Exploring aspects of modern arts in middle east
Egypt, People, 1/23/2002

In this companion volume to the successful Images of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East (AUC Press, 1998), historian and ethnomusicologist Sherifa Zuhur has once again commissioned and edited authoritative essays from noteworthy scholars from around the globe that explore the visual and performing arts in the Middle East. What differentiates this volume from its predecessor is its investigation of theatre, from the early modern period to the contemporary.

Topics include race and national identity in Egyptian theater, early writing in the Arab theatre in North America, Persian-language theatre from its origins through the twentieth century, Palestinian nationalist theatre, and a survey of the work of noted Egyptian playwright Yusuf Idris. Other aspects of the arts are not neglected, of course, as further avenues of dance, music, and the visual arts are explored. Marked by interesting and fresh perspectives, Colors of Enchantment is another vital contribution to scholarship on the arts of the Middle East.

Colors of Enchantment explores aspects of contemporary visual and performing arts of the modern Middle East.

This book continues the project initiated in an earlier volume, Images of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East (1998), to provide descriptive and analytical materials on the contemporary arts that have developed in the region.

The book was generated as a response to an overabundant output concerning violence and terrorism, the development or suppression of democracy, and other, chiefly negative juxtapositions of the West and the Middle East.

It is, secondly, a reaction to a romantic, or nostalgic, approach to traditional arts and production in the Middle East that seemed to have taken precedence over explorations of contemporary cultural issues and art forms.

Thirdly, it aims to convey the exciting process of synthesis and hybridity in the arts whatever its genesis- travel, colonialism, publications and print media, mass media, and globalisation of contemporary art, forms especially the conceptual.

Fourthly, the book presents the work of various authors and performers whose explorations of visual and performing art add to our understanding of Arab ("enchantment"), an aesthetic quality that causes enjoyment, reciprocation of emotion and communication between the performers and their audiences in Arabic.

The book's range of topics, cases, and authors also suggest and celebrate the amazing diversity of artistic expression in and of the region.

Dance, music, painting, and cinema made up four sections of that companion volume, Images of Enchantment, ranging from aspects of popular as well as "high" culture.

Colors of Enchantment continues to survey the arts from this broad perspective and explores additional linkages between the art forms of theatre, other forms of public performance and spectacle, cartoons, Arabic "art," "folkloric" and Sufi music, vernacular poetry, tribal dance, and ideas, aesthetics, social critique, and language. The artist as the fashioner of taste or voice of conscience (or even ethics) has lengthy historical roots, springing from patron's esteem for his/her power in eliciting tarabs.

Ziryab, the medieval musician, student of Ibrahim al-Mawsuli who traveled to the al-Andalus and established himself there, set the fashions and even the cuisine of the court.

In the mid-twentieth century model for male stars was promoted by Farid al- Atrash, who sought to modernise and professionalise the image of the male musical and cinematic star, the book says. The artist's ability to influence his/her environment may or may not be actualised, but critique, satire, repositioning (reframing), and transformation are other key artistic activities.

In this book readers will note the sharp early political cartoons, the specific concepts of nationality and race injected by performer 'Ali al- Kassar, or the political role of the clown or clown-like figure in certain plays of Yusuf Idris (see chs. 21, 2, -and 3 respectively). But Idris'clown, who can eloquently define his social role, cannot even save his own job! (See ch. 3).

The artist or performer may be subjected to demeaning or denigrating language as discussed by Ali Jihad Racy, or may recast art as trade (see ch. 17).

These art forms also lend themselves to the expression of romance, or they may adopt elements of experimentation or allude to a great body of traditional culture as in the Sufi inshad, the El-Warsha theatre's use of epic tale, or the Moroccan poets' performance of zajul, the book says.

The 17 essays of this book were deliberately chosen for their scholarship and their inclusion of observations by those personally engaged in contemporary art forms.

Whereas, Images of Enchantment chose to focus on the non-textual aspects of the four art forms dance, music, painting, and cinema, this volume allows for exploitation of certain relations among words, texts, and ideas expressed by or about the arts. In Chapter 17, for example, Racy explains that in the parlance of musicians "the verb yighanni (â??s/he sings) is characteristically avoided in favour of yiqul (â??s/he says/speaks') and that 'this implicit correlation between music and speech seems to bring closer the notions of poet and singer and to portray the musician as a type of orator and conveyor of a revered text'.

In Chapter 13, Michael to Frishkopf, assistant professor of music at the University of Alberta, elaborates on this melding of performance functions in his exploration of the relation-ship between the Sufi singer and the Sufi poet the former being able through his acute judgment of the hal («condition") of his audience to tap into the spiritual reservoirs of the poet's tarab (ability to enchant). This ability is also explored in Deborah Kapchan's essay on Moroccan culture. In this essay, she points to many layers of aesthetics in the translation of emotion, such as the notion of «depth" and the absence of boundaries of time.

