Listening to Shaykh Imam: Music, National Belonging, and the Egyptian Left

TY - JOUR

T1 - Listening to Shaykh Imam: Music, National Belonging, and the Egyptian Left

AU - Frankford, Sophie

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press.

PY - 2025/8/4

Y1 - 2025/8/4

N2 - The Egyptian singer-composer Shaykh Imam (1918-1995) holds an almost mythical place in the social imaginary of the Arab left. An icon of dissent, he rose to fame in the late 1960s with a stream of songs commenting on current events and criticising the failings of successive political regimes. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt with fans of Imam (all of whom were involved with student / leftist politics to varying degrees during the 1960s and 1970s) and a close listening of his repertoire, explores why this generation of the Egyptian left embraced Shaykh Imam so wholeheartedly, and why they remain so attached to his songs. I argue that identifying with Shaykh Imam was not only central in bolstering leftists’ claims to be the authentic representatives of the Egyptian nation, amidst many competing claims, but importantly enabled his listeners to perform national belonging of a more intimate kind.

AB - The Egyptian singer-composer Shaykh Imam (1918-1995) holds an almost mythical place in the social imaginary of the Arab left. An icon of dissent, he rose to fame in the late 1960s with a stream of songs commenting on current events and criticising the failings of successive political regimes. This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt with fans of Imam (all of whom were involved with student / leftist politics to varying degrees during the 1960s and 1970s) and a close listening of his repertoire, explores why this generation of the Egyptian left embraced Shaykh Imam so wholeheartedly, and why they remain so attached to his songs. I argue that identifying with Shaykh Imam was not only central in bolstering leftists’ claims to be the authentic representatives of the Egyptian nation, amidst many competing claims, but importantly enabled his listeners to perform national belonging of a more intimate kind.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105012727792

U2 - 10.1017/S0020743825100664

DO - 10.1017/S0020743825100664

M3 - Article

SN - 0020-7438

VL - 57

SP - 215

EP - 237

JO - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES

JF - INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EAST STUDIES

IS - 2

ER -