Critique of "Arab music" history

Touma tends to read contemporary Arabism and ethnic identity into the past

My reading of "Arab music" is somewhat different. A continuous and distinctively Arab music history is impossible to trace, because the concept of "Arab music" (like that of "Arab") is always shifting, and has only come to its current meaning in modern times.

Some key points:

• Early period, through Umayyads
  • Origins of "Arab" ethnicity are unclear. Label "Arab" was first applied by outsiders (Assyrians) in 835 BCE; only applied by Arabic speakers in 328 CE.
  • Arab self-consciousness crystallizes with Islam (power, consolidation, greater linguistic unity, contrast to non-Arabs). At first Arabs live separately from conquered people.
  • Genealogical, linguistic, cultural identity is at first clear. Arabs are first class, non-Arabs second class.
  • Muslim conversions are limited; non-Arabs must first attain client (mawali) status.
  • But boundaries between Arab and non-Arab gradually become ambiguous, with mixing: multiculturalism, influence of non-Arabic-speaking cultures (esp. Persian), intermarriage, Arabicization of others.
  • Islam tended to reject the non-Arab during this period, while absorbing non-Arab influence
  • Ironies:
    • Islam promotes Arabs, but Islamic universalism cannot forever exclude Arabicized non-Arabs, nor prevent mixing
    • With consciousness of "Arabness" comes wealth, urbanization and mixing, hence loss of "pure" Arab culture
    • Islam provides "morals" but also capital to fuel musical patronage
    • Islamic moral strictures catalyze the rise of male art music (mukhannath) to replace loss of female (qayna)
    • Concept of al-ghina' al-`arabi al-mutqan (polished Arab singing) and the Hijazi school only arises with injection of Persian influence
    • Later, this musical period becomes the "classical" Hijazi school of Arabic singing (in opposition to newer Abbasid trends containing greater Persian influence), while "pure" "Arab" music is ascribed to the pre-Islamic inshad (Beduin ethos)

• Abbasid multiculturalism
  • Abbasid empire shifted power from an Arab to an Islamic basis
  • Abbasid "golden age" was in fact less Arab, more Persian
  • Expansion of musta`riba (Arabized) class.
  • Intermarriage
  • Ethnicity and identity become ambiguous: Islam, Arabic language, lineage, family, region.
  • Ambiguous ethnicity (e.g. al-Farabi himself)
  • Arabism or Islam is finally replaced by Greek-inspired universalism in philosophical treatments (e.g. al-Farabi)
  • The new music comes closer to Persian
  • Later Abbasid period: Persian and Arabic singing share a single musical tonal system.
  • To what extent can Abbasid culture be considered Arab?

• Andalusian multiculturalism. Similar considerations apply here.

• Eclipse (1258-1800), inhitat (decline), refers to Arabic literature. But much non-literary culture remained very much alive (e.g. architecture). Concept of "Arab" contracts with loss of power. Ibn Khaldun: "Arab" is pejorative, or primitive culture. Arabs are a kind of noble savage.

• European Orientalism and philology (17th to 19th centuries)
  • Enlightenment discovery of the world. Tended to define "peoples" according to their language. "Arabs", "Arab music" appear.
  • Concern to connect Europe to ancient Greece via the Arabs.
  • Marin Mersenne (1610), Benjamin de Laborde(1780): connecting music of Helenistic world to that of Europe via "Arabs".

• European colonialism (19th century)
  • Concern with control, exploitation. More anthropological, ethnographic nuance. Egyptian music, etc.
  • Reinforces local and regional identity over uniform "Arab" identity.

• Arab nahda (Renaissance), and rise of Arabism as linguistic community.
  • Arabism is always indebted to Europe for providing core ideas (self-determination, cultural expressive forms)
  • But boundaries of the "Arab" varied. Egypt was rarely included, North Africa even less. Levant and Iraq were central.
  • Muhammad Ali and Europeanization, following Napoleonic conquests. Establishment of European music schools, Opera House, in Egypt.
  • Arabo-Islamic reform: move to restore Ottoman power. Oriental music concept. (musiqa sharqiyya)
  • Secular Arabism (Levantine Christians). Arab music concept (musiqa Arabiyya)
  • New patronage of great singers performing in Arabic (e.g. by Khedive Ismail), even if patrons were non-Arabs.
  • Development of "classical" turath (muwashshahat, dawr) along with Ottoman influence
  • Rise of musical theater (European influence; Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani) (ca. 1884)
  • New print media catalyzed "imagined community" of Arabs: e.g. al-Ahram newspaper from 1882, Jurji Zaydan and al-Hilal magazine, and his Literary history of the Arabs

• Secular Arabism. End of WWI: demise of the Ottomans, way open for secular Arabism
  • 1920s and 30s: Arab nationalism: Sati al-Husri (Iraq) and Michel Aflaq (Syria)
  • New focus on music of the Arabs as opposed to the Ottomans
  • Gradual decline in "al-musiqa al-sharqiyya", rise in "al-musiqa al-`arabiyya"
  • 1932 conference on Arab music in Cairo, convened by King Fuad I.
  • Irony: Europeans attendees favored preservation, Arabs tend to favor Euroepan modernization.
  • 1933: oriental Music Institute in Cairo was renamed the Royal Institute for Arabic Music

• Rise of 20th century mass media (phonograms, radio) and its effects
  • Preserve vestiges of pre-mediated musics that developed in the 19th c with European influence (ironically: these became known as the "old heritage", turath qadim)
  • Disseminate for the first time a true pan-Arab music, the new tarab music (turath jadid) while deleting much of that music's "authentic character" (as Touma would have it)