Critique of "Arab music" history
- Touma's tends to project contemporary Arab nationalism into the past)
- My reading of "Arab music":
- Arab self-consciousness rises with Islam.
- So does multiculturalism, esp. Persian influence.
- Irony: concept of al-ghina' al-`arabi arises with Persian influence
- True "Arab" music is pre-Islamic (Beduin ethos)
- Islam tended to reject the non-Arab
- Abbasid period was less Arab, more Persian
- Rise of musta`riba (Arabized) class.
- Ethnicity is ambiguous. Islamization, Arabization vs. lineage and region.
- Is Abbasid culture really Arab? Multiculturalism, on an more equal footing.
- Ambiguous ethnicity (e.g. al-Farabi himself)
- Universalism in treatises (e.g. al-Farabi)
- Andalusia: likewise multicultural.
- "Arab singing" tends to mean Beduin.
- Later Abbasid period: Persian and Arabic singing share a single musical tonal system.
- Eclipse (1258-1800). Ibn Khaldun: "Arab" is pejorative, or primitive culture.