<P>How does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in Syria's musical culture, which is particularly known for embracing and preserving the Arab musical tradition, and which has seldom been researched in depth by Western scholars. Music plays a key role in the process of self-imaging by virtue of its ability to convey feeling and emotion, and Shannon explores a variety of performance genres, Sufi rituals, song lyrics, melodic modes, and aesthetic criteria. Shannon shows that although the music may evoke the old, the traditional, and the local, these are re-envisioned as signifiers of the modern national profile. A valuable contribution to the study of music and identity and to the ethnomusicology of the modern Middle East, Among the Jasmine Trees details this music and its reception for the first time, offering an original theoretical framework for understanding contemporary Arab culture, music, and society.</P>
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Jonathan Holt Shannon. Among the Jasmine Trees
Among the Jasmine Trees
CONTENTS
FIGURES
A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION. The Aesthetics of Musical Authenticity. in Contemporary Syria
ONE. Among the Jasmine Trees
TWO. Sentiment and Authentic Spirit: Composing Syrian Modernity
THREE. Constructing Musical Authenticity: History, Cultural Memory, Emotion
FOUR. Body Memory, Temporality, and. Transformation in the Dhikr
FIVE. Authentic Performance and the. Performance of Authenticity
SIX. Ṭarab, Sentiment, and Authenticity
SEVEN. Notes Toward Closure
Epilogue: 2000
NOTES
GLOSSARY OF SELECTED ARABIC TERMS
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND DISCOGRAPHY
INDEX
MUSIC/CULTURE
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Among the Jasmine Trees
CONTEMPORARY SYRIA
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In Syria, I thank the many friends, acquaintances, teachers, and officials who made my research possible. I acknowledge the Syrian Ministry of Culture for permission to undertake my project and the staff at the Asad National Library for their generous assistance in finding materials. The staff at the American Cultural Center in Damascus, and especially Abd al-Raouf Adwān, facilitated my work in every way. Husain Nāzik first welcomed me to Syrian music, and Adnān Abū al-Shāmāt was a generous teacher in Arab music history and theory. Hussein Sabsaby has been a close friend and inspiring performer, and Ali Sabsaby provided me with excellent ouds, fine repair work, and friendship. Ādil al-Zakī and his son Ayman of the Shām Dān music store in Damascus provided friendship and hundreds of quality recordings of Syrian and Arab artists, which allowed me to form an essential sound archive and begin to learn the secrets of ṭarab.
Special thanks are due to Muḥammad Qadrī Dalāl, my friend and teacher, and to his family in Aleppo. Without Mr. Dalāl’s encyclopedic knowledge of Arab music and culture and his warm guidance and friendship, this project would have suffered greatly. I thank Sabri Moudallal for his inspiring voice and warmth, and Muḥammad Hamādiyeh, director of the al-Turath Ensemble, for his great friendship and assistance in my research. I also wish to extend thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Wasil al-Faisal and family of Homs and Damascus, Syria, and to Hala al-Faisal, for assisting in much of the research on which this work is based. The late Fateh Moudarres was an inspiration and provocateur throughout the period of my research, and I fondly remember the hours spent in his Damascus studio listening to music and talking about aesthetics.
