TRACING MIGRATIONS
New Music by Jordanian,
Palestinian, Iraqi and Lebanese composers
22. - 23.
October 2004 Pergamon Museum, Berlin
PANEL DISCUSSION
(transcription)
Migration and Identity:
Perspectives of Contemporary Music in Arab Countries.
Paneldiscussion in cooperation
with the Berliner Soceity for New Music (BGNM)
Participants: Mounir Anastas, Agnes Bashir, Karim
Haddad, Saed Haddad, Iyad Mohammad, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Mohammed Uthman Sidiq
October 23, 2004, 6:30-8:00pm, Pergamon Museum -
Gate of Ishtar
Oliver Schneller: Der diesjährige Schwerpunkt der Frankfurter Buchmesse
lag auf arabischer Literatur. Filme wie Elia Suleimans "Divine Intervention"
oder Hanny Abu Assads "Rana's Wedding" liefen mit grossem Erfolg an deutschen
Kinos. Vor kurzem eröffneten die Staalichen Museen zu Berlin eine grosse
Sonderausstellung zum Thema "10,000 Jahre Kunst und Kultur aus Jordanien". Die
arabische Kultur und Kunst wurde uns in diesem Jahr in Deutschland sehr
gegenwärtig, was in einer Zeit der erhöhten politischen Brisanz dieser
Region umso wichtiger erscheint. Als Beitrag im Bereich der Musik möchte ich
ihnen das Projekt "TRACING MIGRATIONS. Neue Musik von jordanischen,
palästinensischen, irakischen und libanesischen Komponisten" vorstellen. Im
Mittelpunkt stehen Arbeiten von neun jungen arabischen Komponisten, deren Werke in zwei Konzerten in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Ensemble United Berlin
zu hören sind. In der nun folgenden Podiumsdiskussion mit den anwesenden sieben unserer neun Komponisten geht es um das Thema "Migration and Identity: Perspectives of Contemporary Music in Arab Countries". Ich möchte kurz die Struktur der Diskussion erläutern. Ich habe die Teilnehmer gebeten, jeweils mit einer kurzen
Stellungnahme zum Thema anzufangen. Auf der Basis dieser "statements" werden
wir dann diskutieren und gegen Ende der Veranstaltung auch Fragen aus dem
Publikum aufnehmen. Die Diskussion findet in Englisch statt. Ich darf also
zunächst Agnes Bashir bitten anzufangen. Agnes Bashir is originally from
Tbilisi in Georgia but has lived most of her life in Iraq and Jordan. She
studied composition in Moscow, then moved to Baghdad with her husband, the
Iraqi violinist Fikri Bashir. In 2000 she founded the "Arab Alliance for Women
in Music", which I believe, she will refer to in her statement.
Agnes Bashir: My countries are Irak and Jordan. For most of my life
I've worked in the field of education. From my experience in teaching Arab
student musicians I observed that a real sense of Arab identity seems to have
been lost throughout the centuries. Only in the twentieth century, even only
during the past thirty, forty years, with the establishment of institutions for
music and a genuine commitment to musical education, the situation is beginning
to change. Traditional music has existed all this time but it had not been
codified or institutionalized in any way. With the accessibility of
Western-style education there also came the sense that we "as Arabs" should
create something of our own. My experience stems mainly from the 70ies and
80ies, from my time at the Music and Ballett School in Baghdad, the
establishment of which I was participating in. This school was a unique
institution in the Arab world. The interest and demand was so great that we had
to turn down applicants. There was a feeling of discovery, or re-discovery, of
our very own subjects. Many of our ballett creations and performances adapted themes and subjects from Arab literature and history. And
this is also how I myself came to write music, specifically for the symphonic
orchestra of Baghdad. Some of my works incorporate elements from Arab culture
as well as musical gestures from European
Romanticism. I was always conscious of thinking about the audience that
would be listening to this music. This is an audience which is not at all used
to modern music. What prevails is a familiarity with traditional music and
only occasionally European music. We held competitions for musical
performance, which became a means of finding and gathering musicians from all regions.
After the first Gulf war many Iraqis moved to Jordan. Here we established the
ARAB ALLIANCE FOR WOMEN IN MUSIC. This is a collective of women who are
involved in music. Its aim is to encourage younger generations, boys and girls,
who show an interest in music. So I believe education is really at the base of
the formation of any sort of identity in our region.
