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Hajer Ben Boubaker awakens the VintageArab musical

Launched in 2018, VintageArab offers audio series that erudite entire sections of Arab musical culture. From the Ottoman flank to the diasporic production of the Barbes district, from the Scopitones to the labor movement, from the languid Farid el Atrache to the vigorous Middle Eastern dabkeh, Hajer Ben Boubaker grasps the listener by the most emotional sense perhaps, the listening . His shows, constructed in themed episodes, take the form of a podcast, the audio format perhaps allowing an emotional proximity that the analytical distance of the written word does not always allow. The opportunity to discover forgotten musical pearls that the researcher still inscribes in a human density. She quotes Pasolini who defined History as the desire of sons to understand fathers. A genealogy of hopes, struggles, memories that can equally well mix the crystal of Fayrouz, the melody of Oum Kalthoum, the scansion of La Rumeur and rap. The Arab World Institute was not mistaken since Hajer Ben Boubaker is also working on the next exhibition dedicated to Arab divas. Interview.

Hajer Ben Boubaker : I approach Arabic music from a sociohistorical point of view and not just musicological. I am not part of a process of rehabilitation of heritage, because I do not consider that it needs any revaluation. I just wanted to bring a look at this music that would come out of the category of “world music”. I realized that they were part of a social and historical environment and that through cultural history, great History could also be read. I also had the impression that we were talking about this music in an orientalist way without integrating them into their dimension of political and social struggle.

Hajer Ben Boubaker explores with VintageArab all dimensions of Arab musical culture. For the Institute of the Arab World, she is preparing an exhibition on Arab divas. © DR

In what sense do you observe this “orientalism”?

I found it quite strange that there is a revival of Arab music through electronic music without being interested in the performers, that we are also losing interest in copyright. This was a fashion which depoliticized this music, restricted its reach and its social environment, in particular that of the Maghreb community in France which had been its first receptacle. But it affects other musical genres, those of Africa, South America, as well as Asian music.

What do you mean by the word “Arabic”? Is it civilization, language, geographic area of ​​presence or influence?

By “Arabic”, I mean music in the Arabic language. The classical language, the vernaculars also. I am Arabic speaking, and I also master several of its national variations. But I was interested in so-called Arab musical genres, based on the maqam, that is to say a general musical system and its particular applications in a melodic framework. In these national heritages, there may be music sung in Arabic, but with other musicalities, such as Berber or Amazigh musicalities. While working for example on Barbès Blues, it was necessary to approach Kabyle music. I also lived in Turkey and I was able to find there Arab-Ottoman sounds, ways of revisiting the Syrian heritage. Judeo-Maghrebian music also interests me, in the sense of this pooling of Arab and Berber sounds.

I am interested in the music used during political mobilizations. I was able to study this in Tunisia. I wondered about their historicity, the possible links between political upheavals, between different Arab countries. Figures like Ziad Rahbani or other singers who transcend the Arab left. Cheikh Imam is, for example, listened to in Egypt, but also elsewhere for its political significance. The history of this music can therefore be national, transnational, but also regional with a national scope. We then think of the music of Kabyle protest which is part of the protest against the colonial order then in that of the construction of the centralized Algerian state.

What did you observe of the Algerian hirak and the music that accompanied it?

I put my observations in a larger historical context. I worked on the genealogy of protest music in Algeria, from the 1830s to the current Hirak. I observed this phenomenon through the mobilizations in the stadiums which appeal to a very politicized musical repertoire. These stadium songs are in turn part of a tradition of mobilization of certain singers affiliated to parties. I am thinking of Lounès Matoub, who was affiliated with the Kabyle protest movement, as Cheikh Imam had an affirmed communist affiliation, then anti-Nasser, then anti-Sadat. I observe that the closure of the recording industry and its censorship also changed the space for popular protest song.

Is the song a spark, a political dynamic? Does it precede, accompany, illustrate or embellish these movements?

