University of Texas Press The Status of Music in Muslim Nations: Evidence from the Arab World Author(s): Lois Ibsen al Faruqi Source: Asian Music, Vol. 12, No. 1, Symposium on Art Musics in Muslim Nations (1980), pp. 56-85 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/833798 Accessed: 19/04/2010 03:02 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=texas. 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]. University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Asian Music. http://www.jstor.org THE STATUS OF MUSIC IN MUSLIMNATIONS: EVIDENCEFROM THE ARAB WORLD By Lois Ibsen al Faruqi The categories with which ethnomusicologists and musicologists usually divide and explain a musical tradition--religious music, art music, folk music and popular music--seem strangely inappropriate for describing most Arab music. If applied, they are meaningful only in special, indigenous ways. This paper seeks to explain and expand this judgment, and in conclusion, to present a few ideas for the study of music and musical change which have been learned in the process of reaching this conclusion. The first section of the article deals with the extensive unity of religious, traditional art, and folk music in the Arabic context. Whereas these categories into which music is divided are usually indicative of readily recognizable and even substantial differences, this wide segment of the Arabic musical tradition presents an extensive unity which is multi-dimensional. It includes extensive unity in audience participation, in the occasions for performance, and in the performers who sing and play it. We might even speak of an historical extensiveness to this unity, for we are dealing here with a body of music which has shown a high degree of basic correspondence, if not always superficial identity, over a long period of time (d'Erlanger 1949:64; 1959:4; and al Faruqi 1974:Chaps. III, IV). All of these considerations deal with the use of music rather than with the description of musical elements themselves. Secondly, the article will deal with what I have called the intensive unity of these same three musical categories. Here it is maintained that there is a correspondence in the musical materials themselves as well as in their use in culture, and reasons for this correspondence are essayed. Thirdly, the discussion moves to those categories of diversity--Westernized popular music and Arabized Western classical music-- which differ both in use and substance from that body of music exemplifying extensive and intensive unity. A short concluding section tries to answer the question: What does this information teach us about the nature of music and musical change? 56 I. EXTENSIVEUNITY There is every reason for caution in the assign- ment of musical categories. Some might argue that the category or name is not important; that names can be used freely so long as precise definitions are made. This statement certainly has much truth in it. Examples can be found even in Western musical life which make more precise definition, even new definitions, of the old categories necessary (see the various articles in Hammet al 1975). But at some point on the spectrum of var-Tety, the old categories become so encumbered with new definitions that they no longer serve a meaning- ful role. This is all the more true when we move to other cultures for whom these categories are alien. This seems to be the case for Arabian music. We therefore offer a new organization of musical materials which will hopefully provide a truer understanding of the various types of Arabian music and even, by extension, of music in other parts of the Islamic World. A. Religious Music First, let us consider "religious music" as a category of the contemporary Arabic musical tradition. Here the following types of music should be included: Qur'anic chant (or qira'ah), the call to prayer (or adhn), the aural art of the dhikr ("remembrance") service of the mystical brotherhoods, and similar examples of takbirat (exaltation of God), hamd (thanks to God), madih (praise of the Prophet Muhammad), or duCa' (supplica- tion) . Religious music may be defined as any music which is connected with a liturgical or prayer service, as well as musical settings of poetry or drama which have a religious setting or theme. There are certain characteristics such as slowness of tempo, subtlety of rhythmic pulse, modal quality, etc., which at one time were considered to be necessary characteristics of such music; but those are no longer valid criteria either in the Western tradition or the ethnomusicological experience. A wide variety of musical characteristics is actually found in religious music of different cultures and periods, these variations being indicative of the differing religious views of the culture at the time each has existed (al Faruqi 1974b). Since the character- istics of religious music have varied considerably, the category of "religious music" has been one which tries to set boundaries for a class of musical examples which share a similarity of cultural use or function. In other 57 words, the religious setting for performance is normally the stable characteristic of religious music. Not so in the Arab World' Most Arabs would not even think of Qur'anic chant, the adh-n or much of the aural art of the dhikr service as music. In fact, none of the Arabic terms usually rendered in English as "music" would include these examples. Even in its more the word which was borrowed from general sense, mus'qa, the ancient Greek, excludes such religious music as the Qur'`nic chant and the adhan, as well as the chanted formulae of the dhikr service, madrh and hamd. In its more limited sense, m-us-q (or msl-T) pertains only to the theoretical, as distinguished from the practical art of music (ghin5'). To add to the confusion, ghina' has also been used to denote vocal, as distinguished from instrumental music (Cazf); or secular, as opposed to religious music. Sam5C ("listening"), another term sometimes translated into English as "music," accurately pertains only to the recitations and musical renderings of the dhikr ceremonies of the SUff brotherhoods. Lahw, a term used in the Classical Period, is also sometimes translated as "music"; but it is more correctly rendered as "entertainment." As such, it carries a much more inclusive connotation than the word "music." It is not only the case that there is no precise equivalent for "music" in the Arabic language. There is also no term which would subsume all forms of what we would consider religious music. Instead, each one carries its own specific title. Despite the factors of religion and terminology which distinguish religious from non-religious musical materials in Arab-Islamic culture, examples in both categories fit the English definition of "music" precisely and show amazing conformance to each other in musical as well as sociological characteristics. The dilemma of conformance in musical nature versus non-conformance in cultural definition has presented thorny problems and many a confusion for the student of Arab and other Islamic World musics. It may be one cause for such misleading, if not downright denigrating, statements as "Islam has no religious music in our normal sense of the term" (Farmer 1957:438-439), that Islam "prohibits music" (Nettl 1975: 77) or that "it is arguable that in the Middle East today there is no music "to qualify as 'classical'" (see Powers paper above). This is not to argue that the Islamic ritual incorporates equivalents of the St. Matthew Passion or a Rock Mass, or that there was not a problem of acceptance 58 of some forms of musical art in the Islamic World. But it must be carefully pointed out that there is no Qur'anic injunction against music in either its narrow (i.e., non-religious) or its wider (i.e., both religious and secular) sense. In fact, the commands its own recitation with tartil ("...Wa Qur'ainrattil al Qur'ana tartilan"- Qur' n 73T4). In the hadith literature, which is the second most authoritative source for Muslim practices and ideas, items both for and against music can be documented. This evidence and the practices of the community recorded in Islamic history would certainly not justify our saying that Islamic culture produced no religious music or that Islam prohibited music. The fact is that both religious and secular music flourished in all periods of Muslim history. Islam never condemned or questioned--in fact, unceasingly promoted--that music exemplified in the qirr'ah, the adhin, takbTrTt, hamd, duc' and madrh. On the contrary, iT institutionalized it. Concerning other types of religious and secular music, Islam as a community took a different stand.