Song, State, Sawa Music and Political Radio Between the US and Syria

Song, State, Sawa Music and Political Radio between the US and Syria Beau Bothwell Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2013 © 2013 Beau Bothwell All rights reserved ABSTRACT Song, State, Sawa: Music and Political Radio between the US and Syria Beau Bothwell This dissertation is a study of popular music and state-controlled radio broadcasting in the Arabic-speaking world, focusing on Syria and the Syrian radioscape, and a set of American stations named Radio Sawa. I examine American and Syrian politically directed broadcasts as multi-faceted objects around which broadcasters and listeners often differ not only in goals, operating assumptions, and political beliefs, but also in how they fundamentally conceptualize the practice of listening to the radio. Beginning with the history of international broadcasting in the Middle East, I analyze the institutional theories under which music is employed as a tool of American and Syrian policy, the imagined youths to whom the musical messages are addressed, and the actual sonic content tasked with political persuasion. At the reception side of the broadcaster-listener interaction, this dissertation addresses the auditory practices, histories of radio, and theories of music through which listeners in the sonic environment of Damascus, Syria create locally relevant meaning out of music and radio. Drawing on theories of listening and communication developed in historical musicology and ethnomusicology, science and technology studies, and recent transnational ethnographic and media studies, as well as on theories of listening developed in the Arabic public discourse about popular music, my dissertation outlines the intersection of the hypothetical listeners defined by the US and Syrian governments in their efforts to use music for political ends, and the actual people who turn on the radio to hear the music. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….. ii List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………... iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….. v Dedication……………………………………………………………………………….. vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1: Learning to Broadcast…………………. …………………………………….52 Chapter 2: Damascus Radioscape……………………………………………………….. 97 Chapter 3: Popular Music in Syrian Mass Media Discourse…………………………... 153 Chapter 4: Radio Sawa, Sonic Consumerism, and Western Music in the Syrian Radioscape……………………………………………………………………………... 232 Chapter 5: Idhāʿat Sawa and Asymmetric Music Politics……………………………... 302 Chapter 6: Conclusion - Sound Shifts in the Syrian Uprisings………………………... 340 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………………. 365 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………… 370 Glossary………………………………………………………………………………... 400 Appendix 1……………………………………………………………………………... 402 Appendix 2……………………………………………………………………………... 404 Appendix 3……………………………………………………………………………... 405 i List of Figures Figure 1.1 RCA advertisement “Freedom to Listen, Freedom to Look” 57 Figure 1.2 Hypothetical broadcast radii for powerful AM stations – US 61 Figure 1.3 Hypothetical broadcast radii for powerful AM stations – Europe 61 Figure 1.4 Arabic broadcasts by country of origin 69 Figure 1.5 Memorandum to the Deputy Director of the CIA regarding Radio 90 Free Europe Figure 1.6 Memorandum to the Deputy Director of the CIA regarding Radio 91 Free Europe (cont.) Figure 2.1 Makhlouf phone book cartoon (Al Domari) 117 Figure 2.2 Version FM Logo and Website Banner 138 Figure 2.3 Virgin FM Jordan Logo 139 Figure 2.4 Elissa, “ A Bālī Ḥabībī” first phrase 149 Figure 3.1 Syrian Radio Song Contest 2011 (Arabic) 161 Figure 3.2 Syrian Radio Song Contest 2011 (translation) 163 Figure 3.3 Melodic Line from Ziad Rahbani’s “Talfan ʿAyyāsh” 194 Figure 3.4 Doubled Line from Ziad Rahbani’s “Talfan ʿAyyāsh” 194 Figure 3.5 Tripled Line from Ziad Rahbani’s “Talfan ʿAyyāsh” 195 Figure 3.6 Full Chorus from Ziad Rahbani’s “Talfan ʿAyyāsh” 195 Figure 3.7 Lena Chamamyan, “ ‘A-Rōsānā” First Chorus 210 Figure 3.8 Lena Chamamyan, “ ‘A-Rōsānā” Ending 212 Figure 3.9 “Tradition,” Randall Monroe, XKCD.com 219 Figure 3.10 Graphic representation of Version FM’s playlist 228 Figure 3.11 Graphic representation of Ṣawt Ash-Shabāb’s playlist 229 Figure 4.1 Unduplicated Weekly Reach of Radio Sawa (BBG Report) 242 Figure 4.2 Map of Middle East Broadcasting Network of target audience region 243 and degree of press freedom. Figure 4.3 Language Percentage by Song Frequency 262 Figure 4.4 Graphic Representation of Radio Sawa’s Levant playlist 265 ii Figure 4.5 Org introduction to Nancy Ajram’s “Saḥr ‘Uyūnu” 281 Figure 4.6 “Like a Virgin”, played on an electric keyboard as the underscoring 283 for the Radio Damascus program “Tashri at Jadīda” Figure 4.7 Dabke rhythm in Tony Hanna’s “Ṭāl as-Sahir” 285 Figure 4.8 Straight eighth-note rhythm from the introduction to Hayek and 285 Hanna’s “Ṭāl as-Sahir” Figure 4.9 Syncopated rhythmic pattern of Nassif Zeytoun’s “Wenweit” 287 Figure 4.10 Rhythmic transcription from Lil Wayne’s “Up and Way”, produced 289 by Timbaland Figure 4.11 The lyrics from Brian Adams’ “Everything I Do” as heard by a 290 listener with limited English Figure 4.12 Elissa “ A Bālī Ḥabībī” first phrase 291 Figure 4.13 Graphic Representation of Radio Sawa’s Levant playlist 296 Figure 4.14 Graphic Representation of a typical private station playlist in Syria 297 Figure 5.1 Kulna Sawa, “Ana Irhābī” melody 321 Figure 5.2 Ending guitar solo on “Ana Irhābī” 321 Figure 6.1 Screenshot of the “Top 5 Songs” Al-Madina FM website (English 353 page). March 22, 2012 Figure 6.2 Screenshot of “Top 5 Songs” from the website of Al-Madina FM . 