MofA Week 4

Musical values, aesthetics, performance, & emotion: turath, asala, and tarab in urban art music - rooted in medieval concepts of melodic and rhythmic modes (maqamat, durub)

Preliminaries

• Announcements:
  • The number of e-books continues to grow.
  • CSL forms due by Friday (sign into the portal) - but I need to sign by Thursday!
  • CSL
    • CSL Annotations. Discuss in your group how you'd like to approach this.
    • CSL bibliographies. There's been little progress thus far on the shared Zotero database! Everyone please strive to add at least one bibliographic item by Thursday! I would expect roughly 10 annotated entries each.
  • Touma CD is available online - accompanies book (was lost from library)
• Assignments
  • Fieldwork assignment: event ethnography (concert, belly dance show at a local restaurant, community event...). Careful description: who, what, where, why, how, when, considering people, their behavior and interactions, as well as sound and music.
  • SC papers: importance of annotating each reading before embarking on this task. Treat each chapter topic as a single reading.
  • Practicing for the map quiz. Identify 22 countries of the Arab League, their capitals, and their approximate populations.
  • Reading presentations: as the course is larger than before we'll do these in CSL teams, 10-12 minutes each. Each team presents 2 online readings relevant to their band. Send everyone a link beforehand. In class, (a) explain what the readings are about, and (b) provide your critique, relating them to the band. You can use Google Presentation in Google Docs - or any other software for text, image, and video accompaniment. This will happen in Week 6 (folklore) - October 7 and 9. BE PREPARED TO PRESENT BY OCTOBER 6!
• Optional creative assignment (extra credit): choose a maqam, compose a dulab, or improvise.
• Watch: "Umm Kulthum: A voice like Egypt" (on reserve in the Music Library). It would be helpful if you can coordinate to watch in small groups.
• Note: I'm away on Thursday Oct 2, but please meet in this room to work in your groups.

Warmup with maqamat and durub!

• Sing dulab rast and perform durub (half class do each, then switch)
• Follow my melody (modulations from/to Rast)
• Browse the 12 basic maqamat of Egypt and the Levant (sing or play them)
• Note families of related maqamat:
  • Maqam Rast, Suznak...Huzam...Nahawand, Nawa Athar
  • Maqam Bayyati, Shuri, Saba
• Become familiar with an assortment of durub (at least: bamb, malfuf, maqsum, sa`idi, masmudi, ciftetelli, sama`i darij, yuruk sama`i, sama`i thaqil, dawr hindi, mudawwar masri, murabba` (sing or play them). Today: add sama`i

Theory, turath, asala, tarab

• Concepts
  • Turath: heritage (tradition): that music which is continuously connected, in the popular imagination, to the pre-modern Islamicate world (often as represented by the earliest recordings), and (again in the popular imagination) is weakly affected by modernity generally, especially technology (media, notation) and Western musical sounds and techniques (instruments, harmonY).
  • Asala: authenticity (value): the essence of such connection
  • Tarab: musical ecstasy or emotion, a key ingredient of turath and indicator of asala (listen to Prof AJ Racy on Tarab

• Theory has a variable but important relation to actual practice (including the turath, value of asala, practice and experience of tarab).
  • Develops following Bayt al-Hikma in 9th century (translation project)...
  • ...as independent philosophical tradition (Greek influence: quadrivium)
  • uptake of Greek theory (from Pythagoreans, to Euclid, Aristoxenus, and others), including Pythagorean theory double octave, tetrachords, scales, modes
  • ...but modified to suit Islamicate (Arab-Persian-Byzantine-...) tonality and instruments
    • placement of "neutral tones", formulated (Greek influence!) as integer ratios.
    • some "dissonance" results as Islamicate practice is "force fit" into Greek structures
    • use of oud (and tanbur of Baghdad, and of Khorasan) as theoretical instruments rather than monochord
  • Approaches:
    • more ethnographic, descriptive approach, related to practice (al-Farabi)
    • more systematic, prescriptive approach, defining practice (Safi al-Din al-Urmawi)

