middle east issue || the art/popular music paradigm and the tunisian ma'lūf

The Art/Popular Music Paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'lūfAuthor(s): Ruth DavisSource: Popular Music, Vol. 15, No. 3, Middle East Issue (Oct., 1996), pp. 313-323Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/931332 .

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Popular Music (1996) Volume 15/3. Copyright ? 1996 Cambridge University Press

The art/popular music paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'liif

RUTH DAVIS

This article was triggered by a conversation with Jan Fairley, some years back, when she first put to me her idea for a special Middle East issue of Popular Music. My natural enthusiasm was tempered with some quite fundamental reservations. Was there such a phenomenon as 'popular music', in any generally accepted sense of the word, in Middle Eastern society? And if so, how were we to identify its repertoires, musicians and contexts? Could a useful distinction be made between 'popular' and 'non-popular' (or specifically, 'art' music) genres? And who, among my Middle Eastern music colleagues, would consider themselves scholars of 'popular music'? As we discussed these and other such questions, Jan homed in on the truism that, for me, drawing from my experiences in Tunisian music, hit the nub of the problem: 'of course, "popular" is different from "traditional" '

I thought of the Tunisian urban communities in which historically, 'tradition' was valued so highly that, right through the early decades of this century, musicians who wanted their new compositions to be accepted would have to pretend that they had learned them from a dying shaykh. I thought specifically of the present controversial status of the so-called Arab-Andalusian repertoire, al-ma'laf, generally considered the foundation of all Tunisian urban music, whose songs provided models for the first flowering of Tunisian media genres in the 1930s and 1940s, and whose now legendary musicians included the first generation of popular media stars. Dubbed in recent decades as 'classical' or 'art' music' by both Tunisian and Western scholars and promoted as such by the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the same repertoire has been spontaneously performed, added to and enjoyed for centuries by entire urban populations as their preferred, if not only, type of secular entertainment music. I thought of the mayor of the mountain spa town of Zaghuan who, in an attempt to convey the central role of the ma'lf in defining the community's Arab-Andalusian identity, described it to me, without any sense of contradiction, as 'notre musique populaire traditionelle'. Finally, I thought of the countless Tunisian musicians, music critics, scholars, journalists, media bureaucrats and politicians I met during my fieldwork around the mid-1980s, unanimously lamenting the 'crisis' of modern Tunisian music, which, they insisted, had yet to rediscover its own 'authentic' voice, swamped until now by inferior Egyptian imitations churned out by the mass media. Could a society that placed so high a premium on 'traditional' values support a genuinely 'popular' music culture?

313



314 Ruth Davis

In a general sense, my reservations echo those of other scholars, notably Harold Powers, Jihad Racy and Virginia Danielson who have variously challenged the appropriateness of the conventional art/popular music paradigm in the Middle Eastern context. Following on from Powers (1980, pp. 6-12), whose objections focus exclusively on social criteria, Racy identifies a broad range of factors that have contributed to the blurring of boundaries between Middle Eastern musical styles. Pointing to the levelling role played by the Egyptian mass media in promoting many diverse types of music equally and without discrimination, he maintains that: the classical-popular division, with all its familiar implications, can be particularly mis- leading. For decades the mass media . .. have been shaping the musical careers and prod- ucts of practically all prolific and highly respected Egyptian artists. It is noteworthy that since the early 1930s almost every established Egyptian male or female singer has been both a recording artist and a movie star . .. a phenomenon which might be unthinkable in some other cultures. (Racy 1981, p. 6)

Racy characterises the music of such 'popular' Egyptian artists as Umm Kulthtim and CAbd al-Wahhab as constituting 'one large central domain' with which 'several smaller peripheral domains' all overlap and interact. Significantly, he notes that Egyptians and neighbouring Arab audiences refer to the music of this 'central domain' as fann (art) and tarab (enchantment or entertainment), terms that are resonant with traditional aesthetic values associated with older layers of repertoire, styles, types of performance practice and contexts (Racy 1982, p. 391).

