UCLA

This dissertation examines how Egyptian youth use “do-it-yourself” (DIY) music to produce social change under conditions of authoritarianism. DIY music is made by youth, who use low-budget home studios and Internet software to produce innovative new styles that mix Arab musical aesthetics with globally-circulating genres such as hip-hop, rock, jazz, metal, and electronic music. Building from approximately 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt since 2010, it demonstrates how DIY musicians use public listening to transform overwhelming public depression and paranoia in the aftermath of the failed 2011 Egyptian revolution in ways that they believe will make the “coming revolution” successful. In so doing, they reanimate dominant Arab/Islamic philosophies that treat listening as an embodied practice able to transform mood, thought, emotion, and behavior. It argues that under a return to violent authoritarian conditions, which render discursive critique and protest dangerous, DIY music engenders new modes of affective politics that locate persuasion in the listening body’s capacity to feel and affect others. Putting Arab/Islamic philosophies in conversation with theories of the public, affect, sound studies, as well as queer and feminist theories on the body, it expands feminist critique that challenges the centrality of “discourse” and “reason” in dominant Western political models, offering instead an alternative form of politics that privileges public feeling, the body, and indirect action.