After featuring the Sultana of Tarab Music, the Prince of Arabic Violin, the Master of Buzuq, Hajja Zeinab El Mansouria, the rich music of Yemen, we share with our audience Arab songs of Satire and Resistance.
Music is a powerful force for healing and reconnecting us with our roots and shared humanity in a world of numerous challenges.
'From Ocean to Gulf: Heritage Music of the Arab World' is a new series by Ahram Online, in partnership with the AMAR Foundation (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research). Focusing on the early years of recording in our region, which reflected a modern cosmopolitan repertoire and coincided with the Renaissance era that flourished in Egypt between the mid-19th century and the 30s of the twentieth century, this initiative aims to introduce our audience to the iconic figures of Arab music whose contributions have enriched our intangible cultural heritage and inspired generations worldwide.
The Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research (AMAR) (founded in 2009) launched its first biennale entitled Songs of Satire.
Supported by the Norwegian government and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), as well as a mostly volunteer team, including board members of AMAR.
The biennale selects an array of themes from the Arab music archive in various forms through the efforts of AMAR’s president, Kamal Kassar, and team, including educational podcasts, concerts, thematic and documented audio CD compilations, and two international exhibitions at the Mucem (Marseille) and Humboldt Museum (Berlin).
Songs of Satire and Resistance and the Collective Memory
In its first edition, held from 4 May to 11 in the aftermath of a brutal war on Lebanon and an ongoing genocide in Palestine, the AMAR Biennale sought to highlight the role of satirical and protest songs in addressing social and political challenges and their local, national, and Arab impact over the past century, particularly focusing on Egypt, Palestine, Algeria, and Yemen.
Over time, these works are increasingly considered historical documents that unfold societal transformations.
They are, therefore, a component of collective memory that needs to be preserved and disseminated in the face of systematic attempts to erase them.
The emphasis here lies in the musical dimensions and the critical and satirical nature of these songs, which reflect the political and social realities of the Arab region.
78 Records of humour and protest
The Biennale events included a documented music and research release, seminars, film screenings, a series of short videos generated using artificial intelligence, and an artist’s residency.
Moderated panel discussions were held with ethnomusicologists, historians and social scientists on the impact and evolution of the satirical and protest song across the 20th-century Arab region, particularly focusing on Egypt, Palestine, Algeria and Yemen in addition to Bilad Al-Sham.
This component featured a panel with the historian Diana Abbany, sociolinguist Nader Serage and ethnomusicologist Badih El-Hajj to launch AMAR's new release ‘Songs of Satire: Dissident Voices of Bilad Al-Sham 1920-1950’.
The release consists of 78 selected recordings as well as a booklet in Arabic, English, and French, and reveals how these songs transcend colonial borders to express, with humour and sharp criticism, issues of identity, resistance, and everyday life.
Blending local traditions with modern influences, these tunes reflect, to varying extents, the changing society of the time.
Singers and musicians of satire songs in Bilad Asham include Omar Al Zi'nni, Laure Daccache, Salamah Al-Aghawani, Mousa Helmi, Eliya Baida, Sami Sidawi, Abdul Ghani Sheikh, Nouh Ibrahim, Siham Rifki, and Daoud Karanouh, among others.
From the 1920s musical theatre to Tahrir Square
The panel on Egypt was entitled Songs of Satire from Musical Theatre to Tahrir Square and featured the researchers Frédéric Lagrange and Tarek Abdallah.
It traced the impact of satirical and Resistance songs in Egypt from the 1920s to the 25 January 2011 revolution and its precursors. It highlighted its most essential features in style, structure, and performance elements.
The huge socio-cultural and geopolitical movement that marked the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the avant-garde project of the duo Badi’ Khayri and Sayed Darwish, among others, allowed this type of singing to flourish through musical theatre, some of which have been preserved on record and radio, commenting on the radical changes in a traditional society, including the presence of women in the public sphere.
This project became a ‘tradition’ after generations of devotees, such as Bayram Al-Tunisi, Sheikh Zakaria Ahmed, Ahmed Fouad Negm, Sheikh Imam Issa, Salah Jahin, Sayed Mekkawi, and others, took it up and added to it.
This great repertoire and accumulation eventually became integral to the collective consciousness.