In this issue of Popular Music, Danielson also argues for an eclectic approach towards identifying 'popular' music in Cairo, observing that 'no category emerges in local discourse that represents the vast majority of mediated musics and would be clearly analogous to what, for instance, we have called popular music of the last thirty years in North America'. More explicitly, she points out that 'Some widely popular mediated music is located in the turdth, or heritage of Arabo- Egyptian music . . "Popular" then does not exclude classical or "folk" or religious music that also draws from sources within the turdth' (Danielson 1996, p. 299).

In his study of kiliwali music in Herat, Afghanistan, John Baily argues for an ethnomusicological approach to problems of categorisation and cautions that 'labels such as "art music", "folk music" and "popular music" can be used with justification in a cross-cultural context only when the society concerned makes such distinctions itself' (Baily 1981, p. 106). Adopting this criterion, Baily concludes that kiliwali may legitimately be labelled 'popular'. In Tunisian urban society, in contrast, no less than in Cairo, such clear-cut categories are not readily apparent, and to the extent that relevant distinctions might appear to exist, they are at most, ambivalent. Certainly, the art/popular music dichotomy of Western scholarship has scant, if any, place in regular Tunisian discourse.2 The very terms sha'abiyya/ populaire and fann/classique are used in senses that correspond only partially with those of their Western counterparts. MisTqa sha'abiyya denotes any music commonly performed and enjoyed in 'real life' situations such as weddings and other family and communal celebrations. It does not necessarily refer to a specific repertoire, or repertoire type, although it tends to be associated with traditional instruments and genres, and with women's music. Nor does muszqa sha'abiyya have any intrinsic connotations with the mass media, although their repertoires may overlap: songs popularised on the radio may be adopted as musiqa sha'abiyya, and vice versa. The terms sha'abiyya/populaire are sometimes used perjoratively to denote



The art/popular music paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'lif 315

music that anyone can enjoy and, in this sense, they do directly oppose mfisTqd fann/musique classique, which imply respect and connoisseurship. More specifically, the terms fann/classique refer to music perceived as equivalent in status to Western classical music or the Egyptian 'turath', that is Arab-Andalusian music and its associated repertoires and genres.3 However, their usage is determined as much by social and institutional criteria and the status of the user as by actual musical substance; thus while the ma'lif performed by the official national ensemble, the Rashidiyya, and taught alongside the corresponding foreign repertoires in music conservatories, might be described by its exponents, patrons and scholars as fann/ classique, the ma'laf performed by local musicians in provincial towns, at weddings and in Sufi lodges, is unlikely to carry such elitist labels and might even be regarded by the local inhabitants as their muisqad sha'abiyya.

In my experience, the basic polarities of Tunisian musical discourse are: first, between indigenous and foreign, or more specifically, orientale/sharqiyya (i.e. Egyptian) music; and second, within Tunisian music, between the ma'lzf and old or 'traditional' media songs (al-'atfqa) dating from around the 1930s to the 1950s, on the one hand, and the modern or 'new' songs (al-hadrtha) currently promoted by the RTT (Radio et Tilevision Tunisienne), on the other. In the mid-1980s, the overwhelming impression received from musicians and the music public generally was that Egyptian music was far more 'popular' and highly regarded than Tunisian music. Also, that of all genres, the constant flow of new Tunisian media songs (al-hadftha) churned out by the RTT, that is, the repertoire that would seem most obviously to correspond to Western notions of 'popular', was appreciated and valued the least. This impression was born out by a survey made in 1980 by the Centre Culturel International de Hammamet of the musical tastes of a 'representative sample' of students from various regions, aged between 20 and 25, currently at L'Ecole Normale Superieure d'?ducation Physique de Ksar-Said (ENSEPS) in Tunis. The students ranked the following musical categories in terms of preference: 1. Orientale/al-sharqiyya (Middle Eastern).

2. Occidentale/al-gharbiyya (Western).

3. Tunisienne traditionelle/al-tunisiyya al-'atfqa (traditional Tunisian, i.e. media songs dating from the 1930s to the 1950s or thereabouts).

4. Al-ma'lif.

5. Tunisienne ricente/al-tunisiyya al-hadftha (modern Tunisian, i.e. contemporary media songs) (Noktar and Sallami 1980, p. 7).

