Arab Art Music between Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Mandate Palestine
Keywords: 
Palestine
British Mandate
Arab art music
tarab
Radio
Egypt
nationalism
moderism
elite
Abstract: 

This article examines Arab art music, or tarab, during the British Mandate for Palestine as the sonic harbinger of Palestinian modernism. It shows how the production, consumption, and dissemination of professionalized Arab art music in early twentieth-century Palestine was linked to the emergence of a Palestinian elite at a time when Palestine was undergoing rapid developments and becoming an important node of cultural exchange in the region. Arab art music thus provided a site for the construction of a cosmopolitanized urban identity across Palestinian cities, one that operated on two political registers: local Palestinian nationalism and regional pan-Arabism. The article concludes with a discussion on how Palestine’s political elite negotiated the inherent contradictions of colonized modernity through Arab art music.

Author biography: 

Loab Hammoud is an ethnomusicologist and a Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Music Research at the University of Würzburg, where he researches identity formation in musical performances and the role of music in the lives of Syrian musicians, as they adapt and reconstruct their homes in Germany. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Haifa. He plays and teaches the oud, as well as Arab music theory. His previous research focused on the history of Palestinian Arab art music and Arab music education and performance among Israeli Jews.