An Ode to Arabic Music’s Rebel Years

I had probably finished school early, maybe it was a half day, or maybe a sick leave. Nonetheless, I had an hour or two to waste with nowhere to go but my mom’s office, because my father, who usually picked me up, had errands to run.

Whenever I joined my mother at work, one of her colleagues would take me in. She had luscious, plump curls and a smile that revealed naturally and meticulously structured teeth. A round hoop ring sat just below her lip. Everything about her was round and welcoming. She even shared her name with my mother, and to me, she was familiar, all-around lovely. 

She wasn’t bubbly, though – fairly thin, calm, and maybe just edgy enough to make a ten-year-old like me watch Happy Tree Friends. I loved it. Especially that one episode where an eye falls out, gets cut, and is squeezed into a juice instead of lemonade. 

Instead of cartoon gore, this time, I sat in front of the usual old, bulky computer as she typed into YouTube: “Mashrou’ Leila – Fasateen”, absolutely rocking my world.

I grew up listening to Mohamed Mounir, Ziad Rahbani, Sheikh Imam, and Marcel Khalife, partly the finest of music, but also rebellious, satirical, and of the people. But Mashrou’ Leila’s song felt like subversion squared. It wasn’t just political or satirical; it was everything turned upside down. Haig Papazian in a wedding dress, Hamed Sinno driving a car carried by a towing truck, mattresses getting slashed and cakes being flung. The masterpiece ends with the boys peeing in the back. It was golden. 

For 2010, the song and its music video were a jab. A jab at society and marriage and gender and music and all those constructs we hold to each other’s heads. It was revolutionary, it was artistic, it was both simple and grand. It was utterly stunning. 

Although the Lebanese band had been active for two years by this point, “Fasateen” felt pivotal to Mashrou’ Leila’s trajectory. “Fasateen”, to me, was their real breakthrough song, towering over the band’s 2009 hit “Raksit Leila” with over 3 million views on YouTube today and it had, like all splendid initiators of subgenres, created a whole culture and an all across community. 

But Mashrou’ Leila weren’t the first indie band to come out of the region, and obviously not the last. Zeid Hamdan had been shaping the scene since the late 90s, solo or within his duo Soapkills with Yasmine Hamdan, and later with Maii Waleed and Maryam Saleh. There were pioneering Jordanian bands Jadal and Autostrad, and later came Egyptian icons Mascara and Cairokee and Palestinian rocker Jowan Safadi, among many others. It was an era marked by indie rock and experimental electronic arrangements. 

“Fasateen” was my gateway to all those names: it was a portal to a new world called  “alternative Arabic music”. 

The term “alternative Arabic music” included a number of understandings rooted in self-produced music, free and unruly and accessible music that challenged the mainstream music industry and norms that the region had become accustomed to. And although the sounds were each distinct and the nationalities varied, this was the genre of music targeting those who were fatigued by Rotana-fed pop loops and corporate TV gloss.

Us, the followers, held these bands up to a godly standard, they were the leaders of our uprising—literally, not too long after, the Arab spring happened, fueled by a hope of a “better tomorrow” as Mashrou’ Leila sang, and scored by Zeid Hamdan’s legendary “Isqat El Nizam”. 

But while both Mashrou’ Leila sang about Friedrich Engels and Jadal talked about the capitalist machine, both ended up on Coke Studio in the same year. 

It is true that both band’s careers only accelerated after, but the Coke Studio appearances were a moment of disconnect, a fracture of trust. Can revolution be branded with the symbol of globalization and consumerism? The coca-colonization felt off-brand and sooner or later a lot of these bands succumbed to pop music themselves, and became what they refuted at first: commercial. 

But is it fair to fault Mashrou’ Leila, for example, for wanting a feature with legendary daft punk even if it means one branded with Coca Cola’s logo? 

You could defend them. Artists deserve recognition and dream collaborations, and fans, devoted ones specially, can become selfish and entitled, creating unintentional music elitism and binding their heroes to a small world, that is valid, but in the case of alternative Arab music, we were holding these bands for what they represented.  

Those early songs weren’t just good music. They were ideology in audio, a permission slip to dress differently. To listen differently. To love differently. Back then, the music sounded like it had nowhere else to go. Like it had to exist or combust. 

What I feel towards the alternative Arabic music scene today is purely a nostalgia of a time when alternative meant something, when music said something, when being a listener meant to taste and not consume merchandise and promoted deals and stadium tickets. 

Back then, not too long ago, a band implied something. Not just musically, but politically. Socially. Existentially. It was a stance, a sonic rebellion. It meant you didn’t want to do it alone. That you believed in harmony and friction. That you valued disagreement and soundchecks and sweaty gigs where no one got paid, and valued the friends who became friends when reciting the same lyrics you did at those gigs. 

I had missed the we. 

There is something sacred in an underground world, in a third space, there is something sacred in the muddle. Sacredness in friendships, in discovering sounds, in belonging to sounds. In those arrangements you hear youth. Youth in the urgent sense. Youth as risk. Youth as fire. Youth as fever. Back then, the songs felt like they might get someone arrested or saved. 

This shift, from alternative to pop, wasn’t just artistic. It mirrored a regional exhaustion. The Arab Spring didn’t give us our better tomorrow instead, it gave us exile, prison, and collapse. The streets got quieter. The venues disappeared. The movements fragmented. What rose after, sonically, was something more personal, and personalized. 

Bands, in the classic sense, have nearly vanished. In their place, we have brands. Solo acts, and hyper-curated identities, and our artists are more politicized than ever: visibly queer, visibly Arab, visibly exiled, or a hybrid and the music comes last. They represent themselves with a ton of prefixes.Avatars of identity.

What was once simply an alternative Arab band is now a multilingual half Lebanese and quarter Tunisian and German artist “challenging norms” and “blending East and West.” Everyone’s a one-person genre with aesthetic fluency and music fueled by nothing but mere individualism. It is the same pop formula those bands resisted, to later join without the slightest of push back.  

Still, there are comrades holding the line. A few artists remain focused, unreachable, uninterested in congratulatory parties. I like to believe that’s why when I reached out with a magazine interview, they never replied to my messages.

And I know people are still listening. A few weeks ago, my little cousin shared a snippet on Instagram accompanied by “Fasateen” by Mashrou’ Leila. I inquired from her, how a 12-year-old is listening to a song older than herself. It was through TikTok, not Bisan, who shares her name with my mom that put me on to the song, but I still hoped for her, it was a regular day turned monumental when she heard that song for the first time. I hope that it cracked open a world, like it did once for me.