Feature Article

Arabic Music Modern Practice

Closing the Gap

By Corey Highberg, Dec 2019

Arabic Music Modern Practice

This article is focused on examining Johnny Farraj and Sami Abu Shumays “Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century” as a source to explore the gap between performance and written theory in the Arabic Music world. I research the books commentary on current practices verses written direction, the progress made between performance and theoretical academia, and what possible futures for Arabic music exist based on this literatures content. Throughout the course of this discussion, I interject my own experience with performance/theory inconsistencies and add expert opinion and predictive outlook as a means of providing alternative viewpoints to what may currently exist in the scholarship of the field. The main questions I explore are: a) does this book close the gap between common practice in performance and organizational written structure of Arabic music Theory?’, and b) What future adaptations or alterations for the theory do we see in the future?’.

“Inside Arabic Music: Arabic Maqam Performance and Theory in the 20th Century” describes many practices of performance that often conflict or have inconsistencies within the written theoretical text. It describes ornamentation as one of the characteristics of the traditional sounds of the music coupled with the individual’s expression. “Ornamentation reflects several facets of Arabic Music: How an instrument or voice is used in Arabic music, what the prevailing Arabic music tradition sounds like, and how the musician’s creativity and vision is expressed within that tradition.” (1) Previous descriptions of how this works in practice have been lacking, as during the Cairo conference of 1932 (2), many common performance practices were omitted to prevent the subject from complications, preventing its easy transmission to new students. Farraj thankfully attempts to bring back the importance of ornamentation and provide specific theoretical structure to its use in the literature by writing, “Ornamentation is not optional, it is a skill and an art that is learned along with the basic technique for an instrument (including, especially the voice.) Not using ornamentation sounds like a student rehearsing. Conversely, non-Arabic music can be transformed to sound like the prevailing Arabic tradition simply be adding the correct form of ornamentation. (pp77) (3) Dr. Scott Marcus is mentioned in the book as writing of the inconsistencies that exist in the current Arabic music world where practice and theory do not match. This book has been “to expand upon that that knowledge, by attempting to reconcile contradictions, and to provide a comprehensive new theory accounting for the maqam system as a whole. It is not that we find the oral concepts of maqam theory to be fundamentally wrong-either as learned from our teachers or as documented by Marcus since 1989-but that we found the theory incomplete. We have tried to add what we inherited in the pages that follow…” (introduction) (4)

Farraj and Shumays makes specific reference to classical Arabic song and poem forms as the source of its teaching. Qasida is the Arabic word for metered poem written in classic Arabic as well as the vocal for that uses that poem for its lyrics. It discusses the rhyme and meter characteristics. (pp123) (5). The influence of Western culture on creating a school for Arabic music helped craft the ability to teach it more broadly. However, much of the individual expression was lost in this process. Shumays does an excellent job of putting this individual expression back into the literature of education with commentary like, “Arabic music is highly personalized and improvisational. Great abundance of improvisation keeps them from music sounding too rigid. To a western observer, Arabic music may appear informal in many respects: musicians vary composition with each performance, sometimes even simultaneously. Audience members react vocally- sometimes loudly- to things they like in the music, and music is transmitted orally, with variation in versions and the addition of individual or regional characteristics.” (Pp9) (6)

Even with the high amount of Western music influence in the later modern period (7), there are still parts of the medium that maintain its uniqueness in an extremely specific way. An example of where Arabic music is far stricter than western music is intonation (pp10). There has been research that shows variations in intonation between notes within the same partial to contain at least 12 different variations. (8) In reference to written verse performance standards, this book also clears up the inconsistencies between transcriptions and practice. They document, “The variations in each recorded or performed version is very normal and considered part of the culture. Many people prefer specific recordings and variations of their favorite songs or instrumental music.” (9)

Along with Western influence, many Western instruments that were foreign to the region have been introduced. These instruments were often altered to use the intonation standards for the Arabic scale. Many previous theoretical writings did not speak about this or did not go into detail about how this was accomplished or what instruments make more sense and fit into the practice more completely. This book writes about the accordion and how it was adjusted for quartertones in Egypt, Cairo in the 1920s. It was used as a melodic instrument as chords are rare in Arabic music - Pp34 (10). It continues to describe the alterations to the organ, keyboards, and saxophones. These are all western instruments that can be altered or played in a fashion to allow for the quarter tone system of the Arabic world. Pp45 (11)

The issue of intonation was often ignored or not completely explained. The sensitivities the ear has to intonation has been explored through scientific research. This led to the (Just noticeable difference) Scale. As Farraj and Shumays describe, “This scale is used to determine if the human ear can detect the difference in pitch. This can vary greatly from person to person. Context and volume matters, however with enough exposure, most people can develop a highly sensitive amount of accuracy to the quarter tone system and its smaller pitch variations”. Pp168 (12). The development of the 24-tone scale as a method of cataloging and transcribing Arabic music has been a revolutionary change to the practice. It is often taken for granted, or not fully described in how its written structure varies from its practical use. This book helps tremendously in this inconsistency. It reads, “The convenience of the 24 tone scale in developing Arabic theory was a model that allowed easy transcription and helped musicians develop a guide thorough which they could reduce the need for remembering hundred of different note names, instead knowing that a pitch within the 24 tone system could be altered slight based on the maqam that they may need it for.” (13) This book gives specific reference to practice versus theory for the 24 tone Arabic scale. It describes its inaccuracies: “1) First the scale system is Pythagorean, not equal tempered. Second numerous pitches are used, with distinctions much finer than a quarter tone, third some individual pitches are variable depending on region and time period. Fourth, note names used to describe the Arabic tuning system are conceptual, some are based on precise pitches derived from open strings, and some are a convenient grouping of many shades of a pitch under one note; therefore, using them to precisely define a single interval is meaningless.” Pp171-172 (14)

