Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while "listening" to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.

Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also reveals a political dimension of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes used sound to distinguish themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound, layering historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.

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Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while "listening" to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.

Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also reveals a political dimension of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes used sound to distinguish themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound, layering historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.

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Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

by Ziad Fahmy
Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt

by Ziad Fahmy

eBook

$28.00 

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Overview

As the twentieth century roared on, transformative technologies—from trains, trams, and automobiles to radios and loudspeakers—fundamentally changed the sounds of the Egyptian streets. The cacophony of everyday life grew louder, and the Egyptian press featured editorials calling for the regulation of not only mechanized and amplified sounds, but also the voices of street vendors, the music of wedding processions, and even the traditional funerary wails. Ziad Fahmy offers the first historical examination of the changing soundscapes of urban Egypt, highlighting the mundane sounds of street life, while "listening" to the voices of ordinary people as they struggle with state authorities for ownership of the streets.

Interweaving infrastructural, cultural, and social history, Fahmy analyzes the sounds of modernity, using sounded sources as an analytical tool for examining the past. Street Sounds also reveals a political dimension of noise by demonstrating how the growing middle classes used sound to distinguish themselves from the Egyptian masses. This book contextualizes sound, layering historical analysis with a sensory dimension, bringing us closer to the Egyptian streets as lived and embodied by everyday people.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781503613041
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Publication date: 08/25/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 312
File size: 20 MB
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About the Author

Ziad Fahmy is Associate Professor of Modern Middle East History at Cornell University. He is the author of Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern National through Popular Culture (Stanford, 2011).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Historicizing Sounds and Soundscapes
1. Walking the City: Street Voices, Traffic, and the Mundane Sounds of Everyday Life
2. Silencing the Streets: Classism, Fear of the Crowd, and Regulating Sounds and Bodies
3. Roads and Tracks: Modern Traffic and the Sensory and Social Impact of Trams and Automobiles
4. The Soundscapes of Modernity: Electricity, Lights and the Sounds of Nightlife
5. The Sounds of Weddings and Funerals: From Brass Bands to Wails and Ululations
6. Sounding Out State Power: Cannons, Music, and Loudspeakers
Conclusion: Class Distinction and Remembering Lost Sounds
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