Few figures in Egypt’s modern history are more synonymous with “vulgar cassettes” than Ahmad ʿAdawiya, one of the pioneers of shaʿbi music, a contentious genre regularly disparaged by critics. Born Ahmad Muhammad Mursi on 26 June 1945, ʿAdawiya grew up listening to Farid al-Atrash, Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and ʿAbd al-Halim Hafiz. Little is known about his early life, but according to one account, ʿAdawiya’s father traded livestock for a living and relocated his family to Cairo when the entertainer was still an adolescent. It was in Egypt’s capital where a young ʿAdawiya, began to pursue music seriously. Unlike some of his peers, who enrolled in prestigious conservatories to perfect their skills, he honed his craft on Muhammad ʿAli Street, a historic avenue renowned for its musicians. There, he played both the nay (reed flute) and the riqq (tambourine) with a musical troupe and followed in the footsteps of several other artists who learned how to become performers on the street. Fame and fortune, however, would have to wait until he met Sharifa Fadil, a singer and actress of some acclaim, who facilitated his introduction to Maʾmun al-Shinawi, a leading lyricist. In 1973, ʿAdawiya recorded his first major hit, “al-Sah al-Dah Ambu,” on a cassette for Sawt al-Hubb, where al-Shinawi served as an artistic adviser. The tape was an unprecedented success, selling an estimated million copies. The first of many hits that ʿAdawiya would release on cassettes, the recording transformed him into a household name and placed him at the center of debates on audiotapes and the “death” of taste.
From the beginning of his career, ʿAdawiya attracted the ire of critics. Respected musicians ridiculed him and those belonging to his “backward” generation. Muhammad ʿAbd al-Mutalab, a pioneer of the “popular song,” attacked ʿAdawiya on multiple occasions. When asked about the quality of songs in the mid-1970s, a time when ʿAdawiya and audiotapes were gaining momentum, he once responded bitterly, “They are machinations! A cheap trade whose manufacturers try to outdo one another in proving their ability and their superiority in corrupting the taste of the next generation.” Other artists, meanwhile, denounced ʿAdawiya outside of the press. In one incident, Muharram Fuʾad entered a casino known for playing ʿAdawiya’s tapes in Alexandria and, upon hearing his numbers, demanded that “foreign music” be broadcast instead. The building’s owner proceeded to play one of Fuʾad’s songs and, when it did not please those present, forced him to leave the premises. There is then the case of ʿAbd al-Hamid Kishk, a popular preacher who slammed ʿAdawiya in one of his sermons. According to Kishk, ʿAdawiya’s “al-Sah al-Dah Ambu” was as “tasteless” as it was “meaningless.” Distancing himself from the singer’s “vulgar” tracks and his use of colloquial Arabic, the shaykh implored Egyptian youth in classical Arabic to study high poetry. Combined with attacks on ʿAdawiya as a foul side effect of Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 war and Sadat’s economic opening that reportedly empowered the “culturally illiterate,” all of these commentaries cast the singer, his success, and his cassettes in a resolutely negative light.
Not all Egyptian public figures, however, embraced a black-and-white view when it came to the cassette star. Naguib Mahfouz was among those who adopted a more nuanced stance. At times, the Nobel laureate criticized ʿAdawiya’s music for its “triviality” and “crudeness,” two qualities, he claimed, that resulted in his productions being the “furthest thing from elegance,” but in other moments the author recognized his “strong, sorrow-infused voice” and recalled several of ʿAdawiya’s songs with ease, only to wish their lyrics were more meaningful. ʿAbd al-Wahhab, similarly, did not despise ʿAdawiya, but he did insist that his music would lose its resonance. In an interview with Akhir Saʿa in 1976, he stated that ʿAdawiya’s popularity was of little concern to him “because in every country in the world there are all sorts of artistic colors and forms.” What bothered ʿAbd al-Wahhab at the time in Egypt was not ʿAdawiya’s presence but the absence of “noble beautiful art,” which, he believed, was “what remains in the end.” Unlike the permanence enjoyed by refined music, ʿAdawiya’s songs, he implied, were a passing phenomenon. Despite the reportedly “fleeting” and “crass” nature of ʿAdawiya’s tracks, some of Egypt’s leading artists nevertheless gravitated toward him. Among these figures was none other than ʿAbd al-Wahhab.
