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Music and revolutions have a very longstanding history, from the US civil rights movements ‘Freedom Songs’ to the Italian partisans’ ‘Bella Ciao’, revolutionaries throughout history have always rallied around an anthem. In the Middle East and North Africa, this was almost unheard of. Until the events of the Arab Spring uprising.
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. It began in response to corruption and economic stagnation, and was influenced by the Tunisian revolution. From Tunisia, the protests then spread to five other countries; Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain, where either the ruler was deposed or major uprisings and social violence occurred including riots, civil wars, and active insurgencies.
To provide some context surrounding the Arab Spring, unrest had been growing in Tunisia and Egypt for decades prior to the uprising. In Tunisia, government corruption was a leading cause of this alienation from the state, and former president Ben Ali’s family was infamous for manipulating the state to suit their own needs, which ultimately led to many citizens feeling as though the government was ‘pillaging’ its own country. Meanwhile, Egypt had become a policed state, with police brutality against…
