[Music]
[Applause]
>> Anne K. Rasmussen:
Good afternoon, everyone,
and thank you so 
much for coming.
It's a real thrill to play here.
I've been in and out of
the Library of Congress
and the American Folklife Center
since the day I started my
dissertation research on Arab
American music and community.
And the first time I listened
to one of these scratchy old 78
was over in the 
Madison building.
And you'll hear that live
some of those very
recordings in a moment.
What you just heard was
Gilman 77, the Egyptian March.
What is that?
Benjamin Gilman made,
well, several hundred recordings
at the Columbian Exposition, 
the Chicago World's Fair in 893.
So that was one of nine
wax cylinder recordings that he
made at the Turkish Pavilion,
the Egyptian March,
and we accessed this through
the archives of Folk Culture,
through the Library of Congress,
who dropped electronic files
in our box and let
us listen to them.
Interestingly the woman pictured is
playing this instrument, the qanun.
And it was also the 
singer in the group.
So, we're going to take 
you down in a kind of
an exciting road
of the musical past.
And there are all kinds of
discoveries along this road,
so, it's a bit of a treasure
hunt, if you will,
and Anne Elise, the
QR code is for what?
>> Anne Elise Thomas:
This is your first treasure.
We just thought it would be
interesting to see who's here
and what brought you all here.
So, we just created a very quick
Google form that we are asking
you to include your email
address and how you found out
about this concert.
This is an opt in.
We can't promise we'll send
lots of communications because
we don't have a communication
system or actually any other gig
scheduled yet. But in case we
do and we're back in this area,
we would love to be
back in touch with you.
So, if you could take a second
and do that, we'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen:
Next slide please, John.
>> Anne Elise Thomas: Wait.
Just make sure everybody's done.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen:
Okay.
>> Anne Elise Thomas: This is the
only place this QR code appears.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: No,
we have it on the last slide.
>> Anne Elise Thomas: Oh, okay.
It's on the last slide as well.
We can go on.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: The
genesis of this project began
when I was invited to
a conference for the
ethnological museum, the
Humboldt Institute in Berlin,
and they actually assigned me
a topic from documentation to
something or other and
something, something, something.
And I thought, well, what
do I have to say about that?
I don't have much
to say about that.
And then I thought about my
collection of Arab American
music interviews, mix tapes
people had given me in the 1980s
and the 1990s.
There are some of them right
there and just kind of
thought about, you know,
what I could do with this,
gave a paper for the conference,
and John, next slide.
And I was very much inspired
by the idea of the archive
challenge from the
Library of Congress.
I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
started with John Lomax's
100th birthday, asking
contemporary performers to go
into that archive of field
recordings and pick something
and make it live again, or
bring something to light that
performers had already been doing.
And then in this magical way
that only happens here at the
Archive of Folk Culture, you
click on the live performance
and it takes you to the
original recording, and then you
click again and you're
looking at the collector's
original field notes.
It's absolutely magical.
So, I thought, you know, maybe
there's an archive challenge
to be done here.
At the same time, I found out
that contemporary musicians like
mixers and dubbers and hip hop
people were sampling a CD
that I had made on the rounder
label of an old 78 records, and
I thought, you know, people
are diving into this music.
How do we make it more accessible?
Next slide please.
At the same time, I was made aware
of the Music Modernization Act,
which means that in 1923,
everything before 1923,
the copyright was lifted.
And this enabled libraries
to make digitally available to
their publics all of these
recordings that had been,
you know, housed in the library.
So, I thought, that's cool.
The person who gave that paper
in the German conference was
Peter Lawrence at Harvard
University, and I knew they had
a great collection of Arab music.
So, I pitched this to Jared
at a conference where you all,
you American Folklife Center
people were at that conference
in Lisbon giving a presentation
on the archive challenge
and I said, Jared, how about
we do this archive challenge?
Let's dig out some
dead repertoire.
Let's make it live again,
and let's teach it to our
Middle Eastern music ensembles.
So Jared was game.
As we worked on this
material, we realized we needed
somebody to be testing this out.
And Elise was, I was on
sabbatical, so I wasn't with my
ensemble, but Anne Elise was
with hers, so she was sort of
the guinea pig working through
this material with her students.
