Arab public sphere where young people have a full say in their societies.

I’m excited about Munathara’s work because I believe that the solutions to the challenges facing the Arab world (and the rest of the world, for that matter) can only be discovered by young people. I’m excited that I will be doing almost all of my work in Tunisian and Modern Standard Arabic. I’m also excited to work with our founder Belabbès Benkredda, our deputy director Christine German, and our amazing staff and trainers. It’s been a dream of mine to live and work in Tunis ever since January 14, 2011, and now I finally get the chance.
 
For the past three years, you’ve known me only as “Ulysses,” so let me tell you a little more about myself now. My name is Sean O’Keefe. I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington and I studied Arabic and history at the University of Chicago. Among other things, I’ve done work with youth programs in Jordan and Morocco and taught Arabic to underserved students in Seattle Public Schools with OneWorld Now!. I also am a proud member of the Class of 2014 of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, where my studies focused on humanitarian relief and international development. Recently, I’ve done field service in Amman with CARE International’s Syria Emergency Response Team and Identity Center's programming for Jordanian youth. Now, I will be devoting my time and energy to bringing what Munathara can offer to as many new participants and audiences as possible. To learn more about me and why I created my blog, please read my post "Introduction: Welcome!" as well as my "About" section.

I’m writing this post, in part, because I'm asking for your support. A big part of my job will be reaching out to people and getting them involved with Munathara. Donations are always great, of course, but we also need people to spread the word, watch the debates, become participants and supporters, and help us find new ways to make young people’s voices heard. On June 18, 2014, Munathara will be holding its #DD11 debate in Sanaa, Yemen on the motion: “Arab Women’s Participation - Only Through Quotas?” Make sure you check it out and that you keep checking back at Munathara.com in the coming weeks and months. While you're at it, don't forget to keep reading my blogs Revolutionary Arab Rap (for articles) and Revolutionary Arab Rap: The Index (for translations and subtitled videos). I’m working on a few cool side projects, including one to document every female MC making hip-hop in Arabic. Finally, thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement and their interest in my work over the past three years. I'm looking forward to what the future holds.

Sincerely,
Sean O'Keefe / Ulysses

Cultures of Resistance: Hip Hop’s Place in Palestinian Resistance

Note: This is an essay I wrote a while back for the May 2012 "Cultures of Resistance" academic workshop at the University of Exeter. Many thanks to Dr. Sophie Richter-Devroe, Polly Withers, and their colleagues at Exeter for inviting me. I've updated my essay a bit and posted it here for you to enjoy.

 What is the Palestinian Hip-Hop Community?

The Palestinian hip-hop community encompasses Palestinian artists from Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, surrounding countries and the worldwide Palestinian diaspora. While marginalization, dislocation, and occupation form the thematic core of Palestinian hip-hop, Palestine’s leading rappers cast their gaze much further. To them, any successful Palestinian resistance must also fight the wider social, economic, and political systems that keep the Israeli occupation and the Middle East's status quo in place. They call for resistance against their own leaders and identify Palestine's struggle with the Arab peoples’ uprisings against their own governments. Revolutionary rappers throughout the Middle East and the world, in turn, are associating their fights against their own societies' social injustices with the Palestinian cause – a process that Palestinian hip-hop artists encourage and amplify. 

Wednesday, Feb 29 at Univ. of East London: Meet 3 Arab Rap Superstars

If you're in London (or simply on the internet), you have an opportunity to meet 3 of world's greatest Arabic hip-hop MCs: Libya's Ibn Thabit, Egypt's Deeb, and Iraq and Canada's the Narcicyst. For you Ibn Thabit fans, this will be Ibn Thabit's first public appearance since he revealed his face and retired from hip-hop in November.

On Wednesday, February 29 from 6:30pm to 8:00pm GMT, Lecture Hall WBG.02 (click here for map) on the University of East London's Docklands campus will host an event called "Rap and the Arab Spring." The campus is across the street from the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) Cyprus Station, and they'll have signs to direct you from there. If you can't make it, you can still watch the event LIVE (details will be posted here) through a streaming broadcast from OpenDemocracy.net (1:30pm on the US East Coast, 7:30pm in Libya and Western Europe, 8:30pm in Egypt and Eastern Europe, 9:30pm in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, etc.)

