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“We are going through a transitional phase, shifting from entertainment music.to something more expressive. This means that the new music wave is different from the past one. We now deal with music as an art beyond song. The history of Arab music is that of song and is closely tied to the authority of discourse. However, with protest songs, we now listen to music pieces with specific themes. This has ushered in a new phase focused on voice as art. Our relationship with the word has therefore become inseparable from the musical act. Such a development will lead to a qualitative evolution in the history of Arabic music.”
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This article is part of a limited series marking a decade since the start of the Syrian revolution. Read this piece, originally written in Arabic, here.
It has been a decade since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution, the divergence of its paths and the onset of the Arab Spring.
There is no better time than the present to recall that event and tackle it from different angles. We can recall the moment of hope that accompanied these revolutions, or focus on what the uprisings represented when they cracked open the public sphere that had been forcibly closed for decades by different Arab despotic regimes.
Richard Breaux is an Associate Professor of Ethnic & Racial Studies at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He is A 78 RPM record collector and the creator of “Midwest Mahjar: The Recorded Sounds of the Syrian/Lebanese Diaspora at 78 RPM,” a blog that focuses on musicians of Arab descent in the United States before 1961.
This article is part of SyriaUntold’s ongoing on Syrian music.
Walk down Washington Street in Lower Manhattan between the Battery Parking Garage and Albany Street, and you’ll see virtually no signs that this area was once home to one of the largest communities of Syrians in the United States.
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“On the face of it, scrupulous adherence to the law is a victory for the cause of humane war. Yet the ruins of Syria tell a more complicated story. Not long before the U.S. assault on Raqqa, Russian and Syrian forces launched a major offensive to capture the rebel-held eastern side of Aleppo. Paying no heed to international law, they retook the city with savage efficiency, laying waste to crowded markets and hospitals. Yet the end result looked no different from Raqqa: a large civilian death toll, honeycombed apartment buildings, streets choked with rubble, entire neighborhoods flattened.” Read more