| Iraqi
Traditional Music Revisited in a War Era
As Iraq makes daily
news coverage for the rapidly progressing political events many are
concerned about the preservation of traditional Iraqi arts.
Among them is the uniquely Iraqi music genre called Maqam
Baghdadi, a style of singing distinguished from the rest of
the Arab World in the performance, composition, and instrumentation.
In an effort to highlight this art Inaya Jaber, an art critic and a columnist
in the As Safir Lebanese newspaper, recently wrote two pieces
on the subject featuring female Iraqi singers of this genre,
the late Salima Murad and Maida Nazhat. Inaya Jaber beautifully
described the accomplishments of Salima Murad and elaborated
on the details of three of her songs: "Hatha Mu Insaf
Minnak" (Not Fair of You), "Alhajr Mu' Ada
Ghariba" (Abandonment is not Strange Behavior),
and "Qalbak Sakhr Jalmud" (Your Heart is Rock Hard).
While eloquently describing
how the lyrics reflect the society and lifestyle of the historical
capital city and how exclusively Baghdadi are the lyrics,
composition and the common rhythmic pattern known as jurjina,
Jaber made the innocent mistake of referring to these
songs as coming from the traditional folk music reservoir
without identifying the composers (sadly, a common practice
for authors to attribute songs to old folklore instead of
explicitly stating "composer unknown" if they do not know
the composer). This prompted a strongly worded counter article
from Hussain al-Sakkaf, who criticized Jaber's research.
Sakkaf asserts that these songs were composed by Saleh al-Kuwaiti
who along with brother Daoud, Yousef Zarur, Salim Zabli as
well as Salima Murad herself were Iraqi Jews who produced
significant works in the period from 1930-1950. The names
of the composers of Murad's songs were coincidentally confirmed
by an article in Al Hayat Newspaper (25 February 2005 ) by
Ali Ajjam, without reference to their religion.
This debate was not
particularly interesting until a sudden twist was introduced
by Sakkaf's claim that in 1973, the then Iraqi vice president
Saddam Hussein formed a committee to study the Iraqi musical
tradition and appointed the late world famous oud
player and composer Munir Bashir as its head. Committee membership
also included the then director of the Iraqi Radio and Television,
Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, later famous for being the Information
Minister appearing in the nightly news to deny the American
invasion of Iraq.
This committee declared its charter as producing an inventory
of legitimate Iraqi songs: "keep the good ones and destroy
the bad ones." These were apparently code words for erasing
any reference to works by Iraqi Jews. Salima Murad was spared
the purge because she had converted to Islam when she married
the singer Nazem al-Ghazali, who is credited for preserving
the Maqam Baghdadi after the all-time leader and teacher, Muhammad
al-Qubanchi. Al-Ghazali had further popularized the repertoire
by moving closer in performance style to the popular music
of the Middle East. Today, Kazem
al-Saher and Ilham Madfaii have taken inspiration from this
reservoir to write their own popular material.
Nobody will know if
the committee had a hidden agenda since getting a surviving
member to admit it is unlikely. Except for diehard conspiracy
theorists, this may be less relevant as long as the credit
is historically restored to the composers. They probably would
have wanted to share their art and stay above the politics.
-
Al Jadid Staff Writers
Vol. 10, no. 49
(Fall 2005).
Copyright (c) 2005
by Al Jadid
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