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"

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, considered old-fashioned, media unfriendly, and unprofitable (except when revived, esp. for nationalist purposes)
• Bifurcation: separation of urban religious and urban secular musics, along with a new kind of mixing--rural and urban:
  • Formerly religious and secular were tightly intertwined. With new forms of music education and new Islamism this connection is undone. Musicians no longer start out in the kuttab; music figures less prominently in religious devotions.
  • Uptake of folk musics into urban commercial popular music (as a form of representation): for instance, in films depicting village scenes, and the common use of folk music in bellydancing suites.
  • Uptake of commercial popular musics into rural folk and religious music (via radio): for instance, Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami (Sufi singer) will often include excerpts from songs by Umm Kulthum
  • Uptake of Western musics into secular entertainment music

Music in 19th century Egypt and Levant

Early 19th century

• Early 19th century Egypt is well-documented from an outsider (French) perspective, in the massive "Description de l'Égypte", an enormous research project begun upon French conquest in 1798 (Egypt was formerly ruled by the Ottomans), sponsored by Emperor Napoleon I (1769-1821) and staffed by some 160 civilian scholars and scientists from France. The project, covering all aspects of Egypt from natural topography to history (ancient to present) and culture, resulted in a lengthy multivolume publication illustrated by meticulously prepared plates.
• Within this work, music culture was presented by Guillaume André Villoteau in "De l'état actuel de l'art musical en Égypte" (État moderne [text], v. 1, p. 607-846); "Description historique, technique et littéraire, des instrumens de musique des Orientaux" (v. 1, p. 847-1012). See: [1], [2] (refer to "Modern State" volumes).
• Extremely detailed plates provide much information on the current instrumentarium.
• Edward Lane (1801-1876) provided further documentation of musical life in Egypt in the 1830s in his "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians"
• 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).
• But during this period European-style modernization emerged too, driven by the modernizing Ottoman (Albanian) ruler 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 19th century

• Latter half of the 19th c was quite different. It is ironically to this period of tremendous change that one can most directly trace the contemporary "turath" or Arab musical heritage. This is partly due to modernity, especially technology - late 19th century music was the first to be recorded - and partly because the social status of music--as part of an "Arab renaissance" (nahda) was greatly elevated by elite patronage at a time of nationalist sentiment, with which it blended easily, eventually becoming "Arab music" (al-musiqa al-arabiyya), though this term was not current in Arabic until the 1930s.
• 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.
• Muhammad Ali's 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, co-opted 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.
• This period also witnessed the rise of star female singers, epitomized in the celebrated Almaz, who performed at the Khedivial court, just as Dananeer had done in Baghdad centuries earlier.

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

• Watching the film "Almaz and Abdu al-Hamuli" one witnesses all these trends, as interpreted in mid-20th century Egyptian cinema.

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 (Zuqaq al-Midaq, 1947; film produced in 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) about transformations to Egyptian culture in the 1940s. 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! (Note: the 1994 film starring Salma Hayek adapts Mahfouz's novel to Mexico)

• 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 the opening scenes [3] 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...

The turath continues to reverberate, modulated by forces of change, throughout the 20th century

• Latter 19th century music
  • Rural folk music
  • urban art music in Cairo: wasla suite (balancing instrumental/vocal, solo/group, composed/improvised)
    • Alatiyya - male (e.g. Abdu al-Hamuli)
    • Awalim - female (e.g. Almaz)
    • vocal forms
      • qasida
      • muwashshah
      • dawr
      • layali/mawwal
    • instrumental forms: Ottoman influence
      • Dulab
      • Samai, Peshrev
      • Taqasim
• Primary forces of change:
  • Mediation
    • phonograms 1904
    • radio 1920s
    • musical film 1930s-60s
    • TV 1950s-60s
    • Cassette tape 1970s
    • VHS tapes 1980s
    • Satellite TV 1990s
    • Internet, mobile phone 2000s
  • Commodification
    • New musical venues
    • Greater prominence of female stars
    • Music (as tickets or media) enters system of exchange
    • Legal framework regulating music as intellectual property
    • Primary force before and after Arab nationalism (1940s-1960s)
  • Rise of nationalism, Arabism (tension: modernizing, conserving)
    • Transformation from "oriental music" to "Arab music"
    • Mikha’il Mishaqa 1800-1888 and modernization of the scale system (24 quartertones) as distinctively "Arab"
    • 19th c Nahda: Arab literature
    • 1932 conference (see CDEJ volume)
    • 1967 founding of Firqat al-Musiqa al-Arabiyya
    • Turath of 19th c becomes symbol of the Arab nation
• "Turath": defined, redefined...reflected, refracted, modernized...reverberating through time and space, recasting sound, remapping meaning, still vibrant...
  • Films
    • Dananir (1940 representation of 8th c Baghdad)
    • Almaz and Abdu al-Hamuli (1962 representation of 1860s)
    • Midaq Alley (1963 representation of 1940s Cairo)
    • Firqat al-Musiqa al-Arabiyya (founded 1967 to revive "turath" in orchestral form)
  • Locales of continuity
    • Aleppo
  • Aesthetic revivals, conserving and modernizing turath
    • Naseer Shamma: great contemporary oud player in the Baghdad tradition, reflecting al-Farabi
    • George Sawa: Egyptian qanun player, in Toronto
    • Simon Shaheen
    • Ghada Shbeir
    • AMAR foundation

