Maraganaat and Shaaby music is REAL

Mahraganaat is REAL Music

Since the beginning of time humans used music to express their emotions. You might feel love, anger, sadness, desperation, or whatever you are feeling, and these feelings can be expressed in words, or in any other form, but the DELIVERY of the feeling itself to the heart is the music’s job.

Music as I believe is a medium through which we can exchange our feelings, pass on our experiences, our emotions, thoughts, no matter how weird they might be. The song might not say the exact words you feel, might not even be a relevant story by any means but, the whole of it just carries the emotions in the air and delivers them to the listener.

In the rural areas in Egypt you’ll find that the Mawwaal is one of the most popular, the sounds of the long humming of a rabaaba, the slow or relaxed tempo manifesting the relaxed pace of life in the country side, the open voice ringing with high reverbs which is usually a natural effect if you are calling someone in a field, usually sad lyrics manifesting the hardship of living and getting by. All these are common characteristics in the Mawwal. If you cross the ocean to the United States, you’ll find almost each state has its own certain sound of music.

The Blues, which was born in the corn fields in the time of African American slavery, most of the songs are “blue”, that was their life, it was sad, full of hardships, women leaving their men because they can’t ‘put food on the table’, the man who is trying to figure out how he’s going to get a job just to be able to get by, the words are all “blue”, the sound of the harmonica is very common in the Blues, the groove of the beats resembling the wheels of trains passing through the fields and blowing their whistle, the still air, with no reverbs, the calm atmosphere of wide fields.

Psychologically anyone who has been brought up in the same environment would relate to such music subconsciously, because it is a manifestation of what they have experienced, and these sounds just bring those feelings back just the way they felt back then, it takes you away to this place where you feel home, it clicks with your senses, the sounds that your ears are familiar to and your whole story in a magical way.

Following the same concept, you’ll find that in Mahraganaat music high pitches of singers are common with the autotune, just like the street vendors high pitches and fixed notes of microbus horns, the noise of breaks squeaking because of low maintenance of such vehicles, the high energy coming from the streets full of people, beggars, toktoks, workshops with their machines, smiths banging on iron, mechanics, fights breaking out over a small parking spot for a toktok or a bike with knives, swords, sometimes even guns, all crammed in a small area or street, the lyrics are usually about friendship, treason, drugs, the way guys flirting with girls in a the ‘haty bosa ya bett’ way (not that it’s a good or bad way, but that’s the REALITY).

Not everyone who lives there is necessarily like this, but this is what people who live in such neighbourhoods are familiar with, and all of this is affected by the economic, educational, and social status of people who live there.

In short, Mahraganaat music tells the story of the people living in Mahraganaat areas, it tells it down to the smallest details, it’s an emotional journey that takes you through these small allies and crowded streets, all the way through the houses, workshops, and gatherings, just another manifestation to the nature and environment it was born in, which is the same way any genre was born. This, my friend, makes Mahraganaat music an authentic one, no polishing, no censors, just REAL.

If you hear a Mahraganaat tune, try to perceive it as a teleporting machine that’ll take you to these areas and deliver you to the emotions and feelings these people experience every day, if you don’t like it you can consider it a ship that would take you to some places that you might not enjoy going to in reality, however, you get the chance to connect with different people on a different level.

So next time you meet someone that might like Mahraganaat music because it relates to them in some way, you now have a better understanding on an emotional level with them. But if you’re not curious, it’s alright, you can unlike Mahraganaat music, but you can’t deny its authenticity.