From the streets of Cairo where he began to rap to the boards of contemporary scenes in Europe (we saw him in 2021 on the boards in a dance performance by the Compagnie Olivier Dubois and at the Nyege Nyege festival in Paris last July) , listening to the story of rapper Shobra El General is an experience of overcoming and creation in exile. A red thread stretched throughout a furious life trajectory, the mahraganate innervates the creative muscle of Shobra.
Born in the chaos of revolutionary Egypt, this music, an improbable mix of loops drawn from the popular repertoire, incendiary lyrics and US rap culture fantasized by the Cairo street, has accompanied Shobra since he was a child: ” I started rapping in 2002, I was eleven, twelve at the time » recalls the artist. ” I was working at the time in a small shop in Cairo, which rented cassettes for weddings. I was helping with the technique at the time, I started playing songs a year later. It was then shaabi music ». The stamp, which literally means “popular” in Arabic, is a musical genre born in the working-class neighborhoods of Cairo in the 1970s. By extension, the word stamp refers to everything related to the popular classes. Coupled with the codes of US rap – a 2000 trend – it is an essential component of the mahraganat phenomenon: “ at the same time, my friends and I were following the whole American old school hip hop scene, Nas, Jay-Z, Pac, Snoop, Dre of course says Shobra. ” Eminem, The Game, DMX, Ja Rule, Busta Rhymes therefollowing. We listened to them a lot, and we completely fantasized regarding their lives. Which was not very well received in the neighborhood, as you can imagine. It was too new, too flashy compared to the very traditional gaze of those who didn’t know this movement, so we were not well seen. And at the same time, we were also very influenced by local role models. I am thinking, for example, of pioneers like the Arabians Knightz and their leader, Karim Rush, as well as Mc Amin or Kordy, one of the first to import the lowrider culture and the West Coast genre to Egypt”.
The sound of the street, and of the revolution
The term mahraganat (literally “festival” in Arabic) emerged shortly before 2011, and events related to the Egyptian revolution: “Before the advent of the genre, we had a fairly traditional rap approach. We downloaded instrumentals via the internet. In the mahraganate, imagine that the three, four pioneers of the genre then recorded themselves directly with headsets, like those you might find in cybercafés at the time. The mahraganate was born in the street. Very poor streets, where people are hungry”.
Ultra-spontaneous, impulsive and raw, stuffed with grime pranks or saturated reggaeton, the genre will upset the small networks of independent and autonomous rap in Cairo: ” more and more young people have taken up self-production as well as production. Me, initially, I took up the music of Amr Haha, the one who really created the mahraganate”. The genre will immediately become the sounding board of a street in full rebellion once morest the autocratic power of Hosni Mubarak: « When the revolution broke out, this whole generation began to sing and rap regarding the insurrection, unrest and social injustice. The mahraganat told, in music, everything that happened in the streets of Cairo”. Streets where the army had then replaced the police: the police removed their own uniforms for fear of reprisals remembers Shobra.
The local scene will then take shape: “ At the time, it was made up of Sadat, Fifty, Dj Figo and, of course, Amr Haha on the one hand, and the duo Oka & Ortega on the other… Everyone then exchanged their microphones for megaphones. Music was everywhere. The mahraganate had become a real social media, directly connected to the street”. Fans of the genre also make up a veritable small urban legion: “ the whole bourgeois and conservative fringe then feared the movement for its uncontrollable side and its outspokenness, even its frank vulgarity. The popular classes adored him.
From the streets to the studios
In the followingmath of the revolution, the mahraganat and Shobra will take the path of the studios: “ when the unrest subsided, let’s say, we then incorporated, still under the influence of Amr Haha, electronic music in our productions. The autotune also arrived at this time explains the rapper. ” The main players in the movement had quite simply acquired more experience, we had better mastered the production and recording tools. In fact, the songs got better. The bass was better, the lyrics better worked.
The scene then welcomed new activists, influenced among other things by the European electronic scenes: “ Wharftof is among those who have inflated and amplified the sound of productions in the mahraganate. This producer had his ears turned towards English clubbing, so he brought techno inspirations that hadn’t existed at all before into the scene. This opening, he also applied it to the public as well as to the actors of the stage, since at the turn of 2017, he opened the genre to women. From the start, he had this strategy of being able to bring girls into the movement, which, at the time, was not easy. Now, largely thanks to him, young female rappers are joining the mahraganate”.
One of the other mutations to date for Shobra comes from Atlanta, and it was imported to Egypt by another rapological mutant: Young Thug. ” In 2017, we discovered Young Thug. As well as Future, and all the rappers in Atlanta says Shobra El General. The arrival of the trap within the Egyptian rap scene will operate new changes. A trend that will further accentuate the relationship to the studio maintained by artists from the mahraganate: “ initially, our music was intended for the street, as well as the stage. It was all regarding energy. The arrival of the trap slowed everything down. Couldn’t rap as fast as we used to on trap productions because no one was on time, it didn’t work. The flow had to slow down, the addition of the trap in our music finally forced me to say less. At the same time, above all, I didn’t want to imitate the Americans, as was done in Cairo. Some local rappers started doing Young Thug in Arabic. And that’s still the case for some. If the illusion might pass here in Egypt, I knew European audiences wouldn’t be fooled.”
From Cairo to Paris
Shobra will then sand a new form, under the direct influence of southern rap certainly, but largely enriched by « purely shaabi samples. My kicks, they are recorded directly in the streets of Cairo”. The European electronic scenes also count a lot in his creation: “ Touring at Fusion Festival opened me up to dubstep, drum’n dass and techno. My next move will be to work with these sounds”. Many today describe his music as a form of trap shaabia rapological monster that would have soaked in the Slime of Young Thug without forgetting his proletarian roots… and Cairo: “ today, the artistic model that dominates the Egyptian scene oscillates between Atlanta and Dubai. That’s a shame. We even go so far as to value those who rap in English, to the detriment of Arabic. After all these changes, and all the turmoil this scene has been through, we need to take stronger artistic stances once more.” The General has spoken.
Shobra El General is performing this Friday, February 24 at Le Chinois in Montreuil (93100) for the Mahragan Beats evening, organized by the Wiwaa collective. He will share the bill alongside Wadie Naim or Ibrahim X. The spirited Hervé Carvalho aka Cheb DJfounding member of the group Acid Arab will also be there.
