Reviews

Preserving Korean Music: Intangible Cultural Properties as Icons of Identity.

Perspectives on Korean Music Volume 1
KEITH HOWARD
SOAS Musicology Series. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006
xvi 228 pp., with accompanying CD, ISBN-10: 0-7546-3892-8 (50.00)
Creating Korean Music: Tradition, Innovation and the Discourse of Identity.
Perspectives on Korean Music Volume 2
KEITH HOWARD
SOAS Musicology Series. Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006
xviii 242 pp., with accompanying CD, ISBN-10: 0-7546-5729-9 (50.00)
This pair of volumes amounts to the most detailed study available of the status and
influence of traditional music in the Republic of Korea. Preserving Korean Music
examines the government-sponsored system whereby traditional performing arts and
handicrafts have been officially designated and subsidised as Intangible Cultural
Properties in an effort to protect them from both loss and change. Creating Korean
Music turns to the various ways in which traditional musical resources have been used
to create something new yet conspicuously Korean through adaptation, improvisa-
tion and composition for both Korean and western instruments. Neither volume
claims comprehensive coverage of genres and artists, preferring instead to present a
series of in-depth case studies drawn largely from the authors own extensive
fieldwork over the past quarter century and framed by more general overviews and
reflections. The end result is a work that might be seen as a summation of Howards
distinguished record of research on Korean music to date, and an illuminating
account of the role of traditional music in a nation whose enthusiastic embrace of
modernity has been accompanied by a strongly felt imperative to deploy aspects of
tradition as (in Howards words) icons and discourses of identity.
Preserving Korean Music begins with a history of the movement to preserve Korean
heritage, spanning the period from the Japanese colonial era to the time of writing
and including an account of how the Intangible Cultural Properties system works,
along with its relationship to the older Japanese system and the later UNESCO
initiatives on intangible heritage. From this it emerges that Korea has been a major
player in heritage preservation policies internationally, suggesting the relevance of this
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/08/010151-12
DOI: 10.1080/17411910701594480
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 17, No. 1, June 2008, pp. 151162
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study to a readership beyond those specifically interested in Korea. The next chapter
explores the tension between preservation and promotion, between maintaining the
Properties in a historically accurate form and making them appealing to modern
audiences in modern performance settings. It shows how authentic versions of the
Properties have often had to be constructed artificially before they could be preserved,
and how control from above has been necessary to protect these authentic versions
from change. Nevertheless, it argues, like the whole book, that the system has proven
successful in its purpose of promoting a positive sense of national identity that was
under threat from westernisation.
The remaining five chapters develop this argument through a series of case studies
focusing on different types of Properties and howthey have fared since being designated
as such. The balance of the case studies, with 50% of the page count devoted to
Properties from the island of Chindo, no doubt reflects the fact that this was where
Howard conducted his doctoral fieldwork; but it also allows a far greater depth and
richness of data than could have been achieved by aiming for more even coverage. If the
quotations from interviews and diaries are sometimes longer than necessary to support
the point being made, they do put the people in the story by allowing us to know the
holders of Properties as distinct individuals with their own motives and agendas. For
each case study, these personal perspectives and experiences are brought together with
background information on the genres concerned and analysis of the effects of
designation. Afinal fewpages of reflections summarizes these effects by acknowledging
that the preservation system has established an artificial canon at the expense of other
valid traditional repertoires, but arguing that it has also helped produce a shift in which
younger Koreans were able to absorb influence from western culture yet no longer felt
that this threatened their inherent Koreanidentity (p. 176). While the systemwas surely
not the only factor in this shift*growing economic prosperity itself might well be
expected to produce a more secure sense of national identity*Howard has presented
abundant evidence that it played a significant role.
His concluding point, however, is that preservation alone cannot equip a
contemporary nation (p. 176), and this leads naturally to the second volume,
Creating Korean Music. Here, there is less introductory exposition and less sense of an
overall argument, perhaps because the book does not describe a single system like
that of the Intangible Cultural Properties but surveys a range of responses to the urge
to be musically both Korean and contemporary. Its conclusion, appropriately enough,
is that within the contemporary music scene, there is scope for many distinct and
disparate Koreas (p. 194).
