Make sure to check out Andrew’s 2022 book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt published by Stanford University Press and forthcoming in Arabic with Dar El Shorouk (more below).

You can listen to the conversation also on Spotify and Apple Music.

The songs you heard during the conversation are:

* History Sounds Intro: Huna al-Qahira, Munir Murad ( هنا القاهرة - محدش شاف)

* Nixon Baba by Sheikh Imam

* Ana Aho by Hassan al-Asmar

* Min Gheir Leh by Abd el-Wahhab

* Kullu ‘ala kullu by Ahmed ‘Adawiyya

* Al-sah al-dah ambo by Ahmed ‘Adawiyya

About Media of the Masses

Media of the Masses offers the first in-depth examination of cassettes as an everyday technology, and their role in shaping mass culture and notions of consumption, taste, the law, and circulation in Egypt. The book’s framework gives prominence not only to media technologies but also, crucially, to artists and their music. In so doing, it sheds new light on Egypt’s sociopolitical, cultural, and economic developments from the 1970s through the 1990s and beyond. What lies behind the writing (and writing out) of history is a key theme of Media of the Masses, one connected to questions of memory, archiving, and the modes of production, circulation, and consumption of media technologies. Cassettes, Andrew Simon explains, allowed for music consumers to become music and cultural producers and distributers, for example through the copying of cassettes and creation of mixtapes. Moreover, cassettes allowed for a new generation of performers and music genres to emerge. Yet oftentimes, these artists and their repertoire were labelled as “vulgar” and threatening to “public taste.” Media of the Masses paints a “counterhistory of Egyptian cultural production” (20) that shows us what can happen when this music, its listeners, and creators are put back at the center of the story.

Further readings and resources:

* Armbrust, Walter. Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

* Arnold, David. Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

* Brand, Laurie. Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014.

* Danielson, Virginia. The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997.

* Fahmy, Ziad. Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011.

* Hammad, Hanan. Unknown Past: The Jewish-Muslim Star of Egypt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.

* Hirschkind, Charles. The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

* ʿInaba, Sayyid. Hikayat Shaykh Imam. Cairo: Maktabat Jazirat al-Ward, 2013.

* Ryzova, Lucie. The Age of the Efendiyya: Passages to Modernity in National-Colonial Egypt. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.

* Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, NY: Destiny Books, 1994.

* Siamdoust, Nahid. Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017.

* Silver, Christopher. Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022.

* Weld, Kirsten. Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.

* Winegar, Jessica. Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Interview and sound design by Olga Verlato.

Check out Massoumi’s recent article “Soundwaves of Dissent: Resistance Through Persianate Cultural Production in Afghanistan” in the Iranian Studies journal.

You can also listen to the conversation on Spotify and Apple.

Coming up: Andrew Simon will tell us about cassettes and mass culture in Egypt.

The songs and recordings you heard during the conversation are:

* History Sounds Intro: Huna al-Qahira, Munir Murad ( هنا القاهرة - محدش شاف)

* Ay tāza gul tū zīnat-i gūlzār-i kīstī?, by Khānūm Zhīlā and Muḥammad Rafīʿ

* Farīda Anwarī reciting one of Mawlana’s poems

* Bemaram O Ghair As To, by Aḥmad Ẓāhir

* Zindagī Ākhir Sar Āyad, by Aḥmad Ẓāhir

Further readings and resources:

* John Baily, War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan: The Ethnographer’s Tale(Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015)

* John Baily. Can You Stop the Birds Singing? The Censorship of Music in Afghanistan. Copenhagen: Freemuse, 2003. 

* Lorraine. Sakata, Afghanistan Encounters with Music and Friends. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2013.

* Ahmad Sarmast, A Survey of the History of Music in Afghanistan from Ancient Times to 2000 A.D., with Special Reference to Art Music from c. 1000 A.D. (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2004)

* Mark Slobin, Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976).

* ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Madadī, “Taḥawul-i Mūsiqī-yi Afghānistān Dar Qarn-i Akhīr” [The Transformation of Music in Afghanistan in the Last Century]. Iran Nameh, Special Issue on Afghanistan, 22, no. 1–2 (Spring and Summer 2005): 109–16.

