At Foreign Policy‘s Mideast Channel, Lauren E. Bohn has an interview with the Tunisian hip hop artist El General (also known as Hamada Ben Amor) whose song “Rayes Lebled” landed him in jail during the January uprising and became an anthem for revolutionaries in Tunisia and the region. Not long ago, this blogger complained about Robin Wright’s essentialist approach to hip hop in the Arab countries in her lackluster new book, Rock the Casbah (Issandr El Amrani complains that the review forgot to mock the title; but how easy would it be to make fun of its goofy title when its chapters have titles like “Extreme Makeover” and “The Scent of Jasmine”?) Even the short introduction to Bohn’s interview with Ben Amor is more edifying than Wright’s chapter on the subject. (Note: After this post goes up, this may sounds like hyperbole.) Today there is a lot of Arab hip hop that testifies to the brilliant internationalism of hip hop and how art as a people’s propaganda, far more overtly than its contemporary American or European cousins. The interview brings this out well.
Ben Amor has much to say and readers should look at the interview. Interestingly, but not really surprisingly he cites Tupac Shakur and the Algerian rapper (little known in the English speaking world, unfortunately) Lotfi Double Kanon as major influences. He rejects a catch all sort of self-identification. One can be more than one “thing” at once; one can be unique and have more a few things in common with those “different” from one’s self. One have beliefs and convictions in common with others and still carry on his his own way. Continue reading
