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"Musicians, Arabic"
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Zakariyya Ahmad: Authenticity in a Modernizing Period
Zakariyya Ahmad (1896–1961) is one of the most prominent composers of modern Egypt. He is remembered today for having composed numerous songs for Um Kulthum (1904–75) and other lead Egyptian singers, and for his long collaboration with the colloquial poet and political satirist Bayram al-Tunsi (1893–1961). He also had a lasting impact on Egyptian vocal music in the early 20th century, a period defined by technological innovation and changing popular tastes. Although contemporary composers such as Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahhab (1902–91) were considered “innovative” for blending traditional Arabic music with Western musical elements, Zakariyya Ahmad was counted as traditional: he remained loyal to the maqām (a system of melodic scales) while striving to preserve and develop traditional musical forms with Arabic and Egyptian aṣāla (authenticity). In addition to his musical contributions, Zakariyya Ahmad also played an important role in the Egyptian cinema, both as composer and actor. He was also a political activist, composing songs around national concerns. 1
Journal Article
Revisiting the Heritagization of Arab Music in Postcolonial Cairo
This article revisits and expands on my previous research on the entanglement of state power, nationalist ideology, lingering coloniality, and heritage production in Arab music in postcolonial Cairo since the late 1960s. 1 It takes into consideration the intersection of politics and elite class positionality with Arab music heritage, an “absent presence” in my previous research and in much of the literature on heritage. 2 I argue that the heritagization of Arab music transformed, re-signified and (re)positioned a largely mass-mediated musical practice that was embedded in urban popular culture into a highbrow expressive domain, a discourse of privilege that conferred cultural and social capital to music, musicians, and audiences. 3
Journal Article
Allah, Allah, Allah: The Role of God in the Arab Version of The Voice
This article discusses Arabic expressions referring to God, such as inshallah, mashallah, and alhamdulillah in the 2014 season of the Arab version of the talent show The Voice. It discusses the question to what extent these expressions are used by the various actors in the show, in particular its four jury members and three presenters, and it tries to explain why they use them and to what purpose. The analysis is set against the background of the question what the relationship is between ‘language’ (in this case, the various varieties of Arabic) and ‘religion’ (in this case, Christianity and Islam). The analysis yielded nearly 40 Arabic expressions referring to God (Allah or Rabb (Lord)) that together showed up more than 600 times in the 10 episodes of the show that were the object of analysis. The conclusion is that the expressions indeed have ‘religious’ roots but that they have at the same time become part and parcel of not necessarily religiously intended speaking styles expressing all kind of feelings, such as astonishment, surprise, disappointment, etc. This conclusion goes well with observations made in earlier research on the questions at stake.
Journal Article
Of Echoes and Utterances: A Brief Sketch of Arabic Hauntings in Hindi Cinema and Song
On a Saturday afternoon in January 2017, Shah Rukh Khan—Hindi cinema's reigning star of the last thirty years—arrived at Bollywood Parks Dubai to promote his latest film release, Raees (2017). To the crowd of adoring Arab and South Asian fans and journalists who had flocked to the theme park to catch a glimpse of the “Badshah of Bollywood” and brand ambassador of Dubai, SRK unveiled the much-anticipated Arabic version of “Zaalima” (Cruel One), the film's breakout hit song. Rendered in Darija by Moroccan pop artists Abdelfettah Grini and Jamila El Badaoui, this version of “Zaalima” proved an awkward copy of the original, its unwieldy Arabic lyrics molded to fit as tightly within the blueprint melody as possible. “Dīrī fiya al-thiqa, al-gharām hā howa” (Put your confidence in me, for love is here) did not have quite the same ring or seamlessness as the Hindi-Urdu “Main sau martaba dīwāna hua” (I fell in love a hundred times over), with the Arabic line painstakingly crafted to echo the “hua” ending of the Hindi-Urdu.
Journal Article
Beneficial Effects of Musicality on the Development of Productive Phonology Skills in Second Language Acquisition
Previous studies show beneficial effects of musicality on the acquisition of a second language (L2). While most research focused on perceptual aspects, only few studies investigated the effects of musicality on productive phonology. The present study tested if musicality can predict productive phonological skills in L2 acquisition. 63 students with no previous exposure to Arabic were asked to repeatedly listen to and immediately reproduce short sentences in standard Arabic. Before the sentence reproduction task, they completed an auditory discrimination task in three different between-subjects condition: attentive, in which participants were asked to discriminate phonological variations in the same Arabic sentence that they were asked to reproduce later; non-attentive, in which participants were asked to detect beeps in the same Arabic sentences without paying attention to their phonological content; and no-exposure, in which participants performed the discrimination task in another language (Serbian). The first, third and seventh reproductions of each participant were rated for intelligibility, accent and syllabic errors by two independent evaluators, both native speakers of Arabic. Primary results showed that the intelligibility of the reproduced sentences was higher in participants with high-musicality scores in the Advanced Measures of Music Audiation (AMMA). Moreover, the intelligibility of sentences produced by highly musical participants improved more over time than the intelligibility of participants with lower musicality scores. Previous exposure to the Arabic sentence was beneficial in both the attentive and non-attentive conditions. Our results support the idea that musicality can have effects on productive skills even in the very first stages of L2 acquisition.
Journal Article
Crowds Enjoy Return of Embassy Open House Tours
After a two-year hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic, crowds of tourists and locals alike experienced the food, culture and history of Washington, DC's many embassies with the return of Cultural Tourism DC's Around the World Embassy Tour on May 7. Despite unseasonably cold and rainy weather, throngs lined up early to view the artwork, furnishings and architecture of the diplomatic missions. The highlight for many was the delicious cuisine of the different regions, along with musical performances. At Algeria's Embassy, musicians entertained the long line of visitors waiting to enter with traditional Chaabi, North African Arabic music.
Journal Article
Computing prosody to detect the Arud meter in Punjabi Ghazal
Ghazal is a very popular poetic form of Punjabi poetry. Every verse of a Ghazal follows the same rhythmical pattern. Punjabi Ghazal is written in Hindi meter and Arud meter. In this research, we deal with Arud meter. Arud is the science of versification being followed in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi as well as some other languages of South Asia. It is a complex set of rules and has a steep learning curve for a novice. In this work, we devised an algorithm to detect the Arud meter in the Punjabi verse and developed a web-based application as well. This web application will not only facilitate the professional poets but also help the students to analyse the poetry in the context of prosody rules. Computing prosody of any poetry depends on recitation instead of written transcription. In the first phase of orthography, we analyse the text phonetically and phonologically to transform it according to the recitation by adding (as in gemination), removing (as in weightless nasalization and aspiration), modifying (as in tonal sounds) and grafting (to assimilate the sounds of neighbouring words) the letters. In the second phase of verse scansion, the verse is passed through a pipeline process of syllabification and step by step weight assignments, figuring out short, flexible and long syllables, ending up in one or more rhythmical patterns. All of these rhythmical patterns are compared one by one to standard and most famous 37 Arud meters. The Cartesian product type matching between verse patterns and Arud meters is solved using nested iterations, regular expressions and finite state automata. The meter that matches with verse pattern is declared as the Arud meter of the verse. This automatic process is more efficient than the manual process and yields satisfactory results.
Journal Article