The same year ʿAbd al-Wahhab refrained from castigating ʿAdawiya in Akhir Saʿa, he tried to poach the entertainer as the co-owner of Sawt al-Fann, a major recording label. ʿAbd al-Wahhab’s partner, ʿAbd al-Halim, approached ʿAdawiya in London, where he was performing at the Omar Khayyam Hotel. There, he offered ʿAdawiya a five-year recording deal. Shortly thereafter, ʿAdawiya’s label, eager to retain him, countered ʿAbd al-Halim’s terms by raising its star’s salary to E£500 per song in addition to a cut of the price of his recordings. Less than two weeks after news of Sawt al-Fann’s proposal broke, Ruz al-Yusuf printed a picture of ʿAbd al-Halim gleefully singing “al-Sah al-Dah Ambu” alongside ʿAdawiya at a party. The photo caused a stir (fig. 1). Arabic periodicals reprinted it and writers claimed the scene evidenced ʿAbd al-Halim’s approval of ʿAdawiya’s “vulgar” art. In response to this charge, ʿAbd al-Halim reportedly denied the incident ever took place. Whereas the Sawt al-Fann kingpins may have preferred to keep their dealings with ʿAdawiya out of the public eye, other artists did not mind supporting the singer in a more open manner. ʿAdawiya’s tapes, after all, were wildly popular.
Throughout ʿAdawiya’s career, some of the biggest names in Egyptian music wrote compositions for him, a reality that undermines any clear-cut division drawn by critics between “cassette stars” and “esteemed artists.” In the 1970s, Mahmud al-Sharif, Muhammad al-Mugi, Kamal al-Tawil, Munir Murad, and Sayyid Mikkawi, all worked with the shaʿbi sensation. Egyptian lyricists, likewise, were well aware of ʿAdawiya’s selling power. One need only consider how one writer penned a song for Muharram Fuʾad only to give the same text to ʿAdawiya before Fuʾad could perform it because any tape ʿAdawiya released sold “40,000 copies.” Even Egyptian celebrities who did not work directly with ʿAdawiya appreciated his music. The actor, writer, and singer Isʿad Yunis stated that his songs neither could nor should be censored. Not only was it “impossible to pull a sorry tape from a taxi to put a Beethoven tape in its place,” she claimed; songs like ʿAdawiya’s provided a useful brain break for scholars and others who could not be expected to tune into artists like French Pianist Richard Clayderman “around the clock.” At the same time, commentators did not accept every defense of ʿAdawiya. When ʿAdil Imam, an Egyptian actor who appeared in multiple films critics found to be “vulgar,” claimed that local intellectuals did not approve of ʿAdawiya’s songs because they were “withdrawn from the people,” one reporter sharply reprimanded him. Being one with the people, the writer rebuked, “does not mean smoking hookah or swaying to the melody of ‘Get Well Soon Umm Hassan,’” one of ʿAdawiya’s popular tracks. Regardless of the divergent opinions that Egyptians expressed toward ʿAdawiya, there was one thing everyone agreed on: audiocassettes were integral to his career.
Throughout the mid- to late twentieth century, Egyptians encountered ʿAdawiya’s tapes in several different settings, from cafés to taxis to hair salons. As one writer observed early on, ʿAdawiya’s voice emerged from “Cairo’s side streets and alleyways to take the ears of the middle class by storm and to impose its songs upon it by way of cassette tapes for no apparent reason!” Notably, one place where ʿAdawiya’s tracks did not resonate was state-controlled radio. Contrary to the claims of some scholars, ʿAdawiya and other up-and-coming artists did not simply turn to cassettes in the 1970s “as a practical solution for low-cost distribution and promotion.” Although the affordability of both processes was a plus, ʿAdawiya and his peers harnessed audiotapes, first and foremost, because Egyptian radio refused to broadcast what its officials deemed “vulgar” material. Forced to find another way to be heard, ʿAdawiya used tapes as a tool to reach a mass audience and to make his name known outside of weddings and Cairo’s backstreets. In overcoming the radio’s ban by way of tapes, ʿAdawiya confirmed what one writer called “the success of the illegitimate” and contributed to the perceived demise of taste.
Two of ʿAdawiya’s most popular songs, both of which surfaced at the start of the infitah, or the “opening up” of Egypt’s Economy in the mid-1970s, shed further light on his cassettes and the attacks inspired by them. The first track, “A Little Bit Up, a Little Bit Down” (“Haba Fuq wa- Haba Taht”), revolves around a man and a woman who resides above him. ʿAdawiya plays the part of the man, who glances up at the “gorgeous” girl only to have his flirtatious gestures go unrequited. “Oh, people upstairs,” the singer pleads, “go on and look at who is below, or is the up not aware of who is down anymore?” The emotional refrain, which clearly captures the man’s frustrations with the beauty above him, also signals a key divide between the duo’s respective classes, a rift many listeners would have readily identified with the infitah. This division, reportedly, was not lost on ʿAdawiya.