And then we realized we
really needed a great singer.
So, we called Albert in.
And Albert is an Arab
American musician,
originally from Damascus but--
>> Albert Agha: Aleppo.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen:
Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry.
Aleppo. And I grew up in the
Boston area, and we've known
each other for years and years.
And he teaches over in Sharjah
in the United Arab Emirates.
So, he just flew in on Monday.
So that's how it all came together.
Next, please, John.
So, there's Anne Elise's
group and next please.
Okay. So, here's our Set List.
One of the things we learned
is that early recording,
when you went to buy your
records and your record player,
you could buy other newfangled
equipment like sewing machines.
As you see up there on the left
hand corner of that record album
and centered below
is a motorcycle.
So, it's interesting to think about
where recording technology
was situated in people's lives
and in, you know,
in the political economy of the
very, very early 20th century.
Next, please, John.
Our first tune is
on the Maloof label.
Alexander Maloof
was an Arab American,
a Syrian American entrepreneur.
And this Ya Nana Hilwa is
with the singer Salim Dumani
and the Takht led by the amazing
violinist Na'im Karakand.
You're going to learn a little bit--
Like we said, it's a treasure hunt.
So, you'll hear a quick dulab,
which is an opening piece, and
then the song, and then at the
end of the piece, at the end of
our performance, we're going
to add a vocal taksim and an
instrumental takasim, improvisation.
Now, anybody playing Arab
music today knows that the
improvisations usually come at
the beginning of a set of music
or in the middle, but you
don't play out all your music
and then say, Laith, take a solo.
Right? That is just
unidiomatic today.
And I proposed, you know,
30 years ago in my dissertation
that it was because the record
was still running out and some
engineer was in the room
saying, you know, they're done
with the song and they're
saying, we need more.
And so we're reviving
that performance practice.
Ya Nana Hilwa.
>> Jared Holton: With
other performance practices
we're reviving as well.
>> Anne Elise Thomas: Yes.
So, you may note these.
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> Anne K. Rasmussen:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
So, you may have noticed some,
concerned looks going on stage.
We think he kept messing up.
We wanted to go on to the B
part of the phrase, and he kept
doing that descending thing.
The oud player does the
descending thing every single time
in the record but these are
one take recordings, right?
This is the acoustic age.
And so, you know,
there's no possibility of doing--
A little possibility of doing
second and third takes so that
you can get the
oud player on board.
So, Anne Elise and I were imagining
what was happening in that room,
and giving Jared the stink eye.
[Laughter]
We're going to move on to a beautiful
piece called "Gose El Hammam".
Thank you, John. Sorry.
Oh, just-- Actually, let's
go ahead and move on
to the next slide, please.
Yeah. So just "Gose El Hammam" is,
we could say so many things
about it. And you know,
in addition to the four of us
and in addition to being
inspired by our colleagues here
at the American Folklife Center
and the Library of Congress and
also Peter Lawrence up
at Harvard, we know so much
more about these recordings,
particularly due to two people,
one who might have just walked
in the room, but one of them is
Richard Breaux, professor
in Wisconsin, who has
done as an historian,
biographical work,
digging up details on all of
these Arab American musicians
who he was introduced to by
buying a stack of old records.
And also just certain
archives of old 78 records.
And also we want to give a
shout out to Ian Nagoski,
who has done amazing work
collecting and reissuing records
and really helped us piece
together details on recordings
like this one by Zakiyya Akub.
We believe she is the first
woman to record in the
United States in New York, and
we learned that hers was
a vanity recording
on the Columbia label.
So what does that mean?
It's a recording
she wanted to make.
Why was Na'im Kadakan takt?
Why was his ensemble in the studio?
Did he hang a sign out and say,
okay, anybody wants to make a
recording, you know, come today.
Did she also perform in public?
I think certainly she performed
at community events.
And in terms of the words,
they're hard to hear.
They're really difficult.
And we asked our colleague in
Paris, Habib Yamin and maybe
Albert, you can tell us a
little bit about the words
of "Gose El Hammam".
>> Albert Agha: Yeah.
So "Gose El Hammam" is--
this form Tartuca, which is a short
popular song form
the early 20th century.
A lot of time has these
sexual connotations to them.
So Gose El Hamma means
a pair of doves.