The art/popular music debate in Middle Eastern scholarship has tended to concentrate on contemporary music cultures of the core Middle Eastern world. My main purpose in this article is to extend the arguments of scholars such as Powers, Racy and Danielson to the urban music of Tunisia, focusing particularly on the so-called Arab-Andalusian repertoire and its associated genres, loosely categorised as 'ma'laf'. I argue that the dualistic art/popular model may be as inappropriate in the context of Tunisian urban music as it is elsewhere in the Middle East, but for different reasons, connected not only with relatively recent phenomena such as government and media policy but also with aesthetic and social values that have deep-seated roots in Tunisian urban society.



316 Ruth Davis

The historical role of the Tunisian ma'liif It is widely accepted that in each major Near Eastern or Asiatic 'high culture', one should expect to find a self-contained, indigenous musical repertoire, which is authentic, ancient, musically sophisticated and socially exclusive. Such a repertoire is usually described as 'classical music', 'art music', 'court music', and 'serious music'. (Racy 1981, p. 4)

According to popular legend, the Arab-Andalusian music of the Maghreb origin- ated in the ninth century in the Moorish courts of Spain and was subsequently transplanted into North Africa by Moslems and Jews fleeing the Christian recon- quest. In Tunisia, this music took root primarily in northern and coastal towns where it became known as 'ma'lif' (lit. familiar, custom). Cultivated by trained professional musicians in the courts of the Ottoman aristocracy, conceived as a distinct repertoire with a continuous history dating back more than a thousand years, connected both historically and theoretically to the greater traditions of urban Arab, Persian and Turkish music, the Arab-Andalusian music of the Magh- reb would seem to qualify in all essential aspects as 'classical' or 'art' music. Indeed, the Tunisian scholar Mahmoud Guettat (1980) entitled his comprehensive study of the four national Arab-Andalusian traditions 'La Musique Classique du Maghreb'. However, there are certain contradictions.

In popular mythology, the ma'laf is perceived as a continuous legacy con- necting contemporary Tunisian communities to their ancestors in the Moorish courts of medieval Spain. The official publications of the repertoire by the Ministry of Culturel Affairs, 'Al-Turath Al-Mfisiqi Al-Tuinisi' (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) (n.d.), support this myth by presenting the ma'l1f as a fixed canon of anonymous compositions.4 However, it is commonly recognised that the ma',1f includes formal and stylistic elements reflecting Turkish and even later Middle Eastern influences; moreover, most of the song texts are in the Tunisian Arab dialect, indicating that they were altered or even newly composed in Tunisia. Salah el-Mahdi, until 1979 Director of Music and Popular Arts in the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, maintains that once transplanted in Tunisia, the ma'lif absorbed so many indigenous elements as to become 'almost purely Tunisian' (El-Mahdi & Marzuqi 1981, p. 10). Many new genres, including all the instrumental pieces, are popularly attributed to the famous Ottoman patron and amateur Muhammad al-Rashid Bey (d. 1759),5 while El-Mahdi acknowledges that in compiling the official canon, he weeded out a layer of anonymous compositions reflecting Egyptian influence dating from the early decades of the twentieth century (El-Mahdi & Marzuqi 1981, p. 89). The high value placed on the communal heritage, and particularly on the Andalusian myth with all its symbolic references to a golden age of artistic, intellectual and spiritual blossoming when the Arabs were rulers rather than subjects of foreign rule, inhibited composers from acknowledging their own compositions. Instead, their songs were passed off as newly discovered items of the traditional repertoire, conveniently rescued from oblivion at the last moment from the lips of a dying shaykh (El-Mahdi & Marzuqi 1981, p. 89).

Despite its courtly patronage, the ma'laf was never primarily an elitist or otherwise socially exclusive repertoire. Its principal patrons were Sufi brotherhoods, that is, popular religious organisations whose membership spanned all social classes. In Tunisian urban communities, where public music-making in secular contexts was normally considered shameful, fit only for the lowest classes or Jews, the Sufi lodges effectively served as covers for music clubs and concert halls.