Oliver Schneller: Mounir Anastas was born in
Bethlehem. Since 1984 he has lived in France where he studied composition with
Iannis Xenakis and Horacio Vaggione. Besides his work as a composer he is the
musical delegate of the Palestinian mission at UNESCO in Paris.
Mounir Anastas: A few points beforehand: I think the term "migration" holds different meanings. There
are political, cultural, economic and social implications which are often
interrelated. Some people leave their countries to study abroad, some leave
because of the political situation, some because of economic circumstances, and
so on. There is an interaction between migration and the construction of
personal identity. In Europe you are probably aware of this this phenomenon,
due to the many immigrant groups living here in Germany, France or the UK. I
won't talk about migration as a social, political or economic topic, but rather
in relation to cultural and artistic identity. In Arabic music today, and Arab
society, one can observe a scientific and technological gap. Fortunately there
is a new generation today which is much more in touch and at ease with new
technologies. This generation is contributing to the transfer of technology to
society. Unfortunately, if we look further for perspectives, in the
contemporary Arab world of music, there still exist many problems. There is a
rather dominant hierarchy for solving problems in Arab countries, and music
certainly is at the bottom of the list. That is my first point: the political
problems influence everything in daily life: economics, social structures, academia , culture, and the psyche of
people. This is the most important thing. The thinking about and perception of
anything is marked by political conditions. I am talking as a Palestinian who
has lived in Palestine for twenty
years, followed by twenty years in Europe. If we would make the comparison it
would be very obvious. Let's take anybody, "Mr X" from Gaza, for example. "Mr X", like many Palestianians from Gaza, has never heard of symphonic
music. He has never even watched a film in a cinema, and his kids don't even
know what a screen is. This is the gap I am talking about. There are some
people who have the economic means , but even more, who don't. And there is
always this political problem.
Fortunately some people, in
spite of this, are always looking forward and trying to go beyond these walls,
because really we are looking outwards from inbetween walls. What about
identity then? How is it constructed?
For somebody like me, living in Europe, the situation is quite
different. In France I have encountered a society where there exists an active
interest in culture, not only from the side of the population, but also from
that of the government and the politicians. There is a budget for culture, for
music, for theatre. In the Middle East there is no budget. You have to
understand the priorities. First there is health, logistics, then education.
There are so many more priorities, I can't go through all of them. But I think
it's clear how these elements work together and how it comes to influence not
only your identity but your way of thinking about music .
Now, for me personally, when
I arrived in Paris in 1984, I encountered
the music of Iannis Xenakis for the first time and was deeply impressed.
Because this music for me was the music I was hearing inside my head during the
war. As a kid I bought the first model of a walkman with a recording function.
I used it to record the sound of
nearby gunshots and tank fire and afterwards listen to these recordings, as if they were music. Much later, when I first heard the
music of Xenakis, I thought: this is the music I have been looking for!
Sometimes negative things can give you positive impulses. That was a negative
influence from my childhood whose output, however, for me was very positive. In
tonight's concert we will hear an electronic piece of mine called Sentence funebre. It's a piece
against the death-sentence . I think it is not so innocent for a
Palestinian pleading against this kind of sentence. We understand what this means and I was
interested in this kind of theme.
I believe that all those
musicans who have come in contact with Western Europe, especially its culture,
have a duty to transfer this
knowledge to the Arab world. We have some progressive people, not only
musicians, but also artists from
other disciplines, who are interested in pushing forward and advancing Arab
society, in spite of everything. Like Agnes Bashir, like Mohammed Uthman Sidiq,
and others. Today this is still a minor movement. But regarding long term
future perspectives for the Arab
world I am - personally speaking - optimistic. I think due to the increasing
facility of communication and transport, which diminishes distances between
countries, we will manage very quickly to fill that gap - the scientific gap,
the technological gap, and also to catch up musically.
Oliver Schneller: Karim Haddad, born in Beirut, has studied in his
native city as well as at the Sorbonne in Paris. Next to his work as a composer
he develops software at the IRCAM where he has been employed since 1999.
