Mahraganat (I may have misspelled it) is a popular form of street music in post-Arab Spring Cairo.
Poor young men from Cairo's poorest areas compose songs that sound like they're straight out of a Bollywood movie, but have real, meaningful lyrics about life and politics.
Politics, according to one of the popular singers is not just about big events like the Presidency (didn't E.M. Forster say the same?), but about the lives of ordinary folks. Politics, the singer says, is enacted every day in the slums where people struggle to keep their body and soul together.
This is all very excellent, but I noticed that this new form of youth-expression in Egypt is plagued by the old virus of segregation. There are no women in the wild gathering of young males, and the commentator says, somewhat discreetly, the women are celebrating "elsewhere."
The poor boy-singer who speaks bravely of life itself as politics, is blithely blind to the fact that separation of men and women too is part of that politics.
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