Wust El Balad and Hijabs

    Last night, Anya and I went with some friends to see a free concert downtown by Wust el Balad, an Egyptian band that can only be described as something like hipster-softrock-Arabic-fusion.  Or, as someone once described it to me before I heard their music, the Arabic Guster (to extend the metaphor, they have a bongo drummer, and he gets mad applause from here to Ramalla).  You can actually find their music on itunes or on their website for free downloading.  There's also a song about the revolution written by their lead singer that you can watch with subtitles on youtube.

   It was a great concert, marred only slightly by the creepy middle-aged man who didn't bother hiding that he was staring at the women in our group.  The voices live are really fantastic, and they're a great group of musicians.  They even played a good number of my favorite songs from the album "robabekya" that I listened to non-stop for about 9 weeks when I was bound by the Middlebury language pledge not to listen to any English.  Back then, as a total Modern Standard Arabic addict, I didn't really understand their lyrics. It's been a while since I've listened to their albums, but this time around, I actually understood what they were singing!

  The crowd was full of liberal-leaning youth/20-somethings.  Liberal-leaning, I say, because the between-shows act took a poll, and the vast majority said they would be voting for al-Baradei, a liberal candidate and Nobel laureate... think Al Gore).

   I think a majority of the hipster Egyptians were there... all the "I will wear thick-rimmed large-frame glasses" crowd, including one with big, white plastic frames that he seemed to wear without any apparent irony.  When two television personalities came on between the opener and Wust El Balad, they talked politics with the crowd, encouraging them not to be afraid of other strains of thought in the political discourse (read: Muslim Brotherhood/Salafists who were not present).  They cited American politics and the fact that our political leaders never seem to be capable of following through on their slogans.  Ie. Barack Obama was supposed to make America a truly liberal country, and look at him... has it changed all that much? No.  It's odd to be in a big group of people where that observation brings hope and potentially assuages fears.

   Anyhow, apologies for being so incredibly bad at posting.  I feel bad for leaving that angry-at-the-NYTimes post at the top of my blog for so long.  Their foreign editor recently posted a really good piece on Islamophobia in Europe.  Good instincts, my friend, but there's just so much amazing graffiti around that the photo irritated me to no end.

    In other news, I saw one of my favorite Hijab (trans: headscarf)-related styles today.  I went to a hair-cut place about a 20 minute walk away, and the place was closed.  I popped my head in next door to ask what their schedule was because there was nothing posted on the door, and the woman inside was sporting a hijab, which was holding her cellphone to her ear.  Hijab == hands-free technology.  She was also holding the store's wired phone in her hand, which really threw me off.

   Hopefully more coming soon.  Gonna try to keep it more Cairo-focused, which will generally require me to *do things in Cairo*.  Still working on that.  Buried in the 9th century Arabic reading at home and the Foucault-reading at the coffee shop.  But *definitely* observations on Ramadan to come.