Bassam Gergi and the folks at OpenAwakening and OpenDemocracy.net have worked hard and put together a fabulous panel, so please show them your support by attending tonight's event or tuning in online. You'll be glad you did. Ibn Thabit, Deeb, and Narcy are more than just sick MCs. They're three remarkable young activists, analysts, and poets who understand how social change in the Middle East really works. I've got videos, links, and descriptions after the jump, so check those out, too!

How Has the "Arab Spring" Changed Arabic Hip Hop?

Big shout-out to Bassam Gergi and the OpenDemocracy and OpenAwakening people for publishing my article. Thanks! Click here to see the article on OpenDemocracy.net.

Ever since "Arab Spring" became the dominant shorthand for the revolutionary uprisings that began in December 2010, writers have been taking issue with the term. Rami Khouri considers the phrase dehumanizing and Orientalist because it downplays the agency, initiative, and courage of people fighting for dignity against brutal, authoritarian regimes. Seasons just happen, but people make revolutions happen. In Arabic, the most common terms are intifada (uprising), sahwa (awakening), and thawra (a revolt or revolution). In English, I think the phrase "the Arab uprisings" works best because, with the partial exceptions of Libya and Tunisia, these events have not fundamentally transformed any country's social relations, political dynamics, or power structures. There have not been any revolutions yet. The injustices and deprivations that inspired the revolts remain largely intact, as does the influence of the local elites and international interests who have run the Arab world into the ground. The past year has witnessed a remarkable flowering of social and political consciousness in the Arab world.

In 2011, Arabic hip-hop, much like the Arab world itself, did not see any fundamental changes to the power structures than govern it. While the Arab uprisings certainly strengthened the social and political consciousness of Arabic hip-hop, that consciousness was already quite strong before 2011. The Arab uprisings gave Arabic hip-hop a new energy, vitality, and inter-connectedness, but except in Libya and perhaps Tunisia, they have not sparked any "revolutions" in the Arab world's hip-hop scenes.  

The Diaspora and the International Media

The Arab uprisings have changed Arabic hip-hop by greatly raising the profile of Arab rappers across the world and spurring intensive collaboration among them. As the producer Excentrik told Aisha Fukushima, "Yeah, there’s an Arab hip-hop scene, but it’s a global scene, it’s not like a localized scene...it’s random because it’s so big and so spread apart.” Before 2011, international coverage of Arab hip-hop artists was quite rare  The youth-driven nature of the recent uprisings, though, has made Arab rappers, especially those in the diaspora, a go-to source of insight. This can be problematic because western observers tend to overestimate Arabic hip-hop's role in the uprisings. Many also so enthusiastic about seeing Arabs adopt Western cultural forms that they often seem contemptuous of other cultures. Despite these problems, international media coverage plays a critical role in expanding Arabic hip-hop's audience, spreading the revolutionaries' message, and helping artists from across the diaspora and the Middle East forge a more unified, vibrant, and coherent Arab hip-hop movement.

My New Article in Italy's Corriere della Sera

The Milan-based daily Corriere della Sera has just published my new article about Arabic hip hop and the Arab Awakening. 

Click here to read "Hip-hop, Arab Youth, and the Arab Awakening" (En.) 

Clicca qui per leggere del mio articolo, "Cosi l'hip hop arabo ha inspirato le proteste (ma anche i regimi)" (It.)

I want to thank Serena Danna of Corriere della Sera for reaching out to me and asking me to write an article for her newspaper. It's quite an honor to see my work appear in Italy's most respected and widely read daily and I am grateful for the opportunity. Many thanks as well to Ted Swedenburg and Hani of Hot Arabic Music for their input on the article and to Realityexpress for his/her constructive criticism of my "Hip Hop Revolution" piece on OpenDemocracy.net. I think I conflated different Arabic hip hop scenes and movements a little too breezily in that piece, so I worked hard to make my Corriere article's analysis more nuanced, rigorous, and accurate. I had to jam everything that I considered essential to an introduction to Arabic hip hop into 700 words, so sometimes it felt like writing an entire article in haiku form. Fortunately, I was able to say most of what I wanted to say and I let the hyperlinks do the rest of the talking. 