Karim Haddad: For me the problem nowadays lies not so much with the
migration of people, but rather with the phenomenon of migrating cultures:
knowledge, cultural values, art and communication - everything is in motion. Mounir Anastas gave an example about people in Gaza. This is not an
innocent example, since there exists also the discrepancy between intellectual
knowledge and cultural poverty. It is related to economic poverty, which is at
its base. For me as a musician, I have thoughts about it, but I don't actually
regard this as an essentially
musical problem. The musical problem for me in the context of a discussion on
identity is that I don't believe in the creation of any decisively national
musics. I think national issues in music are a thing of the 19th Century, with
composers like Smetana, for
instance. It was the era of the modern national state and with it the rising of
musical nationalism. Today we have a different situation. We have the internet,
improved telecommunication, which
lead to a growing network of cultural exchange and even a migration of cultures.
Cultural contents are beginning to disassociate themselves from geographical
localities. So in a certain sense,
I think we are all living here in
Berlin. Like this beautiful gate here [points to the Gate of Ishtar situated
behind the panel] is really for everybody. It is just as beautiful
here as it was in ancient Babylon. Furthermore, we're rather fortunate that
it's not in Iraq now! Probably it would have been damaged or stolen. I think
art is for everyone. And we are all bound to migrate and communicate. And that is all I want to say right
now.
Oliver Schneller: So we continue with Saed Haddad, who is Jordanian,
studied composition in Israel and at the moment lives in London, where he is
working with George Benjamin as a fellow at King's College.
Saed Haddad: Being a Christian Arab and a
Western contemporary music composer, I identify myself as an "other" within the Western
cultural context. However, I find myself also as an "other" within my own
cultural heritage (where contemporary music does not exist, and is neither
understood nor appreciated). This otherness has been one of the enriching
sources of my various compositions and has been the place where questions of
migration and identity have been paradoxically answered.
The Western musical
analytical education has helped me to reflect upon my Arabic heritage in
finding new relationships inside the Arabic scales (al-maqamat) and mastering the art of
time through the exploration of relationships that Arabic rhythms suggest. A
further reflection upon heterophony offered me a dialectical view on unity and
multiplicity. This dialectic was inspired not only by Arabic musical
heterophony, where the "one-liness" is the production of the multiplicity of
instrumental colours, but also by a theological reflection upon the Holy
Trinity, where a multiplicity of the personages "creates" one God.
Moving from the
philosophical to the geographical, I believe that the musical scene in my
native country, Jordan, is still far away - spiritually, intellectually,
materially, and even historically - from the creation and practice of
contemporary music. In Jordan a Western traditional Classical musical education
started only some twenty years ago. A good performance of a composition by Haydn, for
instance, has not been mastered yet and therefore we can't even begin to speak
about facing the challenges and complexities that contemporary music asks for. Audiences are still far
away from an intellectual and spiritual insight of what art is about, and
educational systems face all kinds of financial, professional, administrative
and organizational difficulties.
This leads me to refer again
to the state of strangeness or otherness I identify with. This otherness became
for me a new home in which art transcends reality. It became an inspirational
dilemma between being a part of, while not belonging to the whole, between the
openness toward the other and the refusal of the other, and finally between
being myself and being able to renounce myself.
Oliver Schneller: Iyad Mohammad, a Jordanian composer, has studied in
Minsk, authoring a thesis on the work of Helmut Lachenmann, and currently
teaches at The National Music Conservatory in Amman, Jordan.
Iyad Mohammad: I'm a Jordanian composer, Jordanian of Palestinian
origin. My father is a Palestinian from the West Bank. I am only half Jordanian
since my mother is German, so I am half German. I studied in Minsk, Belarussia,
and I think this is important since Russia, as a third culture, had an impact
on my cultural orientation. On questions of identification and identity: I
think that a person who is an "Arabic composer", is always based on a duality.
