MofA Week 11.

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Music, dance, gender & sexuality

Gender and sexuality as a social construction

  • Physiologically: gender binarism (though binarism oversimplifies even at the level of physiology)
  • Socially: gender categories are numerous, and not always classified as "male" and "female".
  • Constructions of gender and sexuality in Arabic-speaking societies is a broad topic, and a very interesting one--requiring a close look at Islamicate social histories (usually forgone in favor of political and economic histories)
  • Constructions both precede and result from performance (gender performativity; see Judith Butler) -- including dance.
  • We limit ourselves here to an overview of performance-related gender categories.

Influence of Islam on gendered space and performance

  • Catalyst for absorption and fusion of multiple expressive forms, and for accumulation of capital and development of modes of production enabling specialized performer-categories (often professional) to emerge
  • Negative attitudes towards music and dance (hadith), as "haram" (forbidden). But to condemn something does not lead to elimination so much as conceptual or social separation.
    • (cf Prophetic Hadith regarding an effeminate in E. Rowson's article on the Mukhannathun)
    • Cultural response to condemnation is to construct new categories.
    • From an Islamic legal perspective, the public view (visual, auditory) of women produces "fitna" (social discord) and is therefore rejected from public social space
    • But rejection of public female performers does not eliminate them, but rather leads to construction of special gendered categories of "female performer" which are allowed to exist, so long as they do not contaminate the "pure" woman.
    • Often these gendered categories, pariahs of mainstream culture, develop various forms of "symbolic inversion"
    • The forbidden also attains an erotic potency it might not otherwise have had. The hijab focuses attention on the face, the niqab on the eyes. Is the woman "covered" or merely "hidden"?
    • When women were banned, categories of male effeminates may have risen to take their place (mukhannath, khawal): that is the disturbance of gender equilibrium seems to trigger creation of new gender categories
  • Gender segregation
    • Principle based on eligibility for marriage
    • Defines private female domestic spaces
    • Impels use of veil as control
    • These criteria always applied more to upper-class urban society than to lower-class or rural.
  • Gendered-spaces
    • Social space in traditional Islamic society
      • Domestic space
        • Haramlik, (domestic female space), including female only performance (male performers behind a curtain) (the "harem"), except for eunuchs and mukhannathun
        • Salamlik, madyafa (domestic public space for males and their guests), including male only performance
      • Public space, urban
        • Female veiled space
        • Male open space
      • Public space, rural
        • less gender separation for work
        • gender separation maintained for entertainments (e.g. wedding)
      • Marginalized social spaces (dancers, musicians)
        • Freedom from prevailing social strictures implies confinement in specialized social categories
        • Paradox: physical freedom for women linked to conceptual marginalization (as "immoral")

Gendered performance types

  • Gendered music/dance categories and professionalization
  • Social construction of special gender-performance categories in the Arab world (and Islamicate cultures generally) include the following types:
  • Male types
    • mukhannath (effeminate, especially as singer), e.g. Tuways. Important contributions to the development of Arab music; transitional phase (according to Owen Wright: from primacy of female singers, qiyan, to male singers). Arose following bans on alcohol restrictions on women, which constricted the qayna's position. Declined due to perception of corrupting influence.
    • eunuchs (sometimes mukhannath; not musicians per se but could participate in haramlik)
    • alatiyya (19th century public guild musicians in Egypt, performing in public using takht)
    • shaykh, munshid (public male singer, conservative, veiled; bearded; hyper-masculine; religious overtones; anti-erotic)
    • mutrib (public male singer, emphasis on romantic and even erotic characteristics; clean-shaven, high voice, somewhat effeminate, e.g. Abdel Halim)
  • Female
    • jariya\jawari (category of female slaves, under Islam), e.g. Dananir. Slave-singers were often captured (in war) from non-Arabic speaking areas. Education in poetry, singing, and performance on musical instruments could greatly increase a slave's value. Concubinage being legal, many slave-singers gave birth to caliphs. Slaves in aristocratic households tended to be better educated than aristocratic wives.
    • qayna (pre-Islamic, early Islam)
      • qayna as slave (jariya) who entertained her master and his guests (higher status).
      • qayna as public singer and entertainer, attached to a tavern (lower status), perhaps closer to prostitute
      • famous qiyan (e.g. Azza al-Mayla, Jamila) of 7th century Medina transmitted art of music to celebrated male singers, e.g. Ma`bad
    • raqqasa (general category of female dancer)
    • ghawazi (as photographed and imagined: [1][2])
    • `alma\`awalim (19th century female performers in Egypt; "educated", tended to perform for private parties, mainly in harim for women, usually with percussion accompaniment); cf. "Alim"
    • Chikhat or Shaykhat (North African female singer; not respectable); cf. "Shaykh" (in Egypt: Shaykhat is a respectable religious authority, but not a singer!)
    • munshida (some respectability, male in group)
    • mutriba (public female singer of the 20th century, unveiled; increased emphasis on eroticism. Little space for "respectability".)