The Sufi musicians rehearsed the ma'lif alongside their sacred repertoires, and they performed the secular songs after their public ceremonies, allegedly to calm the heightened emotional atmosphere. These weekly sessions were attended by the community at large and everyone was free to join in the singing. The lodges also served as springboards for music-making in secular contexts: the musicians who rehearsed the ma'lif in cafes and sang it at weddings, circumcisions, and other family and religious celebrations, were generally either members of the Sufi groups, or had at least learned the repertoire in the lodges. Historically, therefore, the ma'lif was 'popular' in the most general sense of being 'of the people' as a whole, rather than being confined to any particular social elite (Manuel 1988, p. 2).

In Tunis and other larger towns, there developed a relatively sophisticated type of performance practice for the ma'lif, which demanded specialist expertise involving small solo instrumental ensembles and a vocal soloist. The Ottoman princes used to patronise such ensembles in their palaces; among the aristocratic and bourgeois connoisseurs of the ma'lf were some highly skilled amateurs performing in the privacy of their own homes. Outside the courts, however, there developed a two-tier performance practice, each level operating independently of the other and thus enabling anyone, regardless of talent, training or expertise, to participate. The Sufi brotherhoods, which generally restricted the use of musical instruments on religious grounds, cultivated a type of performance practice called ma'laf kham, comprising a unison chorus accompanied by percussion instruments and/or hand-clapping alone. Ma'lif kham demanded no special training or skills, and membership of a Sufi ensemble was determined by commitment to the lodge and its practices rather than by any specifically musical factors such as vocal quality or expertise. In some towns, ma'17f kham was also the regular type of performance practice outside the lodges; in others, notably Tunis, Bizerte and Sousse, the ma'laf was performed in cafes and other secular communal contexts by small solo instrumental ensembles whose members were often Jews; if Moslems, they were unlikely to belong also to a Sufi ensemble, although they may well have learned the repertoire in the ma'lif sessions of the lodges.

In conclusion, despite its apparently convincing 'art' music credentials, an alternative, equally valid historical profile emerges for the ma'laf as a 'popular' music genre in the sense that it was enjoyed by all social groups, its repertoire was continually self-renewing and open to new musical forms and styles, and its performance was unsophisticated enough for anyone to join in, regardless of talent, training or expertise.

The ma'liif and the media during the French Protectorate The ma'lif entered the modern world in November 1934 when, on the rising tide of the nationalist movement, some seventy Tunisian musicians, poets, intellectuals, politicians and bureaucrats founded the Rashidiyya Institute in Tunis.6 Their prim- ary motive was to counteract the increasing influence of Egyptian music imported by visiting artists and reinforced by the commercial record market: apparently, Tunisian musicians were neglecting their own traditions and copying the Egypti- ans in dress and dialect, as well as in their music (El-Mahdi & Marzuqi 1981, p. 25). With the two-fold mission of conserving and promoting the ma'laf and encouraging new compositions in traditional Tunisian styles, the Rashidiyya intro- duced some radical innovations that were to have a profound effect on the future



318 Ruth Davis

musical and social status of the ma'lf: it created a new type of ensemble and performance practice inspired by the European orchestra; it transcribed the entire repertoire of the ma'lfif known to the shaykhs of Tunis into Western notation for use in both teaching and performance; and it instituted a formal training, comparable to that developed in Western art music, including Arab music history, theory and instrumental technique.

Equally revolutionary was the Rashidiyya's social role. Modelled on the idea of the Western music conservatory, the Rashidiyya attempted to cut through traditional social taboos on public music-making by providing for the ma'lfif an academic status and socially respectable secular public performing context. At the same time, it discouraged its members and students from performing the ma'lif in the traditional 'vulgar' contexts such as wedding celebrations with their alcohol and cafks with their hashish smokers. As the official representative of Tunisian music, subsidised by the government of the Protectorate, the Rashidiyya gave concerts to honour distinguished national figures including famous poets and musicians, important events such as visits of foreign dignitaries, and landmarks in the Inde- pendence struggle (El-Mahdi 1981, pp. 104-6). The ensemble also performed regularly to local audiences in its premises in the medina; like the ma'lfif sessions of the Sufi lodges, these were informal events, and the audience sang along.

