MofA Week 10.
Music and Politics: hegemony, and resistance
Contents
- 1 General considerations
- 2 Music and politics in the pre-Islamic Arab period
- 3 Music and politics in the golden age of Islamicate civilization
- 4 Music and nationalisms
- 5 Music and resistance
- 6 Shaykh Imam
- 7 Politics and Egyptian shaabi
- 8 Music and Palestine
- 9 Marcel Khalife
- 10 Politics and videoclips (your input here)
General considerations
Distinguish:
- music of hegemony and music of resistance
- national anthems
- revolutionary songs
- explicitly political and implicitly political music
- overt, literal statements, with political intent (e.g. Shaykh Imam)
- covert, symbolic statements, with political intent (e.g. Ahmed Adawiyya, Idir)
- music that takes on political valences, without overt political intent (e.g. Saudi Qur'anic recitation signifying conservative Islam; Lebanese female singers' clips signifying liberalism/globalization)
- the music of politics and the politics of music
Music...
- ...encodes political messages (explicit or implicit) regarding
- political values (general, abstract)
- political situations (specific individuals, structures of power)
- ...helps shape the broader political landscape
- Music is relatively limited form of discourse
- Produced slowly, by specialists
- Hard to engage in musical dialogs, discourses
- Much of music's social force is non-referential
- but lyrics contain referential content
- factors compensating for discursive limitations:
- music's affective power, imbuing a felt sense of truth
- music's social power, gathering people in groups (live or mediated), nucleating subcultures
- and non-discursivity is perhaps a form of coercive power (as Marxist anthropologist Maurice Bloch famously wrote: "you can't argue with a song")
- Music is relatively limited form of discourse
Music and politics in the pre-Islamic Arab period
Various pre-Islamic poetic genres--chanted and sung, quickly memorized and disseminated-- effected political roles:
- Hija': poetry of critique (for one's enemies)
- Madih: poetry of praise (for one's rulers)
- Ritha': elegy
- Mufakhara: inter-tribal poetic competitions, enabling inter-tribal dialogs, and helping unify polities
The Arabs of pre-Islamic Northern Arabia formed a Kulturnation; only with Islam would they unite to become a Staatsnation. Public poetic recitation (inshad, nashid, tartil) in a heightened voice may have played a significant role in creating and sustaining the Arab Kulturnation within such a mobile society.
Music and politics in the golden age of Islamicate civilization
- panegyrics (praise) written by the most famous Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, for his patron, the Emir (prince) Sayf al-Dawla (916-967, r. 945-967) of Aleppo, ruler of northern Syria under the Hamdanid dynasty (al-Farabi was another prominent figure in Sayf al-Dawla's intellectual circle)
Music and nationalisms
- Muhammad Fawzy: personal vs. state patriotism (read Frishkopf article)
National anthem of Algeria, composed by the Egyptian Muhammad Fawzy.
Text for Algeria's national anthem
Music and resistance
Idir
Shaykh Imam
This Egyptian singer (b. 1918), raised in the singer-shaykh tradition, became Egypt's most well-known political singer after 1962, in collaboration with poet Ahmed Fu'ad Negm.
Song: "Guevara Died"
(composed 1967: Ahmed Fu'ad Negm and Shaykh Imam). Performed by contemporary revival group Eskanderalla.
Guevara has died, Guevara has died
Late-breaking news, all the radios cried
And in the churches
And the mosques
In the alleys
And the streets
In cafes and the bars:
Guevara has died
Guevara has died
Voices ply endless ropes of speech...
Paragon of fighters, now dead and gone
Aah, sign a hundred for the loss of men!
In thickets deep the young swain perished
still atop his firing gun
Dead and giving body to his fight
He did it all in silence
No drummers explode in ragged sound
No communique goes sailing round
What do you think (your wealth and might live long!),
You antique and twisted gnomes?
Your bodies oozing, fed so well
On tasty morsels and trappings
You, sitting comfy, cozily warm
Tho' firing up your heaters still:
Garish showy dopes
With your polished nodding pates...
Song: "O Palestinians" (1968)
0 Palestinians, the fusilier has shot you
With Zionism which kills the doves that live under your protection
0Palestinians, I want to come and be with you, weapons in hand
And I want my hands to go down with yours to smash the snake's head
And then Hulagu's law will die
0 Palestinians, exile has lasted so long
That the desert is moaning from the refugees and the victims
And the land remains nostalgic for its peasants who watered it
Revolution is the goal, and victory shall be your first step
Politics and Egyptian shaabi
Music and Palestine
- Palestinian rap group DAM
Generation after generation will live in the hope of realizing our dream
As what we say today we will be called to account for throughout our lifetime
It is possible that the darkness of night
May render us far from one another, but
The beam of light can
Reach the farthest of skies
This has been our dream
All of our lives:
An embrace that will contain us all together
Marcel Khalife
Musical activism, musical controversy
Political songs, in collaboration with Mahmoud Darwish (Voyageur)
Music and freedom of expression: "I am Joseph, oh my father"
Criticism from the left: politics of musical aesthetics (Colla, Elliott and Robert Blecher. (1996) A New World Order, a New Marcel Khalife. Middle East Report, No. 199, Turkey: Insolvent Ideologies, Fractured State. (Apr. - Jun., 1996), pp. 43-44.)
Politics and videoclips (your input here)
Everyone please select a Youtube video and insert link here, along with a line or two of comment - we'll watch and discuss on Thursday Nov 18.
You can select clips to be analyzed for nationalistic sentiment, or search for national anthems of the various Arab countries, or look for implicit themes of power (in domestic relations, say), or select clips which address political themes explicitly. I realize not knowing Arabic may be an impediment, but you can select/discuss based on imagery, and you'll find many clips with translations included. (To get started, try searching for "Arab political music", or look for music by artists mentioned above.) You'll learn a lot by reading the clip's comments (if they're in English).
Amanda:
Patrick:
Mahsa:
Justina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLI36kvvu9k
This song is by Djur Djura - a Algerian woman, b. 1949 (?) raised in France, who sings about Women's rights and feminist issues a lot.
Manya:
Adrienne: