Nahda in the Grooves: Musical Modernity and Baidaphon in Post-Imperial Egypt

At the height of the nahda (1850-1930), or “Arab Awakening,” scholars, artists, and intellectuals instituted change in establishing a modern Middle East. Arab musicians in the media center of Cairo also played an important role in contributing to the sound culture of the nahda through using the new sound recording technologies. These musicians translated political ideas into consumable popular music on the phonograph. In this dissertation, I explore how musicians worked with European and Arab-owned record companies to shape and modernize Arabic music in the early twentieth century. Specifically, I focus on the Baidaphon Record Company’s role in Cairo. I argue that the recording studio was an essential site between evolving structures of capitalist and nationalist projects and ideas about Arab musical modernity during the Protectorate (1914–1922) and Kingdom of Egypt (1922–1952). My larger aim is to draw a relationship from the development of the nahda’s literary media technologies to Arabic music and sound in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This dissertation begins by discussing the nahda politics in the Arab world and then narrowing down the subjects of study to the companies, musicians, and finally the individual listening experience. From the general to specific—or global to the local—I describe how larger ideas circulating among Arab elites passed into popular music that was then consumed on the phonograph. In the first chapter, I discuss how the messaging of taqatiq (pl. for taqtuqa; short, light-hearted songs) connect to the broader discussions during the nahda. The second chapter historicizes record companies in the Middle East, and I analyze the roles of the German company Carl Lindström AG and Lebanese company Baidaphon. In my third chapter, I contextualize the recording studio as a political space where musicians could collaborate and experiment with modern Arabic styles. Then, in the fourth chapter, I discuss listening practices and the mediation of tarab (emotional ecstasy) on the phonograph. I conclude the dissertation with a broad look at the role of records in the archive in the MENA region and throughout North America and Europe. Although the titles of the chapters are themed on the material as the medium of study, I focus on the people who have made, moved, and listened to the records to transmit anti-colonial nationalism through Arabic music. By inventing new genres and styles, nahda musicians revolutionized traditional musical practices to contribute to a new sound culture in Egypt that connected music to the broader movement of the nahda.