Element contents
Series: Elements in Music and the City
Music from Aleppo during the Syrian War
Displacement and Memory in Hello Psychaleppo's Electro-Tarab
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2023
Summary
Aleppo is regarded as one of the historical centres of an urban Arab art music tradition known as 'tarab'. During the war that followed Syria's 2011 political uprisings, vast parts of the city were destroyed. This Element explores how 'tarab' lives on in new contexts. It does so through a focus on the work of Hello Psychaleppo, one of Aleppo's displaced musicians and the pioneer of 'electro-tarab', an eclectic style of urban electronic dance music that is conceived as a homage to Aleppo's musical legacy. Whether local religious chants, Palestinian poetry, or the image of a yellow man, electro-tarab includes an inventory of audio, visual and literary samples. These samples help conceptualise the role music has played during the Syrian war; they offer insights into Aleppo's musical and diasporic afterlife; and they illuminate some of the socio-aesthetic parameters that characterise contemporary Arab electronic music.
Keywords
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Series: Elements in Music and the CityOnline ISBN: 9781009071765Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 20 July 2023
References
Achcar, G. (2013). The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising. London: Saqi Books.Google Scholar
Alaghband-Zadeh, C. (2017). Listening to North Indian Classical Music: How Embodied Ways of Listening Perform Imagined Histories and Social Class. Ethnomusicology 61 (2), 207–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Armbrust, W. (2001). The Impact of the Media on Egyptian Music. In Danielson, V., Marcus, S. & Reynolds, D. (eds.), Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 6, The Middle East. London: Routledge, pp. 232–242.Google Scholar
Attar, F. a.D. (2011). The Conference of the Birds. Translated by Darbandi, A. & Davis, D. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Azaryahu, M. (2007). Tel Aviv: Mythography of a City. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.Google Scholar
Baily, J. & Collyer, M. (2006). Introduction: Music and Migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32 (2), 167–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barakeh, K. (2014). Regarding the Pain of Others and Damascus. In Halasa, M., Omareen, Z. & Mahfoud, N. (eds.), Syria Speaks Art and Culture from the Frontline. London: Saqi, pp. 157–64.Google Scholar
Barthes, R. (2013 [1957]). Mythologies. Translated by Howard, R. New York: Hill and Wang.Google Scholar
Bascom, W. (1965). The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narratives. The Journal of American Folklore 78 (307), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, J. (2004). Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Behdad, A. (1994). Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution. Cork: Cork University Press.Google Scholar
Born, G. (2013). Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burkhalter, T. (2013). Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burkhalter, T., Dickinson, K. & Harbert, B. (2013). The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Cabot, H. (2016). ‘Refugee Voices’: Tragedy, Ghosts, and the Anthropology of Not Knowing. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 45 (6), 645–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatty, D. (2017). Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State. London: Hurst & Co.Google Scholar
Chatty, D. (2014). Anthropology and Forced Migration. In Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K. & Sigona, N. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 74–85.Google Scholar
Dalal, M. Q. (2006a). al-Qudud al-diniyah: baḥth tarikhi wa-musiqi fi al-qudud al-Ḥalabiyah [The Religious Qudud: A Historical and Musical Study of the Aleppian Qudud]. Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafah fi al-Jumhuriyah al-ʻArabiyah al-Suriyah.Google Scholar
Dalal, M. Q. (2006b). Shaykh al-mutribin Sabri Mudallal wa-athar Ḥalab fi ghinaʼihi wa-alḥanih: dirasah taḥliliyah musiqiyah li-turath Ḥalab al-ghinaʼi [Shaykh al-mutribin – Sabri Mudallal and the Influence of Aleppo in His Song and Compositions: A Musical and Analytical Study of the Vocal Heritage of Aleppo]. Damascus: Wizarat al-Thaqafah fi al-Jumhuriyah al-ʻArabiyah al-Suriyah.Google Scholar
Danielson, V. (1997). The Voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Demerdash, N. (2012). Consuming Revolution: Ethics, Art, and Ambivalence in the Arab Spring. New Middle Eastern Studies 2, 1–17.Google Scholar
Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Farmer, H. G. (1930). Historical Facts for the Arabian Musical Influence. London: William Reeves.Google Scholar
Figueroa, M. A. (2022). Post-Tarab: Music and Affective Politics in the US SWANA Diaspora. Ethnomusicology 66 (2), 236–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frishkopf, M. (2021). Musical Journeys. In Bayat, A. & Herrera, L. (eds.), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 157–74.Google Scholar
Frishkopf, M. (ed.). (2010). Music and Media in the Arab World. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.Google Scholar
Frishkopf, M. (2001). Tarab in the Mystic Sufi Chant of Egypt. In Zuhur, S. (ed.), Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Music, and the Visual Arts of the Middle East. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, pp. 239–76.Google Scholar
Fulton-Melanson, J. (2022). Post-Tarab Identities in Diaspora: A Sonic Imaginary of Arab Canada. In Abdelhady, D. & Aly, R. (eds.), Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas. London: Routledge, pp. 197–208.Google Scholar
Fulton-Melanson, J. (2021). The Post-Tarab Soundscape: Underground Electronic Dance Music Culture and the Arab-Canadian Diaspora. Unpublished PhD dissertation, York University.Google Scholar
Gabiam, N. (2016). The Politics of Suffering: Syria’s Palestinian Refugee Camps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gill, D. (2017). Melancholic Modalities: Affect, Islam, and Turkish Classical Musicians. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Glasser, J. (2016). The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, A. (1988). Sample and Hold: Pop Music in the Digital Age of Reproduction, Critical Quarterly 30 (3), 34–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habash, D. (2021). ‘Do Like You Did in Aleppo’: Negotiating Space and Place among Syrian Musicians in Istanbul. Journal of Refugee Studies 34 (2), 1370–86.Google Scholar
Hajj, H. (2016). The Syrian Musicians in Istanbul: The Relationship between Repertoire and Stage. Alternatif Politika 8, 474–84.Google Scholar
al-Haj Saleh, Y. (2017). Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy. London: Hurst Publishers.Google Scholar
Halasa, M., Omareen, Z. & Mahfoud, N. (eds.) (2014). Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline. London: Saqi Books.Google Scholar
al-Hardan, A. (2016). Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hawas, S. (2012). Global Translations and Translating the Global: Discursive Regimes of Revolt. In Mehrez, S. (ed.), Translating Egypt’s Revolution: The Language of Tahrir. New York: Cairo University Press, pp. 277–305.Google Scholar
Hirschkind, C. (2006). The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Hirshberg, J. (1990). Radical Displacement, Post Migration Conditions and Traditional Music. The World of Music 32 (3), 68–89.Google Scholar
Iino, L. (2009). Inheriting the Ghammāz-Oriented Tradition: D’Erlanger and Aleppine Maqām Practice Observed. Ethnomusicology Forum 18 (2), 261–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ismail, S. (2011). The Syrian Uprising: Imagining and Performing the Nation. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 11, 538–49.Google Scholar
Jarjour, T. (2018). Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jasim, A. (2016). The Development of New Political Subjectivities amongst Syria ́s Palestinians during the Syrian Uprising. Unpublished MA thesis, Philipps University of Marburg.Google Scholar
Karkabi, N. (2020). Self-Liberated Citizens: Unproductive Pleasures, Loss of Self, and Playful Subjectivities in Palestinian Raves. Anthropological Quarterly 93 (4), 679–708.Google Scholar
Karkabi, N. (2018). Electro-Dabke: Performing Cosmopolitan Nationalism and Borderless Humanity. Public Culture 30 (1), 173–96.Google Scholar
Katz, I. J. (2015). Henry George Farmer and the First International Congress of Arab Music (Cairo 1932). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Khalili, L. (2007). Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
al-Khateeb, A., Rollins, T. & Shaheen, A. (2020). A New Palestinian Community? Syria’s Uprising and Conflict, from the Perspective of the Palestinian Camps. Berlin: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung. www.rosalux.de/en/publication/id/42803/a-new-palestinian-community.Google Scholar
Kligman, M. L. (2009). Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music, and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Lacroix, T. & Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2013.) Refugee and Diaspora Memories: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting. Journal of Intercultural Studies 34 (6), 684–96.Google Scholar
