TRADITIONAL ARAB MUSIC ENSEMBLES IN TUNIS MODERNIZING AL-TURATH IN THE SHADOW OF EGYPT.pdf

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Traditional Arab Music Ensembles in Tunis: Modernizing Al-Turath in the Shadow of Egypt Author(s): Ruth Davis Source: Asian Music, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1997), pp. 73-108Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/834475Accessed: 02-06-2015 00:32 UTC

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Volume XXVIII, number 2 ASIAN MUSIC Spring/Summer 1997

TRADITIONAL ARAB MUSIC ENSEMBLES IN TUNIS: MODERNIZING AL-TURATH IN THE SHADOW OF EGYPTI

by Ruth Davis

In March 1932, the baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, patron and pioneering scholar of the Tunisian urban musical tradition, al-ma'luf, sent his ensemble of four instrumentalists and two solo singers to Cairo to represent Tunisia in the First International Congress of Arab Music. The musicians were Muhammad Ghanim2 on the rabab (two-stringed, boat- shaped fiddle), Khumais Tarnan on the 'ad 'arbi (fretless short-necked Maghrebian lute with four courses of strings), Khumais al-'Ati on the naqqdrat (pair of small kettle-drums) and 'Ali ibn 'Arafa on the tar (tambourine); Muhammad Ibn Hassan sang male alto alternating with the deeper-voiced Muhammad al Muqrani (Moussali 1988:145). The instrumentalists doubled as chorus, alternating with the solo voices.3

This was no regular ma'laf ensemble; rather, it represented a unique and idiosyncratic attempt by d'Erlanger to reconstruct an archaic type of performance practice, which he believed had prevailed before the introduction of European instruments, as well as extraneous Arab instruments borrowed from Egyptian ensembles (Moussali 1988:146-47). Normally d'Erlanger's rabab would have been joined or replaced by a violin, the naqqarat by a darbukka (vase-shaped drum), and the 'uid 'arbi by its softer-toned Egyptian counterpart with six courses of strings, the 'ad sharqi; a qdnan (trapezoidal plucked zither) was often included, and despite their inability to produce the variable intervals of the Arab maqdmdt4 (melodic modes; singular, maqdm) so too were European instruments of fixed pitch such as the piano, harmonium and fretted mandolin (d'Erlanger 1949:341; El-Mahdi 1981:49).5

D'Erlanger's musicians used to rehearse in a special house built on the grounds of his magnificent Moorish palace, in Sidi Bou Said, an idyllic clifftop village overlooking the bay of Tunis. From around 1911, when he took up residence in Tunisia, until his death a few months after the Cairo Congress, d'Erlanger had devoted himself to the study, revival, and conservation of the ma'luf which he considered to be in a state of decadence and neglect (1917:95; 1949:340-41). D'Erlanger blamed corruptive European influences for contributing to this condition, and he criticized in particular the Tunisian aristocracy for inviting European music teachers to their courts. At the same time, d'Erlanger maintained that as an oral tradition, lacking an independent, currently-applicable theoretical basis, the ma'ltif was inherently vulnerable. Believing the repertory to be on thethreshold of extinction, d'Erlanger devoted the rest of his life's efforts to remedying these limitations.6


74 Asian Music: Spring/Summer 1997

Plate 1. Khumais Tarnan (d. 1964) with 'aid 'arbi: Tunisian delegate to the 1932 Cairo Congress; founding member and original chorus master of the Rashidiyya. (Photo courtesy

Salah El-Mahdi.)


Davis: Traditional Arab Music Ensembles in Tunis 75

Regardless of their individual make-up, ma'luf ensembles of d'Erlanger's time, including his own, were characterized by similar principles of transmission and performance practice, and by similar types of performance contexts. The musicians learned the repertory by oral transmission from their shaykh (leader) who normally played either 'ad or tdr; the shaykh was also responsible for selecting the pieces and for leading the transitions from one piece to the next. The instrumentalists doubled the vocal line and played introductions, interludes and purely instrumental genres; they also doubled as unison chorus, alternating with the solo voices. Each instrumentalist and solo vocalist interpreted the familiar melodies in an individual way, embellishing them spontaneously, producing a simple heterophonic texture around the unison choral core. Such ensembles typically performed in private domestic gatherings, particularly among the aristocracy and wealthy bourgeoisie, in communal celebrations such as weddings, circumcisions and religious festivals, and in caf6s. The atmosphere was informal: performances were often accompanied by eating, drinking, and -- especially in caf6s -- by the smoking of taqruri (marijuana), and the audience sang along with the ensemble.

Ma'laf literally means "familiar", or "custom". The musical repertory to which it refers is also known as turath (literally, heritage)7 and, in common with the related musical repertories of Morocco, Algeria and Libya, mtusiqd andalusiyya (Andalusian music). According to popular belief, to which d'Erlanger himself subscribed, this music was originally imported to North Africa by so-called Andalusian refugees, Muslims and Jews fleeing the Christian reconquest of Spain from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries.8 The origins of a distinctive Arab-Andalusian musical tradition date back to the 9th century, when Ziryab, an outstanding musician at the court of Baghdad, was ousted by his jealous teacher and rival Ishaq al-Mawsili. Turning westward, Ziryab eventually found refuge at at the court of 'Abd al-Rahman II in Cordoba, where he established a music school and developed his own principles of composition and performance. United by their common historical identity and theoretical heritage, as well as certain formal characteristics and norms of performance practice, the various national and regional traditions of musiqa andalusiyya are distinguished as a whole from those of the Arab east, or Mashreq.9

In Tunisia, the ma'lhif flourished among urban communities of the northern and coastal regions; until recent decades, it was virtually unknown elsewhere (Abdul-Wahab 1918:117). Essentially it is a precomposed repertory of songs, interspersed by instrumental pieces, organized by maqam in a total of thirteen immense song cycles called nabat (singular, naba). Within each noba the pieces are further classified according to their rhythmic-metric genres, or iqa'at (singular, iqd'). Since it would take many hours to perform an entire niba, in practice a selection of pieces are



organized in a standard sequence of vocal, instrumental, and rhythmic- metric genres and tempos. The song texts mostly belong to the literary poetic forms of muwashshahah (in classical Arabic) and zajal (in dialect); typically they describe the beauty of women and nature, and the intoxicating effects of wine. The melodic structure is highly repetitive, mirroring the strophic structure of the verses: the same melody is repeated for each line, possibly reinforced by instrumental responses, and changing only with the occasional change of rhyme.10

On visits to Tunis between 1982 and 1996, I attended rehearsals and public performances of the Rashidiyya,11 the principal state-sponsored ensemble for the ma'lif. The performers were divided into an all-male instrumental section playing from notation and a separate mixed choir of about ten male and ten female vocalists, singing from memory; the entire ensemble was led by a conductor with a baton, following notation. The instrumental section comprised a nucleus of about ten violins, two or three cellos and a double bass, one or two qanuns, an 'ud 'arbi, an 'id sharqi, one or two nays (s. nday, end-blown reed flute) a darbukka, tar and naqqarat. Only the solo percussion instruments improvised around the basic rhythmic-metric core (1qa'); otherwise, all matters of interpretation were controlled by the conductor. Public performances were typically held in the gracious main concert hall of the National Conservatory of Music, a late-nineteenth century colonial style building which formerly housed the French conservatoire (see below). The conductor, instrumentalists and male singers wore black suits and ties, while the female singers wore colorful Tunisian costumes. Framed by microphones and loud-speakers, the ensemble performed on a raised platform before an audience seated in rows of chairs; they listened in silence, clapping only after each piece. Printed programmes were distributed, listing the musicians and the pieces performed in exact sequence.

