Ramy Essam is best known for his heady performances in Tahrir Square during the 18 days of the January 25 Revolution. His song, "Irhal!' ("Leave!"), became an anthem for the mass street protests against Hosni Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship: "We are all united, we demand one thing: Leave! Leave! Leave!" He played hours before the "Battle of the Camel" — the surreal pro-Mubarak offensive on Tahrir Square — and during the clashes was hit on the head with a rock. A foreign camera crew filmed him there the next day, head bandaged and defiant: "We will stay here until Hosni Mubarak goes. … I will sing again, I will not stop singing until [he] goes."

Ramy's performances in Tahrir Square against Mubarak and then the Supreme Council of Armed Forces feature in the Oscar-nominated documentary, "The Square." It tells his story from the 18 days and beyond: his hopes for the revolution; guarding the entrances to the square; and then being picked out by soldiers during the brutal March 2011 clearance and taken to the Egyptian Museum where he was beaten and subjected to electrical shocks for hours.

Inside a recording studio not far from the western banks of the Nile, Ramy comes bursting through the mixing room door. He is preparing some new material. "For the last three years the atmosphere has been all about the revolution," he says. "But I want to sing about everything, not just the revolution." Still, Ramy denies he is moving on. "I can understand if people are trying to find new ways of fighting, but I don’t stand with people who want to give up."

Ramy is back in Cairo for the first time since traveling back to his family home in Egypt's Nile Delta in early December 2013, after reports that an arrest warrant had been issued for him. Four others were purportedly earmarked for arrest: prominent labor activist Haitham Mohamadeen, April 6 Youth Movement members Sherif al-Rouby and Zizo Abdou, and Sayed Sobhy. Authorities later denied this, and they were not arrested. Three others, including the April 6 Youth Movement's Sherif al-Shirfy, were, and they are to be tried on Jan. 22.