25MIDDlE EAst REPoRt
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FALL 2011
The Grand (Hip-Hop) Chessboard
Race, Rap and Raison d’État
Hishaam Aidi
I
n November 2006, the lm
Te Making o a Kamikaze
b Nouri Bouzid, a respected unisian director, was screenedto great anare at the Carthage Film Festival. Te lm, acollaboration between the French Ministr o Foreign Aairsand the unisian Ministries o Interior, Deense and Culture,eamines the grievances o unisian outh through the stor o a oung hip-hopper named Chokri, better known b hisb-bo moniker, Bahta. Te lm opens in a coastal town where Bahta and his crew—made up o other unemploedouths—roam the streets, hounded b baton-wielding police,looking or a spot to practice. Te atmosphere is tense, therustration palpable. Te United States has just invaded Iraq,and satellite-channel broadcasts in homes and caés speak o occupation and resistance. A gangl, volatile outh, Bahta splitshis time watching television, dancing and seeking a boat tosmuggle him across the Mediterranean Sea to Ital. But dueto the Iraq war, the Italians have tightened their naval patrols;ver ew
harraga
(boat people) are getting across. As doorsclose in his ace, and police maltreatment increases, Bahtaturns to pett crime, angr outbursts and wack behavior, inone scene moonwalking across a caé oor in a stolen policeuniorm, loudl promising all the patrons passports so the cantravel legall. He eventuall alls in with a crowd o Islamists, who drill him with sermons about the sinulness o music,democrac and the West, wooing him toward martrdom.
Making
was mauled b French critics—“unconvincing,”“politicall correct”—and not without reason: Te charactersare caricatures, the break-dance scenes are routine and the paceplodding. Te Islamists’ tirades, which aim to show precisel how a suicide bomber is made, are in particular need o editing.Finall, the lm’s posing o hip-hop and Islamism as mutuall eclusive opposites is ver simplistic, overlooking the denserelationship between the two countercultures: Islamists listento hip-hop, and rappers with Islamist—even jihadi—smpa-thies abound. Te plot implies that both countercultures area reaction to authoritarianism, but as the lm was producedand marketed b organs o Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s policestate, the question arises whether the regime’s preerredcounterculture—hip-hop—has become a mechanism o statecontrol. Te most interesting parts o
Making
come when Lot Abdelli, who plas Bahta, drops out o character and stormso the set to conront lmmaker Bouzid. Te ensuing grain,documentar-stle ootage purports to show “the making o”the lm itsel. Abdelli asks wh he, an up-and-coming actor, isbeing told that dancing is
haram
and wh his character is beingturned into a terrorist. “Where are ou taking this lm? you’reusing this lm to attack Muslims.” Worried it will land himin trouble, he shouts, “I’m not our puppet!” Bouzid calml eplains his secular worldview—religion and politics shouldbe kept separate—and Abdelli resumes his role.It is unclear wh Bouzid inserted these awkward snippets.Perhaps he did so to signal that he had little wiggle room inreecting the Ben Ali regime’s secular outlook and the CultureMinistr’s vision o hip-hop as a counter to jihadi thought.Te lm went on to win the regime’s accolades, including theGolden anit at the Carthage eposition, which is put on b thestate. Praised or its eposure o the “process o brainwashing”used b jihadi groups,
Making
would be shown in Europeanand North Arican cities. Te Pakistani Ministr o Cultureco-sponsored a screening at the unisian embass in Islamabad.State ocials and diplomats introducing the lm reiteratedthe message that hip-hop is the antithesis o radical Islamism,perhaps even the antidote to it. What
Making
let out was not just the possibilit o Islamisthip-hop, but also o outh music directed against the regime,and it was precisel those two trends that rose to the ore asBen Ali’s dominion began to crumble in late December 2010.Te regime had long harassed dissident rappers, banningMohammed Jandoubi—aka Pscho M—an artist with Islamistsmpathies, rom the airwaves, in part or a track ehortinglisteners to pick up Kalashnikovs and shoot Nouri Bouzidor his negative depiction o Islam in
Making
. In December,Pscho M, who had a large ollowing on Facebook, stirredmore controvers with “Manipulation,” in which he angril attacked Western imperialism, ocial unisian
laïcité
, thecountr’s personal status code (which bans the headscar inschools) and a range o secular gures rom Voltaire and Marto Nasser and Atatürk. B the time mass protests spread in earl Januar, other unisian rappers with varing political perspec-tives—DJ Costa, Armada Bizerta, Lak—had posted trackson Facebook capturing the growing rage and memorializingMohamed Bouazizi, the man who had set himsel on re. Teregime switl issued warnings to the artists and shut downtheir Facebook pages. At 3 am on Januar 6, the police burstinto the home o Hamada Ben Amor, 22, the rapper knownas El General. His track, “Mr. President” (
Rais Lebled
)—anopen letter to Ben Ali ecoriating the lack o reedom and
Hishaam Aidi
is contributing editor o
Souls: A Critical Journal o Black Culture,Politics and Societ
at Columbia University’s Institute or Research in Arican AmericanStudies. Aidi was a Carnegie Scholar in 2008–2009, and is currently a Fellow at the Open Society Institute.
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