Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:09:15.950Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The art/popular music paradigm and the Tunisian Ma'lūf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Ruth Davis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article was triggered by a conversation with Jan Fairley, some years back, when she first put to me her idea for a special Middle East issue of Popular Music. My natural enthusiasm was tempered with some quite fundamental reservations. Was there such a phenomenon as ‘popular music’, in any generally accepted sense of the word, in Middle Eastern society? And if so, how were we to identify its repertoires, musicians and contexts? Could a useful distinction be made between ‘popular’ and ‘non-popular’ (or specifically, ‘art’ music) genres? And who, among my Middle Eastern music colleagues, would consider themselves scholars of ‘popular music’? As we discussed these and other such questions, Jan homed in on the truism that, for me, drawing from my experiences in Tunisian music, hit the nub of the problem: ‘of course, “popular” is different from “traditional”’.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , October 1996 , pp. 313 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baily, John. 1981. ‘Cross-cultural perspectives in popular music: the case of Afghanistan’, Popular Music, 1, 105–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danielson, Virginia. 1996. ‘New nightingales of the Nile: popular music in Egypt since the 1970s’, Popular Music, 15/3, pp. 299–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Ruth. In press for 1997. ‘Cultural policy and the Tunisian Ma'luf: redefining a tradition’, Ethnomusicology, 41/1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guettat, Mahmoud. 1980. La Musique Classique du Maghreb (Paris)Google Scholar
Jones, L. JaFran. 1987. ‘A sociohistorical perspective on Tunisian women as professional musicians’, in Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective, ed. Koskoff, Ellen (New York) pp. 169–78Google Scholar
Kacem, Abdelaziz. 1973. ‘La Politique Culturelle Tunisienne’, Annuaire de l'Afrique du Nord, pp. 29–44 (Tunis)Google Scholar
El-Mahdi, Salah. n.d. ‘Al-nuba fi'l maghrib al-'arbi’, in Al-Turath Al-Musiqi Al-Tunisi, vol. 3, ed. pp 3–16Google Scholar
El-Mahdi, Salah and Marzuqi, Muhammad. 1981. Al-Ma'had al-Rashīdī (Tunis)Google Scholar
Manuel, Peter. 1988. Popular Musics of the Non-Western World: An Introductory Survey (Oxford)Google Scholar
Ministry of Cultural Affairs. n.d. Al-Turāth Al-Mūsīqī Al-Tūnīsī (The Tunisian Musical Heritage) vols. 1–9. (Tunis)Google Scholar
Nettl, Bruno. 1970. ‘Attitudes to Persian music in Teheran, 1969’, Musical Quarterly, 56, 183–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noktar, Fathallah and Sallami, Rachid. 1980. Musique Arabe et son Publique. Sondage des gouts des étudiants de l'ENSEPS de Tunis en Matiere de Musique (Hammamet)Google Scholar
Powers, Harold S. 1980. ‘Classical music, cultural roots and colonial rule: an Indic musicologist looks at the Muslim world’, Asian Music, 12, 5–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Racy, Ali Jihad. 1981. ‘Music in contemporary Cairo: a comparative overview’, Asian Music, 12/1, 4–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Racy, Ali Jihad. 1982. ‘Musical aesthetics in present-day Cairo’, Ethnomusicology, 26/3, 391–406CrossRefGoogle Scholar