From Coachella To Antiquity? Reflections On Egypt’s Cultural Exceptionalism

-Essay-

CAIRO — When Mohamed Ramadan took the stage at last week’s 2025 Coachella Festival, surrounded by neon lights and pyrotechnics, many Egyptians watched with a mixture of pride and quiet discomfort. He had become the first artist from Egypt to perform at the prestigious Californian musical festival — a fact hailed by many on social media as a win for Arab visibility. But as he shouted his signature line — “Number one!” — to a crowd that barely knew his name, others were left wondering: is this really what Egyptian culture now exports to the world?

Ramadan’s rise did not happen in a vacuum. In a country grappling with economic collapse, censorship, and the slow strangulation of public imagination, the 36-year-old has become a symbol — neither of artistic excellence nor political resistance, but simply of what sells: bling, virality, ego.

Modern Egypt’s golden age

This marks a stark contrast from Egypt’s golden era of art, when creativity served as the nation’s conscience. Films like The Night of Counting the Years (1969), directed by Shadi Abdel Salam, used minimalist aesthetics and haunting silence to ask profound questions about heritage, identity and moral decay. Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station (1958) addressed class, repression, and mental illness through a thrillingly modernist lens, decades ahead of its time. These weren’t just movies; they were intellectual events — expressions of a society wrestling with itself.

Even popular music once carried poetic depth. Abdel Halim Hafez’s songs were steeped in romanticism, nationalism and longing. Umm Kulthum’s concerts weren’t just performances — they were communal rituals, where entire neighborhoods would gather around radios to listen to her voice stretch the boundaries of time and meaning.

Compare that to Mohamed Ramadan’s “Mafia,” where he brags about wealth, dominance and masculinity with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Or the music video for “Number One”, in which women are reduced to background decoration while the camera worships his abs and his car. 

Where Umm Kulthum sang “Al Atlal” — a song that dealt with the ruins of love and homeland — Ramadan’s lyrics revolve around his own personal invincibility. There is no collective story. No metaphor. Only ego.

Eternal export

Today’s mainstream Egyptian cinema echoes this degradation. Consider the recent wave of slapstick comedies and action flicks that dominate box offices — full of misogyny, caricature, and shallow storytelling. In El-Mamar (2019), the war epic was drowned in nationalism so thick it left no room for humanity. In contrast, a film like The Land (1970) by Chahine used the story of farmers resisting eviction to explore colonialism, power, and resilience with stunning emotional depth.

This shift isn’t accidental. The political and economic climate has reshaped the artistic landscape. Censorship has gutted critical thought, while financial strain has made big-budget escapism the only viable business model. Artists who want to experiment or critique are often pushed to the margins — or out of the country entirely.

And so, in a time when Egypt could most use art that challenges, heals and reimagines, it is left with art that distracts, desensitizes, and inflates.

Ramadan’s Coachella performance wasn’t just a concert — it’s a cultural export. It tells the world: this is who we are. But it is also a reflection of what we’ve lost. The layered storytelling. The poetic resistance. The courage to interrogate ourselves.

It is indeed steeped in thousands of years of history, dating back to the grandeur of ancient Egypt, and the efforts to preserve its patrimony. The much anticipated reopening of the Grand Egyptian Museum, with its unprecedented collection of over 100,000 artifacts and its breathtaking display of Tutankhamun’s complete burial assemblage, is a perfect example of the cultural aura of the nation. This monumental space, set to open on July 3, is not just a repository of relics but a testament to a civilization that once defined beauty, philosophy, and storytelling.

Egypt once gave the region and the world art that could help teach people how to feel. Today, sadly, we offer an internet meme dressed in gold chains.