The Rashidiyya ensemble was founded about the same time as the mass media were taking root in Tunis. Salah el-Mahdi has recounted how, in 1929, a group of well-known Tunisian musicians and singers, including Khmais Tarnan (soon to become chorus master of the Rashidiyya ensemble) and the Jewess Habiba Msika, were invited to Paris to record for the Lebanese company Baidaphone. To their embarrassment, the Tunisian group discovered that they had no suitable Tunisian songs to offer. According to El-Mahdi, this experience provoked a upsurge of trite and obscene songs, typically in corrupt Arabic or in the 'Franco- Arabe' dialect, by a new breed of inferior, opportunist composers. The Rashidiyya reacted by holding competitions and commissioning songs from only the most respected Tunisian composers in a mission to promote new compositions of the highest quality in authentic Tunisian styles (El-Mahdi & Marzuqi 1981, pp. 90-1). For members of the Rashidiyya, Tunisian composition was rooted in the ma'lff: Muhammad Triki, original leader of the ensemble and probably its most popular and prolific composer, described the ma'lf in relation to all other Tunisian composition as 'la base'; while Habib Gouja, formerly violinist in the ensemble, dubbed it (in English) 'the bread and butter of Tunisian music'. Far from being in opposi- tion with, or representing a new direction from, the traditional repertoire, the new media songs were perceived as being in sympathy with it: the old and new songs were seen as a continuum, the older repertoire providing the inspiration for the new.7

The first Tunisian Radio station was established in 1938 with a policy to promote Tunisian music exclusively. Its Artistic Director, Mustafa Bushashah, was brother-in-law of Mustafa Sfar, President of the Rashidiyya Institute, and the radio station had positive relations with the ensemble from the outset. At first, the Rashidiyya more or less monopolised music programming; later, live broadcasts of the ensemble were devoted to two evenings a week, eventually decreasing to one, while several of its members also broadcast independently on other evenings. During the decades leading up to Independence in 1956, the Rashidiyya ensemble provided the springboard for some of the most popular media artists of the time,



The art/popular music paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'lfif 319

in particular, the legendary female singers Salihah (commonly regarded as the Tunisian equivalent of Umm Kulthtim), Fathiyah Khayri, Aliyyah, Na'ama and Shabilah (daughter of Salihah).8 Today, songs of these and other media stars of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, many of whom were members of, or otherwise closely associated with the Rashidiyya, are collectively known as misfqd atrqa (traditional music) and they are often loosely designated ma'laf.

The ma'liif, the media and government policy since Tunisian Independence The status of the ma'laf and its relations with the media changed radically after Tunisian Independence in 1956. As the new government began to implement its cultural and educational policies a gulf was created between the ma'laf, which was adopted by the government to support its music educational and amateur recreational programmes, and the new commercial repertoires promoted by the mass media. A principal factor behind this division was the creation, in 1958, of a full-time, professional, state-funded radio ensemble. While its original membership was drawn mostly from the ranks of the Rashidiyya and graduates of its school, the radio ensemble itself was modelled on its contemporary Egyptian counterparts, with European instruments such as accordions, pianos, flutes and clari- nets added to the nucleus of violins, cellos, doublebasses and traditional Arab instruments (e.g. qainuns, 'ids, ndys and percussion) characterising the Rashidiyya. The Egyptian kamanjah player Professor Atiyah Shararah was brought in as leader, and the Egyptian qanin player Professor Fahmi 'Awad was hired to train the chorus in the art of 'oriental' songs. Rather than pursue a policy of promoting Tunisian music, the new ensemble concentrated on Egyptian and other Middle Eastern repertoires and modern Tunisian songs in similar styles (El-Mahdi & Mar- zuqi 1981, pp. 57-8). Meanwhile, the radio did its duty to the ma'lif by systematic- ally recording performances by the Rashidiyya and a special, reduced section of the radio ensemble; some twenty-five years later, these archival recordings, mostly made around 1960, still provided the sources of the RTT's fortnightly broadcasts of the ma'lif. Similarly, after the television section was added in 1965, studio video recordings of the radio ma'l1f ensemble were made to provide material for occasional television programmes. These token offerings were supplemented by occasional live radio and TV broadcasts of, for instance, concerts by the Rashidiyya ensemble and highlights from the annual international festival of the ma'laf held each summer in Testour.