And basically the song is
about a pair of doves as a
metaphor for breasts.
And it means that this girl
in full sexual maturity.
The text speaks of in a frank
manner about the girl's desire
to sell her charms.
Who wants to buy my doves?
The different verses are
variations of the same idea.
Selling good qualities.
[Laughter]
Yeah.
And I found that out later
after I was like, oh,
that's what that means. Okay.
[Laughter]
And so we picked up two
verses from this in the recording.
We couldn't make out a lot of
the other verses in it,
but that's generally the
theme of this genre,
this particular song.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: Great.
The recording was popular enough
that it was reissued
several years later.
So that's interesting
on this other label.
And the singer Mounira El Mahdeya
in Cairo had recorded it
just a few years earlier, and
she was a famous singer and
cabaret owner.
So it just interesting to see the
way these pieces circulate about.
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
>> Albert Agha: It was dessert.
[Applause]
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: So two
musical treasures so far, right?
The improvisations at
the end of the recording.
And we performed a skip
and you got the joke.
So this is a great audience.
>> Jared Holton: We chose
"Ya Ghazalan" mainly because
it was one of the clearest
recordings of the set.
We could make out most of the
words pretty well the lyrics,
and they followed standard
poetry, and we could
also make out a lot
of the melodic lines.
So "Ya Ghazalan" in an
early recording, 1905,
in Cairo by Favorite Records,
Favorite Records
being accompanied that--
There's not a lot of information
out there about it.
The label here and the numbers
that we have on the screen
sort of say where it was placed
in the catalog of favorite records
that was based in Hannover,
Germany at the time.
But we're doing a lot of
recordings in Ottoman area,
which was the
geography at the time.
So Egypt was included
in the Ottoman catalog.
Ahmed Al Agami is the
singer, the vocalist for this.
If you can go to the next
slide. We do have violin and
Qanun and again, thanks
to Peter Lawrence at
Harvard Library, we were able to
see where this record actually fit
into a larger catalog of what
favorite records was doing
at the time, and it was a wonderful
catalog to look through,
because they had a lot of
photographs of the performers
that were featured,
except for Ahmed Al Agami.
So that was a sad thing for us.
But we love this piece of music.
It is a tawshih. It's a Sufi
vocal song more of a genre
in the late 1800s, early 1900s,
but mostly synonymous
today with muwashshah, a larger
category of song tradition
that is distinct because of how
the poetry is written and
innovation in Al-Andalus, or
Muslim Spain or Moorish Spain,
in the Mediterranean
for about 800 years.
And you may not think poetry
could be that innovative and
trending and exciting and
world shaking, but it was.
It was in Al-Andalus.
And when it was innovated there
in Al-Andalus, it soon spread
across the Mediterranean
into the troubadour areas
of European music.
And in a couple of centuries, people
were writing these kinds of poems,
not only in  and early romance
languages, but also Hebrew.
Of course, that was there
in Al-Andalus at the time
and in languages associated
with Persian peoples.
So in a couple of centuries, it
had really spread far and wide.
So this is "Ya Ghazalan."
I think there is--
So I'll say one thing before we
play, and that is we were
working with Amel Guermazi, a
Tunisian musicologist, and she
directs another ensemble
called Musica in Paris.
She was a part of this project
at an earlier phase.
She helped us with this record.
None of us knew this song when
we first heard it, but then when
Amal heard it, she said, oh
yeah, this is the one we sing.
We still sing in Tunisia
and we pass this down in our
music schools. So, it was really
interesting for us to see
that these muwashshah, you know,
circulate in some places, but
not in others. So by way of our
researching this, we wanted to
put this back into circulation
actually, in North American
ensembles, for those who don't
know it. It is performed in
Tunisia in a different musical
mode today than is in the
recording. So, for
music nerds like us,
that was sort of an
interesting thing.
Because contrafactum is not
a new thing, you know,
a text and melodies
flip flop all the time.
But then to change a well-known
song to a new musical mode is
sort of a larger shift.
So it was interesting to find a
record from 1905 that was in a
slightly different
musical mode than how
it's transmitted today in Tunisia.
Oh, beautiful gazelle
adorned with seductive eyes.
I have passion in my
heart for those eyes.
If you visit me or leave my sight.