I have a few other updates and things to share, as well:

#1 I have updated my El Général, Hip Hop, and the Tunisian Revolution post with some insightful comments about the Tunisian hip hop scene that SPIN's David Peisner, author of "Inside Tunisia's Hip-Hop Revolution," graciously shared with me. Check it out!

#2 I will soon be posting a lot of new song translations and subtitled videos, so please keep checking back for those. I'm also working on several more pieces about Arabic hip hop for OpenDemocracy.net that will be coming out this February.

#3 For my Corriere della Sera article, I interviewed Yaseen, a Libyan-American activist with EnoughGaddafi.com who has spent a lot of time in Libya recently. Thanks again, Yaseen! Yaseen was the person who selected the songs on the Mish B3eed mixtape that EnoughGaddafi.com released in early February 2011. For more on Mish B3eed, check out NPR's interviews with Abdulla Derrat, who did the artwork and promotion for the mixtape, on On The Media and PRI's The World. Mish B3eed is THE thing that made me an Arabic hip hop fan, so it was a lot of fun to talk to Yaseen about Libya, Ibn Thabit, MC Swat, and Arabic hip hop more generally. The following is a slightly edited transcript of our correspondence:

Hip Hop and How Arab Youth Interact With Revolution

Note: Many thanks to Bassam Gergi and the folks at OpenDemocracy for reaching out to me and kindly publishing the following piece in their Arab Awakening section. To read "Hip Hop Revolution" on OpenDemocracy, please click here.  

How Has Hip Hop Impacted the Way Young People Interact With the Revolution?

Hip hop is a fundamentally subversive genre. It has become a universal medium of social and political expression for young, dissident, and marginalized people everywhere. What Arabic hip hop has given the Arab world is a widely-accessible and unfiltered medium for disseminating revolutionary ideas. It's important not to overstate the influence of Arabic hip hop on the Arab uprisings, though. Arabic hip hop is an underground phenomenon. Since there's no real Arabic hip hop industry to speak of, Arabic-language rap artists must distribute their music online or sign with Western labels. Despite this, the genre's popularity and influence are growing remarkably fast because Arabic hip hop powerfully speaks to our desire for dignity, human rights, and a brighter future.

The Internet and the Revolution

Social media and expanded internet access weren't the cause of the Arab uprisings, but they were crucial to their success. In 2008, massive protests erupted in the southern Tunisian mining town of Redeyef. For six months, 3,000 police besieged this city of 25,000 people while its citizens bravely demonstrated against corruption and chronic unemployment. Because of the state's violent repression and its stranglehold on media outlets, the protests failed to spread or gain much attention. Without developed social networks, the thousands of Redeyef's citizens who obtained protest footage on CDs or computers had no way to let most Tunisians see it. Fahem Boukaddous, a Tunisian journalist who covered the protests, said, "In 2008, Facebook wasn't at all well-known, especially in poor cities like here." In fact, fewer than 30,000 Tunisians were on Facebook when Redeyef exploded in early 2008.  By the end of 2010, Tunisia's internet landscape had been transformed. A January 2011 survey found that Tunisia, a country of 10 million, had 1.97 million Facebook users - 18.6% of Tunisia's entire population and 54.73% of its online population. By this time, Facebook, along with YouTube and sites such as ReverbNation.com, had become the primary medium for distributing Arabic hip hop. The internet's great gift was that it allowed Tunisians and Arabs, for the first time, to effortlessly share their testimony with each other and with the world.

