the premier “authentic” performance genre.
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In the modern period, Aleppo has been home to a large percentage of the Arab world’s leading vocalists, performers, and theorists. Perhaps Aleppo’s most famous musical son in the modern era is Alī al-Darwīsh (1872–1952), who is remembered today as a skilled composer, performer of the nāy flute, and an important musical theorist and teacher.12 Alī al-Darwīsh taught such Egyptian masters as the great Umm Kulthūm, Abd al-Wahhāb, and Riyād al-Sunbāṭī while an instructor at the King Fuād Conservatory of Music in Cairo (Mahannā 1998: 124–28; Ibrāhīm al-Darwīsh, personal communication, 1997). In addition, al-Darwīsh worked with the French Orientalist and music scholar Baron Rodolfe d’Érlanger while resident in Tunis from 1931 to 1939, helping him compose his important treatise La musique arabe (d’Érlanger 1930–1959; Mahannā 1998: 128–29; al-Sharīf 1991: 105). Alī al-Darwīsh was likewise an important presence at the first Congress of Arab Music (Mu’tamar al-mūsīqā al-arabiyya), held in Cairo at the behest of King Fuād in 1932. His sons Ibrāhīm (1924–2003), Nadīm (1926–1987), and Musṭafā (1928–2003) were trained by their father and made important contributions to Arab music theory, composition, and pedagogy. For example, Nadīm al-Darwīsh compiled and notated Min kunūzinā (From our treasures), a standard source book containing twenty-three suites performed in Aleppo (Rajāī and al-Darwīsh 1956). It is also important to note that, like so many prominent artists of his era, Alī al-Darwīsh was an active member of Aleppo’s Sufi orders, including the mawlawiyya or “Whirling Dervish” order (Mahannā 1998: 124–25; al-Sharīf 1991: 105; Ibrahim al-Darwīsh, personal communication, 1997).
The Aleppine composer and musician Kamīl Shambīr (1892–1934) worked along side Sayyid Darwīsh (1892–1923), the great Egyptian composer and popularizer of the musical theater and Arabic operetta in the early twentieth century (Mahannā 1998: 150). Shambīr is thought to have notated some of Darwīsh’s works and himself wrote some twenty-seven musicals while working for the theatrical troupes of Najīb al-Riḥānī and Amīn Ata Allāh in Cairo.13 Shambīr also composed a number of light tunes and instrumental dances that are still performed today, such as “Dance of the Coquettes” (Raqṣ al-hawānim).
Zuhayr Minīnī, Damascus, 2004.
With respect to composers and performers of the muwashshaḥ, few names stand out as much as that of Umar al-Baṭsh (1885–1950), the great Aleppine religious singer (munshid) and composer of muwashshaḥāt (washshāḥ). Like Alī al-Darwīsh, al-Baṭsh was active in Aleppo’s then-vibrant Sufi communities. According to a view presented by many Syrian music scholars, al-Baṭsh was almost solely responsible for reviving the muwashshaḥ genre in the Arab East and giving it renewed vitality (Mahannā 1998: 137–44; al-Sharīf 1991: 132–33). Certainly the muwashshaḥ was composed and performed elsewhere in the Arab East, but al-Baṭsh’s output was prodigious. He is thought to have composed over 130, of which some 80 have been notated and survive today. Umar al-Baṭsh moreover revived older songs and “completed” those that had been inherited with certain sections (khānāt) “missing,” including many by Sayyid Darwīsh (Mahannā 1998: 140).14 In addition, al-Baṭsh trained the majority of Aleppo’s major singers of the last fifty years, including Sabri Moudallal, Mustafā Māhir, Zuhayr Minīnī, Hassan and Kāmil Bassāl, Muḥammad Khairī, and Ṣabāḥ Fakhrī. His stamp is still heard in Aleppine performances today, in terms of both compositional and vocal style.
Other important names from among Aleppo’s musical progeny include the composer and vocalist Bakrī al-Kurdī (1909–1978); Sabri Moudallal (b. 1918); Ṣabāḥ Fakhrī (b. 1933), arguably the greatest living Arab vocalist; the late Muḥammad Khairī (1935–1981); Nouri Iskandar (b. 1938), former director of the Arab Music Institute in Aleppo, noted composer, musical modernizer, and researcher of Syriac and other ancient Levantine melodies; Muḥammad Qadrī Dalāl (b. 1946), a music researcher, current director of the Arab Music Institute in Aleppo, and among the finest contemporary oud performers in the Arab world (and my main teacher); Saad Allah Agha al-Qalah (b. 1950), currently Syrian Minister of Tourism, former Professor of Engineering at Damascus University, and a respected qānūn performer and music scholar; Mayāda al-Ḥinnāwī (b. 1958), among the Arab world’s leading female vocalists; and many others.
Ḥassan Baṣṣal (center), with (from left to right) Abd al-Ḥalīm Harīrī, Muḥammad Qadrī Dalāl, the author, and Ghass ān Amūrī, Aleppo, 2004.
Just as important as its reputation for distinguished scholars and performers has been Aleppo’s reputation for its knowledgeable and cultivated listeners, the fabled sammīa or “connoisseur listeners” explored in depth by ethnomusicologist A. J. Racy (2003).15 The sammīa are those who claim a “special talent for listening” (Racy 2003: 40; see also Elsner 1997) and a high degree of musical taste. Traditionally, they also functioned as arbiters of musical taste and aesthetics in urban center such as Cairo, Beirut, and Aleppo. Aleppine musicians often claim that no major Arab artist, including Umm Kulthūm and Muḥhammad Abd al-Wahhāb, achieved fame without having first earned the approval of the Aleppine sammīa. Numerous stories—nay, legends—abound of the importance of Aleppo’s sammīa in determining the course of modern Arab music. One oft-told legend states that in the 1930s the then-rising Egyptian star Muḥhammad Abd al-Wahhāb came to perform in Aleppo. On the evening of his first concert, only a small number of Aleppines came to hear him—perhaps as few as seven in a theater that would hold two thousand (often said to have been the famed “Luna Park” theater, now long-since demolished). Abd al-Wahhāb was stunned and disappointed but nevertheless gave a strong performance. On the second night, the audience overflowed the theater onto the streets,