* Malyar, N. Tārīkh-i Rādīyū-i Afghānistān [History of Radio in Afghanistan]. Kabul: University of Kabul, 1977.

* Aḥmad Siyar Nūrmal, Aḥmad Ẓāhir: Nawā-Yi Māndahʹgār: Kāmilʹtarīn Kitāb Dar Mawrid-I Hunarmand-i Jāwīdān Aḥmad Ẓāhir Wa Surūdahʹhāyish [Ahmad Zahir: The Lasting Voice: The Most Complete Book of His Biography and Songs]. Kabul: Intishārāt-i ʻĀzam, 2013.

* Shir Mohammad Rawan, “Modern Mass Media and Traditional Communication in Afghanistan.” Political Communication 19, no. 2 (2002): 159. 

* Andrew Skuse,  “Radio, Politics, and Trust in Afghanistan: A Social History of Broadcasting.” Gazette: The International Journal for Communication Studies 64, no. 3 (2002): 267–79.

Interview and sound design by Olga Verlato.

Check out Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music across Twentieth-Century North Africa and Gharamophone: Preserving North Africa’s Jewish musical past, one record at a time.

Coming up: Mejgan Massoumi will tell us about radio and popular culture in modern Afghanistan.

The songs and recordings you heard during the conversation are:

* History Sounds Intro: Huna al-Qahira, Munir Murad ( هنا القاهرة - محدش شاف)

* Arjaa lebladek by Salim Halali, 1939

* Je t’appartiens (tango) by Salim Halali, c. 1945

* Kam wa-kam ya ‘ayni by Laho Seror, c. 1907-1912

* Mamak by Lili Labassi (performed by Mlle Ghezala)

* Lukan al-milayin by Elmaghribi, 1951

Further readings and resources:

* Mahieddine Bachetarzi, Mémoires, 1919– 1939; Suivis d’étude sur le théâtre dans les pays Islamiques (Algiers: Éditions nationales algériennes, 1968).

* Aomar Boum, Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco(Stanford University Press, 2013).

* Nadya Bouzar-Kasbadji, L’émergence artistique algérienne au XXe siècle: Contribution de la musique et du théâtre algérois à la renaissance culturelle et à la prise de conscience nationaliste (Algiers: Office des publications universitaires, 1988).

* Ruth F. Davis, Maʻlūf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia(Scarecrow Press, 2004).

* Michael Denning, Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (Verso, 2015).

* Dynamic Jewish-Muslim Interactions in Performance Art, 1920-2020, eds., Sami Everett and Rebekah Vince (Liverpool University Press, 2020).

* Jonathan Glasser, The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa(University of Chicago Press, 2016). 

* Alma Rachel Heckman, The Sultan's Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging (Stanford University Press, 2020).

* Ethan Katz, “Did the Paris Mosque Save Jews? A Mystery and Its Memory,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Spring 2012), 256-287. 

* Hadj Miliani, “Crosscurrents: Trajectories of Algerian Jewish Artists and Men of Culture since the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa, eds. Emily Benichou Gottreich and Daniel J. Schroeter (Indiana University Press, 2010), 177-187.

* Rebecca P. Scales, “Subversive Sound: Transnational Radio, Arabic Recordings, and the Dangers of Listening in French Colonial Algeria, 1934–1939,”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2010, 52(2): 384–417.

* Christopher Silver, “The Sounds of Nationalism: Music, Moroccanism, and the Making of Samy Elmaghribi,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020, vol. 52, no. 1: 23-47.

Interview and sound design by Olga Verlato.

Elizabeth Povinelli is the Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies in Columbia University in the City of New York. Her research has focused on developing a critical theory of late settler liberalism, that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. This thinking has unfolded across several books, numerous essays, and a thirty-five year long collaboration with her Indigenous colleagues in north Australia including, most recently, six films they have created as members of the Karrabing Film Collective. [1]

Amit Baishya is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Oklahoma. He writes about political terror, survival and the Anthropocene drawing on film and literature from South Asia. He also translates short stories and novels from Assamese to English and his translation of Debendranath Acharya’s Jangam on the “forgotten long march” of Indians from Burma during World War II was released in 2018. 

