Transforming space: The Production of Contemporary Syrian Music
The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity Book, 2013
Critical approaches to the study of space as a practice, discourse, and cultural imaginary (Lefebvre 1991) have argued that representational
spaces are 'transformed through and on the basis of relations of power' (Rabinow 2003, 354). This claim raises the question of whether and
how this art world is imbricated in larger spatial formations that are embedded in local, regional, national, and global relations of power.
In what ways does the early twenty-first-century emergence of musiqa mu'asira articulate transformations of power, and how can these shifts
be grounded by broader historical understandings?
Syria became an independent nation-state in 1947, following centuries of Ottoman rule and French colonial occupation. Since then, artists
and intellectuals have debated the effects of imperialism and colonialism in the modern arts. Does contemporary music in Syria depend on
external discourses or privilege Western concepts of art music? The Syrian poet Adonis claims that cultural expression in the Arab world has
been constrained by the question of 'how to engage European culture successfully while presenting a link to the Arab past.' This 'double
dependency' on European forms of knowledge-at once aesthetic, historical, and political-reproduces European cultural hegemony and positions
Syrian music as a signifier of non-Western difference within the modern world. Others question whether these cultural politics engender a
crisis of representation, or 'representational paralysis,' in which cultural production stagnates in the absence or suppression of creative expression.
Rather than perpetuate the teleologies embedded in these critical discourses on cultural modernity, art historian Gao Minglu (2008) stresses
the emergent quality of cultural production. He suggests that conditions of production are embedded in 'a network of forever changing relations
among human subjectivity, living space, and experience' (Minglu 2008, 137). Contemporaneity is therefore situated within the flow of everyday
life as the 'permanent' condition of modernity.42 This reformulation brings together 'the jostling contingency of various cultural and social
multiplicities, all thrown together in ways that embrace the contradictions and inequalities within and between the particularities of shifting
lifeworlds' (Smith 2008, 8-9). Recapitulating to Syrian experiences of modernity, this perspective suggests that the social contradictions and
historical contingencies of musiqa mu'asira are what shape its various meanings in contemporary contexts.
The composers and works described in this essay are, in many ways, constrained by the predicament of Syrian modernity. They struggle to
define visions of cultural modernity and build audiences who are open to these visions. This position has been exacerbated by Syria's isolation
from the global flow of ideas, resources, and populations ever since the Ba'ath Party assumed power in 1963. Despite the Ba'athist state's claims
toward social progress and economic development, it has willingly faltered in integrating these agendas into the global political and economic
order. The authoritarian regime has legitimated this policy by invoking Third Worldist sentiments of anti-imperialism and anticolonialism that
support central Ba'athist tenets of Arab nationalism and socialism (Wieland 2006). Moreover, the state has actively suppressed alternative visions
political, cultural, or otherwise-through systems of coercion that perpetuate a culture of fear between and among citizens.
Musiqa mu'asira is therefore situated in complex economic and political conditions that beg the following questions: What makes this musical
world contemporary? What historical processes have shaped the encounters and opportunities pursued by these composers? Does their creative
work offer a new vision for cultural modernity in Syria today? Prior to the onset of social unrest in Syria in 2011 linked to the broader 'Arab
Spring,' it seemed possible to attribute the blossoming of musical culture, ideas, and creativity in the past decade to policies of economic
liberalization and cultural development mandated by President Assad. As described earlier in this essay, patronage of the arts increased through
the building of new cultural centers and performance venues, state sponsorship of international contemporary arts festivals, allocation of resources
to programs and events, and funds for individual artists. It is not insignificant that the musical works and professional livelihoods discussed here
were made possible by state support for the arts.
It is problematic, however, to situate musiqa mu'asira as an outcome of economic development and social progress. The developmentalist logic
of the Ba'athist state is perpetuated by the assumption that musiqa mu'asira marks an unprecedented flourishing of avant-gardism and postmodernism
in the musical arts as well as the attribution of this development to economic liberalization in the last decade. These hegemonic forces conceal economic
and social disparities that have increased due to flawed policies of industrialization and modernization since the 1970s. Whereas economic liberalization
policies in the past decade assured citizens of increased access, benefits, and provisions, in reality, these have been distributed unevenly. Liberalization
has failed to reduce unemployment, curtail rising costs of living, or stabilize domestic security (Abboud 2009). In short, a 'social market economy'
selectively infused by privatization measures has not reformed society but rather reproduced the systematic contradictions and social grievances that
triggered the Syrian uprising in 2011.
The predicament of musiqa mu'asira is that it is at once contingent on liberalization and yet marginalized by its engagement with global soundworlds.
This field indicates the increased importation of conceptual and material resources; however, its emergence does not herald the diffusion of such cultural
capital into the musical lives of many Syrians. Perhaps due to decades of relative isolation from the global order, connoisseurs reject efforts to engage
with spectralism and atonalism and privilege musiqa sharqiyya as the most distinguished modern Arab musical expression. These aesthetic distinctions
occur in the context of a Ba'athist regime that legitimizes its authoritarian power through anti-Western and anti-imperialist rhetoric, which, in turn, service
its ideological commitment to pan-Arabism.
At the time of this writing in late summer 2011, contacts based in Damascus suggest that civil unrest and popular protests in Syria have not disrupted
musical life at Dar al-Assad. Though some students are not able to travel to Damascus from other regions due to anxieties over violence, the arts complex
has maintained its active calendar of programs and events, which are attended by full-capacity audiences. This situation is gradually shifting, however, as
international economic sanctions make a negative impact on the arts. It is possible to conjecture that the arts are relatively immune because urban elite have
been least affected by civil unrest, for reasons that may be historically traced to Hafez al-Assad's economic policies of infitah (opening) in the 1980s that
benefited urban mercantile elite (Perthes 1995). Each of the composers discussed in this essay has been based in Europe since before the Arab Spring in
order to pursue professional opportunities, and all plan to remain abroad for the foreseeable future. Like many Syrians residing abroad, they are uncertain
about what paths their brethren will pursue and how this may affect the conditions in which they produce artistic work.
Rather than assume that experimental composition developed in teleological alignment with discourses of progress and modernity, this essay embeds musiqa
mu'asira in the jostling conditions of history from which it emerged. The works discussed here represent the crossings, exchanges, and mediations that
composers experienced as they traversed musical routes and encountered disparate narratives of the global avant-garde. Uneven, paradoxical, and textured by
overlapping discourses of modernity, contemporary Syrian art music is itself an expression of the contemporaneity of musical worlds.