(MUSIC: "Tounis Bledna")

Hamada Ben Amor has been singing about social and political issues and inequality since two thousand eight. VOA's Faiza El-Masry asked El General if he had expected "Rayes Lebled" to become so popular.

EL GENERAL (TRANSLATED): "No I didn't. I just wrote from my heart and just wanted to defend the Tunisian people and express how they feel. And with God's help we got rid of the president and the government and every single Tunisian citizen shared the same feeling I expressed in the song. We were living in horror, not only us, all other people, like Egyptians, Libyans. We were all afraid of the governments. We wouldn't dream that we would get rid of them."

Now, he worries about the future. He says he hopes the suffering and sacrifices of young people will not be worthless. He hopes that the people in Arab nations will be happy with the governments that come to power. But one thing El General says he does not wish for is to enter politics.

EL GENERAL (TRANSLATED): "I'm an artist. I would never be a politician. In politics you have to be maneuvering and I like to be straightforward. That's why I prefer to be a singer, an artist."

The demonstrations in Tunisia helped create a new movement of Arab protests across North Africa and the Middle East. Egypt's longtime leader Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi were also driven from power in twenty-eleven.

(SOUND: Protests in Yemen)