The performance conventions I witnessed were neither new nor unique to the Rashidiyya: their basic principles dated back to the years immediately following the founding of the ensemble in November 1934, just two years after d'Erlanger's death and two and a half years after his own musicians had returned from Cairo. Like d'Erlanger before them, the expressed aim of the founders was to conserve and promote traditional Tunisian musicl2 whose survival they believed to be threatened. However, while d'Erlanger concentrated his attack on European influences (1917:95; 1949:340-41) the Tunisians blamed the pervasive and increasing influence of popular Egyptian music, imported by visiting artists since the turn of the century, and popularized further by the commercial record market. In his history of the Rashidiyya, published by the Institute, Salah El-Mahdi describes how Tunisian musicians were abandoning their traditions and imitating the Egyptians, not only in their music but also in their dress and dialect (1981:25).



Plate 2. The Rashidiyya Institute in Tunis (interior detail). (Author: 1996.)



In its efforts to preserve the distinctive identity of the Tunisian tradition, the Rashidiyya consciously turned to contemporary Egyptian as well as Western orchestral models for inspiration. As a result, over the following decades, successive leaders introduced and maintained radical changes in the transmission and performance of the ma'luf, reflecting musical ideologies and aesthetic values directly opposed to those of previous ensembles. Salwa El-Shawan (El-Shawan 1984) has documented a comparable process occurring in Cairo several decades later, with the revival of the indigenous repertory designated al-turath during the 1960s and 70s. The process was initiated in the early 1960s by leading Egyptian celebrities, including the female singer Umm Kulthum and the singer/composer Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab. Alarmed by the republican government's lavish support of Western music since the revolution of 1952, seemingly at the expense of indigenous traditions, these musicians persuaded the Ministry of Culture to create an "Arab orchestra which is comparable to the existing foreign orchestra (i.e. the Cairo Symphony)." In 1967, Firqat al-Musiqa al-'Arabiyyah (the Arab Music Ensemble) was founded in order to revive a repertory which, since the 1950s, had almost completely disappeared. Rather than emulate the earlier ensembles, however, the new ensemble introduced radical changes in transmission, performance practice and context, clearly derived from Western orchestral models. These changes were based on a well-defined musical ideology aimed at reinterpreting the traditional repertory according to contemporary aesthetic ideals. The result, to use the expression aptly coined by Ali Jihad Racy, was a 'modernized heritage' (Racy 1982:402).

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Egypt has been at the forefront of innovative developments in Arabic music. Scholars such as Virginia Danielson (1988:142; 1996:300) and Ali Jihad Racy (1981:6) have pointed to the vital, catalytic role played by the Egyptian mass media, particularly disc, theatre, film and broadcasting, in the creation and promotion of new musical styles and their dissemination throughout the Arab world. As Racy has observed, mainstream Egyptian music has come to be regarded even among non-Arabs as the dominant style of 'Arab music,' effectively constituting a lingua franca, or pan-Arabic musical style (1982:391)

In Egypt, musical developments have been underpinned by academic initiatives aimed specifically at reviving, systematizing and modernizing Arabic music on the basis of Western models. In 1913, the Oriental Music Club was founded in Cairo, providing a center for formal music training and a forum for intellectual and scholarly exchange. According to its director, Mustafa Rida, the Club consistently pursued the goal of "reviving and systematizing Arab music so that it will rise upon an artistic foundation, as did Western music earlier" (Kitcb 1933:23, quoted in Racy 1991:70). In December 1929, the government-sponsored Oriental



Music Institute was founded in Cairo with similar goals. Inaugurating the new Institute, King Fu'ad expressed his desire to hold an Arab music conference to which Western scholars would be invited "in order to discuss all that was required to make the music civilized, and to teach it and rebuild it on acknowledged scientific principles" (Kitab 1933:19, quoted in Racy 1991:69). Hardly more than two years later, the Oriental Music Institute hosted the First International Congress of Arab Music, sponsored by King Fu'ad and organized primarily by the Egyptian government, in which musicians and scholars from more than seventy European and Middle Eastern countries participated. In his penetrating analysis of the conference proceedings, Ali Jihad Racy observes that the Egyptians were fundamentally motivated by their belief in the supremacy of Western music, and the notion that in order to advance, Egyptian music needed to emulate and borrow from that of Europe (Racy 1991:82-83).

In the decades immediately following the Cairo Congress, Egyptian musicians forged their innovative musical ideas primarily in the framework of new compositions. Not until the late 1960s, with the creation of the Arab Music Ensemble, were modernizing ideals systematically applied to the reinterpretation of older repertory. Even then, Racy describes the turath revival movement as peripheral in the context of contemporary Cairene musical culture (Racy 1982:401-402). In Tunisia, in contrast, in the heady last decades of the nationalist movement leading up to Independence in 1956, the modernized ma'luf symbolized the Tunisian national identity,13 and its songs were upheld as the foundation and ideal model for the new songs promoted by the mass media.14 After Tunisian independence in 1956, the ma'lhif was officially designated the national musical heritage, and the Rashidiyya's achievements and personnel became the cornerstone of the government's music educational policies, as state-funded music schools, clubs and ensembles modelled on the Rashidiyya were established throughout the country.

My purpose in this article is to trace the principal stages in the development of the distinctive performance conventions of the Rashidiyya and its offshoots, from the founding of the ensemble in 1934 to the present. I also consider the broader implications of the Rashidiyya's innovations for the ma'luf throughout Tunisia, and their relationships with parallel developments in Egyptian ensembles. Finally, a comparison of the aims and achievements of the Rashidiyya with those pioneered by the Arab Music Ensemble in Cairo more than thirty years later, reflects fundamental, historical differences between the urban music cultures of Tunisia and Egypt, and more specifically, in the concept and significance of al-turath in each case.



Plate 3. Muhammad Triki: Leader of the Rashidiyya ensemble, 1935-1949. (Photo courtesy Salah El-Mahdi.)



A New Type of Performance Practice

Questions of performance practice were remote from the original agenda of the Rashidiyya's founders, who included musicians, poets, intellectuals, politicians, bureaucrats and other prominent members of the Tunisian bourgeoisie. Essentially, their aim was twofold. In addition to their desire to protect the ma'laf from the overwhelming influence of Egyptian music, they intended to elevate its social status by providing a respectable, public secular environment for its performance, comparable to a Western music conservatory. Their immediate model was the French conservatoire, founded in Tunis in 1896.

