I was not surprised by the looks of astonishment that I received from everyone who asked me about the major my daughter had chosen for her university studies. She had decided to study Eastern music, with a focus on playing the oud, which she had been attached to since her childhood.
For many, studying music may be a waste of time and effort, as most people prefer scientific disciplines such as medicine or engineering, especially if the student has a high grade point average that qualifies him to enter these colleges.
But these looks of astonishment stemmed from other reasons. Living in a southern village under the sway of a rigid, ideological political system, this disapproval took on a different character. In our conservative, Shiite region, discussing music is akin to discussing a strange creature or an alien.
If we go back in time, according to my grandmother, dabke circles and evenings of zajal and ataba were always held at the spring with the participation of the village’s young men and women. Hand in hand, voices rang out with mawwals that told stories, described situations, or carried hints of defiance within them.
Even on occasions of death, the deceased was carried on shoulders, accompanied by the “Hurba” to his grave. The “Hurba” consists of sung verses in colloquial Arabic that speak of the difficulty of loss and the dread of death. One of the conditions for the one who performs the “Hurba” is that he possesses a beautiful and moving voice, and the people of the village would repeat his phrases with all reverence, sadness and sorrow.
My mother used to tell me about the radio’s place in the house, and how people would wait for Thursday nights to listen to Umm Kulthum’s evening show, wondering if she would sing a new song, or repeat some of her old songs.
Despite the modesty of the school at that time, music was a compulsory class, and ironically, my mother eagerly awaited this class, as it was her opportunity to sing in front of her teacher and to hear him praise the beauty of her voice and her skillful performance.
I still remember when I was a teenager in the nineties, how we used to gather with our peers to stay up late and dance to the latest songs at the time. Our village was also lucky to have two young men with beautiful voices, which qualified them to participate in singing competitions on Lebanese television, and they used to hold singing parties for the village children.
The momentous event occurred when a new song by Hani Shaker, the darling of the youth at that time, especially the youth of Nabatieh, became popular. Cars would blare his songs during the day, and emotions and feelings would groan at night; as if this singer had sworn an oath to make everyone around him miserable and spoil their lives with the sad and painful lyrics of his songs.
Music was part of our daily lives, with an overwhelming presence on various occasions, whether happy or sad.
How did we in our region become at odds with music and singing? How did these restrictions that define what is permissible to listen to and what is not come about? How did the songs of Fairouz, Sabah and Wadih El Safi become forbidden?
It is the dominance exercised by the religious parties in the South, which set specific standards for evaluation; it is either white or black, either permissible or forbidden, and music and songs were the first victims of this dominance.
Music is considered forbidden by most Shiite religious authorities because it is seen as a form of entertainment that affects people’s feelings and emotions, distracting them from contemplation and performing their religious rituals. With the spread of political Islam in the region, this wave of religiosity has extended to most of the southern regions.
The main concern of the people in our southern villages has become performing religious duties and holding Husseini mourning gatherings on all occasions, as if Ashura has extended to become an event that we remember and mourn throughout the year.
If the use of melody is permitted, it is only allowed in reciting the Holy Quran, or in singing religious songs that are considered permissible.
Instead of cars blasting the romantic songs of singers, they now blast the chants of reciters and the laments of mourners.
I remember when eggs and firecrackers were thrown at the last musical gathering held in my village in the 1990s, and how that marked the end of our experience with mixed-gender musical and dancing gatherings. Afterwards, the culture of women’s religious festivals spread to weddings, along with terms like “legitimate” or “illegitimate” music, the introduction of kitchen utensils that made sounds as substitutes for musical instruments, and the classification of their sounds as permissible music. Most importantly, there was the requirement for girls to perform specific, “legitimate” swaying movements while dancing at these festivals.
In our region, there are no music festivals because they are considered a luxury and a distraction from the main issue; the issue of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has been confined to us in southern Lebanon and Palestine, and therefore it is necessary to adapt all kinds of arts to serve this issue.
So we started replacing sentimental songs with revolutionary anthems, and holding folk poetry evenings praising the Islamic resistance and its achievements. If we hold art exhibitions, the theme must revolve around the land, the resistance, and the blood of the martyrs. This does not mean that we deny the sacrifices or the importance of these concepts, but is it reasonable to eliminate the social, humanitarian, and emotional topics that affect people’s lives?
