materials. The staff at the American Cultural Center in Damascus, and especially Special thanks are due to Muḥammad Qadrī Dalāl, my friend and teacher, and to his family in Aleppo. Without Mr. Dalāl’s encyclopedic knowledge of Arab music and culture and his warm guidance and friendship, this project would have suffered greatly. I thank Sabri Moudallal for his inspiring voice and warmth, and Muḥammad Hamādiyeh, director of the al-Turath Ensemble, for his great friendship and assistance in my research. I also wish to extend thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Wasil al-Faisal and family of Homs and Damascus, Syria, and to Hala al-Faisal, for assisting in much of the research on which this work is based. The late Fateh Moudarres was an inspiration and provocateur throughout the period of my research, and I fondly remember the hours spent in his Damascus studio listening to music and talking about aesthetics.
Last but not least, I wish to thank my family, without whose support I never would have finished this work. Linda Shannon-Rugel and Herman Rugel offered unconditional love, respect, and support. To my brother, Chris, and sister, Pam, I offer thanks and gratitude for always asking how things were going. Extra special thanks are due to Deborah Kapchan for her patient encouragement, intellectual stimulation, and untiring love and support. May our son, Nathaniel “Nadim” Kapchan Shannon, grow to appreciate and love the music and the people who create it as much as I have.
Portions of Adonis’s “Elegy for the Time at Hand” are reproduced courtesy of Northwestern University Press. Earlier versions of chapters 4 and 6 were previously published as “The Aesthetics of Spiritual Practice and the Creation of Moral and Musical Subjectivities in Aleppo, Syria,” Ethnology 43, no. 4 (2004): 381–391, and “Emotion, Performance, and Temporality in Arab Music: Reflections on Tarab.” Cultural Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2003): 72–98, respectively.
It is with sadness that I note with the publication of the paperback version of this book the passing of two of my great friends and teachers in Syria. Mr.
Among the Jasmine Trees
INTRODUCTION
The Aesthetics of Musical Authenticity
in Contemporary Syria
The craft of singing is the last of the crafts attained to in civilization, because it constitutes (the last development toward) luxury with regard to no occupation in particular save that of leisure and gaiety. It also is the first to disappear from a given civilization when it disinte-grates and retrogresses.
—Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddima
Maṭla
Arriving in Damascus one cool November evening in 1996, I found Syria awash in banners celebrating the twenty-sixth anniversary of the “Great Corrective Movement,” a national holiday marking the coming to power of Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad on November 16, 1970.1 Every plaza in the city center was strung with banners, every fountain was alight with colored lights, and at every major intersection nationalist jingles could be heard crackling from battered speakers dangling from light posts or the facades of buildings. No one seemed to be in a festive mood, however. When I asked my taxi driver what was going on, he turned down his radio, glanced at me in the rearview mirror, then turned the radio back up and continued driving to the hotel.
Later in the evening, as I settled into bed, a young woman vocalist (called, somewhat grandiosely, a muṭriba2) began to sing from the roof-top garden of a nearby luxury hotel, filling the night air with the latest Arab pop hits. Her performance included a rendition of what was easily the most popular song in Syria that year: the Egyptian superstar
Yusef al-
After a mostly sleepless night, I decided the following evening to avoid the well-microphoned muṭriba and head to the Old City of Damascus for some “authentic” Arab music. I also was keen to dine on the justly celebrated Syrian cuisine. My guide book to Syria described the Omayyad Palace restaurant as offering “delicious Syrian food in an authentic atmosphere,” adding that the restaurant featured a live band playing “traditional” music, so I decided to go. Located just steps from the seventh-century Umayyad Mosque, one of the glories of Islamic architecture, the Omayyad Palace takes its name from the Umayyad Dynasty that ruled the early Islamic empire (661–750 A.D.) from its seat of power in Damascus. The restaurant is said be located on the site of the grand palace of the first Umayyad prince, Mu
