MofA Week 11.

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.
  • We limit ourselves here to an overview of performance-related gender categories.

• Principle of public...

( who is marriagable)

• Social construction of special gender-performance categories in the Arab world (and Islamicate cultures generally) include the following types:
  • Social space in traditional Islamic society
    • Domestic space
      • Haramlik, (female)
      • Salamlik, madyafa (guests)
    • Public space, urban
      • Female veiled space
      • Male open space
    • Public space, rural: less separated

• • Male types
    • mukhannath (effeminate singer), e.g. Tuways
    • eunuchs (sometimes mukhannath; not musicians per se but could participate in haramlik)
    • Alatiyya (19th century public musicians in Egypt)
    • Shaykh, munshid (public male singer, conservative, veiled; religious overtones; anti-erotic)
    • Mutrib (public male singer, emphasis on romantic and even erotic characteristics)
  • Female
    • qayna (pre-Islamic, early Islam), e.g. Azza al-Mayla
    • jawari (category of female slaves, under Islam), e.g. Dananir
    • raqqasa (general category of female dancer)
    • ghawazi
    • `alma\`awalim (19th century female performers in Egypt; "educated")
    • Chikhat (Algerian; despite name, not respectable)
    • munshida (some respectability, male in group)
    • mutriba (public female singers, unveiled; increased emphasis on eroticism. Little space for "respectability".)

• Dance: raqs
  • Orientalism and world music views (next week)
  • History of Arab world
    • Sufi "dance"
    • Court dancers
      • Dananeer
    • Popular dance
      • Raqs baladi
      • Ghawazi and other public, professional dancers
      • Influence of colonialism (e.g. market for British soldiers in Egypt)
      • Influence of mass media (dance in film)
      • Contemporary dance: weddings, nightclubs
    • Dance as inversion of social order
      • Ghawazi (women in control, outside society)
      • Raqqasa (woman as object of public gaze, inversion of the veil, nudity)
      • cf. Zar, Gnawa