Almost the entire volume is devoted to exploring some of these multiple Koreas
in three case studies, two large and one small. The first large case study, occupying
chapters one to three, is of the percussion quartet SamulNori and the eponymous
genre it spawned. The three chapters show, respectively, how the quartet invented
itself as a tradition by claiming links with much older forms of percussion music
and establishing a canon of pieces with traditional precursors; how they bolstered
their control over the canon by articulating its aesthetic principles and notating it
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in a system based on Korean rather than Western notation; and how they kept
ahead of rival quartets by collaborating creatively with musicians from other
realms, especially jazz. A smaller case study on vocal music occupies chapter four,
covering latter-day reworkings of folksongs such as Arirang and of pansori narrative
singing. The second large case study concerns the composition of new music, and
again takes up three chapters, dealing respectively with new music for Korean
instruments, with Korean composers working overseas, and with composers who
trained overseas but returned to work in Korea. Chapter eight rounds off the
volume by considering some recent signs of merging between Korean and Western
music and summarising the main historical phases in the promotion of Korean
national identity. In all, with its companion volume, the book has given ample
substance to Howards claim that Koreanness is a brand identity with a discourse
founded on heritage (p. xii).
Both volumes are informed by extensive and rigorous research: Howard seems to
have interviewed almost everyone of any influence in the Korean music world, read
all the detailed official reports on Cultural Properties, transcribed many hours of
complex music, and learnt to perform much of it himself. If I have reservations, they
are mainly to do with how the research is presented. Chapters tend to begin with the
first subheading and end with the last interview quote; I would have liked more
introductory and (especially) concluding commentary to bring out the significance of
the often dense body of information that is presented in each chapter and section.
I would also like many of the chapter titles and subheadings to be more informative
as to the actual content of the discussion that follows.
Each volume is accompanied by a CD containing recordings of many of the pieces
discussed, often with staff notation provided in the text. The CDs are valuable in
themselves, containing much material that was previously unpublished or only
available in Korea. But in the context of the books, they are useful mainly for
illustration, since in Preserving Korean Music the emphasis on institutional practices
allows little scope for analytical discussion of the music as sound, while in Creating
Korean Music the pieces on the CD are discussed only briefly, and there is much
detailed commentary on other works that most readers will find difficult to access.
No doubt there were restrictions of licensing as well as length to accommodate, but I
wonder if it would have been more revealing to extend the case studies approach and
concentrate the analysis on a smaller number of works (those on the CD) rather than
aim for a fuller account of each composers oeuvre.
But these are minor cavils, and the bottom line is that this pair of books is essential
reading for anyone interested in Korean music or in traditional musics adaptation to
the modern world.
ANDREW KILLICK
University of Sheffield
a.killick@sheffield.ac.uk
# 2008, Andrew Killick
Ethnomusicology Forum 153
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Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America
MIRJANA LAUS

EVIC

Oxford University Press, 2007

x 295 pp., with CD, ISBN: 978-0-19-517867-8 (19.99)
[We must note with sadness that Mirjana Lausevic has passed away since this review
was written eds.]
While scholarship on musical cultures within the US typically centres on ethnically
or geographically specific communities, Mirjana Lausevic has examined organised
gatherings, performing groups, and summer camps of Balkan music and dance
enthusiasts in the US (self-described as Balkanites) who lack obvious ethnic
affiliations with such cultural practices. In her latest work, Balkan Fascination:
Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America, Lausevic vividly sketches how
Balkan music and dance figure into individual identity formations, and she situates
the practices of this affinity community, linked by a shared musical interest rather
than physical location, within a greater socio-cultural and historical context of
culturally adopted music and dance traditions in the US. A native Balkan scholar and
musician herself, Lausevic brings an insightful, Toquevillian perspective as she writes
with warmth and affection toward her subject, though at the same time she is
critically analytical and unabashedly realistic without being judgmental. [Coming]
from a place where the importance of national, ethnic, religious and regional
identities and boundaries was . . . being blown out of proportion, and where self-
definition, group affiliation, and cultural practice were closely interrelated, the
author was captivated by these Americans who had stumbled upon Balkan music
and dance at some point in their lives and became enchanted by it (pp. 45).
