MofA Weeks 7, 8: Music and Media

Modern urban tarab music of the 20th century (al-jadid): the transformation of the turath and the rise of "Arab music"

• Discussion of ethnographic projects

Transformative factors, and results (from the latter 19th c into the 20th)

• Musical commodification (concert halls, music media) and commercialism
• Rise of music mass media (phonograms, radio, musical film)
• Nationalist movements and independence (partly due to mass media, leading to government control, nationalist agendas, increased influence of Egyptian music, new concepts of "Arab music")
• Increased Western influence (via media, politics): larger ensembles
• Decline of the kuttab (trad. religious school) and rise of public schools
• Rise of Islamist (political Islamic) groups, rejecting much of the aesthetic Islamic heritage, and especially secular music
• concert settings, notation, large ensembles, and mediated music: limit tarab by reducing performer flexibility and reducing performer/audience interactions
• Advent of formal musical training via music institutes and conservatories: standardization, reduction in reliance on the ear and improvisation.
• Urbanization: much larger populations to support commercial music-making
• Cairo becomes the primary center, drawing talent from the Arab world, and exporting music and music films everywhere
• Presence of foreign soldiers (patronizing nightclubs)
• Feminism: appearance of female singer in public, women owners of nightclubs and cabarets. Women's increased role in the performing arts: as singers, dancers, actresses (but not as instrumentalists).
• Increased centrality of conductors, composers and arrangers. Singers become merely singers, or blend into an anonymous chorus.* shorter songs (for phonograms and films)
• longer songs (for mid-20th century tarab tradition): the ughniya (song) of Umm Kulthum and others, representing rise of the composer; often featuring lengthy instrumental sections
• Rise of musical stardom, visual music; increased emphasis on physical appearance
• Decline in traditional tarab and traditional repertoire
• Bifurcation: separation of religious and secular musics

Music in 19th century Egypt and Levant

• In the first part of the 19th c, different musics were associated with minority ethnic categories, including Turks, Armenians, Ethiopians, Copts, Jews, and ghawazi (female dancers).
• Yet the majority ethnicity is not qualified as Arab (which word refers to the Beduins).
• “Majority” music is distinguished by gender and functional criteria: music of the alatiyya (male professional musicians), `awalim (female professional musicians), munshidin (Islamic singers), and shu`ara’ (epic singers).
• Military music appears to have been an extension of the Ottoman Janissary tradition. (Lane, 1836; Racy, 1977:19-26; Villoteau, 1812).
• European-style modernization was driven by Muhammad Ali Pasha (r. 1805-1848), who established several music schools to teach European military music (El-Shawan, 1985), and organized educational missions to Europe.

• Latter half of the 19th c was quite different. Rise of the Arab Nahda ("renaissance") characterized primarily as a literary movement, the establishment of Arabic printing presses, and thus the rise of Arab nationalism along Benedict Anderson's concept of "imagined community". There was a musical component as well - but fraught, torn between tradition and modernity.

• His grandson, the Khedive Ismail (r. 1863-1879), patronized European music, building an Opera House to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal.
• But Ismail also patronized the great Arabic singers and composers of his day, most famously `Abdu al-Hamuli (1843-1901), Almaz (1860-1896), and Shaykh Yusuf al-Manyalawi (1847-1911).
• Al-Hamuli and al-Manyalawi traveled to Istanbul, where they absorbed Ottoman influence.
• Arabic singing flourished at the Khedivial court, where a new art style, known as maghna, developed, featuring a uniquely Egyptian vocal form, the dawr (later reinterpreted as a fixture of turath) as well as Ottoman influence, displayed in the Turkish instrumental genres of sama`i and bashraf, new melodic modes (Rizk, 1936), and a compound form (wasla) comparable to the Turkish fasil.

