The coffeehouse has long been a site of sociability in Egypt. Indeed, by the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, coffeehouses were woven into the urban fabric, gendered public spaces in which the local population might congregate, play chess, and discuss the news of the day. They were also performance spaces in which local talents might perform comedy routines, perform shadow plays, or sing songs. Such popular public entertainments offer a unique point of entry into the social concerns, interests, humor, and imagination of a subaltern that has been largely understood through the eyes of cultural and political elites. This paper will examine how the public performances of one group of players, “muqallidin,” or “mimics,” played a significant, albeit understated, role in the creation of a common national identity. It argues that muqallidin and other public performers gave voice to what it meant for the oft-overlooked sha’b—those who made up the majority of the urban population—to be modern and Egyptian. Muqallidin imitated street vendors and famous singers but also staged original, colloquial plays where they excelled at mimicking regional accents and dialects. One of these muqallidin, Muhammad Idris, earned his reputation by impersonating a famous and beloved singer named Sheikh Salama Hijazi. Hijazi was Idris’s contemporary, a man from a poor family whose voice had propelled him to fame in the world of effendi stage-theater. As only one of many Hijazi mimes, Idris’s performances disseminated music, lyrics, and some version of Hijazi’s voice to people who ordinarily would not have been able to afford seeing him on stage. An emerging cultural icon, Hijazi transcended social divisions by virtue of his sha’bi background, religious training, and soaring melodic voice. In this way, he attained distinction as an authentic, indigenous symbol that helped to unify Egyptians in a new way. Hijazi, and those who performed and disseminated his “voice,” helped to shape an Egyptian cultural identity that would slowly supersede—but never entirely displace—the regional, confessional, and social identities already at work in Egypt. As Idris embodied Hijazi’s person and disseminated his music, it is clear that the muqallid was part of a process of cultural circulation that would affect sha’bi notions of themselves and their relationship to a larger Egyptian identity. Muqallidin helped to make music, song, and comedy central to “molding national tastes” which, in turn, facilitated the development of a national identity.