Joseph Massad could also ask this question. He questioned, in the context of Palestine, the question of whether music creates popular sentiment or the reverse. According to him, this is concomitant. But he notes that music may have sometimes played a vital role. However, he notes that the reverse is also observed and that the song can carry the established power. Nasser, for example, had “state singers,” who were commissioned for songs. He had thus ordered songs from Fayrouz on the Palestinian question. Another point, songs created within a national political framework can be seized in other countries as songs of mobilization. I am thinking of the repertoire of Cheikh Imam, certain titles of which were taken up in Tunisia thanks to the presence of Egyptian students, in the context of a political protest specific to their country.

Do these songs act in synergy, mobilizing people beyond their creative borders?

I have the impression that he has a kind of gaze focused on the neighbors. I see this on a subject like Palestine. It is a cause that united the Arab peoples around anti-colonialism and justice for the Palestinian people. These songs helped to humanize and make perceptible the reality of the Palestinian people, to take them out of their sole position of victim. There is a real circulation of musical works which deal with Palestine and which can be played repeatedly on television when a dramatic event occurs. During the war in Gaza in 2014, Fayrouz’s song about Jerusalem which remains emblematic. These circulations therefore take place on major political issues common to the Arab world. For the Maghreb hiraks, the song produced by the Ultras of Raja Casablanca, a stage song “My country struck by injustice” or “F’Bladi Delmouni”, will have a phenomenal success in Algeria, but also in all the Maghreb in general. In Algeria, it will be the most sung in the stadiums with the Casa del Mouradia, and in Tunisia, it will be repeated during occasional and regular events.

The song can also be of court, serve the powers and accompany Arab nationalism …

I observe in Egypt a fertile ground for this court music. Not just in Nasser’s time. Singers who sang for King Farouk could then sing for Nasser. Oum Kalthoum, for example. But she will subsequently be the voice of the Nasser regime. She made this international tour after the Six Day War, culminating in the concert at the Olympia for which she had received an unprecedented cachet, which she will donate to the Egyptian state to compensate for the defeat. There was a kind of political love at first sight between her and Nasser. They had the same popular Egyptian origins.

Another point, the figures put forward by Bourguiba in Tunisia. He was not in a pan-Arab project, but rather a nationalist one. He will favor singers who will correspond to his state feminism, in a country where there was a great variety of singers and styles. It will also ban the musical genre of mezoued, whose reputation has been similar to that of raï. This is a very popular, even proletarian genre, celebrating the way of life of the working classes in Tunisia. Through the songs, a political project was therefore put forward. Bourguiba will also have a linguistic standardization policy which will involve music.

You also discuss the diasporic dimension with a podcast on Barbès. How does Arab music in the diaspora also carry a political dimension?

I didn’t think I was necessarily working on this subject. I came there little by little by taking an interest in political mobilizations. I questioned the period of the 1970s, a little obscured, because it was between the end of the Algerian war and the 1983 March for Dignity. We did not know the way in which the immigrants mobilized. This period also saw an important musical, militant and cultural production. The Arab Workers’ Movement will also contribute to cultural initiatives for and by immigrants, through theater and music. It was also for this movement the means of attracting militants. Their slogans of mobilization begin first around the Palestinian question. 1967 will be a very strong marker, for students as well as for workers, in a Marxist-Leninist ideology. They are mobilizing with the French proletarian left in order to create the first nuclei of collectives for the Palestinian revolution. But this mobilization will extend to the miserable conditions of Maghreb workers: administrative precariousness, unhealthy homes, social and union rights, discrimination. Racist and security crimes will also be an element of mobilization. Maghreb workers will question the tutelage and claim to authority of the authorities of their respective countries. The proximity with the proletarian left will allow the support of Jean Genet, Sartre, Foucault, mobilized for these workers.

The 1983 Walk for Dignity was also very musical. What is the soundtrack?

It has a soundtrack that comes from Maghrebian or Near Eastern repertoires, and will be very rock. Quite simply because these are children born in France who grew up with this music. We immediately think of Carte de séjour, which will combine French culture by singing in Arabic, while addressing themes that concern the lives of young people. Rachid Taha sang in Algerian dialectal Arabic, in a very popular language.

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