New musical trends from early to mid 20th c

The emergence of Arab music (a paper in progress by MF): In the 20th century (precisely the period most excluded by Touma) "Arab music" is defined and recognized as a recognized musical style, repertoire, and type. The first true pan-Arab music can only exist with publication of cylinders and 78s, later reinforced by radio and musical film.

Mass media and commodification work in parallel with forces of nationalism towards a musical expression of Arabism that is widely heard, and which even shapes the formation of nationalisms (similar to mass dissemination of print media in the 19th century, all of which can be interpreted along the lines of Benedict Anderson's theory of "Imagined Community"). Such music creates "common feeling" - feeling that is shared, and that everyone feels is shared. Thus certain musical figures (such as Umm Kulthum) unite a region. This was never true in the past - the ordinary farmer didn't know anything about music in the court of Harun al-Rashid!

Music is closely tied to formation of imagined communities, and Arab music is closely tied to formations of Arab nationalism (from local nationalisms - Egyptian, Moroccan, Syrian, etc. to "pan-Arabism")

However music's effects are a bit more complex than print for a few reasons:

• oral/aural domain
• multiple musical "dialects" in the region (at least 5, broadly speaking)
• multiple levels of music: "turath", modern song, "folk"
• use of colloquial language increases, and thus divisions among traditions
• less discursively explicit - music typically doesn't make referential assertions
• more emotional - music contains multiple dimensions of sound, whose effects are powerful but perhaps less predictable than text
• TV music introduces further regional distinctions based on dress, image, tolerance of

Trends are multiple:

• ensembles: small (takht) to really small (mechanical recordings) to large to small (pop)
• length: long (wasla) to very short (cylinders) to longer (film, radio, LP) to very long (radio) to short (pop format)
• Westernization increasing
• Shifting media with multiple effects
• Decline in improvisation
• Detachment of popular music from religious recitation traditions
• Decline in use of full system of maqam and iqaa`
• Decline then rise of free market forces (which reached nadir during the socialist periods - in Egypt the 50s and 60s)

Abstractions of media system and social system will be presented below...

Songs recorded on 78 rpm phonogram discs

• New trend: taqtuqa
  • Shorter, lighter songs in colloquial language
  • Small performing group - even smaller than takht, to suit early recording studio
  • Decline of improvisation
  • Separation of composer and performer
  • Site of gender discourse: more frank expressions of love, debate over women's roles
  • Musical development (application of art techniques)
• Examples
  • Abd al-Latif al-Banna (1884-1969)
    • Erkhi S-Setara
    • Ya Ma Nshuf
  • Salih Abd al-Hayy (1896-1962)
    • Abuha radi
  • Munira al-Mahdiyya (1884-1965)
    • Asmar Malak Ruhi
  • Naima al-Misriyya (1894-?)
    • Ta'ala Ya Shater
  • Shaykh Yusuf al-Manyalawi
    • La Tahsibu
  • Shaykh Sayed Darwish (1892-1923)
    • Trained as religious reciter, but also performed art music and developed musical theater
    • Old turath: muwashshahat (e.g. Ya Shadi al-Alhan)
    • Maghna (19th c art music): dawr (e.g. Dayya`t Mustaqbal Hayati)(original and contemporary versions)
    • New popular Egyptian song, with social commentary: e.g. al-Hilwa Di

Long songs broadcast on radio (later recorded in studios, released in edited form on LP)