Still, Lausevic also writes as an insider. In addition to more traditional research
methods like detailed archival research at daily newspapers and public and
performing arts libraries in New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, over
sixty formal interviews with key individuals in the field and statistical information
generated from a distributed questionnaire, she sheds invaluable light into the ethics,
aesthetics, and meaning of Balkanite musical culture through her involvement as a
participant-observer. She has attended Balkan music and dance events since 1992 as
both an audience member and performer, and she has participated as an instructor of
Bosnian traditional singing at Balkan Music and Dance summer camps across the US.
The author presents the text in four parts, the first ethnographic in nature. Using
journalistic questions such as who, what, where, and why as an introductory
framework, she identifies the Balkanite affinity community with demographic data
as a very specific segment of American society [who] are mostly white, urban, highly
educated, professional people, . . . [typically] employed as scientists . . . or as educa-
tors (pp. 2526). She also outlines the various settings in which the Balkan scene is
enacted, focusing on dance classes, workshops and summer camps. Rather than
describing the communitys practices as a subculture or (after Slobin) micromusic,
Lausevic depicts their gatherings as a scene. This is effective nomenclature in that it
154 Reviews
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adroitly describes a network of people and places that are unified under a single guise
of dance and music making only realised through performance or activities centred
on musical enactment. The accompanying CD/DVD provides further ethnographic
detail and demonstrates the great variety of talent, interest and engagement extant
within the Balkan scene.
In trying to account for why individuals in this community find Balkan music and
dance to be particularly meaningful, Lausevic offers insight into the nature and
aesthetics of traditional Balkan music in general, and she compares these features to
motivations participants have identified through conversation. For example, many
cite as important the group experience, social interaction, and sense of belonging
they feel when performing the heterophonic melodic lines, choral singing, circle and
line dances found throughout the Balkans. Others describe the diaphonic drone and
close intervals of many vocal genres to be physically satisfying, socially binding,
unique within their soundscapes and spiritually grounding to an ancient and real
tradition that is larger than them*something perceived to be definitively lacking in
American society.
Similar ideas and practices have long been present in American cultural life, and
Lausevic uses the next three parts of the book to reveal the interweaving of inter-
national folk dance and ideologies of assimilation, nationalism, transnationalism,
cultural pluralism and physical education throughout the twentieth century. While
most Balkan music enthusiasts see the origins of their movement in the 1950s and
60s folk revival, Lausevic views the traditions legacy as fundamental to under-
standing the Balkanite movement. The author traces American folk dancings
historical trajectory from the assimilationist immigrant settlement houses of the
1900s to public school physical education programs and the WPA-sponsored
international folk dance troupes that promoted a new international curiosity; from
the folk festivals and world fairs that used folk dance as a representation of the nation
to the folk revival that viewed traditional music as a transnationally unifying
antithesis to industrialisation. She not only elucidates the folk dancing movements
influence in terms of dance/music collections and modes of instruction, but she also
deftly parallels the often conflicting ideologies promoted by its leaders and their
continued presence among Balkan dance participants.
While the book covers a wide range of topics and is written to reach a broader
audience, devoting most of its attention to the history of folk dancing in the US, it
also leaves some issues unaddressed. Given that the movement is primarily composed
of university professors, scientists and other educators, and is led by a number of
prominent ethnomusicologists, it seems important to consider the role of academe in
the development of the Balkanite movement. Moreover, because it is firstly an
ethnomusicological study, it would have been interesting to examine how the various
ideologies evident among Balkan music participants mirror some of the issues that
continue to haunt our discipline. Still, the wholesale appropriation of a musical
culture is fascinating in that its new contexts endow performances with entirely new
meaning reflective of the adopting social group. Consequently, Lausevic adeptly
Ethnomusicology Forum 155
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considers a number of critical issues such as contemporary colonialism and the
perpetuation of Balkan as peasant imagery, notions of authenticity, and a museum
mentality. Moreover, this study shatters broader notions of cultural competence by
demonstrating that contemporary forms of self-agency exist in which individuals can
project their own competency codes in an effort to fill a perceived cultural void
within American society with new rituals and traditions. Indeed, this book provokes
the reader to turn the anthropologists gaze inward, to reflect upon the life and
calendar events (or absence thereof) that are commemorated in our own lives and to
inspire a reinvigoration of traditions and cultural expressions, whether they be new or
old, local or borrowed from afar.