354 June 5, 2012 (same five songs listed) Figure 6.3 Graphic Representation of a typical pre-2011 playlist on Syrian 358 private radio Figure 6.4 Graphic Representation of a playlist on Syrian private radio in 2012 359 iii List of Tables Table 2.1 Top 5 Songs on Rotana Style FM Syria, May 3rd 2010. 113 Table 3.1 Weekly Program for Version FM, as of May 2012, Sunday-Tuesday 166 Table 3.2 Weekly program for Version Radio, as of May 2012, Wednesday- 167 Saturday Table 4.1 Radio Sawa broadcasting sites 241 Table 4.2 An hour of Radio Sawa programming, 11-12am Beirut time, 11 January 253 2012 Table 4.3 Description of an hour of Radio Sawa Programming 254 Table 4.4 Playlist Breakdown by Artist Country of Origin 260 Table 4.5 Twelve songs in the high-rotation “Superhit” category on Radio Sawa 264 iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family, in all of its many configurations, for their support and encouragement during the long process of school, more school, and graduate school. Particular thanks to my mother and father, for not giving up on raising musical children when the violin and piano didn’t take, and then somehow remaining music boosters when not just one but two sons ending up spending their college years at UCLA “doing ethnomusicology.” This dissertation could never have been completed without the tireless efforts of my advisor, Professor Ellie Hisama. From her warm welcome the first time I came to visit New York to her generous decision not to laugh when I told her “I think I need to go to Yemen and learn Arabic,” and throughout the dissertation process, her intellectual and professional guidance has been essential and profound. The debt that I owe to Ellie is the kind that cannot be repaid to the teacher, only to the next generation of students, and in that effort I will remain inspired by her example. I am also very grateful for my dissertations readers, Karen Henson, Lila Abu- Lughod, Ana Maria Ochoa, and Jonathan Shannon, whose insightful questioning, academic direction and personal examples as scholars and thinkers have been profound inspirations. Among the other faculty members who read and discussed portions of this work, Aaron Fox, Walter Frisch, Rashid Khalidi, and Tim Mitchell were all extremely helpful and generous as I was working on the project. Susan Boynton, Joseph Dubiel, Ellen Gray, George Lewis, Muhsin al-Musawi, Ted Swedenburg, and Mark Katz – among others – came to hear practice papers and talks drawn from portions of the dissertation and gave helpful comments. v I give thanks to the other members of the radio studies crew in the Columbia Music Department, Louise Chernosky and AJ Johnson, for sharing sources and ideas, and to Kristy Barbacane for trading chapters and providing welcome feedback during the writing process. Among my colleagues at Columbia, David Novak, Ben Piekut, Andrew Haringer and Elizabeth Keenan provided outstanding graduate student role models, and I continue to look up to each of them. Without the model of Elisabeth LeGuin as an undergraduate, I would not be studying music today, and I am happy to extend that blame though a series of amazing teachers beginning with my wonderful high school music teacher David Kimura, and including Ali Jihad Racy, Susan McClary, Mitchell Morris, Jeff Taylor, Roberto Miranda, Kenny Burrell, Chris Poehler, and Paul Baxter. That I could even begin this dissertation project at all is thanks to a series of talented Arabic teachers: Ahmed al- Za’tar, May Ahdar, Taoufik Ben-Amor, Mabkhout Al-Wahhab, Robert Riggs, and Ahmed Ferhadi, as well as the language faculty at the Center for Arabic Language and Eastern Studies in Sana‘a, Yemen, the Levantine Language Institute, and the University of Damascus. The staff of the Columbia University Music Library, the al-Asad Library in Damascus, the University of Damascus, and the library of the American University of Beirut, all provided patient guidance through endless stacks of books and microfilm. For their senses of humor and enthusiasm for overwritten dialogue, I want to thank Hart Bothwell, Rick Rowley, Jacquie Soohen, Leila Honeysuckle, David Rowley, Meagan Bellshaw, Jake Rasch-Chabot, Dan DiPaolo, Katie Pfohl, Jason Frydman, Beth Holt, Bram Hubbell, Frank Kelly, Louis Rigolosi, Raffi Kalenderian, Joe Barber, and all of the occasional crew from the Greene Compound in Brooklyn.

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