The Aura of Hip Hop

You can legally download almost any revolutionary Arabic hip hop song for free online - that's exactly what the artists want. As Mark Levine argues, the uncommodified, do-it-yourself character of this hip hop gives it “the aura” that pre-modernity artistic expression enjoyed.  This aura, which "previously had given art such aesthetic, and thus social power by highlighting its singularity, irreplaceable and incommensurable value, was for all practical purposes lost" because of the commercialization of the music industry in the 20th century. That's a really complicated way of saying, "Arabic rap is awesome because its rappers aren't sell-outs." Commercialization inevitably leads artists to compromise their politics and their message because every music industry is run by rich, powerful people with a huge investment in the status quo. The Arabic music industry is especially reactionary and patriarchal. "A lot of the music that comes from here, from the region, is pop," El Général told Lauren Bohn. "It's all the same and it isn't art. They're making harmful actions to arts, actually. There's no engagement. And music without engagement isn't art." Many Arab artists, including El Deeb and Arabian Knightz, have lamented how foreign media supports and promotes Arabic hip hop more than Arabic media does. The reason is simple. Arabic hip hop scares Arab elites because it's profoundly subversive, while Western elites like Arabic hip hop because it makes the revolutions seem non-radical and friendly to the West. To understand Arabic hip hop, though, you need to approach it on its own terms, not on yours.

Ibn Thabit, Libya's Leading Rapper, Retires from Hip-Hop

Note: I'm happy to announce that the wonderful Muftah.org has brought me on board and made me a contributing blogger. It's quite an honor see my blog's name next to The Moor Next Door, Kamil Pasha, and Muftah's other superstar contributing bloggers, so I'm very grateful for the opportunity.

Ibn Thabit, Libya's leading rapper, announced his retirement from hip hop this week (video here). Although Ibn Thabit is largely unknown by the Western media, he's almost universally known among the Libyan diaspora and has a big fan base in Libya itself. Ibn Thabit is the person who first got me interested in Arabic hip hop, so it's a tough moment for me and for many other fans of his as well. He doesn't give many details about his motivation or future plans in his video, but he did say this: he never wanted his music to bring him fame or money. His only goal was to help Libya overthrow Gaddafi's regime (he's not kidding - every song of his is political and Libya-focused). Now, he says, he wants to help build a new Libya in a different way. On Twitter, he wrote:

for peeps that know me, this is not gonna be a big surprise. for everyone else, jawdropper...All praise to The Merciful. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

In 2008, Ibn Thabit began posting songs on YouTube that denounced the government of Muammar al-Gaddafi and called for its overthrow. The pseudonym he chose suggests both deep piety and a respect for the wordsmith's craft, for Hassan Ibn Thabit was the favorite poet of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. Attaching his real name to his work would have led to certain arrest and torture, for Gaddafi's Libya was one of the world's most suffocating, oppressive, and arbitrary police states. Gaddafi even banned all foreign language instruction in Libya from 1986 until the mid-1990s. When 2011 began, despite Libya's great oil wealth, unemployment was at 33% and 67% of Libyans were living on less than $2 a day. This was the situation that inspired both Ibn Thabit's music and Libya's revolution. His conversations over the phone and internet with Tripoli residents about what the Tunisian Revolution might mean for Libya are what inspired the song "The Question," which he released in late January. On February 14, 2011, one day before the revolution's first protests began, Ibn Thabit released, "A Call to the Youth of Libya" (click here for the full lyrics). He has so much to say that he doesn't even bother with a chorus - the entire song is verse:

How Egypt's Rappers Warned SCAF About the Current Uprising

As you're well aware, Egypt is in the midst of a revolutionary uprising against SCAF, the ruling military junta that took over after the January 25th Revolution forced Mubarak from power. This all started on Friday, November 18 when, with parliamentary elections just a few weeks way, various currents and movements of Egyptian Islamism came together for a huge rally in Tahrir Square. They were protesting how the latest draft of the constitutional principles document gives SCAF an overwhelming and permanent influence on Egyptian politics. Most of Egypt's liberal and leftist activists decided against participating because of their differences with the Islamist movements. The Islamist demonstrators went home that night, but about 200 mostly leftist protesters set up tents and staged a modest sit-in in Tahrir to air their grievances, including SCAF's attacks on free expression, its detention of prominent activists, its imprisonment of over 12,000 civilians through military tribunals, and its utter unwillingness to begin reforming any of Egypt's major institutions (particularly the Ministry of Interior's police and security forces) and hold them to account. So when security forces cavalierly stormed the Tahrir encampment and broke it up with extreme prejudice, they unexpectedly created the spark that ignited what could very well become the Second Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

