MER Article Culture and Politics, Culture as Politics Although MERIP is best known for political economy critiques of systems of resource extraction, imperialism and authoritarianism, artwork, creative texts and cultural reviews have never been merely supplemental to its project. Elevating cultural expression and aesthetic performance from the Middle East and North Africa can be an act of political Ted Swedenburg, Paul Silverstein • 7 min read
Current Analysis Youth of the Gulf, Youth of Palestine I recently came across two accounts of Arab youth that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. One is Kristin Diwan’s issue brief on youth activism [http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/Breaking_Taboos.pdf] in the Arab Gulf states for the Atlantic Council, and the other is a documentar Ted Swedenburg • 6 min read
MER Article Egypt's Music of Protest The culture of protest associated with the Egyptian uprising has attracted a huge amount of media coverage -- much of it, unfortunately, partial and superficial. Partial, in that it privileges hip-hop to the virtual exclusion of every other kind of nationalist and protest music sung by musicians and Ted Swedenburg • 13 min read
Current Analysis Patti Smith Remembers Operation Iraqi Freedom On September 8, 2011, just a few days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the intrepid rocker Patti Smith performed at Webster Hall in New York City. Ted Swedenburg • 1 min read
Current Analysis Traditions of Tahrir BBC Radio 4 broadcast a quite interesting program [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019fxjf] last Wednesday (as of now, it is still available for listening), in the run-up to the first anniversary of the Egyptian uprising that toppled Mubarak. It featured Reem Kelani [http://reemkelani.com/index.asp Ted Swedenburg • 3 min read
Current Analysis Mosireen Yesterday’s piece [http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/art-egypts-revolutionary-square] by Ursula Lindsey, entitled “Art in Egypt's Revolutionary Square.” is a very astute and measured account of the art that has emerged in Egypt, in the wake of, and inspired by, the momentous events in Tahrir o Ted Swedenburg • 1 min read
Current Analysis Hip-Hop of the Revolution (The Sharif Don't Like It) In Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, journalist Robin Wright describes and analyzes what she considers an important new trend in the Muslim world: the rejection of “Muslim extremists.” She views the Arab uprisings that began in Tunisia in December 2010 and quickly spread Ted Swedenburg • 6 min read
MER Article Troubadours of Revolt Rami ‘Isam, a 23-year old pony-tailed singer for the so-so rock band Mashakil, based in Mansoura, showed up at Tahrir Square on January 28, 2011, guitar in hand and ready to join the pro-democracy revolt. His music soon became an important component of the Tahrir scene, as the insurrectionists set u Ted Swedenburg • 4 min read
MER Article Imagined Youths Youth -- what is it? The notion tends to be taken for granted, as a natural stage in human development. But, in fact, “youth” is a socially and culturally determined category, a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood that, in its contemporary form, is a product of modernity. In the Ted Swedenburg • 15 min read
Current Analysis Snipers and the Panic Over Five Percent Islamic Hip-Hop A number of media stories have raised the possibility that certain clues indicate a connection between arrested sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo and an African-American Islamic group calling itself the Nation of Gods and Earths but commonly known as the Five Percenters. These clues are also Ted Swedenburg • 7 min read
MER Article The Post-September 11 Arab Wave in World Music Music from the Arab world has traditionally been a minor player within world music, the marketing category encompassing a wide variety of international music that emerged in the late 1980s. Aimed at an NPR listening “adult” audience, world music has a small market share of roughly 2-3 percent (compa Ted Swedenburg • 12 min read
MER Article Arab "World Music" in the US “World music,” defined as “a marketing term describing the products of musical cross-fertilization between the north -- the US and Western Europe -- and south,” [1] attracts a growing audience in the US. Since the mid-1980s, this term has come to incorporate just about any music of non-European origin -- Ted Swedenburg • 13 min read