Review: Tuning, scales and modes in theory: past to present

• Greek inheritance combines with Islamicate practices, and ultimately with Western concepts about music
• LCL division of the whole tone (again, @ represents a fifth, 3/2....^ means "up", v means "down". So @^2 means "go up two fifths", always wrapping around the octave.)
  • recall that
  • @^2 = ^ Tone
  • @^5 = v Limma
  • @^12 = ^ Comma
  • consider four tones, W, X, Y, Z: W --- (@^5) --- X ---(@^2) --- Y --- (@^5) --- Z
  • on an octave circle this becomes: X --- (Limma) --- W ---(Comma) --- Z --- (Limma) --- Y
  • equivalent to: F - Gb - F# - G
• A "neutral" F# can now be defined as Gb.

But Arab practice didn't quite fit and so one finds a variety of "just" intonation solutions to defining neutral tones, resulting in impossible frettings, and demonstrating the difficulty of fitting practice to a Greek preference for music theory based on integer ratios.

Tonal theory in medieval period in Arabic-speaking regions

• Theory is closely linked to instruments, particularly chordophones (ud and tanbur), providing flexible visual representation (monochord was Greek theoretical instrument)
• Most often the `ud serves as reference
  • 5 strings (low to high): bam - mathlath - mathna - zir - hadd (mix of Arabic and Persian terms)
  • 4 "frets": sababa - wusta - binsir - khinsir (names of the fingers: index, middle, ring, pinky) (debate as to whether these are theoretical or real frets)
  • 5 notes per string (but some are variable)
  • Each string provides a tetrachord (jins)
  • Jins species (anwa`)
    • First degree fixed (mutlaq)
    • Fourth degree fixed (binsir) - major 3rd
    • fifth degree fixed (khinsir) - perfect 4th
    • Second and third degrees are variable (sababa and wusta)
  • Jins combine to form scales, basis for modes

Theoretical approaches: scale and mode

Refer to spreadsheet and associated audio examples

• Theory of the Old Arabian school, division of octave into 9 or 11 tones (Hijazi, practical but with retroactive Greek and prescriptive influence): attributed to early figures such as Ibn Misjah (d. 785) who defined the 8 "finger modes", but only available in later treatises, e.g. Ibn al-Munajjim (d. 912) following Ibrahim al-Mawsili in the early 9th century.
• Theory of the Philosophers: e.g. Ibn Sina, and al-Farabi's Kitab al-Musiqi al-Kabir (Greek influence, with multicultural ethnographic approach), mid-Abbasid period; division of octave into about 30 tones
• Theory of the Systematists: e.g. Safi al-Din al-Urmawi's Kitab al-Adwar (prescriptive systematizer), late Abbasids; division of octave into 17 tones
• Later theorists (e.g. Syrian 53 comma octave; Michel Mashaqa and move towards equal temperament of 24 quartertones; Westernization/systematization for transposability)

Touma's interpretation of scales and maqam: a critical reading

• He ttempts to differentiate a "pure Arabian" from Turkish or Persian, on the one hand, and Western music, on the other.
  • Pure Arabian scales vs. mixture with Greeks
  • Temperament as "western"
• He draws a philosophical space/time distinction, contrasting Arabian as "spatial" vs European as "temporal".
• He tends to confuse Maqam (tonal structure) vs. taqsim (improvisation in that structure).
• All supports his contention that Arab music is a distinctive manifestation of the Arab nation, while glossing over traditions that may be closer in many respects than the distance between, say, Moroccan nawba and Egyptian wasla.
• There are also many mistakes and inaccuracies in these sections, perhaps partly due to faulty translations.
• Nevertheless, his summaries are effective, particularly when read in conjunction with the listening examples (now online).

Contemporary theory of maqam (as taught and practiced in Egypt and Syria today)

Tonal system (maqam): based on 48 tone gamut comprising two 24 tone scales, out of which are extracted 7 tone scales, adding pitch function (structure). Mode (maqam) is scale with additional melodic information.

