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
  • Label "Arab" was first applied by outsiders (Assyrians) in 835 BCE; only applied by Arabic speakers in 328 CE.
  • Early "music" is based on poetry: huda', nasb
  • Arab self-consciousness crystallizes with Islam (power, consolidation, contrast to non-Arabs)
  • But so does multiculturalism, esp. Persian influence.
  • Irony: Islam promotes Arabs, but Islamic universalism cannot forever exclude Arabicized non-Arabs, nor prevent mixing
  • Irony: Islam provides "morals" but also capital to fuel musical patronage
  • Irony: with consciousness of "Arabness" comes wealth, urbanization and mixing, hence loss of "pure" Arab culture
  • Irony: Islamic moral strictures catalyze the rise of male art music (mukhannath) to replace loss of female (qayna)
  • Irony: concept of al-ghina' al-`arabi al-mutqan (polished Arab singing) and the Hijazi school only arises with injection of Persian influence
  • Later, this period becomes the "classical" Hijazi school of Arabic singing, while "pure" "Arab" music is ascribed to the 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 "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, 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: 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 attendees favored preservation, Arabs tend to favor Euroepan modernization.
  • 1933: oriental Music Institute in Cairo was renamed the Royal Institute for Arabic Music

• Effects of 20th century media (phonograms, radio)
  • 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)