• Mikha’il Mishaqa (1800-1888) was a key figure. Mishaqa was one of the first intellectuals to view Mount Lebanon as a territorial unit, calling for a new kind of regional identity which would transcend religious difference. Mashaqa’s biographical details are typical of secular Arabism. He was born into a middle-class Greek Melkite Syrian family, wealthy through commerce with Europe. Mashaqa’s polymathy included music, both practical and theoretical. A careful reading of his musical discourse reveals new concepts of ethnic identity. * His Risala al-Shihabiyya fi al-Sina`a al-Musiqiyya (translated by Eli Smith in 1847), although ostensibly concerned with age-old topics, marks a radical break with traditional theory in Arabic writings.
• First, he is one of the first to implicitly formulate an ethnically differentiated concept of “Arab music”, via the introduction of contrastive pairs: the contemporary “Arab scale” is compared to the “Greek scale”, the “Arabs” to the “Greeks” and “Franks” (ifranj), and the mode “Nehuft of the Arabs” to “Nehuft of the Turks” (Mashaqa & Smith, 1847:178, 182, 185).
• Secondly, he is widely known for attempting to formulate an equal-tempered quarter-tone scale. This formulation sharply contrasts with medieval Islamicate music theory, as developed by philosophers such as al-Kindi (d. 870), al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (d. 1037), and Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (d. 1294), in which scales are defined by integer-ratio intervals. Through missionary schools and churches, the modern Syrians were introduced to modern European equal temperament, which enables unlimited transposition.
• Following his teacher, Shaykh Muhammad al-`Attar, and anticipating the Arab-Euro spirit of nahda, Mashaqa sought to systematize and advance traditional Arab music along European lines while preserving its character. by promulgating a quartertone scale with 24 roughly equal steps to the octave.
• In doing so he established the basis for much contemporary Arab music theory, while marking its separation from Turkish and Persian theory. Thus in Mashaqa’s equal temperament one can at once read signs of European influence and a clear break from the music (hence culture) of the “Orient”, while maintaining authentic Arab character: the synthesis of modernization and traditionalism which was the signature of the new Arabism.

• Musical theater. An important outcome of the Arab nahda was the rise of Arab musical theater, pioneered by the Syrian Ahmad Abu Khalil al-Qabbani (ca. 1884), influenced by translation of French dramas into Arabic. Many Syrian performers moved to Egypt, featuring a less conservative musical atmosphere. Here, al-Qabbani taught the founder of Egyptian musical theater, Shaykh Salama al-Hijazi (1852-1917), who had also absorbed opera performances at Cairo’s Opera House (Zaki, :125-7) With the success of his theatrical troupe in the 1910s, musical theater became very popular in Egypt. Salama al-Hijazi influenced Sayyid Darwish, who developed the art further, incorporating Mediterranean European influence. The new musical theater was at first subsumed under regional identities (e.g. “Egyptian music”); only later did it become absorbed as a key component of al-musiqa al-`arabiyya.

• Late 19th c witnessed rise of nationalism in opposition to royal rule, coopted by the British from the 1880s. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Shaykh Muhammad Abduh were critical figures in the formulation of this opposition, and nascent nationalisms proceeded from there.

• During this period of turath formulation the music was generally called "musiqa sharqiyya" (eastern music) and counterposed to "ifranji" or "gharbi" music.

The early media age: 1904 - 1930s

• phonograms from 1904
• radio, from 1920s
• musical cinema, from 1930s

• Emergence of "Arab music" concept occurs primarily from 1904 with the advent of recording industry in conjunction with rising nationalism, but especially following the 1932 Arab Music conference, founding of Egyptian Radio in 1934, and the first musical film in 1932 (Unshudat al-Fu’ad, starring Nadra and Shaykh Zakariya Ahmad) and shortly thereafter Al-Warda al-Bayda, starring Muhammad Abdel Wahhab.

• Delegations had attended the Conference from all regions of the Arabic-speaking world, and so, upon their return, the idea of an “Arab music” reverberated elsewhere. Thus were founded the Andalusian Music Society in Morocco, the Musul Society in Algeria, the Rashidiyya in Tunis (1934), the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and Music Institutes in Damascus, Beirut, and Aleppo (al-Mahdi, 1979:5). Following its establishment in 1945, the Arab League established the Majma` al-`Arabi li al-Musiqa (Arab Academy for Music), charged primarily with Arab music research.

Media representations of transformations

• Midaq Alley (film 1963 starring Shadia, setting 1940s): film version of Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz' famous novel (by which he's said to have won the Nobel prize). Watch the film from 15:00. Note scene depicting transformations to cafe culture, formerly the scene for live musical performance. The radio replacing the traditional performer (sha`ir, performer of poetic epics such as the Sira Hilalaliyya (see week 6)) receives a royal position, high up, from which it displaces the traditional performer...with a performance of the same Sira!

• Almaz and Abdu al-Hamuli (film 1962 starring Warda and Adel Mamoun, setting circa 1862): the true love story about two famous singers, musical developments in the khedevial court (rise of female singers, royal patronage, connection to Istanbul) in light of emergent Egyptian nationalism and nascent Islamism. Watch these scenes [1][2] and read the accompanying text. Abdu al-Hamuli, Almaz, and Shaykh Yusuf al-Manyalawi are all mentioned, along with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and the corrupt Khedive Ismail, squandering the country's money. The whole can be taken as an allegory for Egypt's 1952 revolution, with King Faruq taking the place of Ismail...