According to one article, the singer confirmed that “A Little Bit Up, a Little Bit Down” was a “sincere” commentary on class disparities resulting from Egypt’s economic opening. This theme, to be certain, appears in more than one of ʿAdawiya’s early hits. In “Everything on Everything” (“Kullu ʿala Kullu”), a second song, ʿAdawiya again engages someone who is better off than himself. Whether this wealthier individual is a man or a woman is open to interpretation, but what is beyond any doubt is the singer’s exasperation in a chaotic world. “What does he think we are,” ʿAdawiya asks throughout the tune, “are we not good enough for him?” While both of the aforementioned songs may be read in relation to the infitah, they arguably proved popular not for their potential political import but for their embrace of familiar scenes, common obstacles, and colloquial Egyptian Arabic. How popular were these songs? The titles of each turned into contemporary catch phrases, cited by many citizens aware of ʿAdawiya’s tapes.
Critics, of course, did not accept ʿAdawiya’s interpretation of his art or that of those who endorsed it. On the contrary, commentators regularly rebuked those who found “meaning” in ʿAdawiya’s reportedly “meaningless” songs. One article on audiotapes and the decline of taste, for instance, acknowledged those “who confirm that Ahmad ʿAdawiya is the new Sayyid Darwish,” one of Egypt’s most revered musicians, and publish such errant viewpoints in the press. Other individuals, the same editorial elaborates, insist that ʿAdawiya’s recordings are insightful and contend that “Haba Fuq wa-Haba Taht” is “a revolutionary song, progressive, and socialist, demanding the rich ‘who are up’ to bring about social justice and ‘to look at who is below.’” Among those to allegedly promote these opinions were some of the biggest composers and lyricists in Egypt, and as a result of their declarations, the reporters rail, “Ahmad ʿAdawiya has become a political leader more famous than Ahmad ʿUrabi,” an iconic revolutionary from a century prior. At a time when singing in Egypt was “crazy,” the journalists implored public figures to be “intelligent” when writing about ‘Adawiya and his “vulgar” tracks. In this regard, the article’s authors were not alone. From the perspective of many critics, ‘Adawiya was a foul outcome of the infitah, not one of the phenomenon’s most astute observers. Notwithstanding the attacks, which reduced ʿAdawiya’s songs to “nonsense,” his voice continued to circulate widely on tapes that entertained and enraged.
A LITTLE BIT UP, A LITTLE BIT DOWN (HABA FUQ WA-HABA TAHT ), 1974
Gorgeous lives upstairs and I live down below
I looked up with longing, my heart swayed, and I was wounded
Oh people upstairs, go on and look at who is below
Or is the up not aware of who is down anymore?
A little bit up, a little bit down
A look up, a look down
Oh you up there
Her window is curtained and a grapevine adorns it
And in a cage there is bird, bewildered
It reminds me of a story
A story of a heart, in love, and longing ruling over it
A glance of an eye, I fell in love, and no one feels for me
Oh, people upstairs, go on and look at who is below
Or is the up not aware of who is down anymore?
A little bit up, a little bit down
A look up, a look down
Oh, you up there
EVERYTHING ON EVERYTHING (KULLU ʿALA KULLU )
Everything on everything
When you see him tell him
What does he think we are?
Are we not good enough for him?
Go and tell him
What has happened
Everything on everything
Outside, who is outside?
That’s us, us, the bosses
If the door knocks
We know who’s outside
What does he think we are?
Are we not good enough for him?
Go and tell him
What has happened
Everything on everything
Tell him if you were hard to get
And you had no match
My heart is not a stage
For the hobby of acting
What does he think we are?
Are we not good enough for him?
Go and tell him
What has happened
Tell him everything
Everything on everything
When you see him tell him
Tell him everything
When you see him tell him
What does he think we are?
Are we not good enough for him?
Go and tell him
What has happened
Tell him everything
Andrew Simon is Lecturer and Research Associate in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College.
Excerpted from Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt by Andrew Simon, published by Stanford University Press, ©2022 by Andrew Simon. All Rights Reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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