Int. J. Middle East Stud.

51 (2019), 233–256
doi:10.1017/S0020743819000035

Andrew Simon

C E N S U R I N G SO U N D S : TA P E S , TA S T E , A N D T H E
C R E AT I O N O F E GY P T I A N C U LT U R E

Abstract
In this article, I argue that audiocassette technology decentralized state-controlled Egyptian media
long before the advent of al-Jazeera and the Internet. By enabling any citizen to become a cultural
producer, as opposed to a mere consumer, the mass medium and its users sparked significant anx-
iety in the mid-to-late 20th century, when contentious cassette recordings led many local critics to
assert that “vulgar” tapes were poisoning public taste, undermining high culture, and endangering
Egyptian society. This article breaks down these arguments and shows that audiotapes actually
broadcast a vast variety of voices. Thus, underlying many criticisms of cassette content, I contend,
was not simply a concern for aesthetic sensibilities but a desire to dictate who created Egyptian cul-
ture during a time of tremendous change. By unpacking these discussions, this article harnesses
Egypt as a case study to enhance prevailing investigations of sound, popular culture, and mass
media in Middle East studies.

Keywords: Egypt; history; media; popular culture; sound

During the 1970s and the 1980s, commentaries abounded in the Egyptian press on the
downfall of music, the end of high culture, and the death of taste. Writers cited select
developments in the cultural arena to support consistently dire assessments. State-
controlled radio, once the major producer of “refined” songs, was releasing fewer and
fewer musical numbers, while a number of state-sanctioned performers passed away.1
To make matters worse, Egypt lost one of its premier sites for creating and consuming
high national culture. Cairo’s Opera House, built by Khedive Ismaʿil in 1869, was
reduced to embers in 1971. The venue’s doors did not open again until 1988. Finally,
the very style of songs was evolving. Long ballads, once in vogue, increasingly lost
ground to shorter tunes. Egypt’s soundscape, in short, was changing and many writers
did not approve of the new direction in which it was heading. It was in this transitory cli-
mate that audiotapes carrying contentious content, most notably popular (shaʿbi) music,
became public enemy number one for a wide range of critics who held the everyday tech-
nology accountable for poisoning public taste.
Artists, scholars, and censors, journalists, politicians, and physicians, all attacked cas-
sette recordings in Egypt, where the mass medium, they maintained, played an integral
role in molding the taste of countless citizens. At first glance, audiotapes deemed to be

Andrew Simon is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.;
e-mail: andrew.g.simon@dartmouth.edu

© Cambridge University Press 2019 0020-7438/19

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