Between Welfare and Exclusion: A History of Egypt’s Musicians’ Syndicate
When Egypt’s Musicians’ Syndicate was established in 1944 it was envisaged as a way to provide musicians with material support, including healthcare, pensions, hardship funds, and help securing employment. However, since its inception, the syndicate has also been invested in policing the boundaries...
محفوظ في:
| الحاوية / القاعدة: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/esma, |
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| المؤلف الرئيسي: | |
| التنسيق: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| اللغة: | Anglais |
| منشور في: |
Égypte Soudan mondes arabes
2025
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| الموضوعات: | |
| الوصول للمادة أونلاين: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| الملخص: | When Egypt’s Musicians’ Syndicate was established in 1944 it was envisaged as a way to provide musicians with material support, including healthcare, pensions, hardship funds, and help securing employment. However, since its inception, the syndicate has also been invested in policing the boundaries of the musical profession in ways that exclude certain (often already marginalized) artists. Using press sources, documents from the syndicate, statistics relating to syndicate membership and finances, and ethnographic fieldwork with musicians in Cairo (conducted between 2018 and 2023), this article traces transformations in the syndicate’s role and remit from the 1940s to the early 2020s, focusing on the shifting balance between its two functions: providing welfare and excluding certain musicians and styles. I show that these two functions have always gone hand in hand, increasing in tandem at certain historical junctures, with fines and levies against non-members being used to fund members’ welfare provisions, and with the exclusion of new musical styles ensuring continued employment for older, more established musicians who constitute the syndicate’s main member base. Considering these changes allows us to consider the shifting responsibilities of the state when it comes to the welfare of its citizens. I show that the Musicians’ Syndicate functions as a special interest group that sometimes enables its members to access additional resources to supplement what the state provides. Alongside this, I argue that historicizing the actions of the present-day syndicate can help us better understand its impact on the music scene and the realities of cultural production in contemporary Egypt. |
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