Critique of "Arab music" history

• Touma tends to read contemporary Arab nationalism and ethnic identity into the past

My reading of "Arab music": some key points

• Early period
  • Label "Arab" was first applied by outsiders (Assyrians) in 835 BCE; only applied by Arabic speakers in 328 CE.
  • Arab self-consciousness rises with Islam; first use of "Arab singing" via new consciousness
  • But so does multiculturalism, esp. Persian influence.
  • Loss of "pure" Arab culture
  • Irony: concept of al-ghina' al-`arabi (Arab singing) arises with injection of Persian influence
  • Later, true "Arab" music is pre-Islamic inshad (Beduin ethos)
  • Islam tended to reject the non-Arab during this period, while absorbing non-Arab influence

• Abbasid multiculturalism
  • Abbasid empire shifted from an Arab to an Islamic basis
  • Abbasid period was 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)
  • Universalism in treatises (e.g. al-Farabi)
  • "Arab singing" tends to mean Beduin.
  • Is Abbasid culture really Arab?
  • Later Abbasid period: Persian and Arabic singing share a single musical tonal system.

• Andalusian multiculturalism

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

• Orientalism and philology.
  • 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".

• Colonialism: Concern with control, exploitation. More anthropological, ethnographic nuance. Egyptian music, etc.

• Arab nahda, and rise of Arabism as linguistic community.
  • Arabism is always indebted to Europe for providing core ideas (self-determination, cultural expressive forms)
  • 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: al-Ahram from 1882, Jurji Zaydan and al-Hilal, literary history of the arabs

• 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 "musiqa sharqiyya", rise in "musiqa arabiyya"
• 1932 conference on Arab music in Cairo, convened by King Fuad I.
  • Irony: europeans favor tradition, Arabs tend to favor incor. of Euroepan modernism.
  • 1933: oriental music institute renamed the royal inst for arabic music

• Effects of the media
  • Preserve vestiges of pre-mediated musics that developed in the 19th c with European influence (ironically: to become known as the "old heritage", turath qadim)
  • Disseminate for the first time a true pan-Arab music, while deleting much of the "authentic character" (as Touma would have it) of that music