This study explores how Algerian traditional music has been appropriated for the integration of various members and the formation of cultural identity in the modern and contemporary history of Algeria. The international congress of Arab music in Cairo in 1932 was the first historical event concernin...
This study explores how Algerian traditional music has been appropriated for the integration of various members and the formation of cultural identity in the modern and contemporary history of Algeria. The international congress of Arab music in Cairo in 1932 was the first historical event concerning Algerian music. Western and Eastern intellectuals have debated the preservation and renewal of traditional Arab music that has come into contact with Western music. Main arguments like musical instruments, music scale, mode, harmonization, orchestration, transmission and education, orality and transcription were common among Non-Western countries that encountered western music during the tide of early globalization. Here we find the beginnings of what will be the major themes of musical discourse, such as cultural identity, acculturation and cultural diversity. This congress offered algerian musicians and intellectuals the opportunity to become aware of the specificity of their music and the problematic concerning the relation between particularism and the universalism of Algerian music.
Algerian new government had to build the unity of the country from an ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, linking the past interrupted by colonization to the present. For this, "Andalusian" traditional noble music was promoted as a music model serving as a source for the Algerian cultural identity. Many researchers have tried to reconstruct the history of Andalusian music to justify its antiquity by proving the continuity. The Algerian State has only encouraged selected and "desirable" musical genres that have been legitimized by tradition. The state has not respected cultural minorities; he marginalized them and went so far as to forbid their cultural claims.
The identity reaffirmation of Algerians has gone not only through a restoration of the cultural past destroyed by the colonial fact, but also through cultural resistance against the symbolic violence of Western cultural capital. In this historical context, discourses concerning cultural identity in Algeria have taken on the aspect of power discourses. As a result, cultural identity has become a fixed and homogeneous image, far from identity as a process embedded in social dynamics and articulated around practices. Identity discourses, characterized by a strong tendency to nationalism, prevented Algerians from forming a network of free speeches. In reading the Algerian musical discourse, we see an affirmation of the superiority of their music in relation to the Other, especially to the West. They build the chronology of their music often without historical foundations. They do not hesitate to mobilize any argument that would be useful to prove its influences on Western music. Algerian musical discourse shows us a strong attachment to the over-valorization of a glorious past, the golden age and an obsession with the trauma of the colonial era. The present and the future are somehow taken hostage in the past. This obsession with the past impedes, in fact, the effectiveness of discourses that could innovate and revitalize tradition. They wanted decolonization and empowerment, which was paradoxically possible only in reference to the West. One has the impression that they write their story to boast of their glorified past. Although they claim to voluntarily integrate the culture of the other to their identity, their description of the story unknowingly reveals an exclusive nationalism.
However, the Andalusian music of Algeria did not become a music representing the identity of the entire members of Algeria. Rather, the music that was subject to suppression or censorship by the government became a medium for conveying the voice of identity recognition demand. The Berber people, who occupy a fifth of the population of Algeria, used the Kabyle song to resist their own repression of their culture and language. The Kabyle song was the core of the cultural movement for identity like the ‘Berber Spring’. It was also the center of the production of the speeches of resistance. It has become a field of collective memory practice where no speech is forbidden.
Algeria's young people, who were overwhelmed by the rigors of strict religious and traditional society and suffering from extreme unemployment and poverty, expressed their desire for freedom through Raï. The Raï, marginalized from its beginnings, becomes a "world music" and symbol of Algeria. In fact, raï did not originally fit the criteria of tradition. When the raï was a great success, the government, which needed to legitimize it, tried to give it some desirable attributes. Many studies of raï tried to go as far as possible in search of it’s origin and to link it with chaâbi, derived genre from Andalusian music. The raï phenomenon reveals that Algeria's unidimensional identity was based simply on an imaginary. The demand for recognition of identity through Kabyle Song and Raï show the cultural policy that does not share the fruits of modernization with its members would fail. It can also be seen that identity is not a purely fixed entity but a fluid and hybrid.
Algerian musical discourses show us that the various aspects of discourses on tradition always relate to modernity and cultural identity: the relationship between tradition and power, the relationship between tradition and nationalism, etc. They also show us that the marriage of tradition and the ideology of nationalism can lead to negative results, for example, exclusive nationalism, homogenized identity, inertial tradition, abandonment of reform, and so on. Algerian musical discourses also reveal to us that cultural policy can not produce positive results without political and social reforms, for example, the eradication of corruption, the democratization of the press, and so on. These analyzes of Algerian musical discourse would be useful for understanding the problems concerning the modernity of music and cultural identity in post-colonial countries.
