A Trade Like Any Other:

Female Singers And Dancers In Egypt

Cover

Title A Trade Like Any Other

Author Karin van Nieuwkerk

ISBN 0292787200

Publisher University Of Texas Press

Category Nonfiction: Oriental Dance History

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What It's About

This book seeks to answer the question of why women who sing and dance professionally in Egypt have such a low status in Egyptian society. It consists of field research conducted by the author in Egypt, including many interviews with entertainers as well as other locals in other walks of life. The book opens with a history of the entertainment profession in Egypt from the 19th century through into modern times, then goes into depth on the position of the dance in Egyptian society today.

Its Good Points

For those of us in Western society, where celebrities (particularly entertainers) have been respected and adored in our cultures for several decades, it can be difficult to grasp the idea that singers and Oriental dance artists are seen as low status in the dance's home in Egypt. The Egyptian-made movies that made dancers like Tahia Carioca and Samia Gamal famous, combined with the fame of more recent stars like Nagwa Fouad and Soheir Zeki can deceive us into believing that female entertainers in Egypt are as highly respected there as a famous movie star or recording artist would be here. But that is not the case, and A Trade Like Any Other explores why.

Because this book explores the topic of how Egyptian society views its entertainers in great depth, it really helped me understand the very different cultural context of women in Egypt, and entertainers in particular. I knew, that in general dancers are held in low esteem there, but didn't fully grasp why. The historical perspective provided by this book was very helpful in seeing the roots of it. For example, when I read the section of the book describing that it used to be common for Egyptian nightclubs to require their dancers to converse and have drinks with the customers, that explained a lot. In a society where the religious traditions pressure "decent" women to wear veils, the notion of a woman sitting and drinking with the customers would be seen as low-class.

The interviews that the writer conducted with dancers and other people gave a very human face to the subculture of entertainers, sharing the stories of real-life people and their relationship to their society. She interviewed enough different people to provide multiple perspectives and balance the bias that any one interviewee would be likely to bring into the picture. There were also 18 black-and-white photographs showing dancers in the context of their day-to-day lives, which also made these people much more real for me. Although the book also quoted published research that was done by other people, it was the interviews and photographs that really brought the whole issue to life for me. More than once, while reading it, I felt the pain of these women who live a very hard life. It deepened my respect and appreciation for their efforts to keep the dance tradition alive despite the societal pressures against them.

This book is solidly researched. Unlike other books on the history of Oriental dance which include a great deal of speculation by the author, this one is based on the author's field research in Egypt, in which she tested her theories through a carefully-prepared interview process that she could quantify. Van Nieuwkerk's book covers both anecdotal research (quotes from interviews with people) and empirical research, which makes it very credible. Serious scholars will appreciate her methodology.

On The Negative Side....

Van Nieuwkerk's research was originally published as a doctoral dissertation. A Trade Like Any Other is a revision of that dissertation. Van Nieuwkerk's writing style is very academic in nature, and despite the fact that I have a Master's degree myself, I found this book to be slow going. In a number of places, the "academese" way of expressing her ideas was painful to wade through. Here is a typical paragraph that is fairly representative of the tone of the overall book:

Yet, as has been argued, women are marginalized to a greater extent than men in the entertainment field. Although to hold that female entertainers are outcasts and totally marginalized would be to overstate the case, they experience insults and rejection in their daily life. Many men reject the trade and would never marry a female performer. Yet, within the community of entertainers and their "significant others", there is a certain tolerance of women working in the trade, in particular if extra money is needed for the children and the home. The situation is disliked but tolerated. Most female performers from the circuit of weddings and saint's day celebrations are not women without men, which could be a clear sign of marginalization. They are thus not socially marginalized to any great extent. They are not, however, considered to exhibit all the qualities of really good Egyptian women. They are not perfect banat il-balad. On account of their livelihood they are culturally marginal. Female entertainers on the nightclub circuit are more strongly marginalized. Their "significant others," middle-class people, reject the trade. Female nightclub performers are accordingly often women without men.

Readers from the academic community will probably find this book reasonably easy to read, because the writer truly has made an effort to utilize a writing style that is more accessible to the general public than most academic research. But for those of us who don't read academic research for a living, this book is a lot harder to read than most mainstream non-fiction.

The research on which this book was based was conducted in the 1980's. Today, the dance profession is even more repressed than it was then. When reading the book, bear in mind that it describes Egyptian society of 10 years ago, and recognize that things are somewhat different today. For example, it was still common practice to have female dancers at weddings when this book was researched, but when I went to Cairo in January 1999, I went to two weddings, and neither one featured a professional female dancer.