Electro vs. ISIS: Fighting Jihadists With Dance Music

As ISIS plots to censor culture, music continues to deliver its counter-strikes. And the Sounds of Sahara festival, or #SOS, which took place late February in the remains of the desert Tunisian town of Mos Espa, continues to do just that. The festival returns to a country recently labeled in the news as ISIS breeding grounds, instead of as a tourist destination once known for its emerald shorelines and historical cities. But one local desert afficionado wasn’t about to sit and watch his home country be devoured by fear. By bringing back tourism, culture and even a beer sponsor to the remote location some 40 minutes outside Tozeur—a former tourist oasis (literally)—Samy Mhenni has managed to bring 5,000 people together with dance music.

“Their attacks make us stronger,” says Mhenni of ISIS in the documentary L’Electro Contre Daech (Electro Against ISIS) by Jérôme Bermyn. “They make their attacks, and we come back with our events… We will not take down our [fists], but we will instead continue to fight. And we will win.”

The location for #SOS was also home to Les Dunes Electroniques, another electronic dance music event that ran editions in both 2014 and 2015. The latter featured Derrick May, Superpitcher, and a live set by Francesco Tristano. It also managed to pull in nearly 10,000 people, largely Tunisian, to the event. Its French team of organizers were unfortunately forced to cancel this year’s event due to the escalating political tension; however, the documentary on #SOS, which was filmed just a week before the March 7 suspected attacks on the city of Ben Gardane (about 190 miles outside Tozeur), which left some 50 Tunisian soldiers dead, lives on to tell the story of how music can unite and inspire the seemingly hopeless. Bermyn himself commented that the French team has chosen to take a step back and come back at a bettter time with more force.

As part of the larger Arab Spring, Tunsia weathered a sweeping revolution at the end of 2010 that led to the eventual removal of its longtime president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, in January of 2011. The country’s political instability grows more acute over time, as the continued squeeze by ISIS, via Tunisia’s border with Libya, has led to sharp declines in local tourism—the bread and butter for the citizens of its smaller cities. According to Mhenni, eight out of 10 people depend on toursim for income.

The country’s fragile economy was further wounded in the June 2015 attacks on a beach hotel in Sousse, which left 38 dead and wounded countless others. In fact, the country has now been smeared with a red, no-go zone where tourists are strictly advised not to travel. Tozeur itself teeters on the border of the red zone, leaving its citizens penniless and largely without hope. And it’s that very lack of a future from which ISIS supplies itself with warriors. But Mehnni—who was educated in France and lived in Germany, only to come back to support his home country—firmly believes in fighting to keep tourism alive by any means possible.

“Some people are dancing to electronic music for the first time,” says Mhenni of #SOS, “most of whom lost their jobs because of the collapse of tourism and have become targets for ISIS.”

While the first events in Mos Espa really managed to pull in only local tourists—despite the presence of some French flags being waved (Tunisia was annexed to France from 1881–1956)—Mhenni plans to continue fighting his good fight, with the vision that the jihadists trawling the deserts today will become ravers on his dancefloor in the future.