Some of the linguistic distinctions point to matters of honour or respectability, as Najwa Adra indicates in her discussion of the terms used for dance in the Yemeni high-lands, which distinguish bara' (dances performed by the highlanders to identify themselves by tribe), from lu'b, a dance they may also be perform that is considered to be el-raqs, the actual word for dance, which has a connotation of frivolity.

To perform raqs outside these contexts, the book says, is disapproved of, yet perfectly licit within them, as in Kay Campbell's discussion of appropriate performance in all-women parties in Saudi -Arabia' and in William Young's exploration of dance in Rashidi weddings.

It is the professionalisation of raqs in the context of cabarets, clubs, or other public venues, that causes them to be linked with illicit display, even when performed by «Egyptian masters" like Samia Gamal or Tahia Carioca, the book says.

Another way that licit displays become contextually illicit is described by Lori Salem, and that has much to do with the colonial project, in which «American beliefs about the Arab's body and sexuality were imposed on Arabs'.

The book makes some general observations about the nature of theatre, dance, visual art, and music of the Middle East.

THEATRE

Traditional modes of the article performance in the Middle East, Colors of Enchantment says, derive from shadow plays and puppetry forms that were known into this century (the karagoz or the karakoz).

.

'The aesthetics of dramatic performance were also created in various forms of poetic recitation and the public storytelling or readings of the hakawati, Arabic for storyteller,» the book says.

While the hakawati craft ranged from pure storytelling to the more recent "reading" of actual text to the illiterate, the poetic recitations found in North Africa and many areas of the Arab East could be set to instrumental accompaniment.

Such forms also produced the colloquial poetry known as zajol of Morocco or the eventually staged and sung Lebanese zajul, added the 456-page book.

However, the actual development of theatre per se was introduced in both the Arabic-speaking and Iranian worlds through direct contact with the West in the nineteenth century.

In Egypt, the book says, the early ventures into theatre were attributed to Ya'qub Sanu'a (1839-1912) who wrote satirical plays performed in colloquial Arabic that mocked the elite and the khedive.

"There were other early experimentations, as in the work of Uthman Galal. Intriguingly, the prescriptive and educational benefits of dramatic dialogues were used by Abdullah Nadim in response to the corrupting influence of the West, which he detected in many venues including in performances then staged in Cairo for tourists," the book says.

Najib al-Rihani (18921949) continued the development of drama with his theatrical troupe. He was closely identified with one of his characters, Kishkish Bey, the 'umda, or headman of a rural village, who was part of a comedic trend lampooning country folk.

The book says that certain conservative religious scholars deplored the introduction of theatre. For example, in 1911 a group of Damascene 'ulama', censured a theatrical performance at a local high school arguing that theatre, involving as it does a story, or fantasy, equated, as David Commins explained,' the fictional depiction of characters with intentional lies' and was therefore forbidden in Islam.

The conservative objection to cinema that developed some years later was similarly due to its promotion of fantasy and use of visual imagery, the book says.

As with the public performance of music and dance, as well as filmed scenarios, conservatives opposed women's participation on the ground that they were engaging in tabarruj (displaying their bodies and providing sexual temptation).

Readers will note that the first part of the book's coverage of theatre relates to Egypt. Here, a giant of the genre, Tawfiq al-Hakim, a playwright with an extreme sensitivity to language and ideas, should be mentioned. As he is well discussed elsewhere, the book's contributor's venture into different topics on Egyptian theatre, before exploring some aspects of theatre in Iran, Palestine, and Syria. Finally, they take a lock at the early Arabic theatre in America and a contemporary Arab playwright in the United States and Canada.

Those readers, who are unfamiliar with Iranian theatre, may become acquainted with certain key names in that genre, discussed by Mahmoud Ghanoonparvar from Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhundzadeh (1812-78) to Gholamhoseyn Sa'edi (1935- 85) to Bahram Beyza'i (b.1938) and writers in exile like Parviz Sayyad and Mohsen Yalfani, or those in Iran like Salman Farsi Salehzehi. Readers should consider the interesting parallels to the sociopolitical content of Arab theatrical work.

The book says that theatre and the visual arts in the Middle East have been highly responsive to political circumstances.

In fact, it adds, theatre's ability to continue to sharpen social consciousness or point out the abuses of political power seems to be the yardstick by which its vitality has been measured.

The technical success of performances, subtlety of character development, allusions to other ideas current in theatre and/or considerations of dramatic language are also criteria applied to a theatre that is predominantly one of ideas, perhaps harshly so, when measured against theatres of Western Europe, it adds.

"In Egypt, in Iran, in Syria and in certain other Arab country cases, the public sector came to govern much of artistic production and training.' This pertained at least to the formal arts-the "high" arts described in this book. Due to state control, restrictions, and the overall direction of ideology and social critique, it should be noted that the theatre pursued topics of social realism or critique, the book says.

