Amine And Marwa Arabic Music

The terms "Arab music" or "oriental music" have long designated music designed or interpreted within Arab-Iranian-Turkish Islam, without differentiating between national or local specificities or exotic hybridizations. If we refer to the maqam modal structures (Arab-Iranian-Turkish modes), is Arabic music involving structures: intervals, tetrachord genres, melodic-rhythmic formulas, traditional modes developed within Arab Islam. Iranian-Turkish and whose form, improvised or composed, the themes, the peculiarities, the rhythm, etc., derive more precisely from Arab or similar traditions. It uses, among other things, specific intervals that musicologists measure in quarter tones or commas. If we refer to rhythms, Arabic music (as well as Iranian, Turkish music, etc.) can appeal to a multitude of binary or lame rhythms whose cells juxtapose, in application of precise codes, dense times (dum) and clear beats (tak), depending on the point of impact on the percussion instrument. If we refer to an ethnic criterion, we consider as Arab any music perpetuated or created in an Arab country, with the exception of deliberately Western compositions or interpretations. If we refer to the language, we notice that many Arabic songs of the twentieth century, composed on a classical or contemporary Arabic libretto, are dressed in orchestrations or Western harmonizations and nevertheless considered to be Arabic.

FROM THE ORIGINS TO THE 7TH CENTURY
Originally, the “Bedouin” music of the pre-Islamic period (jahilya) was essentially vocal, from oral tradition, and used psalmody (tartil), modulated recitation (inchad), poetry (chir) punctuated by percussion or the chant of the caravaneer (huda '). In addition to the tambourine (daff), the accompanying instruments are the oboe (mizmar, zamr), the monochord fiddle (rababa) or archaic lutes (mizhar, muwattar, kiran, then tunbur and tanbura). Jousts and poetic tournaments take place in Mecca around the Black Stone (Kaba). In the twentieth century, we can get an idea of ​​what this archaic music was by discovering the traditional manifestations of the Bedouins, nomads and villagers, the collective festivals of the Arabian peninsula and the Arabian Gulf (sawt and fjir, etc.), the chanted jousts. of Lebanon (zajal), which minimize the role of the instruments.

From the sixth century, an artistic confluence began in the Middle East between Bedouin traditions and Byzantine and Persian Sassanid cultures, around the principalities of Hra and Ghassan. In the 7th century, the rise of Islam catalyzed this confluence and established its technical foundations with rhythm (qa), elaborate singing (ghina) and the short-necked lute (ud). These three elements define a “meta-Hellenic” music, monodic, improvised on a modal code, whose intervals, tetrachord genres, modes and melodies are conceived on the ud before being entrusted to the voice of the singer who conveys the words, the poetry and the emotion (tarab) according to the mood (ruh) of the assembly.

Abbasid apogee (eighth-thirteenth century)
Under the Umayyad caliphs, the music of Medina, Mecca and Damascus remained dependent on “Semitic” and confessional prejudices; judged as a playful art, they are more readily entrusted to slaves, foreigners (Persians or Blacks), non-Muslim minorities or "trainers" (qayna, qiyana).

From the eighth to the thirteenth century, the patronage of the Abbasid caliphs of Iraq accentuated Hellenic and Persian influences and marked the golden ages of music within Islam, apart from any racial or religious prejudice, hence the proliferation of manuscripts and the hegemony of scholars and artists: Zalzal, Ibrahm Mawsil (7th century), Ishaq Mawsil, Ziryab, Kind (9th century), Munajjim, Isfahan, Farab (10th century), Ibn-Sna, dit Avicenna (11th c.), Safiy al-Dn (13th c.), Abd al-Qadir Ibn-Ghaib al Hafiz al Maraq (14th c.), Etc., leading to high-tech music conceived on five-sided ud ranks spanning more than two octaves, admitting outspoken and dynamic nuances and describing genres and modes according to a commatic system. Improvised within scholarly circles or at court, this refined music has sometimes used alphabetical notations. In the twentieth century, commatic intervals are still used in Turkey, by the lute school of Baghdad and in Eastern churches (Greece, Syria, Iraq, etc.). They give an idea of ​​what the technique was like at the height of the thirteenth century.

ANDALUSIAN EXPANSION (IXth C.)
In the ninth century, a rivalry between two soloists from Baghdad, Ishaq Mawsili and Ziryab, caused Ziryab to leave for the Maghreb and Muslim Spain, where he was welcomed in Cordoba by the Umayyad caliph. Ziryab, equipped with a five-row ud and creator of a rational school of music, would thus have favored the development of Arab-Andalusian music, illustrated by twenty-four "suites" (nawba). In the twentieth century, this music survived in the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia). It has retained archaic aspects and does not modulate, remaining in a unique mode during the course of the "suite". In order to compensate for the inaccuracies due to colonial periods, it is important to restore your spirit and technique before broadcasting it.

Also initiated in Baghdad and developed in Andalusia in the ninth century, a reform of prosody led to a new poetic form, the muwachchah, which, supplanting the old qasda, was still considered in the twentieth century as the symbol of musico-poetic Arab classicism. , in the form of long modulating suites called fasil or wasla, and presenting many local variations.