Before 1934, the only places in Tunis where public music making was considered acceptable for all social classes were the lodges of certain Sufi brotherhoods15 where the ma'luf was performed alongside the sacred repertories, without melody instruments, in a restricted type of performance practice called ma'lTf kham (lit. raw, unrefined ma'laf). This was characterized by a unison male chorus accompanied by percussion alone. Outside the lodges, Islamic social taboo relegated public music making to the ranks of professional musicians, typically Jews, barbers, or members of the lower artisan classes; amateur musicians of higher social standing had to confine their music making to the privacy of their homes. By providing a serious, academic environment for the ma'luf, the Rashidiyya also represented a positive attempt to dissociate the repertory from the environments associated with lower-class professionals, such as caf6s with their hashish smokers and wedding celebrations with their alcohol, where Egyptian and 'inferior' Tunisian songs also paraded.16

In order to create an ensemble of the highest possible standards, the founders sent out invitations to the leading shaykhs of the capital. The initial response produced six violins, two rababs, five 'ids, three qanons, a tar, naqqarat, one female17 and six male vocalists. Unprecedented both in size and proportions, the new ensemble encountered difficulties from the start.18 Many of the shaykhs were unaccustomed to performing together and knew different versions of the orally transmitted melodies; at the same time, their spontaneous embellishments were obscured by the instrumental doublings. Evidently, for the new ensemble to be viable the musicians needed to conform to a standard version of each melody; to this end, the young Tunisian violinist Muhammad Triki, adept in European, Middle Eastern and Tunisian traditions,19 was invited to supervise the transcription of the entire repertory of the ma'lof into Western staff notation, teach the shaykhs how to read the transcriptions and lead them in performance.

Within the first decade of his leadership, Triki had created the standard format for the ensemble and established the basic conventions of



rehearsing and performing that have survived until today. In our conversations, Triki acknowledged that he was influenced by the sonorities of both the European symphony orchestra and contemporary Egyptian ensembles, particularly the effect of bowed strings in unison and parallel octaves that characterized the Egyptian firqah. However, unlike many Egyptian ensembles, Triki excluded instruments of fixed pitch on the grounds that they would compromise the intonation of the maqamat. Ideally, he maintained, the chorus and strings should sound in unison "like an army of soldiers,"20 while the solo Arab instruments were free to improvise embellishments; in effect, however, such individual contributions became virtually redundant since they were swamped by the uniform sound mass of the rest of the ensemble.

Rehearsal and performance followed different patterns for the instrumental and vocal sections. Since the nuances of the vocal line were considered too subtle to be taught any other way than by direct imitation, the singers learned the repertory from their chorus master, Shaykh Khumais Tarnan, by the traditional methods of repetition and memorization; the instrumentalists, in contrast, were coached by Triki, aided by parts hand- copied from the original transcriptions. When both sections had mastered a piece they would reunite to rehearse and perform under Triki, the chorus from memory and the instrumentalists still following notation. Triki himself either led the ensemble from within, playing the violin, or more characteristically, he directed it from the front with a baton, like a Western orchestral conductor.

Thus almost from the outset, the Rashidiyya established new patterns and criteria for leadership. Previously ensembles had only one leader, the shaykh, usually the eldest and most respected member who was elected on the basis of his superior knowledge of the vocal repertory. The Rashidiyya, in contrast, was divided into separate vocal and instrumental sections, each with its own leader. The original chorus master, Shaykh Khumais Tarnan, was one of the eldest and certainly the most respected musician in the ensemble; formerly mentor to the late baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger and 'uid player in his ensemble, he had the largest repertory of all the shaykhs, and was the principal source of Triki's transcriptions; according to traditional criteria, he would have been the unchallenged leader of the ensemble. In practice, however, this role fell to Triki, the youngest musician, who created the precedent for the director of the instrumental section to lead the entire ensemble. The Rashidiyya ensemble thus established the anomaly that the leader of a what was essentially a vocal tradition was an instrumentalist who did not participate in the singing, nor was he required to have any special knowledge of the vocal repertory; nevertheless, he had authority over the leader of the chorus to control the interpretation of the ensemble. The source of this authority were the musical transcriptions he used in teaching and performance.



Plate 4. Salah El-Mahdi ('ad) with amateur ma'lif ensemble in Tunis. (Author: 1996.)



Salah El-Mahdi has described the initial laborious efforts involved in teaching the elderly and sometimes recalcitrant shaykhs how to read the transcriptions (1981:67-68).21 In the summer of 1944, El-Mahdi himself, then a recent, young recruit on the nay established a music school in the Institute, functioning independently of the ensemble. El-Mahdi's classes developed into a three-year curriculum comprising solmization, notation, Arab music history and theory, and instrumental performance. By the late 1940s, the ensemble was restricting membership of the instrumental section to graduates of the Rashidiyya school (El-Mahdi 1981:68-70)

The Social Role of the Rashidiyya

The Rashidiyya was essentially conceived as a forum for amateur music making,22 designed to liberate its members from traditional social constraints on public musical performance. It was subsidized by the government, and despite their amateur status, members of the ensemble received a small fee, comparable with the token rewards given to members of Sufi ensembles. In 1938, the national radio was founded with a policy of broadcasting only Tunisian music; its artistic director was Mustafa Bushasha, brother-in-law of Mustafa Sfar, president of the Rashidiyya and mayor of Tunis. At first, the Rashidiyya provided the backbone of music programming; eventually, its contribution decreased to one live evening broadcast each week, a pattern that was maintained until a full-time professional radio ensemble was formed in 1958. Meanwhile, several of the Rashidiyya's musicians, singers and composers forged independent careers in the media: during the decades leading up to independence in 1956, the Rashidiyya provided the springboard for many of the most popular media artists of the time, including the legendary female singer Salayhah, regarded by Tunisians as their equivalent of Egypt's Umm Kultham. As the official representative of Tunisian music, the Rashidiyya gave concerts to honor important public events and personalities, including landmarks in the struggles of the nationalist movement and distinguished foreign visitors (El-Mahdi 1981:104-106).

The ensemble gave regular public concerts in the large inner courtyard of its building in the medina. Apparently the Rashidiyya's concerts achieved the serious atmosphere that the founders had envisaged: their atmosphere was informal, but the audiences were attentive and respectful: they sang along with the chorus, but unlike the caf6 and wedding audiences, they refrained from talking through the performances and they waited until each piece had finished before applauding. When Salah El-Mahdi succeeded Triki as leader in 1949, his Saturday afternoon concerts were compared to club meetings, the same familiar faces returning each week: the ensemble passed round copies of the words and the audience sang along.



In its efforts to maintain the highest possible performance standards and to raise the social status of the ma'laf, the Rashidiyya discouraged its members from performing it in venues of the type traditionally associated with professional musicians. Through the 1920s and 1930s, d'Erlanger's musicians, led by 'fd player Shaykh Khumais Tarnan, gave ma'luf concerts on Saturday mornings at the Cafr Mbarrat in the medina. Their performances attracted a large, regular following; one former member of the audience described them as a 'veritable school for the ma'lhf.' With the creation of the Rashidiyya, d'Erlanger's musicians were absorbed into its ranks and the caf6 concerts ceased. It is difficult to gauge the overall effects of the Rashidiyya's prohibition on traditional ma'laf activities since other factors, particularly the increasing competition from newer repertories popularized by the mass media, must inevitably have contributed to their decline. By Tunisian Independence in 1956, the ma'laf had virtually disappeared from the caf6s in the city, and the repertory was rarely performed in wedding celebrations; meanwhile, the shaykhs of the ma'laf who once had turned their homes into private music schools and clubs, had long been made redundant by the Rashidiyya ensemble and school. However, in the coastal villages outside Tunis such as Sidi Bou Said and La Marsa, members of the local Sufi ensembles continued to sing the ma'laf in caf6s and wedding celebrations, while musicians from Tunis without allegiance to the Rashidiyya took their instruments out to the suburbs to play with the local groups.