Levi, E. & Scheding, F. (2010). Music and Displacement: Diasporas, Mobilities, and Dislocations in Europe and Beyond. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
Lidskog, R. (2016). The Role of Music in Ethnic Identity Formation in Diaspora: A Research Review. International Social Science Journal 66, 23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lohman, L. (2010). Umm Kulthūm: Artistic Agency and the Shaping of an Arab Legend, 1967–2007. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Lenssen, A. (2020). The Filmmaker as Artisan: An Interview with the Members of Abounaddara. Third Text 34 (1), 159–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manuel, P. (1995). Music as Symbol, Music as Simulacrum: Postmodern, Pre-Modern, and Modern Aesthetics in Subcultural Popular Musics. Popular Music 14 (2), 227–39.Google Scholar
Massad, J. (2003). Liberating Songs: Palestine Put to Music. Journal of Palestine Studies, 32 (3), 21–38.Google Scholar
McLeod, K. & DiCola, P. (2011). Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, P. D. (ed.) (2008). Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Morris, B. (2008). 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Munif, Y. (2020). The Syrian Revolution: Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Navas, E. (2012). Remix Theory the Aesthetics of Sampling. Vienna: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nickell, C. (2020) Promises and Pitfalls: The Two-Faced Nature of Streaming and Social Media Platforms for Beirut-Based Independent Musicians. Popular Communication 18 (1), 48–64.Google Scholar
Nooshin, L. (2018). ‘Our Angel of Salvation’: Towards an Understanding of Iranian Cyberspace as an Alternative Sphere of Musical Sociality. Ethnomusicology, 62 (3), 341–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Öğüt, E. H. (2021). Music, Migration, and Public Space: Syrian Street Music in the Political Context. Arts 10 (4), article 71.Google Scholar
Ong, W. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Parker, J. D. (2018). Song and Rebellion in the Syrian Uprising. Middle Eastern Studies, 54 (6): 1015–28.Google Scholar
Pearlman, W. (2017). We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria. New York: Custom House.Google Scholar
Pinto, P. G. (2016). Mystical Bodies/Unruly Bodies: Experience, Empowerment and Subjectification in Syrian Sufism. Social Compass, 63 (2), 197–212.Google Scholar
Pinto, P. G. (2006). Sufism, Moral Performance and the Public Sphere in Syria. Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée 115–16, 155–171.Google Scholar
Poché, C. (2001). Musical Life in Aleppo. In Danielson, V., Marcus, S. & Reynolds, D. (eds.), Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 6, The Middle East. London: Routledge, pp. 594–600.Google Scholar
Racy, A. J. (2003). Making Music in the Arab World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Racy, A. J. (1991). Creativity and Ambience: An Ecstatic Feedback Model from Arab Music. The World of Music 33 (3), 7–28.Google Scholar
Rajaʼi, F. & Darwish, N.A. (1955). Min kunuzina: al-Muwashshaḥat al-Andalusiyyah [From Our Heritage: The Andalusian Muwashshaḥat]. Aleppo: Maṭbaʻat al-Sharq.Google Scholar
Ramsay, G. & Askland, H. H. (2022). Displacement as Condition: A Refugee, a Farmer and the Teleology of Life, Ethnos 87 (3), 600–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rasmussen, A. K. (1996). Theory and Practice at the ‘Arabic Org’: Digital Technology in Contemporary Arab Music Performance. Popular Music 15 (3), 345–65.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, A. K., Impey, A., Willson, R. B. & Aksoy, O. (2019). Call and Response: SEM President’s Roundtable 2016, ‘Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees’. Ethnomusicology 63 (2), 279–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reyes, A. (1999). Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Rietveld, H. (2011). Infinite Noise Spirals: The Musical Cosmopolitanism of Psytrance. In St. John, G. (ed.), The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance. London: Routledge, pp. 69–88.Google Scholar
