ian music created powerful semiotic responses that helped strengthen the movement that sparked the Arab Spring. Turino’s theory can explain the importance of hip-hop as a genre for the Tunisian social movements. In the United States, hip-hop is the ‘iconic’ genre for African Americans, a marginalised group. American hip-hop deals with issues of oppression, poverty, and rebellion. For much of the world, hip-hop and ideas of fighting oppression have an indexical link. Tunisian hip-hop have been especially important in calling out oppression in Tunisia because of the indexical clusters that are associated with hop-hop and fighting subjugation. Certain hip-hop artists like El General have become iconic of the Arab spring, as he played a huge role in the movement and so he became one of the symbols of the Middle East rebellions.

Throughout the Middle East music was used a defence to fight against the government as activist groups sang political chants over familiar popular tunes to create a semantic snowballing effect that gave the original song meaning. Continuous repetition of determined revolutionary activities in a mundane life, results in the internalisation of revolutionary ideas within the general population, without the governments attention. Building musical communities involves the role of semiotic effects as shared sense of community is built through the repetition of certain musical practices and people begin to associate music with the community that they are a part of which becomes part of their identity. However, communities can also surpass boundaries of identity and what holds these communities together is their shared experience of music, which often leads to the acknowledgement of shared experience or political alienation. This creates the emergence of new group political identities.

El General’s rap broke the spell of fear and showed other artists that it was possible to rebel and survive as he was released three days after his arrest due to public uproar. On January 25, 2011 the protests spread to Egypt and music played its part in the firing line. In Egypt, on Tahir Square in Cairo, loudspeakers carried the voice of 26-year-old singer Ramy Essam to the thousands of protesters who gathered there. Before 2011, Ramy Essam was not a household name in Egypt, he was a simple student and an impressive writer with a guitar and an impactful message. He began singing in Tahir square in early days of the revolution with his songs ordering Mubarak to ‘Irahal’ ‘Irhal’ (‘Leave, leave’) which had become the sound of the Egyptian revolt. His songs were taken up with glee by the protestors and were incredibly important to the protesters. According to professor and musician Mark Levine who was on Tahir square during the upheaval, it gave the public adrenaline and new hope when Ramy took the best of chants and slogans and incorporated