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" Developing Arab music: Institutions, individuals, and discourses of progress in Cairo, 1932–2005 "
Anne Elise Thomas
M. Perlman
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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55153
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| Doc. No
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TL25107
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| Call number
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3227948
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| Main Entry
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Anne Elise Thomas
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| Title & Author
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Developing Arab music: Institutions, individuals, and discourses of progress in Cairo, 1932–2005\ Anne Elise Thomas
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| College
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Brown University
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| Date
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2006
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| student score
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2006
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| Page No
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337
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| Abstract
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Developing Arab Music is an exploration of how musical change has been and continues to be discussed and implemented by 20 th- and early 21st-century musical innovators, educators, and performers in Cairo, Egypt. The first part of the thesis traces the establishment of institutions for musical training in the 1920s and 30s and discusses changing views of music in Egyptian society. An examination of records of the 1932 Cairo Conference on Arab Music shows how Arab music was circumscribed as a category and made the object of planned interventions in order to bring about a musical renaissance. Additionally, the thesis addresses the imaginings of a distinctly divided "East" and "West" in these reformers' discourse about music, and the ways in which this distinction functioned in reformers' calls for the "development" of Arab music. The second part of Developing Arab Music examines how notions of progress and change inform the practice of contemporary Arab musicians. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo, Egypt, I argue that these musicians' navigation through the learning stages of a musical career demonstrates astute recognition of both the potential and limitations of both school-based and non-school-based learning. Noting that students and teachers regard certain aspects of Arab music as "unteachable," I analyze specific musical skills, such as ornamentation (tafasil) and improvisation ( taqsim), that are generally not addressed in institutional syllabi, and observe how students take it upon themselves to develop these skills. I examine how these musicians envision their roles as Arab music performers in what is experienced as an era of widespread and rapid change brought about by globalization. Focusing on recent changes in performance style of the qanun, a 78-stringed zither considered to be emblematic of an Eastern (sharqi) musical identity, I examine the attitudes of players and teachers of the qanun toward specific changes introduced by Arab and Turkish players of the instrument. Finally, I describe the activity of one ensemble in Cairo and demonstrate how these performers musically enact both conservative and progressive orientations toward the history and the future practice of Arab music.
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| Subject
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Communication and the arts; Social sciences; Education; Arab; Cairo; Egypt; Improvisation; Music; Ornamentation; Middle Eastern history; Music education; Education history; 0413:Music; 0522:Music education; 0333:Middle Eastern history; 0520:Education history
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M. Perlman
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Brown University
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