• gamut: the double octave (as inspired by Greek theory)
  • each octave is divided into 24 quartertones (equal in theory, but not in practice)
  • the double octave contains 48 notes, many of which are uniquely named
  • others are named using prefixes nim/tik (lower/raise by quartertone) and qarar/jawab (lower/raise by octave)
  • the double octave represents a vocalist's range, comprising a central octave, plus half an octave below and above.
• maqam:
  • collection (set) of pitches or intervals, usually (but not always) replicating at the octave.
  • Most musicians refer to maqamat without reference to the larger gamut; in Egypt a small set of scales is commonly presented, sometimes http://maqamworld.com divided into overlapping ajnas]
  • tonal functions are defined on the set: tonic, dominant, etc. on those pitches or intervals - corresponding to the ajnas boundaries
  • pitch scale degrees, presented on staff paper and referred to A440 hertz
  • intervals (ratios, cents): conceived as a certain number of tempered tones, main intervals being: semitone, 3/4 tone, tone, and 3/2 tone.
  • equal temperment (vs just or "musical" (practical) intonation): theoretically conceived as equal tempered, but not necessarily played that way! ( e.g. Pythagorean theory/Arab theory vs. 24 tone vs. musical intuition)
  • pitch functions are defined in theory:
    • tonic (qarar)
    • dominant (ghammaz)
    • subdominant
    • points of repose (marakiz)
    • leading tone
    • final tone
• Differences between Egyptian and Syrian approaches:
  • Egyptians: talk about maqam as structured Sillim (scale), with tonic and dominant, constructed out of two tetrachords.
  • Syrian theory: based on concept of sayr (path): a description of how to navigate the maqam (starting point, which tetrachords to develop in which order, ending where).
• mode in practice:
  • context-sensitive intonation, allotones (varying a pitch slightly depending on context). Hear: Sami Abu Shumays on microtones
  • tonal ornaments, which may be instrument dependent (listen to the presentations of scale on maqamworld.com)
  • melodic tendencies, patterns, materials ("licks"), network pathways through the scale (especially for the qafla, or cadence)
  • a kind of network defined on the set; this is primarily in oral tradition, through lessons on instruments, imitation....
  • scalar direction, progression of melodic development (more explicit in Syrian theory)
  • modulation from one maqam to another
  • larger modal system comprising directed network of ajnas, through which improvisations/compositions move.
  • Read: Marcus on modulation, intonation
  • Browse: Sami Abu Shumays materials on maqam network, and Rast vocabulary
• Relation of theory - whether written or oral -- to localized concepts of "asala" and "turath" and "tarab": what is "authentic tradition", and what stirs "tarab" is linked to local theoretical concepts, which are both descriptive and prescriptive of these categories.

Iqa`a (rhythm)

• Concepts
  • free or metric time
    • Free (aperiodic): associated with solo performance of improvisation (taqsim, mawwal...)
    • Metric (periodic): associated with group performance of composition (e.g. muwashshah)
      • Periodic signal, but slow! (1 Hz or slower, instead of 440 Hz)
      • Period: wazn, usul, mizan, darb
      • Naqra: beat
      • Darb is composed of segments (2 or more), equal or unequal
      • Each segment is composed of series of naqarat (2 or more)
      • Each naqra is
        • Long or short
        • Accented or unaccented
      • Each accented beat is dum (low, heavy) or tek (high, light)
• Examples
  • http://www.maqamworld.com
  • Other theory resources

Concept of tarab

All of these theoretical concepts, in practice, help to explain "what is tarab".

They also help to define localized traditions (turath) cherished by connoisseurs, who view them as unbroken links to a distant past, a golden age.

And they define musical attributes whose presence is a mark of "authenticity", or asala.

View powerpoint.

Examine for instance the Levantine-Egyptian wasla.

