Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt by Andrew Simon

Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt
by Andrew Simon
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2022, 304 PP.
HARDCOVER, $90.00; PAPERBACK, $30.00; E-BOOK, $30.00
ISBN: 978-1-503-62943-1; PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-503-63144-1; E-BOOK ISBN: 978-1-503-63145-8

 

In his book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt, Andrew Simon presents a thought-provoking view of the fusion of technology with society through a comprehensive analysis of how a portable, affordable artifact generated broad changes in cultural, religious, and political spheres in Egypt between 1970 and 1990. The book allows readers to deepen their knowledge of the history of the media through a study of what the author calls “cassette culture.”

This work provides a profound vision of how technology can be transformed into an agent of social change, for in his research Simon examines in detail the democratization of the media that occurred with the advent of cassette tapes, players, and recorders, devices that emerged to eliminate production and distribution barriers controlled by elites and place a novel means of communication in the hands of the masses. The cassette recorder produced broad swells of social change in media culture as recording technology, once the reserve of a small sector of the population, was made available for use by all social classes.

One particularly strong point of Simon’s argument addresses religious interventions in the cassette culture, for this device’s arrival affected the control traditionally exercised by religious elites over spiritual knowledge and discourse as other members of society began to produce cassettes with diverse taped sermons. Up to that time, the content of religions had been dictated by a closed circle of individuals, but the cassette appeared as a tool that allowed Egyptian society to obtain diverse interpretations of religious texts, thus fostering a democratization of religious knowledge and leading to marked changes in the country’s religious dynamics.

In the political domain, Simon discusses the duality of cassette culture as both an instrument of state propaganda and a weapon for political dissidence while highlighting the sociopolitical implications of the cassette by elucidating the power of the mass communications media as an instrument of control or resistance. He shows that when cassette technology reached Egypt, the state adopted it to disseminate official narratives, but opposition groups utilized it to question those narratives and to circulate their own.

Simon also mentions the cultural impact of cassettes, in this case, on Egypt’s music industry, suggesting that the democratization they fomented made it possible for forms of local and regional music to flourish by lowering production costs and generating a boom in popular consumption of music. Based on these premises, he presents a nuanced view of the impact of technology on cultural practices.

In his discussion of the mass media, the author not only probes the social implications of cassette culture at a macrolevel but also interweaves personal narratives into his analysis. Here, he captures the life histories of certain individuals who lived the arrival of the cassette and experienced a sociocultural remodeling of their lifeways, for example, musicians who found that their audiences increased in size or lay preachers who discovered a convenient means for sharing their religious ideas. This led Simon to examine the important role that cassettes played in allowing the voices of the masses to reach larger publics, a phenomenon that adds another layer to the overall theme of democratization.

But Simon’s work goes beyond studies of individuals, as part of his discussion focuses on the essential role of cassettes in forging and strengthening a sense of community. He argues that through the proliferation of local musical genres and the multiplication of diverse religious discourses, cassettes were transformed into cultural artifacts that came to embody shared experiences and collective identities while also providing a means of communication that allowed communities to reaffirm their distinct identities and share their narratives.

In another section, Simon elucidates a vision of the economic sphere of cassette culture when he explains that by significantly reducing production costs the cassette propelled a prosperous artisanal industry not only for music but also for religious treatises through collections of taped sermons and in the field of politics by making distinct discourses widely available. These developments, in turn, spurred economic diversification among classes and, simultaneously, helped democratize economic participation. Here, the author introduces a novel perspective on the relation between technology and economic dynamics.

The book is organized in six chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the commercial life of cassettes and examines their influence in Egyptian society. The argument is structured around the concept of the “modern home” and consequences primarily for immigrant workers and the convergence of recreation and technology. The objective of chapter 2 is to elucidate the social implications that the author detected in cassette culture. Simon prioritizes the legal perspective by mentioning problems such as property theft and contraband. In this chapter, he presents a double analysis of “reports on popular crimes,” first discussing a clandestine market where cassettes were reproduced illegally and then analyzing the duality of society’s response to the law. Simon analyzes both compliance with legislation and violations of the laws that governed the contraband commerce of cassette players across Egypt’s borders.

Chapter 3 focuses on the convergence of social classes, culture, and politics, underscoring the concerns that emerged with the democratization process that evolved in relation to cultural production and endowed citizens of all classes with the capacity to become producers of culture. Simon examines the reciprocal influences between cassette culture and the current discourse on the identity of Egyptian culture and the authority for shaping it. The proliferation and propagation of cultural content is the topic of chapter 4 from a focus on pirated recordings. The author narrates a dispute involving three artists and a singer who legally appropriated their music and the efforts they made to eliminate pirated cassettes. He also analyzes how clandestine recordings brought about a radical change in the flow of cultural materials.

Chapter 5 shifts the focus to the importance of cassette technology as a vehicle for critique and counternarratives. Simon centers this section on the case of the vision-challenged Egyptian singer Shaykh Imam, whose songs express her nonconformity with official narratives, mentioning specifically Richard Nixon’s visit to Cairo. Finally, in chapter 6 the author presents his vision of the remnants of cassette culture. Through interviews with a religious scholar, the director of a library, and a merchant of electronic products, Simon narrates a microhistory of cassette technology and its fundamental role in creating and preserving the sound heritage of the country.

This book leads the reader to observe how the case of cassette culture in modern-day Egypt offers an integral and revealing exploration of the diverse ways in which a small technological product can develop agency as an essential element in processes of social transformation while simultaneously being transformed into a form of mass media itself. Simon’s book helps the reader understand the social evolution of a society by tracing the history of the media, cultural studies, and technological change. It stands as obligatory reading for anyone interested in these vital topics.