RECESSION (14th-19th C.)
The capture of Baghdad by the Mongols (1258) and that of Constantinople by the Turks (1453) changed the balance of Arab-Iranian-Turkish Islam. Musical elitism shifted from patronage of the Abbasid caliphs to that of the Ottoman emperors, and the best artists were devoted to Istanbul. The music of the "Arab provinces" becomes a recessive art of the colonized, hence the regression of scholarly or instrumental forms and the revival of popular or vocal forms, which are better differentiated from Ottoman art.

XIXth CENTURY AWAKENING
In the nineteenth century, Ottoman music flourished and the situation in the Arab countries bordering Turkey remained acceptable. Iraq maintains the Arab-Iranian-Turkish confluential tradition in Baghdad and Mosul, with the genre called maqam al-iraq, a poem sung by a soloist, the maqamtch, accompanied by a specific quartet, the tchalgh, comprising a zither-tympanum (santur), a fiddle (jawza), a chalice drum (tabla) and a Basque drum (daff or reqq). This maqam will be renovated by Rahmallah Chiltag, Ahmad Zaydan and Molla Othman Mawsil, before being taken over by the great Iraqi singers of the twentieth century: Rachd Kundarj, Muhammad Qubbanj and Yusuf Omar. But the resurgence of the elite Abbasid tradition of the ud did not occur until 1936 with Cherif Muhieddin and his lute school in Baghdad.

In Syria, Aleppo perpetuates muwachchah, and Damascus the notion of classicism. In the mid-nineteenth century, Michel Muchaqa proposed a reform of the theory and practice of ud and Abu-Khall Qabban renovated the style of secular chants. They announce the great artists of the twentieth century: the “prince of the lute” Omar Naqishbend and the singer Sabah Fakhr.

In Egypt and the Maghreb, music has become poorer. At the end of the 19th century, a musician from Cairo, Abdu al-Hammul, had the idea to borrow new modes (maqam) from Istanbul and from Aleppo his art of muwachchah. From all sides springs the idea of ​​going back to the golden ages and analyzing Arab music to better compare it to European music. It is the awakening of Arab nationalism.

20th CENTURY MEDIA
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire facilitated the awakening of Arab nationalism and a very active literary and musical renaissance (nahda) in Egypt. This renaissance is linked to the folkloric (Sayyd Darwch) and classical (Arab Music Congress, Cairo, 1932). Two exceptional vocal talents (Umm Kulthum and Muhammad Abd al-Wahhab) will reign over half a century of Arabic song and enchant the crowds. The qualification of Egyptian artists quickly encourages them to dominate the Arabic-speaking media (cylinder, record, film, radio, television, cassettes), imposing their style and their productions. But this supremacy eventually turns into an entertainment monopoly, supported by commercial or demagogic works that abuse melodrama and easy effects. To this day, the Arab masses are dominated by Egyptian “varieties”, an effect further accentuated by the televisions which have imposed on families the faces of elected stars, melodies and stereotypical formulas.

After 1950, Lebanon began a folk renaissance embodied in operettas intended for the festivals of Baalbek and entrusted mainly to the pen of the Rahban brothers or to the tender voice of the singer Fayrouz, peddling a hybrid music promoting oriental styles, western orchestrations and popular dances. Arabs (especially the dabka). Real talents, like those of the singer Wadi al-Saf or the buzuq player Matar Muhammad, must make their way between the monopolies of Cairo and Baalbek.

CONTEMPORARY FOLKLORES
Currently, in line with the world trend, all Arab countries are trying to revive their popular heritages. These traditions, better differentiated from one region to another than the learned traditions, are still alive and practiced in the village during the festivities. They also reflect the survivals of certain pre-Islamic or minority heritages (Aramaeans, Kurds, Copts, Berbers, etc.). They are nonetheless based on the same modal structures as scholarly music, by reducing the ambitus to an octave or a pentacord.

These popular events now emerge from the countryside and reach national theaters, resorts, local and international festivals; hence their support by the administrations and a tendency towards standardization, coupled with spectacular staging, orchestrations and choreographies which take care of the effect to the detriment of authenticity.

RESURGENCE OF INSTRUMENTAL RECITAL
The supremacy of variety songs conveyed by the media has accentuated the domination of vocal music and overcrowded orchestras have stifled the traditional quartet (takht) and ancient instruments. The short lute (ud), the long lute (tanbura, buzuq), the zither-tympanon (santur), the zither-psaltery (qanun), the oblique flute (nay) and their soloists have been reduced to the roles of accompanists. The improvised instrumental solos (taqsm) became brief interludes.

However, in Baghdad, between 1936 and 1948, there was a resurgence of the elite practice of ud, according to the ethics of the Abbasid period, with the Baghdad lute school, founded and directed by Cherif Muhieddin. This institution revives commatic intervals, dynamic nuances, the out of line and skilful fingerings on six-row ud spanning three octaves. She will train the greatest lutenists of the contemporary Arab world: Jaml Bachr (the most subtle poet of the lute), Salman Chukur, Munr Bachr (the pioneer of Arab music in the West), Jaml Ghanim, Al Imam…

The delicacy of their playing in solo oriental recital and the complexity of their modulations make them at first inaccessible to crowds subjected to song or accustomed to the banal practice of the usual ud. But, from 1970, the Arab taqsm takes place in the new current of interest carried by the West to oriental instruments. And the consecration of the great Arab soloists by the Western media arouses a renewed interest in their countries of origin for instrumental music.
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