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Entering his studio for the first time, I find it dark, almost cave-like, its rooms cluttered with canvases, paint supplies, and shelf after shelf of books in several languages. Ustaz Fateh is seated in the main room at a table cluttered with small tea glasses, ashtrays, books, pens, and various papers. He is conversing with a young artist, who gives up the seat of honor across from Moudarres when I arrive so that I can sit and speak with him. Small of stature and frail with illness, Moudarres nonetheless is a powerfully charming and charismatic man—his bushy eyebrows arch as his eyes gleam with brilliance and mischief. His voice, soft and grave, commands attention, like that of an ancient sage: No matter what he says, you simply must listen.
He has just finished another of his aphorisms, written on a blank sheet of paper and signed, “Fateh.” I look around me and find them hanging here and there around the main room of the studio like so many manifestos or Confucian analects. Some are obscure—“That brigand paints the mountains with his voice”—others profound—“with one painting a man is able to found an entire nation.”
After I introduce myself, we begin to speak about my research on Arab music and I ask him his opinion of the music today. Leaning back in his chair, he replies, “The music today is mostly rubbish . . . there’s a lot of rubbish out there. It is the music of the ‘mob,’ not serious. Oriental music (mūsīqā sharqiyya) is serious, thoughtful, meditative. But today it is mostly lost. If you want to study it you must go and search for it. You must go to Aleppo, to the old buildings and neighborhoods, to the orange and lemon trees. You must hear the birds. . . . Go to the old quarters of Damascus, listen in the courtyards of the old Arab homes. There, among the jasmine trees, you may find it. . . .” Then, sounding like an old Sufi master—his bushy brows raised and a wry smile traced on his mouth—he proclaims: “You must choose between them.” Pausing to roll a cigarette, he turns to another artist friend who has just joined us and asks him, “How was your exhibition?” leaving me to ponder his remarks.
What choice must I make?
Fateh Moudarres was challenging me to make a choice, I believe, between two worlds, the first the world of the older music—in his view associated with authenticity and deeply seated geographical and cultural truths and memories—the second the world of the contemporary Arabic pop song—in his view one of inauthenticity, vulgarity, and superficiality. While music is by no means the only domain in which the tensions of modern life are expressed in the Arab world, and Fateh Moudarres had similar observations concerning contemporary literature and painting, it has become one of the most important in recent debates over the trajectory of contemporary culture in Syria, as throughout the Arab world.2 Partly in response to the rise of new, so-called “inauthentic” forms of culture, many Syrians, like their counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world, call for the preservation of the old, “authentic” culture. The dialectic of the old and new, authentic and inauthentic, manifests deeper contradictions of modernization and cultural modernity that I explore in chapter 3. In this chapter, I explore why someone like Fateh Moudarres would advise me to seek authenticity “among the jasmine trees” in the old cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Why Aleppo in particular has come to serve as the premier metonymic site of musical authenticity in modern Syria requires an outline of the city’s political and economic history, an exploration of the principle musical genres that are performed there, and an analysis of the practices through which Syrians cultivate habits of listening to and evaluating music as “authentic.”
Walking the streets of Damascus soon after my arrival, I came across a most curious advertisement for a computer company. Computers are readily available in Syria, hardware and software surprisingly inexpensive (much of it bootleg), and computer advertisements widespread in the major cities. However, this particular ad stood out because of its direct appeal to tradition. It depicted a computer tower case, keyboard, and monitor sitting on a glossy table top, but reflected in the table top were images of two large cuneiform tablets mirroring the computer and monitor. Above the image read the words, “Building on the achievements of our forefathers . . .” and the name of the company. The advertisement implied that the computer—icon of technological development—is an extension of early (very early) developments in Levantine civilization. In fact, some Syrian scholars claim that the earliest “computer” was developed in Mesopotamia, meaning a variety of the abacus and the concept of the zero, allowing for the eventual development of binary numbers and, five thousand years later, the electronic computer.
Notwithstanding these fantasies, the cuneiform computer advertisement illustrates some of the ways in which Syrians assert claims to cultural authenticity and legitimacy through an appeal to particular conceptions of heritage and the past—often the distant past (pre-Islamic, even prehistoric). Other examples include the use of the names of famous Muslim scholars and luminaries in the names of contemporary businesses. One finds an “Ibn Haytham Pharmacy” in every city, named after the great Muslim pharmacist. Likewise, “al-Rāzī,” graces many a Syrian hospital, referring to the great Muslim doctor, while “al-Kindī” movie theaters are found in Damascus and Aleppo, though what the relationship between the philosopher and the cinema might be is unclear. In earlier decades, many theaters and establishments in Damascus and Aleppo carried European names, such as the “Luna Park,” the “Dolce Vita,” and “Versailles.” The heritage names reflect both a modern nationalist sentiment as well as adherence to a law that requires all Syrian businesses to have an “Arabic” name, though what qualifies as “Arabic” is flexible. For example, the proprietor of the “Shām Dān” music shop in Damascus asserted that the words of his shop’s name could mean something in Arabic, Persian, or Turkish, the three sources of the Arab-Ottoman musical tradition that the store features. In Aleppo, musical ensembles carry such names as “The Heritage Ensemble,” “Ensemble al-Kindi,” and “Ensemble Urnīnā,” referring to the famous singer and dancer at the Assyrian temple of Bal.3 One shop in Aleppo combines two well-known Aleppine tastes: “Heritage Sweets.”
These few examples illustrate some of the diverse domains in which Syrians assert claims to authenticity and cultural legitimacy through an appeal to particular conceptions of heritage. In addition to public culture such as advertisements, political discourse is full of references to the past as part of official practices of legitimization and authentication of state power (see Wedeen 1999). In the realm of the arts, concern with heritage, however it may be conceived, presented, and understood by artists and their audiences, reveals the contradictions of the aesthetics of authenticity in contemporary Syrian culture. In conjunction with systems of patronage and Syria’s major cultural institutions, this aesthetic sensibility constitutes a Syrian “art world” (Becker 1982; Danto 1964) in which artists and intellectuals debate and construct the meanings of authentic culture, the past, and heritage. Of course, different artists and audiences have different notions of authentic culture, the past, and heritage; indeed some reject the conceptions of others as “inauthentic.” Still others reject the discourse of authenticity as false and misleading, arguing for cultural and political forms distinct from—indeed, liberated from—heritage.
The contradictions of these views and discourses reverberate through the art worlds of contemporary Syria. Around the Arab world and Middle East region in general, the arts play an important role in discussions about the direction of contemporary society and culture.4 Conferences from Cairo to Casablanca draw intellectuals to debate poetry, painting, architecture, and music, and how they either reflect an ongoing sense of crisis or provide a means of articulating alternative courses for the future. The concept of authenticity and discourses of a return to the Arab heritage often are deployed by Arab intellectuals as foils to promote or critique modernist projects and identity politics (see Jābrī 1999, 1991; Ṭarābīshī 1991, among others).
