Arab pop-music and Quran recitation are definitely prominent in the audioscapes of Cairo and Amman.
On Sunday 2003-01-12 13:17, Robert Seeberger wrote: > http://slate.msn.com/id/2076531/ > > Imagine it were possible to stem the rising tide of anti-Americanism in the > Arab world. (I like to think this is the kind of speculative, optimistic > sentence tossed around all the time at the State Department.) You would > want to target an audience of middle-class and working-class men between > the ages of 18 to 30-the demographic most likely to attack Americans and > American property. To that end, the State Department recently announced > that it is exporting an anthology of American writers, in the hopes that > this will persuade Arabs that the American experience is more varied, and > less evil, than the state-controlled Arab media say it is. > > > Regardless of whether you buy into this kind of cultural marketing, it's > clear that the State Department chose the wrong medium. American book > publishers can tell you that American men between 18 and 30 don't read a > lot of books. The Arab street reads even fewer-just one book, mostly: the > Quran. The United States should have followed the lead of Arab governments, > which know that music is the region's most powerful form of expression. > That's why they use it for propaganda-and also why they ban so much of it. > > The classic example of this is Umm Kulthoum, the voice of Egypt, the diva > of the Arab world. In 1975, her funeral, legend has it, drew an even larger > crowd than Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's in 1970. Nasser's rise > to power coincided with a golden age of Egyptian music, and in Umm Kulthoum > he found a willing participant in his campaign to promote the image of a > charismatic nation on the rise. She recorded several nationalistic songs, > like "Watani Habibi Watani el Akbar" ("My Beloved Nation, the Greatest > Nation") (scroll to the bottom of the page, and listen to the second clip), > which are still widely known in Egypt-as are a host of singer Abdel Halim > Hafez's patriotic numbers, like "Ya Gamal, Ya Habib El Malayeen" ("Gamal, > Beloved of Millions") and "Ehna El Shaaab" ("We Are the People"). > > Of course, few Arab leaders have enjoyed as loyal a supporting chorus as > Nasser did. Many have had to check the efforts of musicians not in sympathy > with their policies. Sayyid Darwish is more or less the founder of the > engaged, or oppositional-the sense is like the French intellectuals' sense > of "engag�"-school of Arab music. His "Quom Ya Masry" ("O Egyptian Arise") > is one of the earliest examples of music used to wage cultural war against > an unpopular government; it served as one of the forces driving the 1919 > revolution. The song was banned at the time, but today every Egyptian knows > it by heart. Marcel Khalife, a Lebanese musician, is the contemporary > leader of the engaged school. His albums are officially unavailable in > Egypt; many of his songs are powerful and subtle odes on the Palestinian > issue, which the government fears will further flame resentment against > Israel. Khalife's very beautiful "Ana Yussef Ya Abi" ("Oh Father, I Am > Joseph"), from a poem by the Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, takes the > biblical-and > Quranic-story of Joseph's treatment at the hands of his brothers as a > metaphor for Palestinian suffering. > > Curiously, while the Egyptian censors banned Khalife's quiet songs of > protest, they more or less ignored Egyptian singer's Shaaban Abdel Rahim's > recent hit, "Bakrah Israel" ("I Hate Israel"). The censors probably aren't > making any genuine aesthetic discrimination here; they tend to distinguish > simply between what's merely embarrassing and what is truly threatening to > the Egyptian government. Hence Rahim's latest song, in praise of Osama Bin > Laden (with its catchy chorus, "Bin Bin Bin Bin Bin Bin Laden"), was > removed from the airwaves. After all, Bin Laden and other hard-core > Islamists haven't targeted only America but also Arab regimes that > cooperate with America. Evidently, the Mubarak regime acted so quickly and > forcefully that Rahim, a commercially and politically savvy buffoon, denies > that he ever made any song about Bin Laden. This has got to constitute one > of the more compelling chapters in the psycho-biography of the Arab street. > It's a testament to the power of a police state that the song now remains > only in the memory of the masses-but the fact that it remains suggests that > the memory of the masses may be yet more powerful. This only makes the goal > of reaching the Arab world's frustrated unemployed (and underemployed) > young men all the more important. > > Unfortunately, this is where the State Department miscalculated again. The > people most likely to read a book about America are the Arab world's > well-educated professional and intellectual elite, who-unlike the > underclasses-already have extensive experience of America and the rest of > the West. Not only are they the least likely to change their minds, they're > the ones, like members of the Arab media, who have been most active in > fanning the flames of anti-Americanism. What the State Department ought to > have done to reach those underemployed young men, then, is call Miles > Copeland, a music producer who specializes in world music (like that of > Cheb Mami, a French-Algerian singer, and the Egyptian singer Hakim). > Copeland became interested in Arab culture while he and his brother > Stewart, the former drummer for the Police, were growing up in the Middle > East, where their father worked for the CIA. Maybe Copeland can start > turning out Arab-American fusion hits for another federal agency, the > Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America and its > latest initiative, Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language news and entertainment > station with frequencies throughout the Middle East. > > In any case, the State Department needs to recognize that Arab culture is > predominantly an aural one. This is largely due to the Quran itself, which > institutionalized the sovereignty of the spoken word. From the outset, > God's word to the Arabs came to its audience-including the Prophet > Muhammad-primarily as a heard text, not a written one. Arab Muslims still > mostly experience the Quran that way and listen to it all day long, in > taxis, coffee shops, stores. Quranic reciters are something like pop stars. > (One of the major figures from the heyday of the Egyptian school of > recitation, Sheikh Abdel Baset, can be heard here.) Long before the Quran, > classical poetry in Arabic issued from an oral tradition; it wasn't written > down until well after the text of the Quran was established. The Arabic > language itself, its rich vocabulary, argues for the overwhelming pleasure > of sound in a culture that was not very visually interesting. There are, I > believe, nine different words for "desert" in classical Arabic-which > reminds you that 1,500 years ago most Arabs were looking at desert most of > the time. Even today, as one Egyptian pointed out to me, Arab cityscapes > are all of a piece. In Cairo, the sands and sun have worn art-deco > apartment buildings down to the same dulled gold as the pyramids. So, she > said, we stay at home and listen to the music of singers like Umm Kulthoum, > marveling at her perfect diction, piecing out the phrasing, the > repetitions, the variations. The battle for the hearts and minds of the > Arab world, then, should go through CD players, cassette decks, and radios, > not libraries. > > > > xponent > Muslim Mind Control Maru > rob > ________________________________ > You are a fluke of the universe. > You have no right to be here. > And whether you can hear it or not, > the universe is laughing behind your back. > > > _______________________________________________ > http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
