Singing the protest.. The history of "committed art" in modern Tunisia

Music styles such as rap have become a favorite way for Tunisian youth to express their protest and hopes. However, the legacy of protest songs from previous decades is still present in the collective mind of the country's young left-wing activists.

In 2011, the song "President of the Country" - which was the first era of Tunisians with rap music - spread widely on the communication sites, at a time when popular protests were shaking the pillars of the ousted regime, and it was at that time the first musical work exposed to the corruption of the regime.

The demand for these songs, especially among young people - where millions of people watch them on YouTube - is due to their approach to youth issues and their concerns such as unemployment and dreams of immigration, and others, in addition to their clash with the political situation to represent a loud protest voice in the country.

protest singing

Writer Alicia Carnevale says, in the report published by the Australian website "The Conversation", that since the mid-seventies and during the eighties of the last century, during the regime of Habib Bourguiba, protest songs developed as a different culture in the art scene. That period was characterized by economic turmoil, successive waves of protest, and political problems.

The writer, an academic at Sapienza University in Rome, adds that the protest songs are a product of the cultural work carried out by leftist parties and organizations in Tunisia, within the framework of student movements and union organizations.

She believes that the importance of this folk art, for the left in Tunisia, lies in the fact that left-wing activists found in this type of singing in particular a powerful tool, suitable for spreading awareness among young people, galvanizing activists and spreading revolutionary socialist ideas, at the time.

art and politics

The writer says that these protest songs are called in the Arabic language the "committed song" that focuses on political and social connotations, and aims to deliver a specific message.

During the seventies and eighties, artists and bands appeared to perform this genre, the most prominent of these are the committed artist Al-Hadi Qila and the Imazighen group. They held parties in universities, union headquarters and political meetings, but their songs were rarely broadcast on television and radio stations, although they were widely spread among the people.

New popular culture

During that period, these songs represented an expression of a culture opposite to the ideology that the Bourguiba regime was spreading. The late president, who came to power in 1956, was an educated, middle-class Western-model who promoted a reformist progressive ideology. But during the last two decades of his rule, he lost a lot of his popularity, among the people in general and among the new intellectual and cultural elites in particular.

During this period, the new radical left was influenced by Maoist ideology and Arab nationalism. They also did not neglect to consider that association with the toiling class would be impossible without taking into account the Arab-Islamic identity of the Tunisian people.

During those years, songs were the most powerful tool for communicating political messages, and their spread was easy with the advent of new and cheap technology represented in the cassette recorder. The parties were also held on a limited budget and attracted hundreds of people.

The Oasis and the Mine

Among all the names known for performing protest songs, two groups stand out. The first is the Musical Research Troupe, which hails from the city of Gabes in the southern Mediterranean, and is distinguished by its oases, and in which large chemical industrial complexes have been established since the seventies. The second is the Oulad Minaj group, which hails from Umm El-Arayes, a town located in the governorate of Gafsa in the mining basin.

These groups, which are still active today, were born from the womb of areas that were exposed to the effects of industrial transformation and the exploitation of natural resources in rural areas. These industrial sectors eventually impoverished the local population and caused them suffering.

The members of the music research group were students at the university and activists within the student movement. As for the members of the children of the mines, they were workers who felt the suffering in their town.

Both groups were very popular with left-wing activists and unionists, thanks to their performances and the revolutionary nationalist message in their songs.

Such bands created a revolutionary culture and at the same time a new popularity, and drew inspiration from modern Arabic poetry, and specifically from poets such as Mahmoud Darwish in his defense of the Palestinian cause. However, they also relied on popular styles and themes in Tunisian folklore and folk poetry. Thus they reacted in an innovative way to the need to create a new socialist culture for the masses.

They also benefited from other Arab experiences, such as the author and singer Marcel Khalife, the Moroccan band Nass El Ghiwane, and in particular the Egyptian duo Sheikh Imam and Ahmed Fouad Negm.

Thus, the musical research group produced songs such as "Heyla Hey Matar", "Nakhla Wadi Al-Bay" and "Al-Baisa", which combined the rural image on the one hand, and revolutionary slogans and national symbols on the other.

The Mining Boys group also presented songs that were very popular, revolving around the difficulty of life in the mining basin, such as "Ya Damous" and other songs calling for labor and Arab unity against imperialism, such as "The People's Anthem".

The legacy of resistance

The writer returns and says that the popular protest songs witnessed a decline with the rise of the Ben Ali dictatorship in the nineties, but they did not completely disappear. After the 2011 revolution that toppled the Ben Ali regime, the old orchestras reunited and resumed their activity in the new democratic cultural space.

Today, protest songs take many forms, from rap to electro. But the old songs are still frequently heard at political meetings and at festivals and celebrations.

Despite the scarcity of documentation and studies, the Tunisian protest song in the seventies and eighties still constitutes an essential part of the collective memory of the resistance. It is loaded with political and emotional meanings for an entire generation of political activists and trade unionists.

In conclusion, the writer emphasized that studying this experience may provide us with a new vision of Tunisian political and cultural life under the yoke of tyranny. It highlights the continued presence of the opposition and the revolutionary culture that paved the way for the events that in 2011 toppled the dictatorship.