Regional Ma'hif Ensembles After Tunisian Independence

Until Tunisian independence in 1956, the Rashidiyya remained unique of its kind, and its influence did not extend significantly beyond Tunis. After independence, with the creation in 1961 of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the Rashidiyya's innovations were extended nationwide. The mission of the new Ministry, fixed by presidential decree, was to "promote and harmonize cultural activities through the elaboration and execution of a program of development and diffusion of culture throughout the nation" (Kacem 1973:30). Salah El-Mahdi, leader of the Rashidiyya, was appointed director of Music and Popular Arts, with the primary responsibility of "conserving and promoting the national heritage" (op.cit: 36).23

Through the 1960s and 1970s, the government formed music schools and amateur ma'lof ensembles modelled on the Rashidiyya, directed by graduates of the Rashidiyya school and the new National Conservatory of Music,24 in newly established educational and recreational centers throughout the country. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs published the Rashidiyya's transcriptions in a series of nine



volumes entitled al-Turdth al-Masiqi al-Tunisi /Patrimoine Musical Tunisien (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) which were distributed to the new ensembles. Meanwhile, the syllabus and teaching methods of the Rashidiyya school were adapted for use by the National Conservatory and other state-sponsored music educational institutions. Thus the ma'lif was introduced to areas where it was previously unknown, and new teaching methods, performance norms and institutional contexts were imposed on communities where it had traditionally been cultivated.

Despite its limited geographical representation, the ma'lhf was in other respects relatively well-qualified to fulfill the role of national musical heritage. As an urban repertory it was at least common to several different communities, unlike the rural traditions which are regionally more diversified (Abdul-Wahab 1918:116). Within its urban and regional confines it was a genuinely popular tradition, crossing class and religious boundaries. As an Arab musical and literary tradition, with a basis in Arab music theory, the ma'lff enjoyed a certain intellectual status; at the same time, it reflected the government's general policy to Arabize Tunisian culture. It had a legend which passed in both popular and scholarly imaginations as a history, and it carried the prestige associated, among urban communities at least, with Andalusian culture generally. Finally, and uniquely among Tunisia's diverse range of indigenous musical traditions, the ma'luf came equipped with a complete repertory in notation, modern performing and teaching models, and an army of qualified teachers, musicians, administrators and advisors provided by the Rashidiyya.

In its efforts both to encourage and monitor the new ensembles, the government established an annual cycle of competitions and festivals; these culminate in the annual International Festival of the Ma'lif held each summer in Testour, a small orchard town in the Mejerda river valley, founded by Andalusian refugees. Throughout the week of the Festival, the garden of the main hotel of Testour is transformed into a competitive concert arena as prize-winning regional ensembles perform their chosen pieces on a brightly lit, colorfully decorated dais, to an audience of local townspeople and adjudicators from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the National Conservatory and the Rashidiyya. The Tunisian performances are interspersed with presentations by ensembles from other countries in the Maghreb and Spain, culminating in a concert by the Rashidiyya.



Plate 5. 'Abd al-Hamid Ben 'Aljiya in his office at the R.I. (Author: 1996.)



The Radio Ma'lif Ensemble

Further refinements in performance practice were introduced in 1958, when the government provided funds for a full-time, professional radio ensemble. While the original members were supplied by the Rashidiyya and graduates of its school, the radio ensemble itself was modelled on its contemporary Egyptian counterparts: it combined the instrumental and vocal elements of the Rashidiyya with assorted Western instruments such as flutes, clarinets, accordions and electric harmoniums, and its repertory focused on popular Egyptian media songs and Tunisian songs in similar styles (El-Mahdi 1981:57-58). The Egyptian violinist Professor Atiyah Shararah was brought in as leader, and Egyptian qanun player Professor Fahmi 'Awad was hired to train the chorus. Within this framework, special arrangements were made for the ma'lif. 'Abd al-Hanrid Ben 'Aljiya, former nay player in the Rashidiyya, was appointed leader of a reduced ensemble drawn from the elite of the Rashidiyya's past and present membership, comprising a chorus of ten male and ten female singers led by Khumais Tarnan, and an instrumental section of ten violins, two cellos, a double bass, qantin, 'ud 'arbi, nay, darbukka, tar and naqqarat.

Ben 'Aljiya aimed to distinguish his elite, professional ensemble from the amateur Rashidiyya by introducing new 'professional' standards of performance,25 which he acknowledged were inspired by Western orchestral models. He prepared separate parts for each type of instrument, and insisted on absolute adherence to the written score, subject only to expressive nuances which he himself introduced in rehearsals. In general, the cellos and basses articulated the 1qa', reinforcing the percussion in a reduced version of the melody, while the remaining instruments played the complete melody with characteristic embellishments. Ben 'Aljiya's scores contrast effects of timbre and register between various instruments and voices, and between pizzicato and arco strings; they synchronize bowings and they include details of tempo, dynamics and phrasing. Unlike El- Mahdi, who liked to lead from within the ensemble, playing 'ad or nay, Ben 'Aljiya consistently conducted from the front with a baton, maintaining that this was a necessary move in order to establish the leader of the instrumental section as leader of the entire ensemble.

Despite Ben 'Aljiya's high ideals and efforts, the ma'lif has maintained a relatively low profile on the radio and, since its inception in 1965, television. The same applies to the commercial record and cassette markets, which tend to replicate the popular repertory of the radio. During the first decade or so, the Radio concentrated its efforts on recording studio performances of both Ben 'Aljiya's ensemble and the Rashidiyya; to this day, these original archival recordings provide the sources of most of the Radio's limited slots for the ma'lof. Similarly studio video recordings of



the Radio ma'lof ensemble provide the main sources of the infrequent television programmes. These token offerings are occasionally supplemented by live transmissions of, for example, concerts of the Rashidiyya ensemble and highlights from the Testour Festival.

The Rashidiyya After Tunisian Independence

While remaining the official national ensemble for the ma'luf, the Rashidiyya at first continued in its amateur status under El-Mahdi and his various successors, uninfluenced by the changes Ben 'Aljiya had introduced. Eventually, in 1972, the government provided the funds to professionalize the Rashidiyya. 'Abd Al-Hamid Ben 'Aljiya was appointed leader, the amateur musicians were replaced by his salaried colleagues from the R.T.T. (Radiodiffusion Tilevision Tunisienne), and the scores and performance standards he had introduced to the Radio were imported to the Rashidiyya. The Rashidiyya's professional status and new performance style were accompanied by a new visual image: black suits and ties replaced the jaba'ib (s. jubba: long, wide-sleeved coat) traditionally worn by the men, although the women retained their colorful Tunisian costumes. The Rashidiyya's concerts were transferred from the courtyard of the Institute to the Municipal Theatre, where the Rashidiyya performed on the same platform as the symphony orchestra of Tunis and visiting opera companies. It no longer distributed the words of the songs, and the audience no longer sang along with the ensemble.