As such, both Elizabeth Povinelli and Amit Baishya not only transgress disciplinary boundaries and engage seamlessly across anthropology, comparative literature, critical theory and philosophy in their academic endeavors; but they also work with film-making and literary translation in their broad intellectual engagements with the worlds that they care about. 

Read the conversation soon on www.borderlines-cssaame.org

Sheetal Chhabria and Andrew B. Liu also touch upon Banaji’s early influences, transformations in theory and global capitalism since the 1970s, and the relevance of theory and history for political imagination in 2020.

Sheetal Chhabria and Andrew B. Liu also touch upon Banaji’s early influences, transformations in theory and global capitalism since the 1970s, and the relevance of theory and history for political imagination in 2020.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative's podcast series, Columbia College senior Yosan Alemu interviews Kyle Zarif on his work on Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, as well as the affinities between Pan-Islamic and Pan-African colonial projects in interwar London and New York. Kyle is a student in the Dual MA/MSc in International History at Columbia and the London School of Economics, studying trade unionism in the British defense industry in the contexts of Thatcherism and arms exports to the Persian Gulf.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative’s podcast series, Columbia College graduate Augustus O’Connor interviews Columbia College junior Sam Needleman on his work this summer curating a narrative map of New York based on the Ambedkar Initiative team’s archival research. Sam studies History and Latin American and Iberian Cultures, with an interdisciplinary focus on the urban. Twentieth-century New York is one of his primary research interests.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series, recent Columbia College graduate Augustus O’Connor interviews classmate Tommy Song on his work this summer creating the Ambedkar Digital Archive, which will make all the documents from his and others' research thus far available to the public. Tommy graduated from Columbia this past May, where he majored in history and political science. He has been working for the Ambedkar Initiative since last June, conducting archival research in several repositories for Dr. Ambedkar's letters, essays, and more.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiatives Podcast Series, Ph.D. student Rohini Shukla interviews Layla Varkey on her work this summer examining the reception of Gandhian politics in Black intellectual circles in the postwar period. Layla is a student in the Dual MA/MSc in International History at Columbia and the London School of Economics, studying 20th century histories of communism, gender and sexuality in Kerala.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series, Master's student Kyle Zarif interviews Rohini Shukla on her work this summer examining the experience of Indian students (including Ambedkar) as they shaped and were shaped by Columbia’s institutional and intellectual history. Rohini is a second-year Ph.D. student in Columbia’s Department of Religion, hailing from Pune, India. She is currently preparing to study the American Marathi Mission archives at The Burke Library.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series, Columbia College graduate Tommy Song interviews Augustus O’Connor on Gus’s experience annotating Ambedkar’s 1916 essay “Castes in India.” Gus paid close attention to the ways in which the contemporary social sciences affected and influenced Ambedkar’s thinking. Gus hails from Sewickley, Pennsylvania, and he graduated from Columbia College in May with a degree in English. He is particularly interested in post-conflict and postcolonial literature and theory. Gus was recently awarded a Fulbright, which will take him to Vietnam, where he will travel in January to teach English to university students.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.

In this episode of the Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series, Master's student Layla Varkey interviews Columbia College senior Yosan Alemu on Yosan’s experience annotating Ambedkar’s 1916 essay “Castes in India.” At Columbia, Yosan studies Comparative Literature, focusing on the African Diaspora and Blackness as a category for thought and thinking. She was drawn to Ambedkar’s analysis of caste in relation to race, gender, and sexuality. In her annotations of “Castes in India,” she pays close attention to Ambedkar’s analysis of casteism through the lens of gender and sexuality, as well as the notion of ‘surplus man and woman’ that Ambedkar introduces.

The Ambedkar Initiative Podcast Series is a project of the Ambedkar Initiative at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.

Production and Design Team: Khadija Hussain, Sam Needleman, Katherine Vandermel

All rights reserved by the Ambedkar Initiative. If you wish to circulate, please email Tommy Song at ms5340@columbia.edu. We are happy to provide permission on request.