Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Cow



Translation: "The Cow calling haha [name of the cow's owner] and say to my children [the people] haha and the good people with manners, haha, deeply sleeping."
"Al Bukra tnady haha w tkool ya wlady haha w wlad elshoom haha rayheen fe elnoom haha"

The street art is a spoof of the famous Egyptian song "البقرة النطاحة" "Elbkra elntaha" [The Cow who moves his head to hit someone]. The song was a popular refrain during the Revolution. The stencil first appeared during the 28 October demonstrations.

In the song...A man has a cow on which his livelihood depends, but the foreigners stole his cow & all her milk. His cow calls the men with the good manners to come and save her as she's being stolen, but everyone was sleeping. The cow is overwhelmed by her captives and falls into a well in her struggle. "She falls from fear."

Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote this song in 1967 after the "nkba" [catastrophe], i.e. Israeli victory of The Six-Day War in which Israel seized the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
In this context: the cow is Sinai Penninsula, those sleeping are the Egyptian military and the foreigners are Israeli.
But who is the cow now? Maybe the revolution is the cow and the Egyptian people are those sleeping while SCAF is the foreigner who is stealing the revolution. If so, how will the cow get out of the well? Will the people of Egypt wake up?


Here are the song's lyrics in Arabic and English.
Here is a Youtube clip of Ahmed Fouad Negm preforming the original song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghGSW-K2_m8
Here is a Youtube clip of Azza Balbaa, a famous Egyptian singer, singing the song in MidanTahrir during the Revolution.



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