RYAN HAYNES
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
rshaynes@uiuc.edu
# 2008, Ryan Haynes
The World of South African Music: A Reader
CHRISTINE LUCIA (ed.)
Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005
383 pp., ISBN 1-9043-0336-6 (39.99)
This Reader is an anthology of articles about South African music, organised
according to a broad political time-line. Drawing direction from music historian
Gilbert Chase, editor Christine Lucia defines the book as . . . the sum total of musical
experience in its full range of social and human values including not only classical
and genuine folk music, but also such hybrid manifestations as urban street music
and popular theatrical music (xli from Chase 1941:17). Rather than a sum total of
the music of a single nation, however, Lucia offers an eclectic range of articles that
cross categories and genres, featuring edited excerpts of travel journals, memoirs,
poetry, essays, conference papers, published journal articles and book chapters.
Commencing with the music of the Dutch and British settlers in the Cape in the
late 1700s, which melded together elements of Dutch folk song, German Christian
hymnody and the ritual and secular music of Malay prisoners (incarcerated by Dutch
East India Company), the book journeys through more than 200 years of diverse
musical histories and practices. Articles have been sourced from both relatively
inaccessible publications, such as that by Jackson, who analyses the music of the less-
frequently profiled Hindi, Gujurati, Tamil and Telegu-speaking South Africans, as
well as from better-known works by Erlmann, Coplan and Ballantine, whose Marxist-
inspired analyses of black working-class musical experiences and expressions have
profoundly shaped discourses in South African ethnomusicology from the 1980s to
the present.
More than an exposition of musical genres and histories, however, Lucias
motivation is the critical appraisal of the narration of voices in South African
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music (xxi); a review of discourses about music as they have emerged at different
historical and political moments, and been reflected in the subject matter and
ideological positionings of its various contributors. The book has been published at a
particularly judicious moment in South African musical history, when the
disciplinary fissure between musicology, with its focus on western classical music,
and ethnomusicology, which has been concerned predominantly with non-western
performance practices and contexts, is finally being reconciled under a single South
African Society for Research in Music. It thus intercepts a moment when a
postcolonial critique of who wrote about whom, for what purpose, and with what
justification, is both an exercise in critical historiography, as well as an invitation for a
more radical reconceptualisation of disciplinary discourses about music in relation to
contemporary issues around identity, politics and purpose.
The book is divided into four sections. Part one, entitled Imperialism to
modernism, tracks writings from early seventeenth century evolutionist accounts
of indigenous musical practices, as portrayed in travel diaries and administrative
documents, through to the beginnings of more formalised expositions about music,
as explored by theologians, composers and historians in the 1930s. Articles by the
celebrated Zulu choral composer and teacher, Reuben Caluza, and by Frieda Bokwe
Matthews, a music teacher and daughter of the renowned clergyman and newspaper
editor, John Knox Bokwe, signify some of the first attempts by black South Africans
to transcribe their own musical traditions; an endeavour that is underscored by a
growing concern about the widespread transformative effects on African culture and
cultural integrity by Christianity and westernisation.
Part two, Apartheid and musicology, focuses on a period in South African political
history (194870) when the State became vigorously engaged in reinforcing western
classical music through national and municipal orchestras and opera houses, through
a standardised music education system, and through the establishment of a National
Council of Music and Allied Arts. Articles in this section are selected to represent
both the institutionalisation of a State-controlled music infrastructure, as well as the
emergence of an oppositional voice as it began to be expressed in new urban musical
genres (e.g. marabi, jazz), musical theatre (e.g. King Kong) and in new modes of
analysis.
We see during this period the emergence of such maverick figures as Hugh Tracey,
whose mission to systematically record original folk music in sub-Saharan Africa
was undertaken on behalf of people who, in his opinion, were not yet civilised
enough to recognise the value of their own music. His establishment of the now
world-renowned International Library of Africa Music in 1954 represented both
vindication of apartheid ideology, through its preoccupation with tribe and tradition,
as well as ideological challenge. By publishing the Sounds of Africa Series, the
African Music Society Journal and numerous instructional manuals, Tracey worked
tirelessly to include African music in the education system and in public life more
generally.
Ethnomusicology Forum 157
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Lucia includes in this section writings that reveal the development of more
interpretive scholarly analysis of both traditional and town music, such as that by
Rycroft, Blacking and Coplan, whose work with Nguni, Venda and popular township
music respectively sought to examine the connections between musical structures,
social patterns and their cultural meanings.
Interpreting music in relation to social history and an emerging political
consciousness is the overriding theme of Part three, entitled Music and social
transformation. Reflecting the dominant ethnomusicological discourse of the 1980s,
this section focuses largely on notions of change, hybridity, adaptation, subversion
and resistance in urban South African performance. Ballantines research on early jazz
and vaudeville, for instance, deals with the ambiguities of new genres which serve as
both social improvement and political subversion, both producing impetus for a new
Africanist impulse, and using music as a self-conscious expression of a new black
urban identity.
Lucia selects a disparate assortment of articles in her final section, New South
Africa. These writings represent a much wider range of themes, theoretical
perspectives and interpretive approaches, e.g. classes of African instruments (Tracey),
the stylistic underpinnings of multivocality amongst the Ju/hoansi (Olivier), Black
choralism (Olwange) and South African art music (Clarkson-Fletcher et al., and
Scherzinger).
While these articles may be indicative of a more wide-ranging approach toward
music scholarship of the past decade or so, I would have wished to have seen in this
section a selection of writings that engage with some of the more cutting-edge
issues in the new South Africa. Such articles may have included Meintjes critically
acclaimed work on South African music and the politics of globalisation;
postcolonial re-readings of masculinities and gender politics in black South African
popular music (as exemplified in the work of Ballantine and Olsen); music, the
body and HIV/AIDS (Meintjes), and kwaito (Africanised rap and hip hop) and the
emergence of post-apartheid youth identities (McCloy, Steingo, Ballantine and
Watkins).
This Reader is a unique undertaking in South African music scholarship and offers
a valuable door-opener for those interested in the diverse musical histories of South
Africa. Lucias thoughtful, incisive and meticulously crafted Introduction invites the
reader to engage critically with the text, and serves as an important reminder that
ideas, themes and analytical approaches may become deeply enshrined in our
disciplinary perspectives if they are not boldly, self-critically and continuously
interrogated.
ANGELA IMPEY
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
ai6@soas.ac.uk
# 2008, Angela Impey
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Beyond Exoticism: Western Music and the World
TIMOTHY TAYLOR
Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2007
304pp., ISBN: 0-8223-3968-4
A reading of Timothy Taylors Culture/History piece in the Pacific Review of
Ethnomusicology in 2006 gave me a taste of things to come in Beyond Exoticism. In
that short article, Taylor notes that, In some music disciplines, it is simply taken for
granted, without questioning, that music sounds the way it sounds because people
wanted it to sound that way. There is very little roomleft for culture or history if one
subscribes to this individualist notion of the production of music. Yet this notion still
dominates the academic study of music, a theme that I tackle explicitly in my
forthcoming book, and have been enunciating in various ways for some time now
(Taylor, 2006:1). Not only does he tackle the theme of Culture/History in his most
recent book (the forthcoming book mentioned above), he tackles the individualist
notion head on. The author of Global Pop (1997) and Strange Sounds (2001)*surely by
now college curriculum mainstays*has come up with yet another much needed survey
that takes the reader on an inter-disciplinary journey through time, space, and the
literature (academic and beyond). In Beyond Exoticism, Taylors theoretical trajectory is
different but not too dissimilar to his previous two books, but more obviously something
of a distant sequel to Global Pop in its concerns for western treatments of otherness
(p. 11). He starts fromthe Renaissance and works up to the present day, focussing first on
an extended discussion of an English masque by William Lawes (who lived in the first
half of the seventeenth century). Then he works his way through Rameau, Mozart, and
Beethoven to Ravel, Ives and Cowell, and then on to Bill Laswell followed by Karl
Jenkinss group, Adiemus. Music history books need never be quite the same again.
For some reason I thought the classical music ideology as Taylor calls it, with its
reification of the great composers and their masterworks, had been scrutinised and
deconstructed at least two decades ago (as Taylor notes). Taylor convinces me that
there is still much work to be done though, as the history of music is re-written. Still
the canons come under fire in Beyond Exoticism. Yet Taylor is not only critical of the
canon of the individual in musicology (the reification of certain composers) but also
of the apparently canonical micro-study in ethnomusicology. For Taylor, this is
epitomised by the old-fashioned village ethnography . . . or studies of a tiny,
localised, community . . . limited in their bracketing off of how historical forces shape
particular social groups, individuals and their music (Taylor, 2006: 1).
Beyond Exoticism is in two parts. Part One, Colonialism and Imperialism features
three chapters which are concerned with western art music and its composers, and
how power and representation worked in this era using textual exegis (p. 1) and
contextual data. Taylor is clearly aware that the theme of exoticism in music has been
looked at many times before. However, he extends previous attempts at analysis by
developing a critique of approaches that fetishise musical form and style at the
expense of an understanding of the ideas behind racial, ethnic, and cultural difference
Ethnomusicology Forum 159
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in music (as captured in the music of the western world). Part Two, Globalization
features four chapters which focus respectively on the work of Bill Laswell, bhangra,
Hawaiian cowboy music and TV ads. Here, Taylor re-interrogates, updates, and puts
new purchase on our understanding of terms such as exoticism, globalisation,
hybridity, third space, world music and collaboration.
Taylor notes that biographical information on composers is sometimes used as a
point of departure for musicological analyses, and insists that at times this is useful
but at other times reductionist. In approaching the problem he says, I would argue
instead that we know too much about composers, and that if we knew less, we would
be forced to learn more about their time and place, view them as social, cultural, and
historical subjects rather than autonomous individuals with well-known biographies.
To the extent that it is used at all, the composers biography ought to be the window
into a time and place, the mediator between the private self of the composer and
the wider world (p. 4). Importantly, he calls for scholars to re-examine ideas about
cultural difference and their incorporation in music, where these ideas came from,
how they were shaped by the time and place of their origin, how they travelled (p. 3).
That is, whether in the music of Lawes or Laswell, Songs of Sanctuary or Songs of the
Hawaiian Cowboy, Beethoven or bhangra.
Out of what seems an impossible task Taylor has achieved coherence, clarity and
vision. What impresses me most about this book is its level of theoretical
sophistication. As one might have come to expect from this author, he has consulted
a staggering range of sources across a wide range of media, which provides the reader
with an extremely useful resource in terms of references, scores, recordings, films and
websites. Taylor is not just on top of a wide range of cultural theory, he is able to apply it
successfully in his analysis of a wide range of musical works, contexts, problems and
issues. He has succeeded in drawing together an extraordinary assemblage of material
that offers significant and new insights into the meanings and workings of music across
the board, as we move beyond exoticism to a broader and more inclusive treatment
of the history of ideas with the history of music. It may be that we turn to Taylors work,
among the work of just a few others, if we really want to find out about the social,
cultural, and historical forces that continue to affect the shape of the wider musical
world around us. Full of ideas, Beyond Exoticismis surely a timely and well placed work.
References
Taylor, Timothy. 1997. Global pop: World music, world markets. New York and London: Routledge.
***. 2001. Strange sounds: Music, technology and culture. New York and London: Routledge.
***. 2006. Culture/History. Pacic Review of Ethnomusicology, 12 (Fall 2006). Available at:
Bhttp://www.ethnomusic.ucla.edu/pre/Vol12/Vol12html/V12Taylor.html.
KEVIN DAWE
University of Leeds
k.n.dawe@leeds.ac.uk
# 2008, Kevin Dawe
160 Reviews
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Women in Egypt 1924

1931: Pioneers of Stardom and Fame

Single CD with 20-page booklet
Compilation and text by AMIRA MITCHELL, from the World and Traditional Music
Section of the British Library Sound Archive.