Rodgers, T. (2003). On the Process and Aesthetics of Sampling in Electronic Music Production. Organised Sound 8 (3), 313–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, T. (1994). Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Sa’di, A. H. & Abu-Lughod, L. (eds.) (2007). Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Safi, O. (2007). ʿAṭṭar, Farid Al-Din. In Fleet, K., Krämer, G., Matringe, D., Nawas, J., and Rowson, K. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden: Brill Reference Online. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_23976.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2019). From Silence into Song: Affective Horizons and Nostalgic Dwelling among Syrian Musicians in Istanbul. Rast Musicology Journal 7 (2), 2050–64.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2018). Nightingales and Sweet Basil: The Cultural Geography of Aleppine Song. In Frishkopf, M. & Spinetti, F. (eds.), Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 146–65.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2016). Sounding Home: Syrian Musicians in Istanbul. Anthropology News 57 (5–6), 8–9.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2006). Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2003a). al-Muwashshahât and al-Qudûd al-Halabiyya: Two Genres in the Aleppine Wasla. Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 37 (1), 82–101.Google Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2003b). Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage. American Anthropologist 105 (2), 266–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, J. H. (2003c). Emotion, Performance, and Temporality in Arab Music: Reflections on Tarab. Cultural Anthropology 18 (1), 72–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelemay, K. K. (1998). Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sigona, N. (2014). The Politics of Refugee Voices: Representations, Narratives, and Memories. In Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K. & Sigona, N. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 369–82.Google Scholar
Silverstein, S. (2016). The Punk Arab: Demystifying Omar Souleyman’s Techno-Dabke. In Veal, M. E. & Tammy, K. E. (eds.), Punk Ethnography: Artists and Scholars Listen to Sublime Frequencies. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, pp. 265–87.Google Scholar
Silverstein, S. (2012). Syria’s Radical Dabka. Middle East Report 263. https://merip.org/2012/05/syrias-radical-dabka/.Google Scholar
De Sousa Santos, B. (2018). The End of the Cognitive Empire: The Coming of Age of Epistemologies of the South. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sprengel, D. (2020). Street Concerts and Sexual Harassment in Post-Mubarak Egypt: Ṭarab as Affective Politics. In Fischlin, D. & Porter, E. (eds.), Playing for Keeps: Improvisation in the Aftermath, New York: Duke University Press, pp. 160–90.Google Scholar
St John, G. (2013). Aliens Are Us: Cosmic Liminality, Remixticism, and Alienation in Psytrance. The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 25 (2), 186–204.Google Scholar
St John, G. (2003). Post-Rave Technotribalism and the Carnival of Protest. In Muggleton, D. & Weinzierl, R. (eds.), The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg, pp. 65–82.Google Scholar
Stokes, M. (2009). ‘Abd al-Halim’s Microphone. In Nooshin, L. (ed.), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Farnham: Ashgate Press, pp. 55–73.Google Scholar
Stone, C. (2008). Fayruz, the Rahbani Brothers, Jerusalem, and the Leba-stinian Song. In Mayer, T., & Mourad, S. A. (eds.), Jerusalem: Idea and Reality. London: Routledge, pp. 155–67.Google Scholar
Stone, C. (2007). Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The Fairouz and Rahbani Nation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stone, L. (2006). Blessed Perplexity: The Topos of Ḥayrat in ʿAṭṭār’s Manṭiq al-Ṭayr. In Lewisohn, L. & Shackle, C. (eds.), ʿAttar and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight. London: Tauris Publishers, pp. 95–111.Google Scholar
Swedenburg, T. (1990) The Palestinian Peasant as National Signifier. Anthropological Quarterly 63 (1), 18–30.Google Scholar
Tahhan, S. (2008). Al-ḥakawati al-suri [The Syrian Storyteller]. Damascus: Dār Kanʻān.Google Scholar
Tahhan, S. & Rugh, A. B. (2005). Folktales from Syria. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, T. D. (2016). Neoliberal Capitalism and the Rise of Digital Sampling. In Bull, M. & Back, L., (eds.), The Auditory Culture Reader (2nd ed.). London: Routledge, pp. 445–52.Google Scholar
Taylor, T. D. (2001). Strange Sounds: Music, Technology and Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wedeen, L. (2019). Authoritarian Apprehensions Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wenz, C. (in press). ‘I Say She Is a Muṭriba’: Memories of Aleppo’s Jewish Female Musicians. In Fruehauf, T. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Music. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wiedemann, F. 2019. Remixing Battle Rap and Arabic Poetic Battling. Rivista sul Mediterraneo islamico / Università della Calabria 4, 13–28.Google Scholar
Yassin-Kassab, R. & Al-Shami, L. (2016). Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. London: Pluto Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuhur, S. (2000). Asmahan’s Secrets: Woman, War and Song. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by