Revisiting the Heritagization of Arab Music in Postcolonial Cairo

This article revisits and expands on my previous research on the entanglement of state power, nationalist ideology, lingering coloniality, and heritage production in Arab music in postcolonial Cairo since the late 1960s. 1 It takes into consideration the intersection of politics and elite class positionality with Arab music heritage, an “absent presence” in my previous research and in much of the literature on heritage. 2 I argue that the heritagization of Arab music transformed, re-signified and (re)positioned a largely mass-mediated musical practice that was embedded in urban popular culture into a highbrow expressive domain, a discourse of privilege that conferred cultural and social capital to music, musicians, and audiences. 3