The relative lack of interest of the RTT in the ma'lf is mirrored in the cata- logues of the Tunisian record and cassette companies. In the mid-1980s, the two privately owned companies Mallouliphone (Tunis) and La Societe de la Cassette (Carthage) and the state-owned Ennaghem were still relying mostly on contacts with other Middle Eastern record companies, and Tunisian music constituted only a very small proportion of their output (e.g., in the case of La Societ6 de la Cassette, about 6 per cent). Neither of the two privately owned companies had issued any recordings of the ma'laf, and Ennaghem had released only a handful of vinyl records, all of which were based on recordings made by the RTT.

As the Tunisian media looked to the Middle East for inspiration, the academic status of the ma'lif, pioneered by the Rashidiyya Institute, was reinforced by the Presidential decree of 23 January 1958 outlining the syllabus of the new National



320 Ruth Davis

Conservatory of Music in Tunis. Expanding on the syllabus of the Rashidiyya school, the Conservatory combines studies in Western classical music, the Egyp- tian turath and the Tunisian ma'l1f. The Conservatory's syllabus provides the over- all model for state music education at all levels, from high schools and amateur music clubs and ensembles, to provincial music conservatories.

In 1961 the Ministry of Cultural Affairs was created with the general policy of 'cultivating the national cultural heritage and providing a basic, popular education in all its aspects' (Kacem 1973, p. 30). With Salah El-Mahdi, leader of the Rashidiyya ensemble, as Director of Music and Popular Arts, the Ministry of Cul- tural Affairs extended the ideology, methods and achievements of the Ra'shidiyya throughout Tunisia. Designating the ma'lif as the national musical heritage, it established a nationwide network of amateur ma'liif ensembles in new cultural and recreational institutions called dar al-thaqdfi/maisons de culture; it sent graduates of the Rashidiyya school and the new National Conservatory of Music to direct the new ensembles; and it published the Rashidiyya's transcriptions of the ma'laf in a series of nine volumes entitled 'Al-turath al-miusrqz al-tfinisi' (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) (n.d.), which were distributed to the dar al-thaqafi, schools and music conservatories throughout the country. Despite common evidence of distinct regional variants, the published canon of the ma'liif is officially presented as a unitary national tradition9 whose interpretation is monitored by an annual cycle of festivals, competitions and residential music courses. Meanwhile, many of the regional traditions have themselves been undermined by the government's hostile policies towards the Sufi brotherhoods, chief guardians of those traditions, in the years following Independence.10

Yet despite the government's efforts to monopolise the ma'l1f, in certain traditional centres in the mid-1980s, former Sufi ensembles were continuing to flourish alongside the new, state-sponsored ones, attracting new recruits among younger members of their communities and performing to public demand in traditional communal contexts. In the town of Testour, founded in the seventeenth century by Andalusian refugees and site of the government's Annual International Festival of the ma'lf, the former musicians of the 'Issawiyya brotherhood, evicted from their lodge shortly after Independence, rehearsed the ma'l1f in cafes and sang the familiar songs at local weddings, untouched by the activities of the youth ensemble based in the dar al-thaqafa. In the idyllic cliff-top village of Sidi Bou Said, over the bay from Tunis, the local ma'lf ensemble dressed in white jaba'ib (long, wide-sleeved gowns) with sprigs of jasmine tucked behind their ears, entertained local residents and tourists throughout the summer in the famous pilgrims' Caf6 des Nattes, adjacent to the marabout of the clssawiyya brotherhood; the same musicians were regularly hired to perform at local weddings. And in the mountain spa town of Zaghuan, whose population is almost entirely of Andalusian descent and whose mayor described the ma'lif as the community's 'traditional popular music', the residents were proud of the fact that, despite the influx of radio, television and cassette recorders, ma'lf kham was still the only secular repertoire sung at weddings.

