Najm and Sheikh Imam: the rise and decline of political song in Egypt

The article focuses on the artistic and innovative aspects that were produced by the Egyptian political and musical duo, the colloquial poet Ahmed Fouad Najm and his friend Sheikh Imam Eissa, the composer and singer. This duo constituted a very important artistic phenomenon that developed and crystallized during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. The study discusses the progress of Najm/Imam's political song during that period, its rise and radicalism as a result of its association with the rise of the students' leftist movement and the mass movement in general in Egypt, and the decline of this song at the beginning of the 1980s until the final separation of the duo. Folk motifs played a crucial role as a tool of artistic expression in Najm/Imam's political song.