• Rise of the "long song" (ughniya), 15-30 minutes, and longer with repeats in concert, with multiple sections, including instrumentals
• Essentially the wasla becomes a single multisectional song
• Long introductions (overtures)
• Bigger orchestras (firqa)
• Centrality of composer - distinct from singers (though singer maintains importance, unlike the orchestrated turath that follows)
• Use of tarab's musical dimensions (maqam, iqaa`, instrumentation, melodic principles) together with other "colors" (alwan) - folk, western, religious - creating a complex overlay
• Little improvisation
• New "mediated tarab" style (Racy's "central domain")

Umm Kulthum:

• El Awela Fe El Gharam (1944, Zakariya Ahmad, Bayram al-Tunsi, Hijaz, Ughniyah)
• Al-Atlal (1966, Riad al-Sunbati, Ibrahim Naji, Huzam, Qasidah)
• Howa Sahih (1960, Zakaria Ahmed, Bayram al-Tunsi, Saba, Ughniyah)

Qalbi biyuul kalam Muhammad Abdel Wahhab

Toba Abdel Halim Hafez

Ghanni ya albi Farid al-Atrash

Musical film songs

Related to earlier musical theater. Shorter, fitting dramatic action, but also heard and watched (with TV) out of context. Thus, precursors to the contemporary "video clip"... Most singers performed both types, performing in concert halls, on radio, and in film.

Large orchestras, short songs.

• al-Ward Gamil (Umm Kulthum)
• Ya habibi (Farid al-Atrash)
• Layali al-Uns (Asmahan)
• Ya A`zz min ayni (Layla Murad)
• Lahn al-Wafaa (Abd al-Halim Hafez)

Techno-political musical history from independence to present: Egypt

(with implications for music culture)

• Nasser years: 1952-1970
  • 1952 independence - Gamal Abdel Nasser
  • King Faruq expelled, British leave
  • Patronized the young Abdel Halim Hafez
  • (Umm Kulthum briefly eclipsed, then restored)
  • Soviet alliance, High Dam project
  • Ideology of Arab socialism
  • Expands range and scope of radio in support of Egypt-centric pan-Arabism
  • 1960 television established in Egypt
  • 1967 stunning defeat by Israel
  • 1970 Nasser dies
• Sadat years: 1970-1981
  • 1970 Anwar Sadat becomes president
  • economic "opening: (infitah), shift to US alliance, privatization, free market forces, imports
  • 1973 Sinai war with Israel
  • 1973 Gulf oil embargo
  • Removal of travel restrictions
  • Migrant labor in (now oil rich) Gulf
  • New consumerism
  • Cassette technology transforms music scene: enabling, localizing
  • 1970s Decline of tarab stars (Umm Kulthum d. 1975, Farid al-Atrash d. 1974, Abdel Halim d. 1977, Abdel Wahab d. 1991)
  • 1975+ TVs, radios, cassette players proliferate
  • Gradual decline of rural oral music culture
  • Rise of Arab pop songs (shababi, sha`bi) centered on small ensemble
    • Shababi: westernized ensemble and sound (drums, bass, guitars, synth, Arab percussion, kawala; sometimes with bowed strings)
    • Sha`bi: more Arab elements (Arab percussion, synth...)
    • Largely gone: Arab stringed instruments (oud, qanun)
  • Musical censorship: raqaba ala al-musannafat al-fanniya (sex, politics, religion)
  • Imprisonment of many intellectuals and leftists, repression of political music
  • Rise of Islamism in Egypt, decline of the Left
  • 1979 Peace treaty with Israel
  • 1981 Sadat assassinated
• Mubarak years 1981-present
  • 1981 Muhammad Hosni Mubarak becomes president
  • liberalization of press and culture
  • Clampdown on militant Islam in late 80s and 90s
  • TVs, radios, cassette players become even more widespread
  • early 1990s: private satellite TV covering Arabic-speaking region
  • mid 1990s: Internet
  • late 1990s: mobile phone networks
  • rise of the "video clip"
  • shift back to visual music
  • Decline of top-down pan-Arab ideology; new pan-Arabism emerges out of satellite broadcasts

Shifts in the pan-Arab music network

New pop songs

• Shababi music: urban westernized tarab
  • E.g.: Amr Diab
• Sha`bi music: urban modern folk
  • E.g.: Ahmed Adawiya

Video clips

• Ruby