The professionalized Rashidiyya was short-lived. Despite the ensemble's historical commitment to traditional Tunisian music, Ben 'Aljiya played down the role of the ma'lof in his programmes, replacing it with a similar repertory of popular Egyptian and Egyptian-style songs to those performed by the radio ensemble. The Ministry of Cultural Affairs found the professional ensemble a strain on its budget, and its achievements on behalf of the ma'lof unsatisfactory. In December 1978, it appointed a new leader, Muhammad Sa'ada to replace Ben 'Aljiya; most of the professional musicians returned with Ben

'Aljiya to the R.T.T., and the Rashidiyya reverted back to its original amateur status, with a small subsidy from the Ministry.

It was Sa'ada's ensemble whose activities I documented during my original fieldwork in the early 1980s. Beginning in the late 1970s, if not earlier, this period was typically portrayed by musicians, journalists, cultural bureaucrats and the music public generally as a time of crisis for Tunisian music, ironically echoing the situation in the 1930s that led to the founding of the Rashidiyya. The Tunisian public, particularly its youth, appeared to be neglecting Tunisian music for the predominantly Egyptian



and other foreign Arabic music dominating the mass media, while the new Tunisian songs churned out on the radio were dismissed as trite, pale imitations of their eastern counterparts. Critics complained that Tunisian musicians and audiences alike had lost touch with their musical roots. The Rashidiyya in particular, was blamed for turning the ma'luf into a museum- piece, alienating potential audiences with its formal, disciplined presentations of the same well-worn repertory.

Sa'ada was consciously addressing some of these criticisms by renewing the ensemble's repertory, rediscovering pieces that had been neglected since El-Mahdi's time and commissioning new pieces in traditional styles. On the whole though, he retained the performance standards and style of presentation that Ben 'Aljiya had introduced. He continued to use Ben 'Aljiya's scores, while those he prepared himself adopted similar orchestral conventions. The men retained their formal Western dress, and the women, their colorful, quasi-traditional costumes. Sa'ada reintroduced the custom, abandoned by Ben 'Aljiya, of distributing the song texts to the audiences, but the people were not supposed to sing along. Singers were criticized when they swayed spontaneously to the music during performances. Sa'ada even considered introducing an announcement before each concert, advising the audience when to applaud.

Sa'ada resigned from his position in 1985 and returned in 1991-92. He was replaced by a succession of others: on my last visit (October 1996) the ensemble was led by Ben 'Aljiya once again. During these various changes of leadership, the 'professional' standards and style of presentation originally established by Ben 'Aljiya have been retained, and the Rashidiyya continues to set the standard for mainstream ma'laf performances, serving as both model and inspiration for countless state-sponsored ensembles. At the same time, its methods and goals also provide a focus of criticism and active resistance, inspiring various alternative approaches that aim to rediscover performance principles and/or contexts of the past. Tahar Gharsa, veteran 'ad 'arbi player and currently chorus master in Ben 'Aljiya's Rashidiyya, also gives nightly ma'ltf concerts in the restaurant of Abou Nawas, one of Tunis's top hotels, leading an ensemble of five instrumental soloists; since the 1960s, Gharsa has deliberately flaunted orthodox stigma and performed the ma'laf alongside other traditional Tunisian songs, in caf6s and wedding celebrations.

In 1986, the year after he resigned from the Rashidiyya, Muhammad Sa'ada formed the ensemble Al-Fann, a flexible medium comprising up to eight solo instrumentalists with Sa'ada leading on the nay. Al-Fann performs the ma'luf alongside Egyptian songs and Turkish instrumental pieces in formal concert venues. Probably the most high profile example of a return to the soloistic medium are the recitals and recordings of



internationally acclaimed media star Lotfi Bushnak, whose eclectic Egyptian and Tunisian repertory includes songs from the ma'laf sung solo, backed by an ensemble of solo instrumentalists. Finally, the all-women ma'lUf ensemble Al-Azifat, founded in 1992 by Amina Srarfi, daughter of composer Kaddour Srarfi, has effectively shattered the all-male instrumental barrier rigorously maintained by the Rashidiyya. Al-Azifat comprises some fourteen Conservatory trained female instrumentalists doubling as chorus, performing from notation on a mixture of Arab and European instruments with Amina Srarfi directing from the piano. Dubbed by some Tunisians as a mere curiosity, designed to present a liberal image of Tunisia to foreign audiences, Al-Azifat performs the ma'lof and other traditional Tunisian compositions to packed houses throughout Tunisia and abroad.

The Rashidiyya and the Arab Music Ensemble Compared There are certain obvious parallels between the transformation of

traditional performance practice that occurred with the founding of the Rashidiyya in Tunis, and that which occurred independently over thirty years later with the founding of the Arab Music Ensemble in Cairo. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the Egyptian repertory, al-turath, was performed by a small, all-male ensemble called a takht (Persian; literally, 'platform')26 in which a solo vocalist (mutrib, literally enchanter) was typically accompanied by five instrumentalists playing qanan, 'ad, nay, kamanja and riqq (tambourine) and two or more supporting vocalists. As in the ma'lif ensembles of the time, the solo vocalist and instrumentalists added their own embellishments to the basic melody (lahn) and rhythmic- metric pattern (iqa').27

After World War I, the takht gradually expanded to create a new type of ensemble called firqa. Typically, more violins, one or more cellos and double bass were added to the core takht instruments; in some cases, other takht instruments were doubled and instruments such as accordion, flute, and tablah (goblet-shaped drum) were included.28 Despite these additions, the characteristic performance practice of the takht was not radically changed: the solo vocalist remained the central focus while the extra instruments doubled the vocal line, leaving the small core of takht instruments free to improvise embellishments. Both takht and firqa performed in the private homes of wealthy patrons, and the takht performed in caf6s until after World War I, when theaters and concert halls became the typical venues for both types of ensemble. Until World War I, it was customary for male ensembles to perform to male audiences, while female ensembles performed to female audiences (Racy 1977:24-25); subsequently, with the rise of the firqa, female singers began to perform with male instrumentalists to mixed audiences (op. cit: 48-49). Regardless



of venue, performances, whether by takht or firqa, were characterized by a close interaction between the audience, who spurred the musicians on with their spontaneous interjections (istihsdn), and the performers, who responded in turn with their improvisations.

Plate 6: Tahar Gharsa ('tid) and ensemble performing in the Abou Nawas hotel restaurant, Tunis. (Author: 1996.)



Plate 7: The Rashidiyyn ensemble in rehearsal under 'Abd al-Hamid Ben 'Aljiya at the Institute, Tunis. (Author: 1996.)



Plate 8. Detail of the Rashidiyya in rehearsal. Left to right: ndz, qandtn, 'ad 'arbi, with chorus behind. (Author: 1996.)



Plate 9. Detail of the Rashidiyya in rehearsal. Left to right: naqarrat, tar, darbukka, double-bass. (Author: 1996.)



In contrast to the Rashidiyya, whose founding members were not specifically concerned with performance practice per se, the musical goals of the Arab Music Ensemble were agreed at the outset by an officially appointed 'artistic committee' comprising twenty musicians and music scholars (Wizdrat al- thaqdfah 1968:16, cited in El-Shawan 1984:278). These goals included "the revival of the authentic turath ... and its presentation in its purest form, using a scientific style which does not involve any repetition or boredom..." In presenting al-turath, the new ensemble aimed at "preserving its melodic and rhythmic essence and ridding the musical performance from the factors of distortion and improvisation by presenting a uniform rendition of each composition which is respected by all performers" (Wizardt al- thaqafdh 1974:1, cited in El-Shawan 1984:278).