Perhaps even a contradiction because as a composer, even an Arabic composer, he
associates with a phenomenon of Western culture. "Composers" of Eastern
cultures are by definition very different. This is due to the fact that the
creative act - the act of
composing as we understand it here in Europe - is itself part of the Western
way of thinking. So the way we think, the way we understand and work with
music, the way we understand the musical elements is probably a completely
Western way of thinking. The category itself of creating and composing a piece
as we generally understand it, is a Western category. If we agree that the most
important thing in a composition is the way we work with the musical elements,
then I believe that simply using Arabic elements, such as particular scales and
rhythms, while retaining methods and techniques derived from Western music,
will not render a composition more "Eastern" or "Arabic" in any way. In other
words, I think that if one wants to use different, culturally heterogeneous
elements in a composition, one can't simply go about this by using Arabic
elements in a Western way. If a composition is "split" in this sense -
culturally and in terms of
heterogeneous materials -
this will result in a clash between those elements. We have to then show
clearly what is Eastern and what is Western. And if we do that, then this
precisely would be what the composition is all about. So I think that such a
duality, expressed in a composition, could be an inspiring force for a composer
provided he is able to probe it creatively and turn it into a specific world
view or aesthetic.
Oliver Schneller: Samir Odeh-Tamimi, born 1972 in Tel-Aviv,
Palestinian, studied music in Kiel and Bremen
and currently lives in
Berlin.
Samir Odeh-Tamimi: Ich möchte vielleicht doch einen anderen Weg gehen
und nicht direkt über Formen und Musik reden. Überhaupt, die Frage der
Identität, das ist nicht etwas, was mich nun zwangsweise seit zwölf Jahren
beschäftigt. Ich bin der Einzige auf diesem Podium hier, der noch nie in einem arabischen Land war. Ich
bin Palästinenser, bin aber in Tel Aviv, in Israel, geboren. Und schon damals,
mit 12 Jahren, war mir klar: ich war in meiner eigenen Heimat fremd. Ich fühlte
die Fremde schon damals und - ob nun bewusst oder nicht - befand mich bereits
auf der Suche nach Identität. So habe ich mich als kleines Kind immer sehr
zurückgezogen . Zwar lebte ich in Tel Aiv, Jaffa und dann auch in einem kleinen
Dorf. Aber mit der anderen Seite haben wir eigentlich in Israel auf kultureller
Seite fast nichts zu tun. Das heisst, wir kommen mit europäischer Kunst und
Kultur kaum in Kontakt. Für mich hiess das: es lieb mir nur die Beschäftigung
mit unserer alten Kultur. Wichtig war hier für mich, dass ich aus einer Familie
von Sufis komme. Mein Grossvater war einer der letzten Sufis in meiner Familie.
Ich denke, dass mich das als Komponist stärker interessiert und geprägt hat als
die alte arabische Musik. Ich habe einen Satz von Mahmoud Darwish gelesen: "Nur
die Fremde lehrt mich wer ich bin". Und da habe ich verstanden: ich muss gehen. Und so bin ich nach
Deutschland gegangen, was sich fast zufällig entwickelt hat. Ich wusste damals
nicht, was "Neue Musik" war. Ich kannte nicht einmal Schönberg. Ich wusste von
Beethoven, mehr nicht. In Kiel habe ich zunächst einmal Musikwissenschaft
studiert. In der Bibliothek ist mir dann ein Streichquartett von Schönberg in
die Hände gefallen. Da begriff ich, dass es etwas Anderes gab. Ich habe damals
noch nicht komponiert, fühlte aber das Bedürfnis danach, wusste aber
gleichzeitig nicht was ich komponieren wollte. Schönberg war 1951 gestorben,
ich suchte aber nach lebenden Komponisten und habe dann angefangen
Zwölftonmusik zu schreiben. Ich entdeckte Lutoslawski und fing an, ihn naiv zu
imitieren, was mich krank gemacht hat! Bis ich dann meine Lehrerin, Younghi
Pagh-Paan kennengelernt habe, die mich durch ihre Liebe und durch ihre
Erfahrung dazu gebracht hat, mich mehr mit meiner Identität zu beschäftigen.
Das war ein sehr schwieriger Prozess. Was ist denn meine Identität: bin ich
jetzt ein Israeli, ein Palästinenser oder ein Araber? Die Frage, ob ich ein
Araber bin spielte bei mir eigentlich noch keine Rolle. Und Palästinenser: was
bin ich denn als Palästinenser, was weiss ich denn überhaupt? Dann lernte ich
bei ihr, dass man sich nur durch die Erinnerung finden kann. Ich bin nach Hause
gegangen und habe angefangen zu suchen: was ist das? Ich habe mich an meine
Kindheit zurück erinnert, was ich dort musikalisch erfahren hatte, was mich
angegriffen hatte, was mich begeistert hatte. Ich habe dann begonnen mich mit
Korangesängen zu befassen, aber nicht nur um "etwas gefunden zu haben". Die
Korangesänge hatten es mir angetan. Es gibt einen sehr berühmten Koransänger
aus Ägypten, Scheich Abdel Basset, der eine bestimmte Form entwickelt hatte,
die meiner Meinung nach zu einer der grössten Kunstformen der arabischen
Geschichte gehört. Zu Abdel Basset habe ich eine bestimmte Beziehung. 1982
waren die Massaker von Sabra und Shattila, da war ich noch klein. Als wir die
Nachricht bekamen, dass das passiert war - ich lebte damals noch in dem kleinen
Dorf Jaljulia, bei Jaffa - haben alle Menschen ihre Lautsprecher in die Fenster
gestellt und Abdel Basset gespielt - das Dorf bebte. In dem Nachbardorf war es dann noch lauter. Das waren
Klänge, die in mir hervorgerufen worden sind, und die niemals gestorben sind,
durch all die Jahre hindurch. Aber das hatte ich nicht gewusst, daher: die
Kraft der Erinnerung. Nun habe ich sechs Jahre bei Younghi Pagh-Paan studiert
und während dieser Zeit auch versucht Korangesänge mit und ohne Computer zu
analysieren. Ich habe versucht mit Akkorden zu arbeiten, also mit Harmonien, in
harmonischen Folgen zu denken, etwas, was mir sehr fremd ist. Es hat mich krank
gemacht. Durch die Beschäftigung mit Abdel Basset und seiner Musik habe ich
verstanden, dass ich linear denke, dass meine Musik eben linear ist. Ich hatte
etwas gefunden: linear und nicht harmonisch. Dazu kam der Klang der sufischen
Gebete, wie in meinem Trio "Li-Umm Kamel". Ich bin als Komponist, der seit 12
Jahren in Deutschland lebt, nicht auf der Suche danach, Europa und Arabien
miteinander zu verknüpfen. Auch interessiert mich die Frage nicht, ob ich nun
ein arabischer Komponist, ein palästinensischer Komponist, oder ein deutscher
Komponist bin. Ich bin ein Palästinenser. Ich bin ein Araber und ich bin
jemand, der seit 12 Jahren in Deutschland lebt. Und das geht auch alles nicht an
mir vobei, das heisst, die Geschichte der europäischen zeitgenössischen Musik
trage ich auch in mir. Und ich bin unendlich dankbar, dass ich hier sein darf
und dies alles hier kennengelernt habe. Das ist alles etwas, was mich auf den
Weg gebracht hat, meine eigene Musik neu zu entdecken, und nicht etwas zu suchen oder
irgendwelche alten Formen oder Modi in der europäischen Musiktradition
aufzudecken, die ich dann mit meiner eigenen Musik verknüpfen könnte.
Oliver Schneller: Mohammad Uthman Sidiq was born in Bagdad, studied in
Moscow and returned to Iraq to work with the Iraqi National Symphony
Orchestra whose conductor he was
from 1991-94. Today he lives in Amman, Jordan.
Mohammed Uthman Sidiq: Thank you. As an Iraqi musician, I never studied
composition professionally. I am a piano soloist. In 1987 I finished my studies
in Russia and went back to Baghdad. During the war between Iran and Iraq I served in the army and then in the
90ies became the conductor of the Iraqi National Orchestra . In 1993 I had to
flee to Jordan because of the war and have been working there since then. As a
musician I have had the opportunity to study both Western and some Arabic
music. My higher education has been focused on Western music but as an Arabic
musician and composer there was a
part of me that was saturated with the sounds of our country, our culture and
identity. I started composing in a more modern setting but using the sounds of
traditional instruments. It was like taking old instruments out of their
traditional contexts and introducing them to the world as "performance
instruments" that can be
confidently placed next to the instruments and sounds of the world. My idea is
to create a dialogue between Western and Arabic music. In his statement Mounir
Anastas said that you can meet Arabs who do not know what a symphony is. Well,
by the same token I would say you could meet a German musician who wouldn't
know what samai means - a certain
form in Arabic musical composition. In Arabic music we have a very rich
collection of instruments like the nai, the qanoun or the ud. I think these
instruments deserve to play a larger role in contemporary music. In
their traditional usage these instruments play a background role. They sit
behind the singer and usually play the same melody. The players of these
instruments are very bad sight readers
because they usually just play around the same maqam as the singer. My interest lies in involving them
more in composed music. For example, I wrote a concerto for nai and orchestra. The nai player was an excellent musician. But it was very
difficult for him to study two lines of music. So I worked extensively with
him. He studied my music and in the end he followed it very well. I also did
this with musicians playing the ud
and qanoun. I think that for me
as an Arabic composer and musician it is important that we give our music more
of a role in the world. There are such beautiful tuning systems, maqams and rhythmic colours.
