Radio Success Theory

The radio was the first grand scale broadcasting device created by man and its invention will forever remain one of the brightest moments in his history. Throughout the years, the content broadcast over radio stations all around the world has evolved from basic news to complex talk shows and in-depth political discussions to specializations in some of the most esoteric styles of music ever played. Your average and most tuned into radio stations (for reasons to be explained later in this text) are ones that focus on music, more specifically, pop music, hip-hop and RnB and your sporadic couple of minute chit-chats that go into the mix. I know this to be for a fact in Germany because I've heard them myself, it's largely true in the US and it is a cold hard truth in this veritably bewildering country of mine.

Let's spend some time with this brief description, shall we?

It's obvious that when a radio station has a wider broadcasting range, its content and opinions are available to a wider portion of the population. But what exactly is the effect of that? The effect of that, my hopefully growing number of readers, is that these radio stations are consistently transmitting through the air waves their common views to their listeners. These views aren't fully manifested in the brief chit-chat sessions between songs. They do, of course, have a share in this sonic transmission but the bulk of it is vicariously transmitted through the selection of songs.

These largely popular radio stations play a major role in forming the general public's opinion regarding music and what it 'should' sound like. Now if you've ever had a personal conversation with me, you'll know how sarcastic I am about these quotations I used with the word should. Music, like any form of art, is never true unless it’s a real expression of the artist; an aural transmission of feelings and perceptions. So when hundreds of musical products come out every year following the same weak, repetitive and over-worked pattern, you'll have a large number of your population believing it to be 'normal' music and over time affirming it as what they like.

There's a grave danger to this and it is the mass flattening of the public taste; presenting to it a consistent dose of mundane, lyrically recycled, verse-chorus abominations in the form of three-to-four minute silver pills that do the exact job they were cheaply design for (thank you Mr. Wilson for your poetic description). The further implication to this flattening is its end result, a public that is largely unwelcoming to any new forms other than that which it was spoon-fed by these radio stations. Any slight variation in the music being played, any extended musical section without any words, any song that exceeds the five minute mark are all instantly frowned upon and deemed unfit for public inartistic-consumption.

As local comedian George Azmy once mentioned, the vast majority of Egyptian pop songs works around a certain set of keywords, a proverbial list-of-essentials that all writers refer to when blurting their numerous one hit wonders, even if most of them don't actually 'hit'. This list he was talking about puts the majority of songs into two sub-categories of the same category: love songs. They're either talking about the good part of it when all goes well or about the bad part of it when things slip off the rails. So as the years pass by and these bland trends become more embedded into the public's mind, the chasm separating them from real music that has any sense of drama or urgency grows ever wider.

My late grandfather used to tune into a certain radio station every night at 10 pm because they used to play Om Kulthoum songs at that time. Om Kulthoum was and remains the best selling artist in the Middle East and North Africa, selling more records than the MTV Music Award winning Amr Diab and the deplorable, self-proclaimed 'king of generation' Tamer Hosny. Om Kulthoum had a voice like no other in the business. Her vocal capabilities were astounding and the public at that time (the 50s and 60s) appreciated that and respected it enough that they showed up in suits and soiree dresses at her concerts. Watching a recording of such concerts in 2010, I can't help but look from a bleak angle and realize that such events look almost irrelevant now when you compare them to the average local pop concert.

The lack of creativity in the music that came after her death was the first clue to the general decline of public taste. The approach became more commercial; the music started shifting towards repetitive concrete structures and the lyrics evolved in a rather unpleasant manner that eventually led it to that aforementioned list-of-essentials. This was aided by many internal factors, like the state of war the country was in during the early 70s, the hardly rising economy and the early sights of the spread of modern age technology.

The wide spread of the radio in Egyptian homes during that time exposed more people to the same thing, thus grinding the proverbial surface of their music receptors to a near flat finish. As time passed and the singers started to increase in number, they had to present something that grabs the attention of the radio stations that were broadcasting to that increasing percentage of the population. This put the stations in a position of power because they became the main channel through which many people listen to music. The lack of diversity in the content they were broadcasting made it easier for them to choose what will be broadcast and made it easier to them to put the majority of their listeners in one frame of mind.

This new found radio power forced many music labels to produce records that will get air time so their investments can pay off. Money forced the labels which consequently forced the singers to sing that radio-accepted kind of songs. This way, the singer gets the record deal, the record company gets air time and therefore better record sales and the radio station can twist the arms of advertisers for more money because it has the huge listener base and of course, the products advertised will become more expensive to cover the advertising expenditure. So the average Joe (or average Ahmed if you want to be culturally accurate) will listen to more mass produced, radio-friendly music, pay more for the records that he's not sure are really worth it and pay more for random radio-advertised products for reasons he can't yet explain.

How's that for a music business?

The empty can rattles the most

Many repeat the common phrase 'actions speak louder than words' yet not as much people adhere to it. Everyone can talk and say whatever they want; talk is cheap, isn't it? Of course it is, and in Egypt where we're growing up in a culture of rarity, talk is our most coveted commodity; only because of the lack of something else that's more valuable. 'Hang on. What do you mean by a culture of rarity?' you ask me. Allow me to elaborate, however briefly.