The ensemble designed to achieve these aims was remarkably similar, both in make-up and performance conventions, to the Rashidiyya today.29 The Arab Music Ensemble originally comprised ten violins, two qanons, two 'ads, two nays, one riqq and a separate chorus of ten male and ten female vocalists; a year later, two cellos and a double bass were added. The solo vocalist, the 'quintessential feature of traditional Arab music performance practice' was eliminated; according to El-Shawan, this was partly in order to distinguish the new ensemble from the popular media songs, and partly because, it was maintained "there are no good voices any more capable of performing al-turath in the old way"30 (El-Shawan 1984:278). Five years later the prohibition was relaxed, and in some genres, vocal solos, duos and trios were sung by members of the chorus.

Like the Rashidiyya, both instrumentalists and conductor used Western notation; melodic improvisation was eliminated, and musical compositions were "replicated in an identical manner in every performance." Only the solo riqq was allowed to improvise around the basic iqa', apparently in order to relieve the monotony of the unembellished melody (op. cit: 181). As in Tunisia, the vocalists continued to rely on oral transmission, a practice which the Egyptian conductors, like their Tunisian counterparts, attributed to the "difficulty, if not impossibility, of representing the vocalist's part in Western notation" (op.cit: 279). The Arab Music Ensemble performed in concert halls and theaters where "the rules of conduct observed in concert hall performances of Western 'art' music" were emulated (op.cit. 281): the audiences' traditional verbal interjections (istihsan) during performances were banned, and their response was limited to applause following individual compositions. The new ensemble's performances attracted large audiences, particularly among the younger generation of Cairo's educated elite. Within the decade following the founding of the Arab Music Ensemble in 1967, four new ensembles had been modelled after it (op.cit: 179).



Despite the obvious parallels between the Arab Music Ensemble and the Rashidiyya, there are significant differences in the roles and functions of the two ensembles and their respective repertories. The ma'laf is conceived as a fixed canon with a long, continuous tradition stretching back to the medieval courts of Islamic Spain. For Tunisians, the ma'lof, their turath, is symbolic of a remote and vanished past, a rich and glorious era when their Arab-Andalusian ancestors were rulers rather than subjects of foreign, colonial rule. Egypt, in contrast, has no comparable twentieth century tradition that is self-contained and continuous, "whose historical and theoretical roots go back several centuries and whose domains were primarily the courts of the rulers and the aristocracy" (Racy 1982:7). On the contrary, Racy observes that that in Cairo, "most musical genres seem to have lived ephemeral lives" and that even "the major 19th century genres were of relatively recent origins." After World War I, the 19th century genres themselves either became gradually outmoded or, like the qasidah, were radically transformed (Racy 1981:7-10).

In Egypt, therefore, al-turath is a relative concept, denoting a comparatively recent and open-ended repertory. The term itself, according to El-Shawan, only became significant as a distinct musical category during the second decade of the twentieth century, when it began to be used in opposition to al-jadid (literally, the new). Compositions designated al- turath belonged to the 'traditional' or 'old' repertory, defined according to specific stylistic criteria, while those designated al-jadid were 'deliberately and consciously open to non-traditional [i.e. Western] influences' (El- Shawan 1980:51). Subsequently, temporal criteria have tended to override stylistic qualities in the Egyptian definition of al-turath, and the temporal boundaries have themselves shifted to accommodate newer repertory. Thus, whereas in the 1930s and 1940s, al-turath designated repertory composed before 1910, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, it included compositions dating from as late as the 1940s (El-Shawan 1980:48), including songs by composers such as Sayyid Darwish (d. 1923) and Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1991) which in their their own time were labelled al-jadid.31

In Egypt, moreover, al-turath is associated with individual, known composers, some of whom, e.g. Muhammad 'Abd al-Wahhab (originally the main protagonist of al-jadid) were among the founders of the Arab Music Ensemble. The ma'laf, in contrast, is conceived as an anonymous repertory, identified in its various local and regional manifestations with the particular communities that cultivated it.32 So high was the premium placed on anonymity - a prerequisite for a song to be identified with its legendary Andalusian past, that, up until the early decades of the twentieth century, musicians who wanted their compositions to be accepted into the



mainstream repertory would have to pretend that they had learned them from a dying shaykh.33

The Arab Music Ensemble was founded in order to revive a broken tradition: during the previous twenty years, according to El-Shawan, the repertory designated al-turath had virtually disappeared from the live musical scene. During her research in Cairo in 1977-78, El-Shawan discovered that the majority of the supporters of both the new ensemble and others modelled after it, constituted members of the 'young educated elite,' many of whom had no previous experience of any other type of performance practice for this repertory (El-Shawan 1984:286). The Rashidiyya ensemble, in contrast, was originally established in order to conserve and promote an ongoing tradition and to provide for it an alternative, less socially restrictive social context; initially at least, it supplemented, rather than replaced the traditional types of performance practice. Despite the prestige and official backing enjoyed by the new type of ensemble and the dramatic decline in both the social conditions and aesthetic values that supported the older ones, these never entirely disappeared. Solo instrumental ma'laf ensembles performing in the caf6s and wedding parties of Sidi Bou Said and in other traditional centers for the ma'laif, coexist alongside the Rashidiyya and its offshoots, providing a potential challenge to their musical authority and a benchmark by which their innovations may be assessed. Finally, while in Egypt, the changes in transmission and performance of al-turath were ideologically pre- determined, and introduced in one fell swoop at the outset, reflecting the consensus of a government appointed 'artistic committee,' those represented by the Rashidiyya were introduced in phases, reflecting instead the personal preferences and developing ideologies of successive leaders of the ensemble.

Conclusion

Tunisians today acknowledge the influence of both European and Egyptian models in the creation of new types of performance practice for the ma'luf. Nevertheless, they insist that the Rashidiyya's innovations were essentially indigenous initiatives, representing locally inspired responses to local conditions. In his history of the Rashidiyya, Salah El-Mahdi recognizes the timely role played by the Cairo Congress as a catalyst in the creation of the Tunisian institution just two and a half years later. On their return from Cairo, d'Erlanger's musicians reported the Congress's recommendation that institutions be established throughout the Arab world in order to preserve and promote the individual Arab musical traditions. However, El-Mahdi maintains that this recommendation served merely as 'fuel for the fire' to the Tunisians, who "had been thinking for a long time about the creation of an organization for that goal" (1981:28). Significantly,



the discussions and recommendations of the Cairo Congress concerning the performance practice of Arab music were limited to the use of particular musical instruments, rather than to such broader aspects of interpretation as the Rashidiyya and later, the Arab Music Ensemble were to address. Evidently, the Rashidiyya's decision to standardize interpretation through the use of Western notation in both teaching and performance occurred independently, nearly thirty years before such innovations were applied to al-turath in Egypt.

