promote forms of modern subjectivity that are anchored in a domain of authentic spirit and sentiment, though for many it is not so much a matter of emotionality versus rationality, but of rationality tempered with sentiment—indeed, made more humane by it.
In many ways, Syrian and other Arab discourses of emotionality also can be read as responses to if not reappropriations of Orientalist depictions of the Arab peoples as hopelessly mired in their emotions, irrational, and childlike. As has been argued in the context of modern Arabic poetry (DeYoung 1998), the appropriation of colonial and Orientalist discourses of the emotional Arab by such Arab poets as Badr Shākir al-Sayyāb, for example, can be understood as a strategy for transcending colonial and Orientalist discourses to assert an emotionality that, far from being an impediment to social and cultural progress and modernity, can be a strong foundation for an Arab modernity and modernism.
As Partha Chatterjee has argued (1993), the construction and indeed investment in the distinction of two separate realms—the material and political versus the spiritual and cultural—is a common feature of anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalisms in a variety of contexts. Unlike Chatterjee, I want to emphasize that in the context of modern Syria, the features of the so-called “spiritual” or “cultural” domain and indeed the separation of material from spiritual realms is highly contested, subject to changing dynamics, and is not always the brain child of the indigenous elites (such as the Tagores in the case of India). Rather, in the case of Syria it is defended chiefly by new entrants to Syria’s precarious middle class, by conservative elements of the traditional elite (the “notable” families in particular), and by some political elites disaffected by what they perceive to be the failures of modern Arab society. The Syrian state, for its part, co-opts many of the discourses of authenticity among middle-class intellectuals, artists, and others for use in its own ideologies of modernization and modernity—in the case of the present regime, ideologies that aim to construct Syria as the home for Arab secularism, pan-Arab socialism, and as the caretaker and promoter of Arab and Islamic cultural heritage; hence the value and importance for the state of promoting national folklore and classical traditions in the construction of an official Syrian national culture. Therefore we must strive to understand such practices as painting and music and related aesthetic discourses of emotionality and authenticity both in terms of how they express and enact competing conceptions of modernity and how they ultimately are situated within the context of ideologies of the postcolonial nation-state.
People and Places
My initial intention was to research the performance practices and aesthetic discourses of musicians in Aleppo and Damascus. “Musician” (mūsīqī) does not in any sense constitute a unified professional category, and in fact many musicians had other work, day jobs through which they earned a living and by which they referred to themselves: teachers, shop owners, in some cases engineers, dentists, economists. Some—usually the best—referred to themselves as “artists” (fannānīn sing. fannān) to avoid the social stigma associated with musicians in Syria as in many Arab and Islamic lands.
Most professional or full-time musicians in Syria are not members of elite families, and many do not have a university or even high-school education. Moreover, musicians, I found, are not always the most self-reflective artists and often have difficulty talking about their craft in the same way that poets, writers, and painters, for example, often discourse at length about their work. Only those with considerable formal training in music talk about their music and music making in a systematic way; others prefer to just perform and let the music speak for itself, which it usually does more clearly than words anyway. Therefore, in addition to my work with musicians I also worked with those who would consider themselves to be intellectuals and members of the artistic elite: writers, poets, dramatists, actors, architects, film and television directors, journalists, and art critics.
As I explore in chapter 1, music enjoys an ambiguous status in Muslim society, at once intimately involved in some spiritual practices and reviled by some as unorthodox or dangerous. Moreover, today musicians occupy a very low position on the status hierarchy in Syrian society as elsewhere in the Arab and Mediterranean world, and few professional musicians are from elite Syrian families, though many members of elite families have training in Arab music. This is especially true of more culturally conservative families, including those having strong ties to the religious establishment. Yet, these individuals maintain music as a hobby while pursuing careers in medicine, law, and business. If pursuing a professional career in Arab music might be an inappropriate if not scandalous choice for the elite, specialization in other artistic domains—theater, painting, cinema, for example—would carry fewer risks of opprobrium; many Syrian fine artists and authors (both men and women) hail from elite families.
For members of the modernizing middle class, those newcomers to the emerging Syrian public sphere of galleries, poetry readings, literary salons, and discussion circles, music and the arts are not only possible career choices (though with little financial remuneration), they are arenas of great debate about the current and future direction of Arab and Syrian art and society. Therefore my research sites, aside from lessons, recitals, concerts, and the homes of musicians, were the hangouts of the intellectuals: cafés in Damascus and Aleppo, the fine arts club in Damascus, intellectual and literary salons, public lectures, and private gatherings. In other words, this is by no means a study only of musicians or of working-class artists. Rather, I focus on how a certain set of intellectuals and artists and cultural agents of the middle and elite classes create works of art, attempt to understand their contemporary cultural and social significance, and articulate visions for the future. Hence I would not expect the aesthetics of authenticity that I describe here for these cultural agents—their “structures of feeling,” to use Raymond Williams’s phrase (1977)—necessarily to correspond to that of villagers, Bedouin, or the urban working classes, or others not engaged in these kinds of cultural practices and productions.
Moreover, my research was conducted almost entirely among men. I never met a single professional woman instrumentalist or composer, though there are several well-known female vocalists and many women study, compose, and teach music, and play instruments—with rare exception they do not play them professionally or publicly (an all-female Arab music ensemble from Syria’s premier conservatory performs at international festivals, and women instrumentalists specializing in European art music are much more common). The absence of female musical artists is in contrast to much of the history of Arab music, in which women instrumental performers and especially vocalists were not only common but highly valued (see Danielson 1991, 1997, 1999; Van Nieuwkerk 1995). I did have numerous conversations and interviews with women journalists, writers, researchers, music teachers, and others interested in and knowledgeable about Arab music and Arab heritage in general, but all of my lessons and the majority of my research contacts were with men. This research bias reflects conceptions of gender relations and appropriate conduct prevalent within Arab and Muslim society, which often strictly enforces gender segregation. As a man, I was unable to attend all-women’s performances and celebrations, many of which feature musical performance and song (I describe some based on written sources below). This is not to deny the centrality of prominent Syrian women intellectuals, painters, authors, theater directors, and actors in the shaping of the course of modern Syria, and in the articulation of modern subjectivities; yet the dominant discourses of modernity in Syria tend to be patriarchal. Needless to say, other researchers might make fruitful studies of female artists and of how women listen to and engage with Arab music. Not only does this relative absence of women in the musical sphere reflect the dominance of men in nearly all forms of public discourse in Syria, it also reveals how music making and discourses of sentiment and emotion in Syrian music are vehicles for the construction of masculinity.11
Furthermore, my interaction with non-musicians often led to debates about my research project on Arab music in Syria and the question of authenticity. As I explore later, many asked if there indeed is such a thing as “Arab” music? Is there a “Syrian” music? If so, how is it different from “Arab” music? What is authenticity? These questions and others upset many of my assumptions about authenticity