This study explores how Algerian traditional music has been appropriated for the integration of various members and the formation of cultural identity in the modern and contemporary history of Algeria. The international congress of Arab music in Cairo in 1932 was the first historical event concerning Algerian music. Western and Eastern intellectuals have debated the preservation and renewal of traditional Arab music that has come into contact with Western music. Main arguments like musical instruments, music scale, mode, harmonization, orchestration, transmission and education, orality and transcription were common among Non-Western countries that encountered western music during the tide of early globalization. Here we find the beginnings of what will be the major themes of musical discourse, such as cultural identity, acculturation and cultural diversity. This congress offered algerian musicians and intellectuals the opportunity to become aware of the specificity of their music and the problematic concerning the relation between particularism and the universalism of Algerian music.
Algerian new government had to build the unity of the country from an ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, linking the past interrupted by colonization to the present. For this, "Andalusian" traditional noble music was promoted as a music model serving as a source for the Algerian cultural identity. Many researchers have tried to reconstruct the history of Andalusian music to justify its antiquity by proving the continuity. The Algerian State has only encouraged selected and "desirable" musical genres that have been legitimized by tradition. The state has not respected cultural minorities; he marginalized them and went so far as to forbid their cultural claims.
The identity reaffirmation of Algerians has gone not only through a restoration of the cultural past destroyed by the colonial fact, but also through cultural resistance against the symbolic violence of Western cultural capital. In this historical context, discourses concerning cultural identity in Algeria have taken on the aspect of power discourses. As a result, cultural identity has become a fixed and homogeneous image, far from identity as a process embedded in social dynamics and articulated around practices. Identity discourses, characterized by a strong tendency to nationalism, prevented Algerians from forming a network of free speeches. In reading the Algerian musical discourse, we see an affirmation of the superiority of their music in relation to the Other, especially to the West. They build the chronology of their music often without historical foundations. They do not hesitate to mobilize any argument that would be useful to prove its influences on Western music. Algerian musical discourse shows us a strong attachment to the over-valorization of a glorious past, the golden age and an obsession with the trauma of the colonial era. The present and the future are somehow taken hostage in the past. This obsession with the past impedes, in fact, the effectiveness of discourses that could innovate and revitalize tradition. They wanted decolonization and empowerment, which was paradoxically possible only in reference to the West. One has the impression that they write their story to boast of their glorified past. Although they claim to voluntarily integrate the culture of the other to their identity, their description of the story unknowingly reveals an exclusive nationalism.
However, the Andalusian music of Algeria did not become a music representing the identity of the entire members of Algeria. Rather, the music that was subject to suppression or censorship by the government became a medium for conveying the voice of identity recognition demand. The Berber people, who occupy a fifth of the population of Algeria, used the Kabyle song to resist their own repression of their culture and language. The Kabyle song was the core of the cultural movement for identity like the ‘Berber Spring’. It was also the center of the production of the speeches of resistance. It has become a field of collective memory practice where no speech is forbidden.
Algeria's young people, who were overwhelmed by the rigors of strict religious and traditional society and suffering from extreme unemployment and poverty, expressed their desire for freedom through Raï. The Raï, marginalized from its beginnings, becomes a "world music" and symbol of Algeria. In fact, raï did not originally fit the criteria of tradition. When the raï was a great success, the government, which needed to legitimize it, tried to give it some desirable attributes. Many studies of raï tried to go as far as possible in search of it’s origin and to link it with chaâbi, derived genre from Andalusian music. The raï phenomenon reveals that Algeria's unidimensional identity was based simply on an imaginary. The demand for recognition of identity through Kabyle Song and Raï show the cultural policy that does not share the fruits of modernization with its members would fail. It can also be seen that identity is not a purely fixed entity but a fluid and hybrid.
Algerian musical discourses show us that the various aspects of discourses on tradition always relate to modernity and cultural identity: the relationship between tradition and power, the relationship between tradition and nationalism, etc. They also show us that the marriage of tradition and the ideology of nationalism can lead to negative results, for example, exclusive nationalism, homogenized identity, inertial tradition, abandonment of reform, and so on. Algerian musical discourses also reveal to us that cultural policy can not produce positive results without political and social reforms, for example, the eradication of corruption, the democratization of the press, and so on. These analyzes of Algerian musical discourse would be useful for understanding the problems concerning the modernity of music and cultural identity in post-colonial countries.
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