Contemporary perspectives

The status of the ma'laf in present-day Tunisia is both ambivalent and controversial: on the one hand, it is a 'reinvented tradition' taken over by the government



The art/popular music paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'lfif 321

in its quest for a national cultural identity; and on the other, a living 'popular' tradition defining the specific Andalusian identity of individual communities. For most Tunisians, the ma'lif is synonymous with the Rashidiyya: even the most ardent exponents of the regional traditions regard the Rashidiyya's version as the ultimate in purity and perfection.1 For many, the term 'ma'l1f' is also synonymous with the songs of the great media stars who rose from the ranks of the Rashidiyya in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, generally considered the golden age of the Rashi- diyya and of modern Tunisian song. In those last decades of the Tunisian nationalist struggle, the best Tunisian composers and singers, backed by the media, were united in their efforts to counter the influence of the imported 'oriental' songs by creating an authentic Tunisian voice. Today, as Tunisians lament the passing of those stars and debate how to fill the vacuum, musicians, journalists and other intellectuals blame the Rashidyya and its spin-off institutions, the music clubs and the conservatories, with their uniform interpretations and sterile performance rituals, for turning the ma'lif into a museum piece, removed from real life experience. Around the mid-1980s, the Rashidiyya was addressing this complaint by revitalising its repertoire, performing pieces that had been neglected for decades, and commissioning new ones. Rashid Sallami, professor of the adult section of the National Conservatory, had created a reduced ma'l1f ensemble, which learned the repertoire according to traditional oral methods, without notation, in an attempt to encourage improvisation and a return to the soloistic, heterophonic texture of traditional instrumental ensembles. Since the early 1990s there have been reactions from other sources, variously attempting to liberate the ma'lif from the shackles of its official institutional framework - signs that have been inter- preted by some as a movement towards 'popularisation'. In 1992, Amina Srarfi, daughter of composer Kaddour Srarfi, founded an all women's ma'lff ensemble, Firqat El-Azifat, comprising some fourteen instrumentalists playing a mixture of Arab and European instruments with Amina Srarfi directing from the piano; the ensemble performs songs and instrumental pieces from the ma'lif and other traditional Tunisian compositions to packed houses throughout Tunisia and abroad. The internationally successful Tunisian media star, Lotfi Boushnak, balances his recitals of Egyptian music with songs from the ma'l1f and other old Tunisian songs, as well as his own compositions in traditional Tunisian styles. Tunisian colleagues see in these high profile developments fertile seeds of a popular revival of the ma'lIf and of Tunisian music generally, comparable perhaps to the original revival pioneered by the Rashidiyya ensemble some sixty years ago. Be this as it may, they are surely signs that the ma'lif and its related repertoires are finally emerging from the closet of academic and state institutionalisation back into the urban popular musical mainstream where traditionally, they have always belonged.

Endnotes 1. The terms used in Tunisia are musique classique

and in Arabic mausrqd fann (literally, art music).

2. Bruno Nettl describes a comparable situation in pre-Revolutionary Teheran, where 'the distinction between art, classical, or court music, on the one hand, and folk, popular, or tribal music, on the other, was made by persons

who have a special interest in the classical music, but was hardly recognised by others'. Instead, 'the most important distinction was between Persian and foreign music' and within Persian music, 'between instrumental and vocal music' (Nettl 1970, p. 185).

3. Music designated fann/classsique may also be called turath/patrimoine, as in the govern-



322 Ruth Davis

ment's publications of the ma'lhf, entitled Al- turath al-maisFqal-tunisfl/Patrimoine musical tunisien (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) (Ministry of Cultural Affairs n.d.).

4. Exceptions are two 'new' nhbat (suites) by Khmais Tarnan, original chorus master of the Rashidiyya ensemble (d. 1967), and Salah El- Mahdi, included among the miscellaneous compositions in volume 9.

5. Some maintain that Bey composed these pieces himself; others, that they were com- missioned by him from various unidentified composers.

6. The Institute was named after the famous Ottoman patron and amateur of the ma'l17f, Muhammad al-Rashid Bey (see above).

7. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider actual musical relationships between the ma'laf and the new media songs promoted by the Rashidiyya. To my knowledge, no serious music analytical study has yet been made of the repertoire known as masTqd atTqa, and the specific musical criteria according to which compositions were deemed to be in traditional Tunisian styles were never made clear to me. Just as eighteenth century ma'lhf compositions display Turkish influences, so songs of the 1930s and later use rhythmic-metric genres, modes (maqamat) and modal combinations that are foreign to the core ma'ltif repertoire. Muhammad Triki, original leader of the Rash- idiyya ensemble and among its best-loved and most prolific composers, took pride in pointing out to me the 'oriental' (i.e. Egyptian) and Latin rhythms in his own compositions, which, he insisted, were neverthe- less rooted in the traditions of the ma'lif. Like the Andalusian myth itself, it seems that the 'Tunisianness' of musrqd atTqa constitutes a

mythology that perhaps depends as much on associations with specific personalities, poetic themes and the general atmosphere of an era at once more colourful and more optimistic than the present, as on precisely identifiable musical qualities.