In his wide-ranging survey of the Western impact on world music, Bruno Nettl portrays the expansion of traditional ensembles as a global phenomenon, drawing examples from a range of disparate traditions (1985:57-61). Typically, the ensembles he cites have been inspired by Western models, and serve as vehicles for the creation of new repertories and compositional styles. Both the Rashidiyya and the Arab Music Ensemble in contrast, have adopted Western performance models and ideals to support the revival, promotion and conservation of traditional repertories, whose survival seemed threatened under modern social and cultural conditions. In neither case are the innovations perceived by their promoters, or by indigenous audiences generally, as essentially alien, or contrary to tradition. To most Tunisians, the Rashidiyya epitomizes the ma'laf; regardless of the criticisms directed at the ensemble, its melodic interpretations are commonly regarded as the ultimate in refinement and perfection. A widely held belief I encountered in traditional ma'luf centers such as Zaghuan, Testour and Sidi Bou Said, is that the Rashidiyya had restored the

ma'ltf to its original Andalusian forms which had been corrupted through centuries of oral transmission. Elaborating this view, the naqarrat player of the ma'laf ensemble of Sidi Bou Said, Hamadi Bougamha, maintained that the melodies had originally been composed on a proper, scientific basis, which the Rashidiyya had reconstructed by applying the theory of the maqamat to its notations of the repertory.

One young, regular Egyptian follower of the Arab Music Ensemble maintained that for him, the ensemble's interpretations represent "the continuity of tradition within a contemporary framework" (El-Shawan 1980:286). In a personal interview in 1983, 'Abd al-Harmid Ben 'Aljiya, Director of Music in the R.T.T. and currently leader of the Rashidiyya, summed up the prevailing establishment philosophy in Tunisia in corresponding terms: "The techniques I used were Western, but the content of the music remained purely Tunisian...The essence of the

ma'ltf, its Tunisian identity, is rooted in the past; however, it needs to be interpreted according to the means of the present in order to communicate to contemporary audiences."

University of Cambridge, United Kingdom



Notes

1 This article is a revised and extended version of a paper read at the second meeting of the study group of the International Council for Traditional Music on 'The Anthropology of Music and Mediterranean Cultures,' hosted by the Levi Foundation in Venice, June 1995. My research for this article is based on fieldwork in Tunisia spread over several visits between 1982 and 1996. Unless otherwise specified, my data derives from participant observation and interviews. I am grateful for a fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council (US) and the National Endowment for the Humanities to support eighteen months field work in Tunisia in 1982 and 1983. Above all, I thank all my Tunisian colleagues who have so generously shared with me their knowledge, experience and insights.

2 In general, Arabic words are transliterated according to the system of Hans Wehr, A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, ed. J.M. Cowan, Ithaca, New York, 1960. In cases where proper names have consistently appeared in print in other forms, I adopt those forms instead (e.g., Ali Jihad Racy, Salah El-Mahdi). 3 In Cairo, d'Erlanger's musicians performed alongside ensembles from other Arab countries in public concerts and recording sessions directed by Robert Lachmann, assisted by Bela Bart6k. Performances of the Tunisian ensemble are included in a selection of the Cairo Congress recordings (Congres du Caire 1932, Vols 1 & 2, APN 88/9 - 10, 1988) issued in France by the Biblioteque Nationale in collaboration with l'Institut du Monde Arabe.

4 My use of the term maq~am rather than the corresponding indigenous term tab' (literally nature, character) mirrors contemporary Tunisian usage. In his comparative study of the Tunisian maqamat, Salah El-Mahdi uses the term maqam to designate "the various musical scales (salalim; s. sullam) underlying the repertory of traditional Tunisian music, known as the ma' hi f' (n.d.b: 17). He notes that in the past, terms such as 'naghma' in Egypt, 'sawt" in Saudi Arabia and 'tab" in the Maghreb were used in senses corresponding to maqam, but that "with the development of mass media and improved communications, maqam has become the most widely used term, prevailing over all others of similar meaning" (loc cit).



5 For further elaboration of the distinctiveness of the individual Middle Eastern traditions as revealed by the Cairo Congress, see Moussali 1988 and Vigneux (ed.) 1992. 6 As well as being one of the principal organizers of the Cairo Congress, d'Erlanger was responsible for the preparation of a comprehensive classification of the maqamat and iqa'at (melodic and rhythmic genres) of Arab music in current use. In 1931, Shaykh 'Ali al-Darw'ish, dervish musician from Aleppo, was sent to Tunisia by the Egyptian government to serve as d'Erlanger's informant for the 'oriental' traditions (effectively those of Egypt and the Levant) while the Tunisian Shaykhs Khumais Tarntn and Ahmad al-Wafi provided the data for the 'occidental' (effectively Tunisian) traditions (d'Erlanger 1949:xiii-xv). In the event, D'Erlanger was too ill to attend the Congress, and his report was presented by Shaykh 'Ali al-Darwish. It was published posthumously in Arabic in the Congress Proceedings (Kitab 1933), and eventually appeared in French translation as Vols. V (on the maqamat)and VI (on the iqa'at) of d'Erlanger's six-volume work La Musique Arabe, published in 1949 and 1959 respectively.

7 After Tunisian independence in 1956, the official canon of the ma'laf, published in nine volumes by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, was designated al-turath al-musiqi al-tanisi /Ipatrimoine musical tunisien.

8 The Tunisian musician and scholar Salah El-Mahdi, while supporting the myth of the ma'laf's Andalusian origins, maintains that it was subsequently so transformed by indigenous musicians as to have become "almost purely Tunisian" (1981:9-10). Other Tunisian scholars, e.g. Hassan Husni Abdul-Wahab (1918:115-117) and Mahmoud Guettat (1980:172-74), propose a more radical view, maintaining that the development of Andalusian music occurred simultaneously in Islamic Spain and the Maghreb, and that the Andalusian refugees merely reinforced a pre-existing tradition.

9 For a comprehensive study of all four national traditions of musiqa andalusiyya see Guettat 1980.

10 For a more detailed, general introduction to the ma'laf, including its musical characteristics and its traditional types of performance practice and venues, see Davis 1996(a):423-431. I describe the typical structure of a noba, illustrated by an analysis of a performance, in Davis 1992.



11 The ensemble and the Institute in which it is based are named after the famous Ottoman patron and amateur of the ma'u1f, Muhammad al-Rashid Bey (d. 1759). In this article, I follow the Tunisian custom of using the single term 'Rashidiyya' to refer both to the ensemble and the Institute.

12 In examining the concept of tradition as applied to secular song in San' a', capital of the Yemen Arab Republic, Philip Schuyler observes that 'tradition' is considered on the best authority as the appropriate translation of turath when used in the sense of 'cultural heritage' (Schuyler 1990/91:52-53). Likewise, Salwa el-Shawan uses the term 'tradition' with reference to the Egyptian musical repertory known as al-turath. For the founders of the Rashidiyya and subsequent generations of Tunisians, musique tunisienne traditionelle has broader connotations, including not only the ma'10f canon itself, designated al-turath by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, but also more recent compositions whose style is recognizably Tunisian; in this context, the ma'lof is considered the ideal representative of Tunisian style. Following Tunisian practice, I also use the term 'tradition' more generally to distinguish the older types of performance practice, patrons and venues associated with the ma'luf, from their modern counterparts as introduced by the Rashidiyya.