Your average Egyptian is a person who doesn't have much to call his own because valuables are becoming increasingly rare with time in our country. This rarity in which we live overpowers the inherent kindness you'll read about in tourist guide books and blogs of visitors reflecting on their visits to the land of the Pharaohs. The reasons behind this rise in rarity are numerous and may need volumes to fully discuss. Let me just say that this rarity is the result of a weak economic structure, inexistent progress in education and a government-inflicted fear of self expression. This leaves your average Egyptian in charge of only his words; in supposedly "safe" surroundings of course.

The weight of words for the average Egyptian is becoming increasingly heavier because of the open control he has on them. They are what he uses in his everyday dealings with those around him and since their use has become hugely un-moderated, they are becoming more and more expendable. It remains though, on the other hand, a valued commodity owing to its aforementioned rarity. Egyptians (and when I say Egyptians I mean the majority not 100%) take the words of others seriously and give it weight on its merit.

Another very important factor in that equation is the in-bred sentimentality of Egyptians. People value each other and expect altruistic behavior from one another in many, if not all situations. These expectations are often built on a verbal agreement and are in most cases fulfilled. It stems from our dependence on each other and from a general sense of trust. There's no prevailing sense of verification, there's no nagging voice asking 'how do you know this is right?' which make the words heavier than they should be. So if at any point the promise is broken, there's a sense of weakness. The word was all he had and now it doesn't mean anything.

The in-bred sentimentality of Egyptians has made them a little too sensitive over time. So when someone is expressing an opinion which happens to deter from the norm, unfortunately your average Egyptian would consider it a proverbial slap in the face. A 'how could you?' reaction is automatically fired back. This sensitivity has given more weight to the word. Since the average Egyptian is a text book conformist, varying opinions are a rarity, which produces millions of citizens who can't converse objectively and effectively with people they may disagree with.

An analogy that I'd like to use at this point is the analogy of falling objects. Everyone knows that gravity is an uncompromising force of nature that pulls everything towards it. If you stand at a window and throw a rock or a pen, they fall in almost a straight line, this is because of the constant acceleration of gravity and their weight which is almost unaffected by the wind during the fall. Now imagine throwing a sheet of paper out of the same window. What will happen? The acceleration of gravity is the same but any breeze passing by will take the sheet of paper with it in its direction. It's because the paper's weight is so negligible, anything can push it along. This lightness of mass can be extrapolated in examining human behavior as lightness of character.

This lightness of character which is largely attributed to the reasons mentioned above, poverty, over-sensitivity, weak economy and the fear of self expression, has made the average Egyptian like that piece of paper falling from a window. Any meaningless word from someone can push it along with it. In the grand scheme of this lightness, the outcome is intellectually weak because the individual intellect does not get any practice.

I was curious in school why the Arabic word for mathematics was a word almost exactly like the word for sports. The answer to that of course was that the brain is like any other muscle in the body that always requires exercise. Mathematics to the brain is like running to the legs. The more one practices it, the more one becomes better and sharp at it. Transposing this to the human intellect would then be quite simple. The more a person is consistently engaging their intellect in objective conversations, its stays sharp and receptive. The attuned intellect therefore can be constructive and useful in understanding the surroundings and working around them.

On the other hand where you have the lazy and fat intellects living on an exclusive diet of bland summer-hit comedy movies and mass-produced radio-friendly mono-tonal musical products. These intellects are constantly exposed to the most repetitive and mind numbing forms of entertainment which are turning them into mindless drones that are left to wander the land in search of their respective fifteen thousand minutes of fame that are just right around the corner they never seem to pass by. So out goes the drone into the real world with minimal intellectual fortitude and the cold hard truth is that the intellectual and the educational level have departed each other a long time ago in this country. It is not uncommon to meet a person with esteemed academic merits and a frigid inflexible mentality.

In the midst of all social, political and economic conditions that can affect the population of any given country in different ways, Egyptians look like they've got the bottom end of the deal. Our society is infested with religiously induced conformity that's built on 'copy-pasting' what some cleric may have mentioned in passing and directly applying it as divine orders. Our economy once depended on tourism and with every year, Egypt's global ranking is declining. Our internal politics are run by the infantile 'calling it' system which is running the majority of the country's natural and human resources deep into the desert depths that we're progressively moving into without realizing that we must limit our growth in population lest we explode and be forced to move out anyway.

All these conditions, and more that could push this short piece into pages of double digits, collectively put down the spirit of advancement in our youth and gradually grind and polish any sharp mentality and lure it into its conformist populace. Hollow characters are the ones that are most under the spotlights because the average intellect exposed to it is just too damn weak to realize its hollowness. They flabbergast the herd with their flashy appearance and ill use of big words and they keep on doing it well beyond the point of blowing smoke. This, in essence, is the excessive rattling of the empty can. An opportunistic and weightless personification of all what's wrong with our society nowadays.