Topic Records Ltd., TSCD931, 2006 (7.99)
This album highlights prominent female figures in Egypts urban secular music
during a historical period (192431) that witnessed significant social, political, and
musical change, as well as wide proliferation of commercial recording. The release fits
well within the framework of current research on Egyptian music since the late
nineteenth century and throughout the 78-rpm disc era, which began during the early
years of the twentieth century (see Racy 1976 and 1977). It also complements some
other releases, for example a CD series featuring early recording celebrities from
Egypt, that was compiled with notes by Frederic Lagrange and released by Club du
Disque Arabe in France. Meanwhile, thematically, the album contributes to an area of
study that has focused on the role of women in Egypts popular culture. In this
regard, Karin van Nieukerk (1995) has addressed the traditional status, public image,
personal dilemmas, and professional strategies of Egyptian female entertainers,
including dancers. Comparably, Virginia Danielson (1991 and 1997) has discussed
the social and religious backgrounds and the artistry of female Egyptian singers,
especially during the first half of the twentieth century.
The present album offers an intimate view of the lives and musical contributions of
female recording artists, mostly vocalists, many of whom were quite popular and in
some cases socially influential. The sixteen musical items presented had originally
appeared on commercially distributed 78-rpm discs. The material, however, is mostly
excerpts rather than complete performances. As the CD notes state, It was usual
practice for this period and repertoire for a song to span both sides of the 78 rpm
disc. In order to represent a greater range of singers, however, we have for the most
part included only one side. Exceptions are tracks 6, 12, and 15 (p. 17). The enclosed
booklet includes a carefully prepared introduction outlining the history, the social
climate and the musical landscape of the time period. Subsequently, each of the
musical items is discussed individually, thereby giving basic biographical and musical
information about the artist featured. Notably, individual photographic representa-
tions are inserted, thus evoking a vivid sense of the artists presence and in some cases
showing their modern and fashionable appearance, which tends to contrast with the
more traditional musicians and dancers, from around the year 1900, shown on the
CD cover.
The album is remarkable on a variety of scholarly and documentary accounts. To
begin with, it gives the listener, at least the nonspecialist, convenient access to a world
of sound that otherwise may not be readily available. Furthermore, the album as a
whole resembles a self-contained monograph that supplements the music with ample
documentation, which includes interesting anecdotes, quotes, and highlights of the
artists personal lives. The music, per se, illustrates a variety of styles. It includes
Ethnomusicology Forum 161
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traditional genres such as the qas

dah and the dawr, which in earlier decades were

largely part of the male repertoire, but also features the more popular category of
strophic songs that used colloquial Egyptian texts and was known by the generic
name t

aqt

uqah. The latter, which had historically been associated with female
entertainers, gained dramatic popularity during the 1920s, a phenomenon indicative
of the expanding role of female singers at the time, as well as reflecting the
commercial preference of the record companies. This category of songs, as the record
notes explain, drew criticism from the moralists and music critics. Similarly, we are
informed about the early feminist movement in Egypt and the corresponding
conservative reactions, and the ascendance of women artists into the musical
mainstream following a history of physical separation between male and female
performers and audiences. In a related sense, we learn about the ensuing social and
economic gains of the female recording artists, at the time when the celebrated Umm
Kulthum for example had set her long lasting path of stardom.
As a whole, the album is a commendable contribution to the study of Near Eastern,
and by extension, world music. Particularly when used in combination with other
well-documented recordings of both male and female Egyptian artists from the same
era and from prior and later decades, this CD project can be truly appreciated for its
documentary value, if not also for the fascinating performances it presents.
References
Danielson, Virginia. 1991. Artists and entrepreneurs: Female singers in Cairo during the 1920s. In
Women in Middle Eastern history: Shifting boundaries in sex and gender, edited by Nikki R.
Keddie and Beth Baron. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 292309.
***. 1997. The voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic song, and Egyptian society in the twentieth
century. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Nieuwkerk, Karin van. 1995. A trade like any other: Female singers and dancers in Egypt. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Racy, Ali Jihad. 1976. Record industry and Egyptian traditional music, 19041932. Ethnomusicology
20(1): 2348.
***. 1977. Musical Change and Commercial Recording in Egypt 19041932. Ph.D. diss.,
University of Illinois.
ALI JIHAD RACY
University of California, Los Angeles
racy@ucla.edu
# 2008, Ali Jihad Racy
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