{"id":18969,"date":"2026-08-17T17:22:55","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/cairo-music-spaces-shrink-amid-financial-crisis-and-state-control\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T17:22:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T17:22:55","slug":"cairo-music-spaces-shrink-amid-financial-crisis-and-state-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interspacemusic.com\/blog\/cairo-music-spaces-shrink-amid-financial-crisis-and-state-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Cairo Music Spaces Shrink Amid Financial Crisis and State Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last February, the annual Nile Parade<\/strong> brought people from across Cairo to Qursaya Island<\/strong>, a short boat crossing from Giza on the Nile. The island, home to local farmers and fishermen, hosted a day of workshops, an exhibition, food and live music, with attendees learning about challenges facing communities along the Nile from Ethiopia to Egypt and dancing to Nubian and Sudanese music.<\/p>\n

For many residents, such gatherings are rare. Cairenes seldom get to sit in public spaces, on the grass, and listen to music with people from different social classes and backgrounds. Yet the city has long had an immersive soundscape of rhythms, horns and calls to prayer, with music spilling from car windows, street caf\u00e9s and passersby.<\/p>\n

State control of public space<\/h2>\n

Scholar and urban anthropologist Omnia Khalil<\/strong> said in a 2025 interview: \u201cWhat does it mean to have a city that is disappearing on purpose? The Cairo that we know has disappeared already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khalil pointed to the military government of Abdel Fattah El-Sisi<\/strong> and its restructuring of Cairo since the 2013 coup. The approach has been described by Robert Flahive<\/strong> as \u201cregime-security urbanism: the reorganization of space to limit the potential for mass mobilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Arab Spring, the current government has sought to prevent future uprisings by redesigning the capital to make organic gatherings difficult. It has also placed strict regulations on public events, including artistic ones.<\/p>\n

Fewer accessible venues<\/h2>\n

Development and cultural worker Rawya El Attar<\/strong> said that organizing artistic events was more accepted before the revolution. \u201cWe had a lot of festivals that were not costly. Bands like Massar Egbari<\/a><\/strong> would play music for free, and you\u2019d find people of all classes, from the streets to the 1%.\u201d<\/p>\n

El Attar, who has worked in Alexandria and Cairo, has observed events being closed down unless they are held in official spaces tied to Western cultural centers or the government. \u201cIt\u2019s a way to control the gatherings. Also, when you go to a national place, they don\u2019t give you the space for free, and this is where the problem starts,\u201d she said. \u201cYou no longer have access to renting a place or a garden and just putting on a festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cEgypt was never poorer.\u201d Even if street festivals still existed, professional musicians can no longer afford to perform for free. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to find someone who has the emotional capacity to do anything other than survive Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreign funding and its limits<\/h2>\n

El Attar grew up in the upper middle class and was educated in the French system at a time when Egyptian cities were more alive with the arts. As an adolescent, she did not question the involvement of French or German institutes in the Egyptian art scene, but as a university student she came to see their funding and monopoly as a continuation of colonialism.<\/p>\n

Egyptian art practitioners have long relied on Western funding, which has kept them from maintaining their own ecosystem. \u201cWe used to have salons where people played music together, but those spaces are no longer there,\u201d El Attar said. \u201cThose spaces have become the French, German or other foreign institutes, which are now closing their doors bit by bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some lament the decrease of Western funding and the loss of access to Western-run art spaces, El Attar said the new reality has been freeing despite financial difficulties. \u201cIt took me a long time to realize that I don\u2019t want to do things the way they do them,\u201d she said. \u201cHallelujah!\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalled: \u201cThe manager of the conservatoire in Tunis once told me that in Egypt, music was never related to class or intellectualism. You didn\u2019t need to have money; you could learn it in the street, in village circles and in the mosques. That\u2019s how Egypt became the hub for arts in North Africa<\/a> and the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

A segregated music scene<\/h2>\n

With public space and accessible independent cultural events in decline, most concerts are confined to places with strong financial and etiquette barriers. Contemporary art forms are heavily segregated:<\/p>\n