me to choose sides in the debates I was addressing in my research about authenticity and vulgarity. As I relate in the following chapter, one prominent artist challenged me to choose which of two worlds I would move in as a researcher, referring not so much to two social classes or two musical genres but to two visions of culture and modernity: a vision of a spirit-infused authentic and modern culture, versus a nostalgic vision of a traditional culture overrun with the excesses of vulgarity and banality. I chose the former, as will become clear throughout this work. Certainly, many of my own biases against much of what is produced in the contemporary musical market today were confirmed through my interaction with like-minded cultural agents, though some were nicely overturned as well. I fully recognize that my position put me at odds with the majority of Arab listeners, for whom the modern song is an integral and enjoyable part of daily life. Yet my views aligned nicely with those of many of my informants, for better or for worse, and allowed me to be accepted as serious (what “serious” person would devote years to studying the modern pop songs?). My position also prevented me from addressing certain questions or blinded me to certain ambiguities, though I hope at least some of these ambiguities will become apparent in this work.
Local, Regional, and Global Contexts
Because performing and listening to music do not occur in a vacuum, isolated from the social and cultural contexts in which artists and audiences engage in aesthetic experiences, I strive to situate debates and contradictions regarding authenticity and music in the context of the other arts in Syria, as well as in the general context of daily life in a changing and complex cultural landscape. My intention is as much to raise questions about what Steven Feld (1994b) calls “cross-modal homologies” of different aesthetic modes of attention as it is to provide an outline for examining how Syrian intellectuals and artists of diverse backgrounds articulate their understandings of modernity and authenticity (see also Feld 1990, 1996)
It is important to note that Syrian artistic production and reception simultaneously participate in local art worlds and regional aesthetic circuits. This is especially the case with the engagement of Syrian art and artists in artistic markets and circles that encompass Lebanon and Egypt. Beirut, a mere few hours drive from Damascus (including the inconvenient border crossing and numerous check-points), hosts a far more vibrant artistic and cultural life than Syria today, partly as a result of its self-constructed role as a cultural broker between East and West, and partly due to historical political-economic circumstances. Syria’s best artists perform and exhibit in Beirut, while selected Lebanese artists will do the same in Damascus or Aleppo, though usually the orientation (not to mention aspirations) of Lebanese artists lies distinctly to the North and West: Paris, London, and New York. But because of the historical ties of Lebanon and Syria (indeed, the official Syrian line is that Lebanon remains a province of Syria, and Syria exercises decisive influence in contemporary Lebanese politics), there has been and remains a great amount of cultural flow between the metropolitan centers of Syria and Lebanon.
Whereas Lebanon can be thought of as the dressier younger sister of Syria, Egypt dominates Syria and the other Arab countries in the total quantity—if not always the quality—of its artistic production.12 Long considered to be the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egypt has been a source of inspiration for a number of Syrian artists, both in terms of providing subject matter (for instance, themes from ancient Egyptian art) and as a center for study at Egypt’s fine arts academies and conservatories. While Egyptian performance halls and galleries do not regularly feature Syrian artists aside from superstars like vocalist Ṣabāḥ Fakhrī, Egyptian artists both well-known and emerging make the rounds of Syria’s halls, clubs, and galleries. In the old days, as Syrian musicians often told me, Syria was the cultural standard, and the great Egyptian artists—Sayyid Darwīsh, Dāwūd Ḥusnī, Muḥammad
However, for many artists and intellectuals, Egypt symbolizes vulgarity and decadence. Many consider Cairene cinema and television, while still the regional leader in production output, to be coarse, melodramatic, even vulgar (see Abu-Lughod 2000, 2004; Armbrust 1996). In terms of music, the Egyptian star
Yet, a moment’s reflection raises the question: If these songs are so vulgar, why do they remain so popular around the Arab world and in Syria? Critics are quick to point out the general “debasement” (inḥiṭāṭ) of contemporary Arab culture as the context for the production and reception of these “vulgar” songs. The overwhelming popularity of this music among the growing youth population in Syria—as mentioned, upwards of 50 percent of the population is fifteen or under—suggests that criticism of popular culture reflects an Arnoldian bias against “low-brow” culture from the standpoint of “high-brow” culture. As I noticed on many occasions, many critics of these so-called vulgar songs listen privately to what they may excoriate publicly (see Ghuṣūb 1992), indicating that these “vulgar” songs are popular not only with Syria’s youth, but with a broader segment of society—including haughty cultural elites.
Adorno (1976: 69) writes that every genre bears the mark of the contradictions that exist in society as a whole. Contemporary Arab popular music bears clear marks of the many contradictions and ambiguities of contemporary Syrian society: its uncertain search for authenticity, the often banal admixture of old and new, local and foreign. Seen in the light of contemporary cinematic conventions, clothing styles, architecture, drama, and literature, which often borrow heavily from Western conventions even when cast in local idioms, it comes as no surprise that contemporary music too adopts freely from Western models. At the same time, much of the local pop music also manages to retain elements of local conventions, especially folk music and what in general terms is described as sha
Moreover, the notion that the pure Arab musical tradition has been sullied by the incursion of Western music and popular culture, a common sentiment among Syrian intellectuals, does not accurately describe the rise of the modern pop song and the dynamics of the interaction of Arab and Western musical cultures (see Frishkopf 2003). In light of these discourses of decline and corruption, it is instructive to read mid-twentieth-century criticism of artists who by today’s standards are considered exemplars of valued musical aesthetics but who in their own time were criticized widely as vulgar. A prime example is
For example, in a 1954 editorial entitled “The Cheap Songs” [al-aghānī