Dance: raqs (general considerations)

  • History of dance in the Arab world
    • Historical sources are sparse (due to religious attitudes, low esteem, continual "othering" of dance)
    • Strongly gendered (with males also imitating females)
      • Sufi "dance" (sama`)
      • Male dances: stick, sword, line, circle (group, or duel, more than solo display)
      • Female dances: group, solo
      • Some mixed dances (rare)
    • Court dances
      • Iranian origins?
      • al-Farabi: dance classified with rhythmic arts, inferior to singing and playing instruments
      • al-Mas`udi (d. 956) describes dance linked to 8 rhythmic modes, and mentions dances: al-kurra, al-ibl
      • Dananeer (20th c representation)
    • Popular soloistic female dance ("belly dance")
      • Raqs baladi: female rural folk style
      • Ghawazi: professional dancers as distinctive tribe (Gypsy?). Danced -- rather well-covered -- with cymbals, rabab, tar, darabukka, entertaining for life cycle rituals. Banished from Cairo in 1834 (M. Ali), increasing number of male professional dancers. Men were musicians. Matrilineal.
      • Raqs sharqi: modern professional dance
        • Influence of colonialism (e.g. market for British soldiers in Egypt) produced an "unveiling" of dancers (more exhibitionist, more risque) and finally an absorption of the Orientalist eroticizing gaze into the style itself.
        • Influence of new commodification of music and dance in the early 20th century theater (particularly in Cairo's Ezbekiyya garden district, e.g. the musical stage of Badia Masabni)
        • Influence of mass media (music films, videoclips)
        • Modern belly dance: weddings, nightclubs, films
        • Rich mixture of styles, choreographic and musical, often featuring the largest orchestras (which effectively combine tarab and varieties of folk ensemble)
          • Ghawazi
          • Baladi
          • Beduin
          • Zar
          • Regional styles (e.g. Turkish, Gulf, ....)
    • Dance as inversion of social order
      • Ghawazi (women in control, outside society)
      • Raqqasa (woman as object of public gaze, inversion of the veil, symbolic opposite of the bride, often mistresses, access to power)
      • cf. Zar, Gnawa
    • Influence of Islam
      • Rejects dance, especially female display dance
      • Dance retreats from ordinary public social space
      • Dance doesn't disappear, however, but grows in special socially and conceptually isolated spaces sometimes sharply contrasting with ordinary public space
        • Special group: ghawazi
        • Confined to particular social spaces (e.g. weddings, even for more conservative Muslims)
        • Confined to media space (e.g. film) [stories: Mit Adlan wedding]
        • Confined to female spaces (girls' parties)
      • Effects on Egyptian dancers
        • Re-covering ("veiling" of the dancer's body)
        • Retirement in favor of religious pursuits
        • Rise of the "foreign" dancer (ironic reversal of Orientalism: the European or American dancer as "exotic" spectacle for Arab men)

Dance and Belly dance (raqs sharqi) in the Arab world

  • Context: nightclub and self-orientalization in Egypt

Arab music and dance in the West

Background: Orientalism

  • History of Orientalism in art and literature
  • Representations of Oriental music, dance in painting. [7], [8]
  • Representations of the "Orient" in Western art music (Mozart and others: "Alla Turca" techniques)
  • Representations of music and dance on stage, in 19th century Expositions Universelles and World's Fairs, in Europe and America.
  • Representations of the harem
  • Exoticism of Arab music in the West

Raqs Sharqi in the West

Exotic Orientalism outside the "Orient"

New interpretations

  • Belly dance as originary female dance (fertility, matriarchy, goddess)
    • Spiritual bellydance[12]
    • Participatory bellydance: a ubiquitous Western phenomenon, considered art/exercise/feminine spirituality/professional showbiz, with its own forms (e.g. tribal), often appearing in the media
    • Professional choreographic bellydance, e.g. Belly Dance Superstars (Arab-American women actually play a relatively minor role in this popular culture phenomenon).
  • Context: Belly dance subculture in the West, e.g. Bedouin Beats in Edmonton
  • For debate:
    • "Belly dance is feminist" (supports women's rights)
    • "Belly dance is Orientalist" (demeans Muslim societies)
  • Question: Is there "orientalism" or "orientalisms" (e.g. how does "orientalism" of American popular culture in the 1950s and 60s compare to European "orientalism" of the 18th and 19th centuries? What has changed? What has not?)

Debate!

  1. "Belly dance is feminist" (supports women's rights) vs. "Belly dance objectifies women"
  2. "Belly dance is Orientalist" (demeans Muslim societies) vs. "Belly dance is an authentic expression of these societies"

What do you think?

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