The turath: inheritance from the 19th century

Map of the Arab world

Islamicate timeline

• Ideology:
  • Inhitat (decline) of the Arabs: 13th (fall of Baghdad) to 19th c
  • Nahda (renaissance) in 19th c following European contact and Ottoman resistance
  • Revival of turath as marker of national identity, based on early 20th century recordings
• Reality?
  • Early Arab music is Arabian (from the peninsula)
  • With Islamic expansion, musical systems are blended (Arab, Persian, Byzantine)
  • Ethnicities are not defined in linguistic terms at this time
  • Arab nationalists back-project linguistic nationalism to this period, "claiming" Arabic-speaking musicians and philosophers, even when Arabic was not their native tongue (e.g. al-Farabi)
  • In times and places when dominant empires (e.g. Ottomans from Turkey, Safavids from Iran, Mughals from India) are not Arabic-speaking, Arab nationalists speak of "decline" (e.g. 13th to 19th c)
  • 19th c witnessed colonialism, but also (as a consequence) the rise of nationalism and a new sense of Arabism as encompassing Arabic-speaking regions (in imitation of parallel trends in Europe)
  • Rise of media simultaneously froze and transformed these traditions at the beginning of the 20th century
  • "Turath" appears as those traditions as first captured by recorded media, reinterpreted as a timeless "Arab heritage" (turath)
  • Ironically, the same media (in conjunction with Western cultural influence) now rapidly transformed and nearly erased those traditions (e.g. negating turath, asala, tarab) by
    • requirements of the recording process (record length, microphone limitations)
    • introducing western music sounds and instruments
    • transforming listening practices and contexts (live to recorded) and breaking tarab feedback cycles
  • To a great extent, the turath is defined in terms of tonal-temporal systems (including intonation, scales, modes, rhythms), together with compound forms, genres of poetry, and musical instruments.
  • The turath thus assumes an emotional resonance, for at least two reasons:
    • Due to a structure providing feedback potential designed to evoke tarab in performance
    • Due to its association with national feeling and a sense of attached cultural authenticity (asala)

Turath (heritage): inheritances from the unmediated 19th century into the mediated 20th

Each region of the Arab World has its set of traditions, "turath" (though these are etic groupings and may be further localized). Roughly speaking, there are five regional types: North African, Egyptian, Levantine, Iraqi, and Gulf, though historically Egypt and the Levant were always very close.

As a rule each "turath" includes a compound or "suite" form, comprising a flexible sequence of genres, designed to occupy one or more hours of performance, perhaps an entire evening...they derive directly from the early 20th century (when instances were first recorded and sometimes notated) and their oral tradition can be traced--continuously-- much farther back.

However we do not know the extent of change over the centuries. Furthermore they were not formerly identified as specifically "Arab" (even if texts were in Arabic) but rather were closely linked with broader Islamicate culture, as illustrated by close connections to contemporary Turkish, Persian, and Central Asian art music traditions.

Much of what is today taken as "turath" actually stems from the 19th century, as promulgated by famous singers, such as Muhammad `Uthman, Abdu al-Hamuli, and later Sayyid Darwish in Egypt. But this period was one of rapid change - not only the rise of Arab nationalism and renaissance in arts and literature, but also a shifting position of music (rising with patronage of the court, rise of musical institutions, and new literacy) and changing roles of women (from the somewhat negatively-viewed `awalim, akin to the old qiyan, to a new position as solo singers).

The advent of recording media ironically both preserved and transformed the turath, and ultimately created a set of social-aesthetic conditions that could not sustain them. They were therefore largely consigned to the musical museum (though current popularity varies by region), while retaining a vast importance as cherished symbols of timeless culture and tradition. In recent decades, however, there have been significant attempts to revive these traditions, both national and non-governmental.

See the film Almaz and Abdu El Hamuli for a vivid expression of these contradictions (a romantic view of the 19th century love story between court musician Abdu al-Hamuli

Each such suite form balances:

• instrumental and vocal forms
• improvised and composed forms
• solo and group forms
• multiple meters (durub, awzan), often accelerating and shortening/simplifying
• multiple maqamat (though typically bound by a single principal maqam, often bestowing its name on the whole)

The form typically features a solo singer, backed by instruments and chorus. Usually an instrumental section introduces new tonal material, whether via composition or improvisation, before the mutrib (principal vocalist) enters, often beginning ametrically with an improvisation, then shifting to composed material. Some tonal modulation can be expected, though the suite as a whole exhibits a tonal unity. Ensemble pieces may allow the solo singer to rest.

Please browse the following types and listen to the examples provided:

Levantine-Egyptian wasla

North African nawba

Iraqi maqam

Arabian sawt