News of the violence spread immediately. Thousands of people poured into Cairo's early morning darkness to confront the security forces and re-occupy Tahrir Square. Violence, tear gas, rubber bullets, bird shot, and reported live ammunition have only inspired more people to join the protests. The past few days have seen Egypt's largest demonstrations since the January 25th Revolution - not only in Cairo but in cities throughout the country, most notably Ismailia and Alexandria. The fiercest fighting has been on Mohamed Mahmoud street, which links Tahrir Square to the nearby Interior Ministry. At least 30 people have died so far, but the protests and sit-ins and clashes have only grown in size and intensity. The protests have passed an important threshold because the security forces cannot forcefully disperse them with anything short of a horrific massacre that would destroy SCAF's ability to govern. SCAF can only get the protesters off the streets with a political solution - and the protesters know it. SCAF has therefore offered concessions by apologizing for "deaths of the martyrs" and promising to hand over power to a civilian government in June. The protesters, though, say they will not stop until SCAF steps down from power and hands the country over to a "national salvation government" that represents the full spectrum of Egyptian politics [update on November 30th: well, the elections broke up the protests in a way the security forces could not. There will definitely be more demonstrations in the coming months, though]. 

One striking aspect of the current uprising is the prescient way in which revolutionary Egyptian rappers Ramy Donjewan and Ahmed Rock of Revolution Records had threatened SCAF that it would come. Such an uprising seemed far-fetched this summer, when the revolutionaries' continuous sit-ins at Tahrir Square and aloofness from the concerns of ordinary Egyptians turned public opinion overwhelmingly against them. The Egyptian blogger Zeinobia powerfully documented their missteps in a soul-searching blog post from August 3rd. During this gloomy, demoralizing summer, Ramy Donjewan released a brash, brave, and profoundly threatening song entitled "Message to Tantawi." In the chorus, he raps in a haunting tone:

The blood of my brothers is so expensive, so precious, O Tantawi,
and we will NOT be threatened.
And what happened before can happen again, O Tantawi,
if our demands are not implemented.

El Général, Hip Hop, and the Tunisian Revolution

Update, January 2012: David Peisner, author of "Inside Tunisia's Hip-Hop Revolution," shared some great insights with me about Tunisian hip hop via email. Mr. Peisner has graciously allowed me to repost our correspondence here, so please scroll to the bottom of this article to read his comments.

Like many people, I first took notice of Arabic hip hop because of El Général and the Tunisian Revolution. The story has practically passed into mythology now. For a few critical days, a 21 year-old rapper from Sfax had a more powerful voice than the dictator of Tunisia himself. On October 23, Tunisia will hold the first truly free elections in its history when it elects a new constitutional assembly. El Général's story illuminates, with a vividness that few others can match, how Tunisia got to this point and where it might be going from here.

On November 7, 2010, Hamada Ben-Amor, a young rapper from Sfax known as "El Général," posted this jeremiad against the regime of Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on Youtube and Facebook:

Click here for the full Arabic lyrics to "Rais lebled" and their English translation

"Rais lebled" 

The video begins with a clip from Tunisian state television of Ben Ali attempting to soothe a sobbing schoolchild. The little boy, whose parents have evidently taught him something of the regime's true nature, must be terrified about being face-to-face with the dictator who destroyed so many Tunisians' lives. Ben Ali, clearly flustered, tells the child, "Why are you worried? Would you tell me something? Don't be afraid!"

Via andymorganwrites.com

The video then cuts to El Général, smoking a cigarette and hiding his face in shadows like Hal Halbrook's Deep Throat in All the President's Men. Général conceals his face with shadows, digital alterations, and a baseball cap throughout the video. Intriguingly, though, he seems to reveal enough of himself and his mannerisms to let his acquaintances (and, presumably, the secret police) figure out his real identity. El Général's friend and fellow rapper RTM told David Peisner of Spin that, "When Hamada recorded ["Rais lebled"], I tried to convince him to be worried. Rap like this may lead him to death. I tried to convince him to convey his message implicitly. He just smiled and told me he's ready for the consequences." El Général acknowledges these entreaties in "Rais lebled" when he raps, "I see so much injustice and that's why I chose to speak/even though many people told me that my end will be execution." In fact, El Général had no idea what was in store for him. "I expected it might get me in trouble but I didn't think the president would be ousted," he told Peisner. "I didn't know there would be a revolution." 