Oliver Schneller: Many thanks to all of you for your statements. In our aim to trace migrations in the biographies of
the composers present we have encountered not only personal stories of
migration but also cultural, stylistic and aesthetic considerations. The word
"migration" surely not only covers its dictionary definition, the movement
of people, a people from one locality to the other, but carries implications reaching from categories
of form and style to states of "inner migration" brought about by changing
relationships to cultural tradition and orientation or the re-emergence of
personal memory. One common theme that I've noticed in the statements by the
speakers is the emphasis on knowledge. The history of Arabic music, which is
tied to the history of a vast geographical area stretching from North East
Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Sinai, the
Near and Middle East, to the Arabian peninsula, is itself subdivided into a
multitude of local cultural practices. During the Abbasid and Omayad periods
the theoretical codification of Arabic music began, developed further through the writings of Avicennas and Al Farabi, for instance in the
areas of rhythm and ornamentation. Islamic music has been researched by
numerous ethnomusicologists in Europe, where it is also taught at universities
and hopefully an awarness is beginning to spread about just how much of our
symphonic instrumentarium we owe to predecessors from the Arab world. So this is a category of historical
knowledge that is currently rather present in our scene. As I mentioned
yesterday before the concert, we have today access to many genres of
traditional Arabic music, especially here in Berlin. However, one conception
that Western listeners might have - and that may well be a misconception - is that Arabic music and, more generally,
Islamic music is "static" in the sense that it is bound to its forms of
traditional practice. There are the tahsin, for example, the rules of ornamentation, or the
rules of the taqasim-style of
improvisation that seem to be relatively fixed in their codification. But, if
this is at all like this, are there elements of this heritage that can actually
be developed further by composers like you? And if yes, do you have an interest
in this? Many of you have already spoken about this and some of you were rather
sceptical, for various reasons... But asked again to the point, how would you
assess the potential of this theoretically loaded body of the material of
Arabic music in your process of composition? Are there ways to incorporate it and develop it further? Or
do you react against it, or even against this notion altogether? Goodness
gracious, this is such a European thing to ask, isn't it?
Agnes Bashir: I believe that Arab culture as a whole is yet a
rather unexplored area. It has a huge potential, because for centuries people
have been passing on music, orally, without even writing it down. Only today
musicians and musicologists are collecting tunes and rhythms, like Nimr
Sirhan's work on Palestinian folk music for example. This culture is very rich
in itself and potentially it could be a huge repository for composers. This is
the good thing about our meeting here: you get to know composers who are living
in Arab countries and composers
who have emigrated and now live in the West. And it becomes clear, that there exist different
approaches in dealing with our
common musical heritage. For those living in Western cultures I suppose dealing
with new technologies and aesthetics is of primary interest. And for us, who
live in the Middle East, it's about dealing with the public and trying to
educate this public to accept a
new and possibly intellectual art. It is much more difficult. We can't afford
to distance ourselves too far from traditional music, a music that lives on in
absolutely everyone there. So this gap between high technology, "progress", and
cultural awarness in the West and the East can only be approached by moving step by step. One must include expectation in the
calculation: what can you expect from people who grow up solely on traditional
music? You can't immediately introduce them to the art of the 20th Century,
when they have hardly started to accept listening to classical music! So it is
here that I sense a psychological problem because you need to let people
realise and appreciate all the
cultural gifts they have from history first, before you move on. And many Arabs
themselves don't know their own
cultural history.