8. The success and high profile of these and other solo female singers contrasts the insigni- ficant role generally played by women in other dimensions of professional musical life. As L. JaFran Jones has observed, in Tunisia as elsewhere in the Middle East, 'women are singers, while instrumental music and music creation are the domain of men' (Jones 1987, p. 77).

9. This claim, which has attracted considerable controversy among Tunisians (see Davis, in press) is made by Salah El-Mahdi in his intro- duction to volume 3 of Al-Turath Al-MasTqT Al- TanisT (Ministry of Cultural Affairs n.d., 12) and in his official history of the Rashidiyya Institute (El-Mahdi and Marzuqi 1981, pp. 81-2).

10. A fuller exploration of the effects of the government's hostile policies towards the Sufi movement on the regional ma'liff traditions and the controversial relationship between those traditions and the published notations, in Davis (in press).

11. A common view expressed by musicians in the traditional ma'lhf centres was that the Rashidiyya's notations represented the pure, unadulterated version of the melodies origin- ally imported by Andalusian refugees, which had gradually been corrupted through centuries of oral transmission and neglect under foreign rule. The Rashidiyya, they maintained, had restored the melodies to their original identity.

References

Baily, John. 1981. 'Cross-cultural perspectives in popular music: the case of Afghanistan', Popular Music, 1, 105-22

Danielson, Virginia. 1996. 'New nightingales of the Nile: popular music in Egypt since the 1970s', Popular Music, 15/3, pp. 299-312

Davis, Ruth. In press for 1997. 'Cultural policy and the Tunisian Ma'luf: redefining a tradition', Ethnomu- sicology, 41/1

Guettat, Mahmoud. 1980. La Musique Classique du Maghreb (Paris) Jones, L. JaFran. 1987. 'A sociohistorical perspective on Tunisian women as professional musicians',

in Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Ellen Koskoff (New York) pp. 169-78 Kacem, Abdelaziz. 1973. 'La Politique Culturelle Tunisienne', Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 29-44

(Tunis) El-Mahdi, Salah. n.d. 'Al-nuba fi'l maghrib al-'arbi', in Al-Turath Al-Musiqi Al-Tunisi, vol. 3, ed. pp 3-16 El-Mahdi, Salah and Marzuqi, Muhammad. 1981. Al-Ma'had al-RashTdT (Tunis) Manuel, Peter. 1988. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (Oxford) Ministry of Cultural Affairs. n.d. Al-Turath Al-MasTqf Al-TunTsT (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) vols.

1-9. (Tunis)




Nettl, Bruno. 1970. 'Attitudes to Persian music in Teheran, 1969', Musical Quarterly, 56, 183-97 Noktar, Fathallah and Sallami, Rachid. 1980. Musique Arabe et son Publique. Sondage des gouts des itudiants

de I'ENSEPS de Tunis en Matiere de Musique (Hammamet) Powers, Harold S. 1980. 'Classical music, cultural roots and colonial rule: an Indic musicologist looks

at the Muslim world', Asian Music, 12, 5-37 Racy, Ali lihad. 1981. 'Music in contemporary Cairo: a comparative overview', Asian Music, 12/1, 4-21

1982. 'Musical aesthetics in present-day Cairo', Ethnomusicology, 26/3, 391-406

Discography Tunisie Anthologie du malouf - musique arabo-andalouse. 5 CDs. Auvidis: W 260044, 260045, 260046, 260059.

260047 (ADD): original recordings made in the early 1960s of the Tunisian Radio Ensemble, including now legendary players. W 260059 (DDD): recording made in 1994 of similar-style ensemble with top-ranking instrumentalists and chorus.

Lotfi Boushnak: Malouf Tunisien. W260053. Andalusian songs sung by star singer with ensemble of top instrumental soloists.



middle east issue || the art/popular music paradigm and the tunisian ma'lūf

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