Hamo Beeka and Omar Kamal, two popular Egyptian mahraganat singers made a video in 2020 .....
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| Convicted For This Video |
.... that featured the well known Brazilian dancer Lurdiana.
She has become well-known in Egypt for her sexy belly dancing. However despite the fact that everyone is fully clothed, an Egyptian court for jailed the two men after finding them guilty of "violating family values," and also convicted them of profiting from the video.
They were sentenced to a year in prison and fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($540; £435). If they pay the same amount on top as a fee, they can have their jail terms suspended. In this last few years at least a dozen young women, often acting as social media influencers, have been cruelly accused of violating the the ill defined 'family values' law, with the courts giving them hefty fines and sentences of up to five years in jail.
Social media and mobile phone videos have fuelled the growth of this very popular form of low cost music also known as festival music ... of course as this is popular with teens and lower class/income Egyptian males on the streets (women are noticeably absent in pictures of mahraganat raves), then it is often seen as subversive by conservative Egyptians.
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| Mahraganat Music In Egyptian Streets Is An All Male Affair |
But the state-run Musicians' Syndicate has banned a number of Mahraganat singers, including Mr Kamal, which prevents them from legally performing in public. Hence the YouTube videos. The Musicians' Syndicate said that the lyrics included the words "alcohol" and "hashish" ... so made the court complaint about the 'family values'.
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| Egyptians Can't Face The Music and Dance |
There is no hope for these regimes and if the young population have no freedom to express themselves there, will, to quote the song, 'be trouble ahead'.
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