Karim Haddad I admit there is a knowledge gap about ancient Arab
music because translations are not available. And even the great books by
Al-Farabi are difficult to find in their original version. I found a copy in
Paris, but in Beruit it is impossible, especially after the war. But one thing
you must take into consideration is that knowledge about the past is not a
typically Arab problem! For Europeans - and I am also half-European -, we don't
know our Adam de La Halle, our organum etc. very well either. Sometimes this is
also a problem of translation: the notation is not in modern notation. So not
everyone understands the music of the middle ages. We can take Gregorian chant,
for example, and it's the same.
A. Bashir: But in Arabic countries there is a problem of
access. An Arab student should be able to research about how his heritage
developed. There simply is a lack of educational infrastructure.
K.Haddad: But what is knowing knowledge? You can spend your
whole life -
A. Bashir: Why does an Arab child grow up not knowing his own
culture?
K.Haddad: Because of economic problems.
A. Bashir: I agree with you, but we need to solve this cultural
question.
Oliver Schneller: Let me pose a question to Iyad Mohammed who spoke of
the notion of "duality" he's experienced
as a Jordanian-German composer studying in Minsk. You spoke of the
difference in the meaning of what
"composing" signifies in Arabic and European culture. If, as a composer, one
were to somehow operate with both concepts, the Arabic and the Western , do you
think this could help audiences in Arab countries to appreciate your music
more? Would they recognize elements that they are familiar with and thus have a
thread to hold on to when listening to your music? I am asking for your opinion
because I've attended a few concerts of "classical" music in Amman and noticed
mostly Western listeners, expatriots, in the audience. I was wondering whether
this was, aside from mere
interest, also a question of the processing of musical language. How do
you see the chances to bridge the knowledge gap so that one day there will be
predominantly Arabic audience members coming to your concert?
Iyad Mohammed: I don't know - I think this is very difficult and I
dont have much hope of getting an audience for my own compositions in Jordan.
It is difficult, but it would be advantageous if we'd initially manage to
increase audience attendance for purely classical concerts. As you said, it's
mainly the foreigners who come and perhaps some wealthy locals, who see the
concert as a social event. It's not really about the music. But for
contemporary music I don't think we're getting anywhere in a long a time.
Oliver Schneller: Samir Odeh-Tamimi , what do you think?
Samir Odeh-Tamimi:
Formell-musikalisch
gesprochen ist das schwierig. Zunächst: ich würde niemals etwas einfach
übernehmen um irgendwie musikalisch damit zu arbeiten. Ich habe fast zwei Jahre
lang daran gearbeitet, um herauszufinden, was mich an arabischer traditioneller Musik wirklich
interessiert. Erstens ist das die Form, diese unglaublich intensive Art etwas
zu tun - also ein Gebet, nicht in der Stille. Es gibt ja viele verschiedene
Formen des Gebets: es gibt Menschen, die sehr still beten, es gibt Menschen die
sehr intensiv beten, Menschen die sich hingeben, Menschen die sich ins Feuer
schmeissen, alles Formen des Gebets. Für mich ist es auch so etwas ähnliches.
Aber arabische Hörer würden nicht
sofort verstehen, dass es um Korangesänge geht. Wahrscheinlich würden sie mich
ersteinmal angreifen, weil ich überhaupt dieses Wort benutze: "Korangesang".
Das ist eine sehr schwierige Sache, wenn man über Koran und Religion mit Musik verbunden in dieser Art spricht.
Das ist es ein bisschen gefährlich. Aber ich werde die Hoffnung nicht verlieren!
Mounir Anastas:
Two points on the status of
art in general and especially of music in terms of religion. The dominant word
of the Arabic world is "Islam". In the Islamic religion there is a rich musical
heritage which we can't call "music", unfortunately. Formally we actually can't call it "Korangesang" - we should
say Q'uran tajwid, a special word
that does not exist in any other language. It's rather contradictory because
this is very fine music, a kind of psalmody.
Like the Sufi, this is an
extra-Koranic culture of several levels, that Samir knows better than I do. But
unfortunately and paradoxically in one part of Islamic culture music is harram - religiously forbidden. It's a contradiction,
because when you listen to the Koran being read or chanted it is very musical
and very refined, but you don't
have the right to consider it music! So there is one part of our musical
heritage. We have a very heavy, rich musical heritage with a strong link to
Byzantine liturgy and even Greek orthodox liturgy.
