Music and the Politics of Culture in the Middle East

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the evolution of extreme youth music (EYM) across the countries of the MENA during the last 40 years. After discussing the main historical roots of the genres associated with EYM—primarily more extreme forms of heavy metal, hip-hop, and hardcore—the chapter investigates the role of artists, fans, and scenes more broadly in the evolution of the youth subcultures in the first decade of the 21st century which, seemingly out of nowhere, morphed into powerful countercultural and even revolutionary forces beginning with the Tunisian revolution in late 2010, demonstrating the ways in which EYM offers a unique lens through which to understand these processes. I conclude by offering three areas where the study of EYM points to several felicitous new ways to study political contestation in the MENA and beyond: a spatialized analysis of the “aura” of the work of art, a decolonial and Indigenously grounded approach to research, and collaborative authorship with the artists and activists.