The theatre in Egypt following the 1952 revolution has been studied and dramatic works of the 1960s and early 1970s have now become classics.

A commercial theatre in many Arab states (but not in Iran) and elsewhere in the Middle East (referred to in various places in this book as the habit 'decadent theatre' in Egypt) has also continued its development, especially since the outset of open-door economics.

It remains, along, with cinema and television, the rival of the «serious" or experimental public or private-sector theatre, the book says.

ME DANCE

A background to Middle Eastern dance is more fully described in this book. A few of its features bear repeating: the dance's intense musicality, perceived sensuality, and its role in cultural symbolism.

Middle Eastern dance, whether performed informally or staged possesses its own special movement vocabulary.

In both folk and cabaret dance genres, the feet step, sometimes in patterns, pivot, and are used to afford lateral movements of the body; kicking and leg extensions are not common, except in contemporary staged forms of (Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Jordanian) dabka thanks in part to the influence of Eastern European choreographers.

For centunes, the book says, dance existed in tribal groupings for the expression of tribal identity, for courtship, and for the celebration of certain holidays and rites of passage.

The chapters by Najwa Adra, Lori Salem and Edward Said provide very different insights into the issues of dance performance aesthetics, the social status of performance, and the dance's influence on the self-image of the Middle East.

This leads readers to the question of the local vs. interactive creation of aesthetics and the way in which the spectacle of a culture "dancing" may transmit meaning.

Contemporary dance in Cairo has a specific social history, wrote Karin van Nieuwkerk whose article features links to the art and function of the 'awalim (the almeh), who danced for women in the harem, taught music and dance, and sang for, but were unseen by, men.

In Chapter 11, Lori Salem has explored an East-West crossing in history-dramatic American portraits of Circassian slave women whose performances served to underscore the depravity of the Oriental "Mussulmans" When brought across the sea to New York and Boston, Circassian waiter girls conveyed sensuality, as did dervish performances for tourists in Cairo in these colonialist years, Salem wrote.

Dance fulfilled new functions as it became a common element in film, writes Marjorie Franken, a metier that allows for the re-examination of performance.

ME MUSIC

Middle Eastern music is made up of Arab, Persian, Turkic, Berber, Hellenic, and other musical elements, the book says. "Music is not entirely secular as is demonstrated in a chapter on Sufi inshad. Other religious uses of music include the tajwid of the Qur'an, the adhan (the call to prayer), and the music for the Prophet's and saint's birthdays (mawalid) and Ramadan, the enlogies for the Prophet (mada'ih), and songs composed about the hail to Mecca.

In the contemporary Middle East, the various musical forms have under-gone processes of separation and refinement, as well as blending or interaction.

The focus of contributions to this book is firstly on algadid (the "new"), the Egyptian term for post-1920/30 Arabic music in Egypt and Lebanon folk music in Lebanon, opera in Yemen, the continuation of the Iraqi maqamat, the in inshad in Egypt, and the performance and composition of Western music by Middle in Eastern performers. Arabic (and Persian) music, the bock says, is built on modes rather than scales and is monophonic.

PAINTING & VISUAL ARTS

Painting is in some ways a truly contemporary art in the Middle East, the book says. In other ways, the readers will see its alter ego in the haj paintings on buildings of Upper Egypt and in the brilliant pastels brightening the mynad concrete rectangular apartment buildings springing up in the formerly desert suburbs.

This leads us to a distinction between work that has been dubbed, perhaps erroneously as mere folk art and decor, on the one hand, and studio art, on the other, with e its new techniques and Statesponsored introduction (Ali, 1994, pp. 73-74). Folk arts are considered crafts, despite their often-brilliant execution of design, as in rugs, the Druze round straw mats of southern Syria, the Syrian embroidered cushions and hangings, and Egyptian tentmakers' products.

According to Wijdan Ali, nearly all-Arab artists passed through a stage in which European traditions and aesthetics in art were taught, followed by a period of self- discovery during which they chose «local subjects and themes.» In various Arab countries, the book says, artists, like playwrights and musicians, suffer from the higher valuation accorded to Western products (whether artistic or not).

The inter-Arab or Middle Eastern art market is narrow, as there is not much exposure to artists of other Arab countries. The artists of Cairo by and large do not know the artists of Beirut, Amman, Jerusalem, or Gaza.

Nor do their buyers. Hence, some must produce other varieties of art products for sale to tourists, foreigners, or locals with special tastes.

Previous Stories:
  Egyptian film producer dies at 60   (1/21/2002)
  Pioneer of Children's Literature   (1/10/2002)
  Muhammad Mahmoud Sha'ban ( Baba Sharo )   (1/10/2002)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search