There are still a number of
contradictions in the entanglement of religious and musical practice,
intensified by the social status of different members of the population, who
have different perceptions of the musical status in society. Let's roughly say
the majority of the population, with not much acces to higher education, still
consider music to be harram,
forbidden.
This reference is not in the
Koran, but in one of the hadithe,
the different speeches of the prophet Mohammed, and in a fatwah, derived from it. When there was a problem that was
not treated in the Koran, muslim clerics found a solution in the form of a fatwah. There
is another fatwah that is
advantageous to music, as it actually states that music is not harram after all. But then there are still people who would
rather follow the hadithe,
because they consider a hadith
more authoritative than the more recent fatwah... And on top of that is the social hierarchy that can
be detected not so much in the
middle classes but in the lower classes: here they think music is ok. The
reality is, we can find music everywhere.
They all listen to music. And the upper classes not only listen to music
but encourage its production. But they are in the minorty, so once again it's a
problem of knowledge. I think we as Arab composers, whether Christian or Muslim
or mixed - like Iyad Mohammad - are all influenced in one way or the other by
this culture. And as for the question about musical traditions, whether they
can be advanced or not: no one forbids any composer, whether he is European or
not, to use any element from any culture. This is even a tendency
considered "normal" in
contemporary music. Think of Messiaen's use of the deci tala, or Xenakis using structural principles of Balinese
and Javanese music. Or think of Beethoven. He incorporated popular tunes in his music. But the
point is that once he used them in his music they ceased to be "popular" music,
in a certain sense, and instead became part of the structure of a composed
musical artifice. In terms of "advancing" our own Arabic musical tradition: I
think we can't imitate or reconstruct
the trajectory of European history. We can't go back, take everything in
our tradition and say, "OK, we'll start here and then in two centuries we'll
reach polyphony, then dodecaphony, then aleatoricism and then we will be modern
or post-modern!"
Publikumsfrage (Helmut
Burkard):
Aber wie ist es mit der
Verpflichtung der eigenen Tradition gegenüber? Sie sollten sie als arabische
Komponisten nicht vernachlässigen.
Samir Odeh-Tamimi:
Ich fühle mich als
arabischer Komponist nicht dazu verpflichtet, arabische traditionelle Musik
nach Europa zu bringen. Der berühmte Lautenspieler Mounir Bashir hat sich hier
verdient gemacht und ich bin ihm dafür sehr dankbar. Aber ich glaube wir gehen
hier und heute einen total anderen Weg.
Publikumskommentar
(Dr. Martin Schneller):
Something which struck me in
this discussion is that normally we relate emigration and exile almost
instinctively to something rather negative. It has the connotation of loosing
one's home, one's roots and so on. I found it impressive that some of the
panelists here expressed the
experience of exile and migration as something quite positive. Mr Saed Haddad
mentioned his "otherness" as a source of enrichment, Mr Iyad
Mohammad discovered a creative potential in his "duality" of cultural
orientations, while Mr Tamimi quoted Darwish: "Nur die Fremde lehrt mich wer
ich bin". Perhaps these indications point towards a new definition of
migration, perhaps even exile, as an element of global thinking, a mindset that
will define the future of our societies.
Mounir Anastas:
Two points on the dialogue
between Orient and Occident. The preservation of the tradition. I agree with
Samir Odeh-Tamimi: it's not the contemporary composers duty to preserve the
tradition as it is. There are certain musicians and musicologists, also from
the West, who do an important and excellent job here. And yet, if some of us
feel we want to use traditional elements, nobody should forbid it. But in no
way is this our obligation. We're all in agreement in regard to the first
point: the preservation of
tradition is important. The second point concerns the dialogue between East and
West and this is a harder question, complicated by political and
economical problems. They lead to
an imbalance compared to Europe: we don't yet have orchestras, ensembles or
institutions, or any other means to spread our music around the world, while
Europe has a long tradition of exporting its culture. It's a material question.
In the Arab world there are unfortunately still other priorities.
_______________________
Transcribed by Joni Taylor
Edited by Oliver Schneller