Other sessions shed light on the trajectory of satire songs in Algeria and Yemen, respectively, by the renowned experts Abdelkader Bendamèche and Dr Jean Lambert, offering an opportunity to explore these local repertoires and think of them comparatively and critically.
Audio-visual dimension
The Biennale worked in a parallel direction on presenting film screenings with dedicated panels, ranging from narrative and documentary films to filmed concerts. The focus was not solely on the cinematic elements but rather on an ethnomusicological and historical perspective.
This edition featured a short film on the life of Sheikh Imam, The Singing Sheikh (1991), directed by Heiny Srour, alongside two documentaries produced by Al Jazeera and directed by Bashar Hamdan examining the role of songs as tools of resistance in Palestine since the Great Revolt of 1932, namely: Songs of Palestine Between the Principles of Revolution and the Dream of Peace (2010) and A duo of lovers of Palestine singing (2008) about the Palestinian musical group Al-‘Ashiqeen.
The film on Alegria entitled Slimane Azem, Legend of Exile (2005) and directed by Rachid Merabet presented the story of a Kabyle Algerian singer and the hardworking working class of Algerian immigrants to France who suffered for many years a deep longing for their homeland.
The film Al-Hal (1981), directed by Ahmed El-Maanouni, follows the influential Moroccan band Nass El-Ghiwane from their original setting in the Hassan II neighborhood of Casablanca to a multitude of venues where they performed, exploring their profound impact on the Moroccan audience in artistic, cultural, and social levels.
Finally, the series of five AI-generated shorts designed by Soon is worth mentioning.
Haus (@Fabrika.cc) of the Lebanese Omar Al-Z’inni (d. 1961) revisiting Beirut of today. Al-Z’inni was a prime singer whose works reflected satirically on the people and times of Mandatory and post-independence Beirut. His audio recordings have endured from the last century to the present day.
Unfortunately, no videos capture his artistic performances or daily life. Thus, AI was utilized to produce short thematic videos using scattered photographs, research, and stories about his life and music.
Closing panel and concert
The closing panel entitled Songs of Satire Beyond Geopolitical Boundaries: Conclusion and Outlook to provide a synthesis of socio-political songs in Bilad Al-Sham, Yemen, and North Africa through the various lenses of class and gender, center vs. periphery, the global south, area studies, and comparative approaches - whether disciplinary or geographic.
It tackled the controversial issue of terminologies, concepts, and epistemic fields towards reaching a more encompassing and precise definition and scope of the domain, whether it is labelled as satire, protest, political, revolutionary, or alternative songs, among others.
This was further examined through chronological, historical, and thematic approaches, including the study of technological progress that helps to open epistemic borders between established disciplines.
The panelists sought satire as a dynamic rather than a static mechanism that is manifested at the macro level of institutional socio-political censorship and struggle and the changing role of art, as well as at the micro level through a more intimate exploration of the forces and risks that impact the artists’ evolving perceptions, identity, and commitment.
This is to be studied in the colonial and post-colonial contexts of our countries in connection with those of the Global South.
The panel ended with recommendations to pursue more public and private archival sources that are not limited to music and the need for research centres and academia to establish participatory and collaborative frameworks that allow a productive and creative synergy among the various key stakeholders concerned to produce more localized knowledge about the subject under study.
The finale
Over a week, seven young artists from Lebanon, Syria, and Algeria exchanged experiences and researched AMAR’s archives on satirical songs.
One of the outcomes of this artistic encounter was a concert with 18 songs, with themes ranging from anti-colonialism and the struggle for liberation in our countries, Palestine and Algeria, to the status of women and social and economic changes.
The closing songs were from Algeria with Marwan Lamini, who performed three works by the Algerian singer Mohamed Al Anka and was met with great acclaim from the audience.
The concert and other components of the Biennale were also a departure from the realm of urban traditional and classical forms of Arabic Renaissance music, such as Dawr, Muwashshah, Taqsim, Bashraf, and Samã'i, to feature a different sonic landscape.
Instead, the emphasis here is on popular genres like Taqtũqa, Monologue, Duets, Anashid, and Marches, particularly from Egypt and Bilad al-Sham, as well as Shaãbi and Kabyle from Algeria and Gnawa from Morocco.
Yet, it still maintained an enduring and underlying objective of previous engagements by AMAR to study the cultural heritage of Arab regions and to better understand its uniqueness and historical, social, and political contexts.
Short link: