Audible War: Musics of Syrians at Home & in Exile

March 9, 2016
Farah Zahra, MTS candidate
Farah Zahra, MTS candidate

"I sent my soul to wander in my home, when my footsteps towards it have lost their way, to ask our home if it still remembers us, or has it forgotten us even since we left"From the song "I sent my Soul to You," by Syrian poet M.D Sabouni.

On Wednesday, March 9, Farah Zahra, an MTS candidate at Harvard Divinity School and a resident at the Center for the Study of World Religions presented on "Audible War: Musics of Syrians at Home & in Exile."

Farah, who herself witnessed war back in her home country Lebanon, began by sharing her motivation behind this growing research interest. She expressed that her decision to begin investigating the musical dimensions of the Syrian revolution/war is a craving for an alternative to throwing up her hands in the face of the growing complexity, cruelty and above all fragility of war. In her presentation, she introduced the topic experientially by showing different music videos and other sonic multimedia.  

Each of the 'musics' presented pointed toward different social, cultural and aesthetic formations of the Syrian music-makings. Each presented a different Syrian community: one at home and one in exile. The musical genres included Syrian folk music, pop and rap; and the lyrical themes included one of recovering collective memories of a land at peace, storytelling of real anecdotes, events and places, stories of dislocation and of struggle for freedom and justice. Moving between these socio-cultural and musical frames, the presentation engaged with issues of nationalism, resistance, selfhood, personal and collective subjectivities each one echoing the other. Farah discussed how, in the field of ethnomusicology, these topics raise questions about the ability of musical performance and reception to embody and exhort discourses of violence, and alternatively, its potentiality to be deployed in projects of healing and reconciliation.

After showing the last musical piece by New York based Syrian musician Kinan Azmeh, "A Sad Morning, Every Morning," she answered questions on topics including: emotionality in Arabic music, the gendering of places in some lyrics and poetry, and the role of music in peace-making projects.