13 The Rashidiyya was founded in a landmark year for the Tunisian nationalist movement: in 1934, Habib Bourguiba founded the Neo-Destour Party whose policies of active resistance to the French Protectorate were to lead Tunisia to Independence in 1956. Tunisians consider this coincidence to be significant, providing a symbolic link between the goals of the Rashidiyya and the broader objectives of Tunisian nationalism. This link was reconfirmed after Tunisian independence with the appointment of Salah El-Mahdi, leader of the Rashidiyya, as head of the Dept. of Music and Popular Arts in the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.

14 I explore the relationship between the Rashidiyya and the first generation of popular media singers and composers in Davis 1996b:318-19.

15 Numerous sources (e.g. D'Erlanger 1917:93; Abdul-Wahhab 1918:116; Guettat 1980:179-80; El-Mahdi 1981:26) attest to the vital role played by certain Sufi brotherhoods, particularly the 'Isawlya and the 'Azuziya, as genuinely classless centers for the instruction and performance of the ma'10f. Both d'Erlanger's informants for the North African traditions in Vols V and VI of La Musique Arabe learned the ma' lf in the lodges of the 'Isawiya: Shaykh Ahmad al-Wafl belonged to the highest ranks of the bourgeoisie, while Shaykh Khumais Tarnan was son of an artisan (1949:382-83). I describe the ma'lof activities of the Sufi lodges and its



performance in other traditional venues in Davis 1989:48-50. For a comprehensive account of music and Sufism in Tunisia, focusing on the music and musical activities of the 'Isaw7ya, see Jones 1977.

16 Salah el-Mahdi has recounted how in Tunis in the 1930s, the newly emerging record industry provoked an upsurge of trite and obscene songs, typically in corrupt Arabic or in the Franco-Arabe dialect, by a new breed of opportunist composers. The Rashidiyya's condemnation of these songs echoed that of conservative Egyptian musicians who in the 1920s, were condemning similarly corrupt traits in the texts of the taqtaqah, a vocal genre in colloquial Arabic popularized by the Egyptian record industry (Racy 1977:54). 17 This seems to be the first recorded example of a women performing the ma'luf with men in public. Subsequently, the Rashidiyya accepted women both as solo singers and in the chorus, but not normally as instrumentalists. As L. Jafran Jones observes, in Tunisia as elsewhere in the Middle East, "women are singers, while instrumental music and music creation are the domain of men" (Jones 1987:77). 18 I describe in detail the initial problems of the ensemble and the radical solutions it adopted in Davis 1989:54-55 and 1992:89ff.

19 Muhammad Triki had studied the violin with a French priest at his lycle in Tunis, and he had conducted rehearsals of the French symphony orchestra of Tunis. He had grown up hearing and singing the ma'luf at public performances in the Sufi lodges, and he had studied the repertory privately with individual shaykhs. He had also taken private lessons in Egyptian song composition with the visiting Egyptian celebrities Kamil al- Khula'i and Ahmad Fariz.

20 The Rashidiyya's reliance on the chorus to carry the vocal line, without solo vocalists, is precedented in ma'lof kham, the characteristic performance practice of the Sufi brotherhoods (see above). In the Rashidiyya, solo singers feature as extras, particularly in the newer repertory. 21 I summarize El-Mahdi's Arabic text in Davis 1989:55.

22 Although the Rashidiyya defined itself as an amateur ensemble, many of its members earned their living making music elsewhere. This trend has continued to the present. In contrast to the stigma attached to professional musicians performing in the traditional environments, salaried musicians



employed by the modem musical establishments such as the R.T.T. (Radio et Tilivision Tunisienne), the National Conservatory and the various provincial music centers (see below, pp. 12-13) enjoy considerable status as government employees, and their activities are considered entirely respectable. Since Tunisian Independence, the 'amateur' instrumentalists of the Rashidiyya have typically been advanced students, professors and other graduates of the National Conservatory. The singers, in contrast, generally have no formal musical training, and are selected on the basis of vocal quality and intonation alone.

23 For a more detailed account of the objectives of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs and their specific application to musical policy, see Davis 1997.

24 In 1958, the former French conservatoire was transformed into the National Conservatory of Music, Dance and Popular Arts, whose syllabus combined Western, Egyptian and Tunisian musical traditions (El-Mahdi 1981:71-74). 25 The use of 'professional' as opposed to 'amateur' to denote a higher level of competence, skill and commitment seems to be a product of the post-independence era. Before independence, a professional musician was simply one who entertained others in public, for a fee. After independence, "professionalism" came to be associated with a background of formal training and qualifications, and a career in the state-controlled musical establishment.

26 My description of the takht and the transition from takht to firqa is based primarily on Racy 1977:46ff. and El-Shawan 1984:272-276.

27 The various types of vocal and instrumental embellishment characterizing takht performances are described by El-Shawan (1984:273). 28 El-Shawan suggests that the changes may have been influenced by developments in the musical theatre, whose ensembles were larger and included Western instruments (1980:275). Danielson observes that in the 1930s, large film orchestras inspired some ensembles to include "a variety of percussion instruments, electric guitars and keyboards, saxophones, and instruments for special effects such as the Hawaiian guitar" (Danielson 1988:151). 29 A detailed account of the Arab Music Ensemble is given by El-Shawan (1984:276 ff.).



30 Muhammad Sa'ada, leader of the Rashidiyya from 1979-85, gave identical reasons for excluding solo singers from his ensemble.

31 Conversely, the turath revival movement in Egypt since the 1960s is "often seen as a process of tajcrid" (literally, innovation) "which in this case aims at reinterpreting older works in accordance with present-day ideals of timbre, texture and orchestration" (Racy 1982:402). 32 The first Tunisian composer to identify his own works, beginning in the twentieth century, was d'Erlanger's mentor, Ahmad al-Wftfi (1850-1921). 33 The shaykhs of the ma'lf , whose authority and status depended on their superior knowledge of the repertory, were traditionally wary of imparting to their pupils too great a proportion of it. As a result, a dying shaykh represented the last chance to retrieve hitherto unknown songs which otherwise, would be lost forever. The extent of the potential loss is illustrated by an old Tunisian proverb "The death of one shaykh of art approaches in its effect the burning of a library of manuscripts."

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Issue Table of ContentsAsian Music, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring - Summer, 1997), pp. 1-153Front MatterErrata, Volume 28, Number 1, and a Note from the EditorAn Introduction to the "Gushi" Drummer of the "Chuanju" Percussion Ensemble [pp. 1-26]Japanese Erotic Folksong: From Shunka to Karaoke [pp. 27-49]Origins of the Musical and Spiritual Syncretism of Nmai in Northern Japan [pp. 51-71]Traditional Arab Music Ensembles in Tunis: Modernizing Al-Turath in the Shadow of Egypt [pp. 73-108]The Barhat Tree [pp. 109-133]ReviewsBook ReviewReview: untitled [pp. 135-140]

Audio Recording ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 141-145]Review: untitled [pp. 145-148]Review: untitled [pp. 149-151]

Back Matter [pp. 152-153]

TRADITIONAL ARAB MUSIC ENSEMBLES IN TUNIS MODERNIZING AL-TURATH IN THE SHADOW OF EGYPT.pdf

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