Much of the issue between performers and what the textbooks say can be traced back to the use of western notation and the specific intonation requirements for its use. There is also the issue of making something intuitive overly complex to the point of incomprehension. Closing this gap becomes complicated, because of the difficulty in accurately describing what it means to play a different note without creating a whole new scale. Marcus has noted the gap between the 24-note theoretical verses actual mode. He concludes that “aside from a small group of musicians who accepted the 24 tones at various mechanisms to relate notes they perform in real-life to the conceptual 24 tones by recognizing that certain notes deviate from their theoretical positions by a comma, by describing shrunken augmented seconds, by allowing for a general pitch variability as a function of tonal focus and/or personal preference, or by adding extra fixed notes to the 24-notes.” Pp172 (15) Shumays and Farraj go on to more practically describe this to the reader by stating, “Pinning down an exact Arabic scale is like pinning down an exact pronunciation of the English language.” Pp172 (16). This analogy is especially helpful to the English-speaking world, as this statement surely rings true to those who are familiar with regional dialects. The chasm between what English sounds like in the American South East verses the British Isles is immense, but people in Southern California can tell the difference between pronunciations in Northern Californian speech in ways that is hard to put into words. The futility of trying to accessibly educate these micro tones was notable in the example of educators at the Cairo conference. Sikah exhibited the most tonal difference by region in 1932 even trying to define each pitch. Pp 173 (17). Another good example that this book helps bring back into the literature is pitch variability based on phrasing as represented in the maqam Huzam, where the ascending and descending pitches vary depending on the phrase. Pp172(18).

When it comes to performing in an ensemble, musicians invariably run into intonation problems. After rehearsing, they will often seek to come to agreement. “The result is never perfect unison, but musician’s intention is clearly to converge and unify their intonation.” Pp175 (19). Another process used to help shorten the difference between notation and performance is described in the way of notation symbols. “Fine tuning symbols used to determine pitch quality. Up and down arrows. Pp183, tonal interval symbols indicating ¾ and ½ intervals,” pp184 (20). The book goes on to explain that Arabic music understands notation as a visual guide, as related in this story, “Syrian singer Zakiyya Hamdan once told a story about a veteran Egyptian composer Zakariyya Ahmad, who spent a month in Beirut in 1950 teaching her ensemble his newly composed song “ya halawit id-dunya” using a score he had notated. When he was satisfied that they had memorized it well, he said to the ensemble, “and now were going to put aside the sheet music and play according to how we feel [our moods]!” pp186 (21)

The authors help students with several anecdotal comments, many humorous, to convey the idea that Arabic music has written theory, but it is malleable, and will continue to change as does the practice. A quote that convey this best is, “Using western notation to write Arabic music is much like using a foreign alphabet to write the Arabic language. There will be inconsistencies and its imperfect.” Pp190 (22) These points are reiterated by Marcus: “Moreover, the new reliance on notation changed the music that which that notation was meant to preserve and disseminate. When given a piece had existed in the aural realm musicians routinely varied its melodic lines, but once written down, the melody was regarded as fixed. According to an age-old performance aesthetician, musicians had been encouraged to render a given melody according to their creative impulses and the idiosyncratic capabilities of their instrument; this quality was often lost with staff notation, where a melody would be performed uniformly without variation.” Pp191 (23)

Western influence has made great improvements to the practice of educating students, but the unfortunate effect has been a degradation in the identity associated with Arabic music’s malleability from performer to performer. As Shumays writes, “The fear of Arabic music becoming one with western music is increasingly difficult to ignore with the problem of a lack of improvisation after notation occurs.” (24) Detailed descriptions of the jins and ajnas and their application, use and tonal centers are described in the text, (25) topics that were previously left out to simplify the practice. These have been keys to stylistic decisions of performers and help to add to improvisational qualities. Speaking to traditions versus innovations, they write, “Modulations in Arabic music is like cooking in regional cuisines; there are many ingredients, and they are all delicious, but people don’t go around mixing these ingredients willy nilly.” Pp312 (26)

One of the main issues that persist in Arabic music is how to accurately document without causing the performance to suffer. Preserving tradition while still allowing the genre to grow is a topic that this book tackles, with the hope that it will prevent conflict in these two issues by educating upon them. S. Marcus discusses the tension between wanting to sound traditional and the desire to innovate: “Additionally, while composers and improvisors general stay within tradition (not trying to be ‘out there’ in the manner of some jazz musicians), there is always the possibility that an insightful musician might present a maqam in a new way. Depending on the reception of that novelty, it might over time be adopted into the mainstream understanding of the mode, or it might be rejected and continued only in that musicians’ performances.” Pp313 (27). Passages like these emphasize this books recommendation for the right balance between tradition and experimentation. It goes on to state that “the community may be dwindling. but by emphasizing on the literature and staying flexible within the tradition it can stay alive”. Pp417 (28).

In conclusion, Inside Arabic Music is the right step forward in helping revitalize some of the forgotten traditions of improvisation, and the buried nuances of Arabic music theory by adding them back into the literature. It is my hope that this text become the foremost sought out for when discussing Arabic theory, and that it continues to grow through revisions. Arabic music’s finest quality is its adaptability, and this book and the contributing scholars have done a great job in the evolution and preservation of the genre.

Link to Notes for this Article found here