Introduction: Welcome!

Welcome to Revolutionary Arab Rap! This blog aims to explore what Arabic hip hop can tell us about the current Arab uprisings and the changing relationship between Arab citizens and their governments. My objectives are:

1. To help new audiences enjoy, understand, and celebrate Arabic hip hop.
2. To help people improve their Arabic and find resources for studying the language.
3. To provide a useful resource for people interested in high-quality journalism, social media, and academic work on the Middle East.
4. To show solidarity with Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and everywhere else where people fight for their freedom.

What I call "my blog" is actually two blogs:
1. Revolutionary Arab Rap (my main site). My posts about the key players, themes, contexts, and local scenes in the Arabic hip hop game go here.
2. Revolutionary Arab Rap: The Index (a companion site). In each post here, I provide a song's Arabic lyrics and their English translation in a Universal Subtitles video (above the jump) and in a full written text (below the jump).

Hip hop has become a universal medium of social and political expression for young, dissident, and marginalized peoples. It's helping the people of Arab world, most of whom are younger than 30, find new ways to raise their voices. It's important, though, not to overstate the influence of Arabic hip hop on the Arab uprisings. Arabic-langauge hip hop is an underground phenomenon, not a mainstream one like Al Jazeera is. There's no real hip hop "industry" to speak of in the Arab world. Arabic-language rap artists must promote their work online or sign with Western record labels. Despite all this, the genre's popularity and influence are growing remarkably fast. Rappers in Libya and Tunisia have shaken the most nightmarish of regimes to their cores. Arab hip hop is blowing up because it speaks so powerfully to Arabs' desire for dignity, human rights, and a brighter future.

Lastly, here's a couple shout-outs to people who inspired me to start this blog.

The people at Khalas/EnoughGaddafi.com: The Khalas Mixtape Vol. 1, entitled "Mish B3eed," is what made Arabic hip hop accessible and engaging to me for the first time. So I downloaded Mish B3eed and started listening to it just when the Libyan Revolution was getting started.

Ibn Thabit, @TasnimQ, and Mohammad Nabbous: The music of the Libyan rapper Ibn Thabit is opened what my eyes to Arabic hip hop. I liked his music so much - and I was so frustrated that I could find no written Arabic lyrics for it - that one day I simply started writing the words down myself. Tasnim's Ibn Thabit translations and videos inspired me to start translating them myself. Tasnim has been a wonderful mentor and she has helped me with most of my Libyan song translations. As for Mohammad Nabbous, I intently watched Libya Alhurra TV, Libya's first independent news channel, from his first broadcasts on February 19th until a sniper shot him dead on March 19th. He was a true revolutionary.

Andy Morgan, Lauren Bohn, and David Peisner are journalists who have put out the best pieces on Arabic hip hop that have appeared in Western media. In February, The Guardian published Morgan's "From fear to fury: how the Arab world found its voice." In July, Foreign Policy published Bohn's "Rapping the Revolution." In August, SPIN published Peisner's Inside Tunisia's Hip-Hop Revolution. I liked these articles because they helped make Arabic hip hop more accessible, addressed the heart of its concerns, and presented it on its own terms and with its artists' own voices. I hope to do the same with this blog.

As of posting this, I've posted the Arabic lyrics and English translation for about 20 songs (please take a look at them here). I have posts coming soon on El Général, Ibn Thabit, #Jan25, reconciliation, women in Arabic hip hop, and Islam's role in the genre, so stay tuned and follow me @ArabRevRap on Twitter. If you have any questions, topics you'd like me to treat, or songs you would like me to translate, please drop me a line via ulysses [dot] rap [at] gmail.com or Twitter. Thank you.