Director: Hind Meddeb.
Running Time: 77 minutes.
Synopsis: A peek into the underground world of a music craze that has taken Egypt’s youth by storm with its pulsating beats and revolutionary lyrics.
Hind Meddeb’s latest documentary is a noble attempt at exploring Cairo’s new musical counterculture in the wake of the Arab Spring. It tells the tale of angry young men who express their hopes and fears through their lyrics, adopting hip hop personas and creating a soundtrack to the revolution going on around them.
Despite clocking in at just under 80 minutes, it still feels a little too long and would have made a great short on BBC Four at half an hour, or 45 minutes tops. It could have been tight and quick, swiftly cut in the spirit of the music. Instead, we get plenty of padding as Meddeb delves too deep into the lives of various MCs and musicians.
Oka and Ortega – a sort of Egyptian Rizzle Kicks – are the central point of the film as they seek fame and recognition. We see that all the local kids know their name and music, but they’ve made no money due to constant institutionalised pirating. So when opportunity knocks, their colleague Weza – an older MC who is perhaps a little less marketable – doesn’t want to be left behind. Do they take the money and run, leaving behind their friend and, perhaps, their integrity? This tale of aspiration and bitterness feels like an Xtra Factor/ITV2 style spin-off from the main thrust of the story, which is the idea of creating a soundtrack to a revolution, and the two themes don’t gel very well.
The cultural investigation is more interesting and far too much time is spent on the personal journeys of the musicians at hand. Time would have been better spent looking at the everyday lives of young people since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, or as they call themselves in song, ‘The Children of January 25th’. The only women Meddeb talks to are the mothers and grandmothers of our male protagonists and there are no female musicians featured. Quite why this is the case is never explored – it is unclear whether any female musicians wished to take part, or even whether women are encouraged to perform in this genre. If more time was spent investigating these issues rather than looking around the bedrooms of various boys, a richer experience would have been had.
Electro Chaabi is rising out of the clubs and into wedding receptions and daytime TV, and will likely find a global audience thanks to diaspora and the internet. The fusion of hip hop and traditional music appeal to ever-widening communities, most likely due to the angry lyrics that decry the hopeless future many people face, which is extremely relatable – despite them using auto-tune like it’s going out of fashion. Primarily though, the problem is that the film focuses too much on the individuals making the music rather than the reasons behind it. We understand that these kids are angry, but we should find out more about why – and Meddeb barely scratches the surface.
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