ABSTRACT

This article offers an alternative approach to the study of atmosphere by examining the relative absence of Egyptian independent music following the military’s return to power in 2014. It argues that periods of quiet, what the Western media has labelled the ‘Arab Winter’, are not reducible to defeat, inactivity, or repression. Instead, they comprise the exploration of third spaces, alternative imaginations, to pre-existing frameworks. Treating the creative work of two Egyptian artists as political theory, it defines a quiet atmosphere as a period composed of nearly-inaudible activity, the relative absence of particular sounds and the illegibility of certain ways of acting, thinking, and speaking in relation to dominant frameworks. The ‘quietness’ of the independent music scene, then, is an indication not that the music has stopped but that it is enacting meaning in ways it had not previously during the revolutionary period (roughly 2011–2014). Treating sonic absence as meaningful and productive, this article broadly suggests an ethnomusicology of the inaudible, which decentres sound in order to be better attuned to the affects of (sonic) absence.

摘要

本文通过研究军方在2014年重新执政后埃及独立音乐的相对缺失，提供了一种研究大气的替代方法。它认为，西方媒体称其为“阿拉伯冬季”的宁静时期并非如此。易于击败，不活动或压制。取而代之的是，它们包括对第三空间的探索，对先前框架的另类想象。将两位埃及艺术家的创作视为政治理论，它定义了一个安静的氛围，该时期包括几乎听不见的活动，相对缺乏特定声音以及相对于主导地位而言某些行为，思维和说话方式难以辨认的时期构架。然后，独立音乐场景的“安静” 这并不是说音乐已经停止，而是它以革命时期（大约在2011-2014年）以前没有的方式发挥了作用。将声音缺席视为有意义且富有成效的文章，本文广泛地提出了听不清的民族音乐学，它分散了声音，以便更好地适应（声音）缺席的影响。