Performing in/outside Islam: music and gendered cultural politics in the Middle East and North Africa
2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1046293042000312742
ISSN1479-5760
Autores Tópico(s)Middle East Politics and Society
ResumoAbstract Women performers, particularly those in theatre, music, dance, and performance art, frequently experience inequitable treatment in Islamic societies. This study investigates the lived experience of women musicians in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), with particular focus on the resistance discourse in Tunisian women's music. Based on a year‐long ethnography situated primarily in the North African Tunisia's capital of Tunis, this study critiques the intersections of religion, sexuality, politics, and power for women in the MENA. It examines the restrictive legislation of Qur'anic verses that compel women to refrain from nushuz (rebellion) and tabarruj (strutting about/displaying of charms). It looks at how this legislation is applied to women public performers through the interlocking hegemonic discourses of religious, governmental, familial, and other institutions. It examines how resistant discursive space(s) articulate subversive and sexual messages through song. Finally, the study addresses the sociocultural and historical roots of a specific imagined woman, the musical performer as a sexualized Other and encoded under the dominant ideology of the region as resisting the tenets of Islam. Keywords: IslamMiddle East and North Africa RegionResistanceSexualityWomen's Music Notes I thank Amina Srarfi, director of El Azifet, the first all‐women's orchestra in the Arab world, for sharing the Arabic lyrics of this song, performed during their 1993–94 concert season. I also extend special thanks to Monia Hejaiej for her translation assistance of this song during our meetings in Tunis, August, 1994. This passage, which is split into four sections in this article, is an interpretation of Sura 4:34, what Barbara Freyer Stowasser calls the “pivotal Quranic verse on gender relations” (32). It includes interpretations by Tabari (d. 923) and Baydawi (d. 1286?). Baydawi, Stowasser notes, whose interpretation of “men's ‘guardianship of’ or ‘superiority over’ women as revealed in Sura 4:34 is likened to that of rulers over their subjects” (33). The term sura indicates one of the 114 sections (or chapters) in the Qur'an. Elsewhere I have analyzed the historical significance of the public performer and the sexed body in the MENA (Lengel, Resisting). As early as the eighteenth century, European travelers wrote about two distinct women musicians in Egypt, the awâlim, a learned group of women musical scholars that both composed and performed music, and the ghawâzî, who performed unveiled, in the streets, and in front of coffee houses (van Nieuwkerk). From that time until the early twentieth century, it was assumed that the accepted road to women's musical success and fame in the region involved not talent, but exploitation and objectification, resulting from the so‐called qayna (slave‐girl) and ahira (prostitute) performing music in the public sphere, in men's cafés. Feminist academicians and performers alike in the region understand that the historical, imagined performer/prostitute was not only the creation of Arab men but, in the Magreb (the Western part of North Africa), by the objectification of the Other by French colonial power. Because this colonial gaze was unaware of the cultural nuances of women's music and dance performance, women were often assumed to be prostitutes by the colonial gaze or the foreign eye generally (Danielson 292). My fieldwork includes a year‐long field research experience in North African Tunisia (1993–1994) funded by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the American Institute of Maghribi Studies, and the Ohio University John Houk Memorial Foundation. I have since engaged in two field experiences in Morocco (1995, 1997), which were funded by grants from the American Institute of Maghribi Studies and Richmond American International University in London, and a brief field research experience in Tunisia (2004). Research included feminist ethnographic participation‐observation and over 100 in‐depth interviews with women musicians: professional and amateur; internationally/nationally known and those who perform only privately; women with differing marital and family backgrounds; women challenged by differing physical abilities; women who have spent their lives in Tunis and others who moved to Tunis to further their careers; and women who have been encouraged to perform and those forbidden to so do. I focused my ethnographic participant‐observation with El Azifet and Taqassim, the first two widely recognized all‐women's orchestras in the Arab world. Within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, another form of “taming,” by non‐Muslims also has occurred. The colonial enterprise positioned both men and women within the second possibility, feminized and tamed, to gain and maintain control over the colonized Other (Sinha). This controlling feminization, juxtaposed with the construction of the woman as sexualized Other, constitutes the subordination of Muslim women. Foucault moved from Paris to the village of Sidi Bou Said, on the outskirts of Tunis, in 1966, where he lived until 1968. There, he witnessed Tunisians being imprisoned for political opposition that influenced his writing of Discipline and Punish (Martin