A star has appeared
and then vanished.
And in true performance style,
we're going to start this record
the way or this recording the way,
the record or this performance--
My worlds are colliding.
This performance with the record.
So, without further ado.
[Speaking in foreign language]
[Laughter]
Albert Agha.
[Applause]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> Jared Holton:
So Urubah qulu Lubnan.
This was our most challenging
record that we got,
but we really appreciated
the vocalists behind this and
the project here,
so, we went with it.
A 1928 recording by
vocalist Habiba Msikah.
And Urubi is a vocal improvisation
from North Africa,
particularly Algeria,
and really the record
is mostly unintelligible.
So Amel Guermazi, again a
Tunisian music scholar, was
working with us and she
and Hassan Azaleas and
Christopher Silver, who was working
with us, managed to get
the refrain out of this.
So that's what we're going to
perform, is the refrain.
It's a very short refrain, but
it's fronted by an improvisation
in the [Inaudible]
the Tunisian mode.
And we can hear percussion
in this recording.
So that's a very rare thing to
get drums in early recordings
like this, because it skipped
the needle and was difficult to
integrate into the sound.
So, we get a very clear rhythm
here, the rhythm [Inaudible]
And so we're going to be
performing that as well.
But the feature is Habiba Msikah.
So a short word about
Habiba Msikah on the next slide.
Habiba Msikah really became
quite well known in the 1920s.
In the last 6 or 7 years
of her life, she recorded
100 records, over 100 records
that became very, very famous.
She was synonymous with another
superstar, rising superstar
in the region [Inaudible]
You may have heard of her.
Habiba Msikah, at the height
of her popularity was
tragically murdered in
her home at 27 years old.
And neighbors heard her
yelling for help, and they took
her to the hospital.
And before she passed,
she was able to
tell them who did this to her,
and they apprehended him.
So this story of Melt Habiba
Msikah also became famous.
She was famous in her life and
she was famous after her death,
one of the probably the superstar
divas called the Queen of Tarab
in North Africa between
World War I and World War II.
a Jewish Tunisian musician
and stage performer.
So, this is not Qulu Lubnan.
We're not singing about
Lubnan. When we got the chorus,
we realized it was Qulu Libnat
in Tunisian dialect.
Yeah. So it's...
Come on, come on, girls.
Don't blame me.
[Speaks in foreign language]
She burned my heart.
[Speaks in foreign language]
And walked away in elegance.
But we also think
with smugness too.
>> Anne Elise Thomas:
And just a quick note,
this story became
famous of her death
because this was an actual record
called The Death of Habiba Msikah
that got circulated and
was a best seller as well.
So that's part of the
[Inaudible] story as well.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: Sounds
like a wonderful topic for a film.
[Music]
>> Jared Holton: So we have accordion
in this and we're going to
break out the accordion.
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: All right.
We have a couple pieces, and
we're going to do a bit of a mash up.
So, all of the qualities that
you've heard, almost all of them
are going to happen
in this mash up of two
really very well known
pieces that are performed
probably in every, you
know, in every hafli and
mahajan in the community, but
also, in all of these university
based ensembles.
One is the [Inaudible] and
the other one is [Inaudible].
[Inaudible] we know from the
very magnificent recordings
of Sabah Fakhri, the Syrian
singer who died just recently
in the early 2021. Yeah.
And then, [Inaudible]
we know it from Fairuz.
And Jared will talk a
little bit about those lyrics,
but by the great Egyptian
composer Saeed Darwish.
Both of these well, we have, yeah.
So "Al-Bulbul Nagha" interestingly is
one of the first records that I heard
here at the Library of Congress,
And what do I want to
say about "Al-Bulbul Nagha"?
So Na'im Karakand, Shehadi
Ashkar and Abrahim Halaby,
two of his sidemen were Jewish
musicians visiting from Aleppo.
We don't know for how long or
how many recordings they made.
The singer--
>> Albert Agha:
It sounds like us.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: Nice.
The singer Constantine Sousse
is certainly with a
name like Constantine.
[Inaudible]
is Christian, like
the great great majority
of the Arab immigrants
to this country.
We thought this could
have been the earliest recording
of this piece, but unfortunately,
we found out from
Akram Reyes, who is the
keeper of an archive in Beirut,
that he thinks there's one
that's a couple of years earlier,
but it is among the
very earliest ones.
