La professionalizzazione dell’industria musicale araba indipendente: contro il paradigma della music of resistance

This article aims to shed light on two aspects concerning the independent Arab record industry in the last ten years: on the one hand, the decline of the academic paradigm of music of resistance; on the other hand, the growing role played by a politics and a poetics of professionalism, embraced by all the categories operating in the music industry. The article reviews the most recent studies that have tried to deconstruct the paradigm of resistance as a predominant interpretative framework. It also recaps the century-old history of the recording industry in the Arab world, which has undergone radical material and symbolic transformations, taking part in the cultural and economic history of the region. Finally, the article tackles the issue of the professionalization of the independent Arab music industry, which musicians and workers of the music industry often see as an antidote to the obsolete rhetoric of resistance, and through which they seek to build a new notion of agency.