et al.). Much has been written about harem (seclusion), the politics of the hijab, and the inscription of covering dresses on the Muslim woman's body (see, for instance, Ahmed; Badran; Chater; MacLeod). This term hijab is widely used to refer to the Islamic headcovering. However, a more exact definition constitutes hijab as an act of obedience to Allah involving iffah (modesty), tahara (purity), sitr (shielding; covering), taqwah (righteousness), eemaan (belief or faith), and haya (bashfulness). In urban Tunis, while a few younger women are now wearing hijab, the covering that one mainly sees is the sifsari, worn by women in their late 40s and older. The sifsari is an ivory garment that resembles a sheet, worn loosely like a shawl over their heads and often grasped around the head by women's teeth. Please see my article (Resisting) for a discussion of postcolonial modernization and the politics surrounding the lack of hijab in Tunisia. Veiling is not a focus of this article as none of the women performers with whom I interacted wore either hijab or sifsari. As this manuscript was being completed the Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc announced the Moroccan government adopted a new landmark Family Law supporting women's equality and granting them new rights in marriage and divorce, such as wives are no longer legally obliged to obey their husbands among others and adult woman are entitled to self‐guardianship. H.M. King Mohammed VI proclaimed that the new Family Law was consistent with the tolerant spirit of Islam (Women's Learning Partnership). In Tunisia, too, the legal framework is far more favorable to women than that of other Arab states. In 1956, following French colonial rule, the Tunisian government—under then‐President Habib Bourguiba—implemented a national Code du Statut Personnel, replacing Qu'ranic law and foregrounding, at least discursively, women's rights in all arenas, including family, work, and education. Government officials and Tunisian feminist scholars (see Ben Aba; Chamari; Ghanmi; Marzouki Le Mouvement; Zamiti‐Horchani) alike agree that the Code has enhanced women's lives profoundly in both urban and rural areas of Tunisia. E‐Sweidi also murdered his business manager Amr El‐Kholi and El‐Kholi's wife Khadija Salaheddin, with a total of 35 bullets, before turning a gun on himself (Shehab). However, some women in El Azifet thought that their director was enacting the same kinds of power plays for which male directors were well known. They broke off to create the second all‐women's orchestra, Taqassim, with a more democratic structure of direction and governance. Like Amati, this song also was revived by El Azifet. I thank Monia Hejaiej for assisting in the translation of this song. Additional informationNotes on contributorsLaura Lengel Laura Lengel is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University. She received grants from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the American Institute of Maghribi Studies, and the Ohio University John Houk Memorial Foundation to conduct the year‐long field research in North African Tunisia (1993–1994) that forms the basis for this paper. The song lyrics and some of the interview narratives in this paper were originally presented in her doctoral dissertation (Drs. Jenny Nelson and Karin Sandell, Ohio University, advisors) and in a competitively selected paper on feminist ethnography presented in the Feminist and Women's Studies Division of the 1996 NCA convention (Dwight Conquergood, respondent). The focus on Islam and performance is new and developed solely for this submission. She thanks Dwight Conquergood, Frederick Corey, Thomas Nakayama, Jenny Nelson, Karin Sandell, and John T. Warren for their guidance, Victoria Newsom for her careful reading of this manuscript, Monia Hejaiej for her song translation, and above all the Tunisian women respondents for sharing their songs life stories. Correspondence to: Laura Lengel, School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University, 302 West Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403. Email: lengell@bgnet.bgsu.edu Laura Lengel is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University. She received grants from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, the American Institute of Maghribi Studies, and the Ohio University John Houk Memorial Foundation to conduct the year‐long field research in North African Tunisia (1993–1994) that forms the basis for this paper. The song lyrics and some of the interview narratives in this paper were originally presented in her doctoral dissertation (Drs. Jenny Nelson and Karin Sandell, Ohio University, advisors) and in a competitively selected paper on feminist ethnography presented in the Feminist and Women's Studies Division of the 1996 NCA convention (Dwight Conquergood, respondent). The focus on Islam and performance is new and developed solely for this submission. She thanks Dwight Conquergood, Frederick Corey, Thomas Nakayama, Jenny Nelson, Karin Sandell, and John T. Warren for their guidance, Victoria Newsom for her careful reading of this manuscript, Monia Hejaiej for her song translation, and above all the Tunisian women respondents for sharing their songs life stories. Correspondence to: Laura Lengel, School of Communication Studies, Bowling Green State University, 302 West Hall, Bowling Green, OH 43403. Email: lengell@bgnet.bgsu.edu
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