Mahraganat

Egypt’s electro-shaabi street sound, made on laptops in Cairo’s working-class districts and built for weddings.

Mahraganat means “festivals”, and it started in the late 2000s with almost nothing: cracked production software, an autotuned voice, a hard four-on-the-floor rebuild of shaabi rhythm, and lyrics in unvarnished street Arabic about money, friendship and neighbourhood life. It spread by phone, by tuk-tuk speaker and by street wedding, with no label and no airplay.

The musicians’ syndicate has moved against it more than once on grounds of taste rather than law, and each round has made it larger.

It is now the most widely exported Egyptian music of its generation, and its production style has been absorbed into mainstream Arabic pop by artists who would not use the name.