Thus, while many regions in Lebanon enjoy their annual international arts festivals, such as Byblos, Baalbek, and Batroun, the South has been deprived of these events, which not only reflect cultural openness but also stimulate the economy. Artistic activity there has been limited to a few rare festivals featuring the singer Julia Boutros in Tyre, given her extensive repertoire of revolutionary and patriotic songs. I still remember the huge crowds when I attended one of her concerts in the Tebnine area after the liberation; it was a free concert held to celebrate the occasion.
I have always wondered why the authorities in our region are afraid of music and singing?!
I don’t think the melody is the reason, because the songs that are permissible according to their assessment have beautiful melodies. I think they are afraid of the words.
Religious parties seek to employ music and art to serve their goals, creating a specific space and certain frameworks to consolidate their beliefs, and suggesting that nothing is more important than the cause they adopt. Therefore, the focus should always be on anthems that glorify the political party, and remind us of victories over the enemy, and the sacrifices that were made.
Emotional lyrics, such as love, passion, regret, and pain, or any human emotion, can soften hearts and distract minds from the underlying ideology of constant alertness and a perpetual sense of being targeted, as if we are in a perpetual state of emotional and intellectual emergency. These emotional words create shared worlds because they speak of feelings experienced by all people, regardless of their beliefs, ethnicities, or political affiliations.
Wadih El Safi and Nasri Shamseddine have many songs that speak of village customs and traditions, and celebrate the beauty of nature, mountains, and rivers in Lebanon. These songs highlight the beauty of our country in general, while the lyrics currently permitted artistically are those that separate our south from the rest of the country, as if we are from a different planet, with no connection whatsoever between us and others in our homeland.
Art has an extraordinary ability to influence and create a collective consciousness that facilitates subservience and obedience. This is what the dominant parties in the South realized, so they used the arts to serve the political agenda and direct society towards specific ways of thinking and particular interests, within religious and doctrinal frameworks that are difficult to transcend.
On the other hand, art, with its inherent freedom, has the ability to broaden intellectual horizons, criticize, confront, refute errors, and challenge authority in a gentle and smooth manner. This is the aspect that religious parties fear.
For three decades, the South has been under the grip of a religious party authority that imposed strict artistic restrictions and set specific standards for what is permissible and what is not. An entire generation knows nothing about the songs of Fairouz, Sabah, or Wadih El Safi, even though they are among the most important singers who have sung about the love and beauty of the homeland.
These are restrictions that must be broken, and this requires a plan managed and supervised by the Ministry of Education. Music classes must return as a core subject in the school curriculum, and a class must be allocated to teach the rules of Dabke in schools… As for me, as a music teacher, I always make sure, when I receive my young students in the morning, to let them hear Zaki Nassif on a daily basis, until they started asking for him by name if I changed the song.
Since the establishment of musical culture begins from a young age, reviving the role of the Teachers’ House for Music is a priority for reviving musical culture in schools. Supporting the Higher Institute of Music and opening branches of it in more than one southern region helps to spread this culture.
This plan should also fall under the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture, which, in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, can allocate additional budgets to municipalities that wish to hold music festivals, even if they stipulate taking into account the general mood of the region, and provide incentives to establish music institutes to teach the arts of all kinds… The important thing is that we start from somewhere, that the South regains its authentic artistic and emotional heritage, represented by music, by the ‘Ataba, by the Dabke, and by everything that constitutes human communication and openness to others.
Musical heritage is a key factor in creating a unified national identity, and in Lebanon we are in dire need of focusing on common factors that strengthen our sense of belonging and national unity.
Perhaps the state that claims to want to return to the South, or demands that the South be brought back into its fold, has no better tool than art to build bridges of reconciliation. Art in all its forms—music, theater, cinema, literature, poetry, and more—is the only realm that can translate dry legalistic pronouncements into tangible experiences that people can encounter, helping to mitigate conflicts and differences and highlighting common ground. If ministries such as Education, Culture, and the Interior can reintroduce the arts into schools and public life in the South, it will mean that the state has succeeded in restoring the meaning of the social contract between itself and its citizens in the South.
I feel pain when my mother’s seventy-year-old friend tells me about her longing to listen to Umm Kulthum and Farid al-Atrash, but she is afraid of doing so because of the religious prohibition, based on the fatwa of her religious authority. All my attempts to convince her that these types of art elevate the human soul, and do not degrade it, have failed, but there is no one to listen!
The religious surge that swept through the South led to an exaggeration in placing restrictions on the arts, and the lack of courage in evaluating what benefits the soul and spirit and what harms them led to their prohibition. Perhaps we forgot that God is beautiful and loves beauty… and music.