Some of the most powerful elements of Youssra El-Hawary’s music come first in her ability to give meaning to sites of resistance and second her appreciation for her authentic voice, story, and struggle to resonate with a broader scope of listeners – even those outside of Egypt.
In her song and video, “El-Soor” (“The Wall” in English) she puts music to words written in 2005 by an Egyptian caricature artist. After the Egyptian government built that wall in front the Ministry of Interior, these lyrics, as she explains, took on a whole new meaning. In this sense, we see Youssra using music as an amplifier - transforming speeches and/or texts into musical art that increases those who hear the message and the way in which it resonates with them.
In the video we can see how el-soor has become a site of resistance – as many walls in other nonviolent have become. I think about the wall between East and West Germany, the walls that surrounded Black communities in South Africa under apartheid, and the separation wall that snakes its way through Israel and Palestine. In this video, as in all the examples just listed, we see that the wall becomes a canvas on which images of resistance are painted or acts of resistance are staged. Youssra’s music, in a way, is capturing this history and placing it within the Egyptian context. In the future, when another artist, in another country, singing about another nonviolent struggle references a wall, we may then also remember El-Sour in Egypt thanks to Youssra’s song.
Youssra also makes a profound statement regarding her approach to reaching audiences and listeners outside of Egypt. I can understand the desire to write for a specific audience – to create a sound or set of lyrics that can resonate with a particular group of people in some part of the world. However, Youssra does not attempt to do such a thing in her music. As she says:
“I never think, when I am talking to people out there, what they will see in my songs and what I have to say to people about my country to the other people, to the West. I never really think that way. I just say what I feel right now, how I see the problem, or what I am suffering from, really. And I think they will get it, whether here or there. So here [Egypt] they will link it with their lives because, of course, they are having the same problems I have or experience, and out there they maybe can understand about the Arab world.”
What I find valuable in this comment is that the potential of her music to reach an outside audience lies in her authentic experience as a musician and an Egyptian – a place of musical inspiration that is true to her in a very specific way – as a female, and Egyptian, someone who lives near the wall, etc. As opposed to, on the other hand, making assumptions about what an outside audience wants to hear or expects to hear from an Egyptian musician singing about the struggle.
If she chose the latter approach she may end up misrepresenting the very experience about which she sings and reinforce stereotypes about Egypt and the Arab world at large.
It’s a profound take-away for me that Youssra’s unique, individual experience may actually be the most universal way to resonate with a larger, more global audience.
Egyptian musician Youssra El Hawary discusses the making of the music video for her song “El-Soor” with Kiosk’s Arash Sohbani.
Youssra El Hawary, Sedky Sakhir, and Arash Sobhani jam in the studio following their interview.
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