MADINAT EL SALAM, Egypt — Madinat El Salam [Salam City], a remote city an hour outside Cairo was built by the Egyptian army after an earthquake left over 50,000 homeless in 1992. Twenty years later, its wide modernist streets have become fertile ground for an emerging music scene that is now making its way across the country.

Mahraganat, which means festivals, is difficult to classify under one genre. It refers to the carnivalesque atmosphere of shaabi (local) music mixed with electronic music and the spirit of early hip-hop — but the artists who created it do not accept this description. Mahraganat, they say, is something new and unique.

The hybrid genre first surfaced on YouTube in late 2009, and really took hold in 2010, just before the revolution. Radio and TV stations did not give them airtime, and with no record deals in sight, they built their reputation beyond their neighborhoods by circulating amateur home recordings via YouTube. The unknown uploaders back then resorted to band nicknames and their music first gradually spread across local areas in Cairo — Salam, Matareya and Ain Shams — before sweeping the entire country.