And, you know, I just think this
really, I mean, so many things
highlight how continuous
these traditions are, right?
And so the interest in ethnic
music in America was really born
right here at the library with
a conference that involved
Richard Spottswood and his
incredible discography of
ethnic records on disc and the
realization, you know, that
American music wasn't just,
you know, black and white, but
it was Lithuanian and it was
Polish and it was Lebanese, and
it was all these communities
recording and just seeing how
closely these pieces are being
recorded there and here,
and how much this
repertoire is circulating.
Not to mention this incredible
violinist, Na'im Karakand, who
we feel is sort of, you know,
on equal footing with
Sami Al-shawwa, who we often
recognize as a major,
you know, instrumental
pioneer, maverick and,
wonderful musician
in the world of Cairo and beyond
in the "old country".
This piece features as much
heterophonic mayhem
and tempic elasticity as is possible.
So if it sounds like a mess,
that's what it's supposed to
sound like. We've got it.
[Laughter]
And one of the challenges with
doing these two tunes is that
we really had to unlearn the
wonderful versions that we all
know and love, and that our
students know and love.
I mean, you really had to discipline
your students to say like,
no, you can't do it that way
even though it's in your ear.
So Jared, tell us a little
bit about "il-Hilwa Di"
because we're going
to-- this is our sort of
We have a tiny little, small
encore for you, an outro.
But this is our final
suite of two pieces.
So tell us a little bit about your
interest in doing this old warhorse.
"il-Hilwa Di"
What made you interested
in picking that up?
>> Jared Holton: [Inaudible]
So many of us know this.
This is a 1922 recording.
It is also not the first
one of this song, but
what interested us was when
we first listened to it,
you can flip through the
slides until we get there.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: One more.
Oh yeah, there we go.
That one. Sure.
>> Jared Holton: The disc is labeled,
it's Maloof and Salim Doumani
is singing, so we started with him.
[Inaudible]
This is Salim Doumani again.
it's labeled "al-Dik
ysayyah ku ku ku ku",
which perhaps is the part
everybody remembers
from "il-Hilwa Di"
the rooster saying ku ku ku ku.
And it's quite comical, actually,
the way they recorded this.
You might hear us doing some
of that now, but "il-Hilwa Di",
it is the title that musicians
tend to transmit this song today.
There were a couple
of other surprises.
In short, verses two and
verses three were new to this.
The refrain and verse one was
the one that we all know and we
all perform. Verse two and
three on the B side were
different and talked about how
America's children love to work,
and they are flush with cash
and all of these sorts of things,
and it gives us a little
social commentary,
actually, on what immigrant
life was like in New York City
in the early 1920s for Arab
peoples that were coming
through this well known, beloved
song composed by Sayed Darwish.
Just a year or two, probably
before this record came out,
but still circulating now
transatlantic on this side and
then set to a new place,
a new context.
So we hope you like it.
"il-Hilwa Di" according
to this record's version.
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: But
we're starting with [Inaudible]
And I don't think we have the lyrics
of that up there. Right? John. Okay.
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Singing]
[Music]
[Applause]
>> Anne K. Rasmussen: Thank
you so very much for coming.
Thank you for this
wonderful invitation
to share our work with you.
This is certainly
a work in progress.
We were kind of staying before
1923, but now we're going
to bust out and check
out all these other collections
we're trying to figure out how
to make this music available,
whether it's on a website or
just circulating it, or try to
do a publication so that we can
get more people playing it.
But we're going to leave you
with our one minute outro.
Your favorite Gilman 77.
The Egyptian March.
For those of you who are late,
this is our oldest recording.
A wax cylinder recording
made by Benjamin Gilman
at the Chicago Columbian
Exposition in 1893.
We have no idea why Gilman
made like 88 recordings of
gamelan and only nine at the
Turkish Pavilion, but this one
was a good one for us.
[Music]
And, John, could
you go to this thing?
That's the special thanks slide.
That's the one.
[Music]
Okay.
[Music]
That's it.
[Applause]
>> Istiwanat--
Istiwanat Live!
Yes.
>> Thank you.
[Applause]
>> Thank you so much.