Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrea Deagon
We're busy tonight!
I think it will help to quote some more from Racy's Making Music in the Arab World.
Pages 5-6. Quote begins:
[Tarab] denotes a number of closely related phenomena. First, the word is used generically sa a reference to the indigenous, essentially secular music of Near-Eastern Arab cities. In other words, it denotes the theoretically based, modally structured, and professionally oriented tradition of music making ... The term tarab is similar in meaning to the word fann, which literally means "art," or "craft," and has been used in reference to the local urban music. Quite prevalent is the expression fann al-tarab, which means "the art of tarab," and similarly denotes the music as an artistic domain. In a more specific sense, however, "tarab" refers to an older repertoire, which is rooted in the pre-World-War II musical practice in Egypt and the east-Mediterranean Arab world and is directly associated with emotional evocation.
The term "tarab" also describes the musical effect per se, or more specifically, the extraordinary emotional state evoked by the music... In familiar terms, tarab can be described as a musically induced state of ecstasy, or as "enchantment" (Danielson 1997: 11-12), "aesthetic emotion" (Lagrange 1996:17) and "the feeling roused by music" (Shiloah 1995:16). In this book the familiar term "ecstasy" is used ... (End quote)
Cathy, I didn't realize that tarab music was used to describe afropop. Oh dear. But no reason afropop can't produce ecstasy, I guess. I was using it mainly to refer to the music of the takht ensemble, since this form of music & ensemble existed before raqs sharqi and exhibited the kind of complexity raqs sharqi shows.
As dancers we obviously gravitate to the "familiar terms" Racy describes, since the other uses seem to refer specifically to music rather than dance. But I do think the term is overused a bit now -- used to mean ecstasy but cut off from its roots in traditional musical forms. But hey, if afropop is tarab music, then we're not the only ones using tarab in this way.
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Dear Andrea,
I have his and Dr Jack Logan's notes from "Arab Music Part 1" and his work discussing Arab improvisation "The many faces of improvisation; the Arab taqsim as a musical symbol". From what you quote from his work, and from reading my own information, it does seem he sees it as a musical situation in which this feeling of tarab might be created rather than it being a specific musical form. As dancers, I think we see music differently than Dr, Racy and when I attended a lecture by him, I noted that he is really, really in love with music and I think this state of tarab happens for him as easily as a Tibetan rinpoche falls into a stare of meditation. I do not think this is true for every musician. I respect him immensely.
He also can go off into his own flights of fancy, such as his "Ancient Egypt"
offering, which I hope to hear some day. Ann K. Rassmussen of William and Mary discussed it the Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin in 1997. The article , called "Made in America: Historical and Contemproray Recordings of Middle Eastern Music in the United States", discusses Racy and others and their music in some detail. I really REALLY am finding that I need to go back and look at my researches more often because I have a lot of info that I have forgotten about!
In reading his work on taqsim, I can see that his writing style is very academic and precise in quality, but I still do not think that there is a specific kind of music called "tarab music", but that tarab can happen under the p[erfect conditions. He writes in his taqsim lecture that "the free composing and improvising along certain melodic models seemed to resist any rational typology of their grouping". Though he does not use the word "tarab" when discussing the altered state of consciousness of the improvisational work of jazz musician and the "duende" offerings of the Flamenco musician, he does hint that this is all a sort of magical process and I believe he relates it to the Arab tarab at some point in this lecture.... I just can not find where. He does discuss "saltanah" or ecstatic content in that is tied to feeling the cultural emotional language of the music, etc.
Regards,
A'isha