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The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel Author(S): Amnon Shiloah and Erik Cohen Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol

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The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel Author(S): Amnon Shiloah and Erik Cohen Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol Society for Ethnomusicology The Dynamics of Change in Jewish Oriental Ethnic Music in Israel Author(s): Amnon Shiloah and Erik Cohen Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 27, No. 2 (May, 1983), pp. 227-252 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/851076 Accessed: 19/04/2010 03:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Society for Ethnomusicology and University of Illinois Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnomusicology. http://www.jstor.org THE DYNAMICS OF CHANGE IN JEWISH ORIENTAL ETHNIC MUSIC IN ISRAEL Amnon Shiloah and Erik Cohen In this paper we shall describeand illustrate the principal directionsof change in the music of OrientalJewish groups in Israel. It is the first systematicattempt to undertakethis formidabletask and is, therefore,of necessitya preliminaryone. Anthropologistsand ethnographerswere until very recentlyalmost ex- clusivelyinterested in the "authentic"or "traditional"cultural products of the "FourthWorld" people - the tribaland ethnicminorities of the newly emergentnations.1 In their endeavorto discover,describe and preservethe culture of the precontactperiod or the period precedingmodernization, they discardedrecent creations as unwelcomedisturbances and alterations of the "original" tradition. The false impressionwas often unwittingly createdthat this traditionexisted, staticand unchanging,until contactwith the Westernworld and the onset of modernizationbegan to destroyit. A similarorientation characterized the approachof art historiansand ethnomusicologists;for them, the valuableartistic productions were those precedingmodern influences on ethnic art. They regardedrecent artistic productionsas mere degeneratereflections of past glory or as bastardized concoctionsdevoid of "authenticity." Recently,however, as detailedinvestigations into the processof social and cultural transformation of tribal and ethnic peoples multiplied, students of arts and crafts graduallyrealized that their earlierjudgments were often based on prejudicesand oversimplifications.It turnedout that tribal and ethnic peoples reactedartistically in a wide variety of ways to their emergenceinto and confrontationwith the modern world. Their art underwentmanifold permutations,which confront the student with new problemsof theory and research.While the term "arts of acculturation" (Graburn1969:457) has sometimesbeen appliedto the newly emergentart forms, it does not do justice to the wide variety of stylistic and other changesemerging under the impactof new conditions.The richnessof these new productionshas been excellentlyillustrated in a volume on Ethnic and TouristArts (Graburn1976a). In the field of music, too, some important Final version rec'd: 12/7/82 0014-1836/83/2702-227 $1.30 1983 Society for Ethnomusicology 227 ? 228 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,MAY 1983 studiesof musicalchange have recentlyappeared (Kartomi 1981; Katz 1968; Merriam1955; Nettl 1978a;Nettl and Shiloah 1978;Neuman 1976;Lomax 1968; Slobin 1976). This diversityof new forms gives rise to the importantproblem of the different directions or types of dynamics of change in the "arts of ac- culturation."The problem has been dealt with on a theoreticallevel by Graburn(1976b) for crafts and by Nettl (1978b)for music. Our approach takes off from these beginnings,but attemptsto extend their conceptual frame of reference,in order to accommodatea wider scope of empirical variation. Traditionalart and more particularlymusic reflectthe life of a society and its culture. Therefore, creativearts should be explorednot only for their own sake, but also for a better understandingof other aspects of culture. It is regrettablethat Israelianthropologists have, in studyingthe processes of change and integration of Jewish Oriental communities, neglected the role of the creative arts in their life. One can find some specific, descriptivestudies of thesetraditional arts, but none has attempted to addressthe generalproblem - the processesof change in the arts of Jewish Orientalcommunities, whether prior to their immigrationto the State of Israelor subsequentto it. We deal here only with music and not with the whole spectrumof ethnic arts. By narrowingthe scope of our study, however,deeper insight into the mattercan be achievedthan would be the case had we coveredthe whole range of ethnic arts. But beyond this, the dynamicsof music are of interestin themselves.As Merriam(1964:296) has pointed out, music is a language of feeling deeply rooted in the subconsciousof an individual steeped in a given cultural tradition. Music not only accompaniesand enhancesmajor events in man's life, but also plays an importantrole in all social happenings.Being so tightly relatedto the differentaspects of life, music becomesa vital and indispensableelement of the cultureas a whole. The sharingof similarexperiences and satisfactionsfrom the same tunes provides,as Lomax argued,a sense of securityand identificationwith the group. This observationled him to conclude:"An art so deeplyrooted in the securitypatterns of the communityshould not, in theory, be subjectto rapidchange, and in fact this seemsto be the case. Musicalstyle appearsto be one of the most conservativeof culturetraits" (Lomax 1959:930).Mer- riam reacheda similarconclusion: "Music structureis carriedsubliminally and, since it is not objectified in most individualcases, it is resistantto change" (Merriam1964:297). These statementsdo not imply that music does not change at all, but ratherthat it possessesa high degreeof stabilityat least in some of its major manifestations.If this much is granted,we can assumethat in the case of SHILOAHAND COHEN: MUSIC IN ISRAEL 229 the Jewish Orientalcommunities in Israel, attachmentto pre-immigration music will, on the whole, be strongerthan attachmentto other facets of culture, includingother art forms. Music does change, however, though perhapsat a slower rate than do other aspects of culture. Moreover,the change, as we shall see, is not complete:it is continuity-in-change,and even a returnto tradition,albeit in a novel context. The degreeof stabilityof music is closely relatedto its function. Less change can be expectedin religiousmusic than in social and recreational music: "Religiousmusic is so much a part of religiouspractice that it can- not be altered without altering other aspects of ritual, while recreational music fulfills other needs whichare not rigidified"(Merriam 1964:308). An examinationof Near Easternmusic in generalreveals that changehas most- ly affected the categoryof recreationalmusic. This has, on the whole, also been the case with Jewish Orientalmusic in Israel. A HISTORICALREVIEW JewishOriental music has historicallybeen associatedwith the "great tradition"2 of Middle Eastern music (photo 1). This tradition was characterizedby severalmajor traits, commonto all nationalmusics in the region:3 the vocal component predominatedover the instrumental;the musicianis both a composerand a performer;there are no time limits and no fixed programin the performance;rather the performanceis a displayof soloist virtuosityand the performeris permitted,and indeedencouraged, to improvisespontaneously; in this he is helped by the continuousinterplay between himself and a limited, often intimate audience, which confronts him directly, without any formal barriers;the music is orally transmitted and was generallybanned, for religiousreasons, from institutionsof formal education. Throughoutits history,the "greattradition" has been in a state of per- manent, albeit slow, flux. Under the impact of the West and its music in moderntimes, the pace of changequickened, while the changeswent deeper and became more pervasivethan they had been in the past. The changes, whichalso affected JewishMiddle Eastern music even priorto the immigra- tion of the Jews to Israel, can be briefly summarizedas follows: (1) loss of intimacy;(2) the emergenceof a barrierbetween the artistsand the listeners through the introduction of the stage; (3) the introduction of new in- struments and new playing techniques, which led to alterations in the originalinteraction between the singerand the traditionalinstruments, such as the 'ud (a short-neckedlute), and eventuallyeven to changesin the struc- ture or size of the instruments themselves; (4) the necessity of playing 230 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY, MAY 1983 Photo 1. "Chalghi Baghdadi"- an instrumentalensemble, which performedtradi- tional Iraqi-Arabmusic
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