Hello! And thank you for
your interest in Drop the Prop, my
groundbreaking series of online Egyptian dance workshops! The topic of my first
workshop is ' Dancing
to Mawwal.' If you’ve already
purchased this series, great! Read on to learn more about the history and
development of mawwal (plural is mawaweel). If you
haven’t, now’s your chance. Just click on this link,
create an account with Teachable, and login to the workshop.
I imagine ‘mawwal’ might
be a new term for some of you, so let me briefly define it. Mawwal is
the improvisational singing that usually occurs in the beginning of an Arabic
song with little to no musical accompaniment. Think of songs like Bint
Il-Sultan; Mawood;
and Inta Omri.
Each contains a mawwal towards its beginning that you can probably
recognize.
So what?, you might be
thinking. Why dedicate an entire dance workshop to such a topic?
Because…
1. …it’s obscure. No one teaches this in a live or
virtual setting, because…
2. …it’s challenging. Most dancers
don’t know how to dance to mawaweel. Either they don’t understand
Arabic, or they find dancing to music-less lyrics counterintuitive. A lot of
times it’s both. Most will edit them out if they’re dancing to canned music, or
else leave them (or tolerate them when dancing to live music) but meaninglessly
flail around until the music kicks in.
3. …mawwal is one of the most
quintessential features of Arabic music. It is deeply rooted in a rich
tradition of Arabic poetry culture that spans millennia. If we’re going to
claim to take this art seriously by doing justice to its cultural components,
we should pay attention to the verbal language that is the raison d’etre
for this music.
4. …dancing to mawaweel brings this
dance back to where it should be—to expression, subtly, and nuance. It is thus
a welcome reprieve from, and an antidote to the acrobatic and/or
hyper-sexualized styles that have come to define modern belly dance.
5. …properly expressing a mawwal is the best
way to captivate an Arab audience. It shows them you know your stuff, that they
can trust your performance, and that you’re interested in the art, not just the
hip drops. And, if you pull it off exceptionally well, they might even think
you are from the region. Never a bad thing.
6. …dancing
to mawwal will improve your ability to dance to anything.
Because guess what. Lyrics don’t magically disappear when the music takes over.
Instrumental compositions exist, however the vast majority of pieces we dance
to contain lyrics. Knowing how to acknowledge them along with the melody and
rhythm is vital.
7. …mawwal is my thing. The only thing I love
more than the Arabic language is dancing to it. So this is my niche—my unique
contribution, if you will, to the world of Egyptian dance instruction. And it
reflects my years of experience dancing in Cairo. I decided to run with it. Run
with me.
Before I continue, I’d like to note three things. The first is
how I've structured this series, and how you can get the most out of it.
The mawwal workshop
contains three different mawaweel (two classical and one shaabi.) in three separate
videos. Each video features a full demonstration of me performing the mawwal, a translation and
transliteration of the lyrics, and a breakdown of my dancing, including an
explanation of gestures. The breakdown is very detailed and thorough, so watch
it as many times as necessary. Try to memorize the lyrics until you can sing
them, or at least anticipate them. And train your ear to hear syllables,
because they will serve as accents. I would also try to memorize the
choreographies so that your body gets used to moving to lyrics.
The second is regarding my
qualifications to offer instruction on this subject. In addition to my ten-year
dance career in Cairo, I am fluent in Arabic. I spent three years studying
Modern Standard Arabic at various institutions, including Harvard University,
Columbia University, the American University in Cairo, and in language programs
in Yemen and Syria. So in addition to speaking, I read and write it. When I
moved to Egypt in 2008, I began learning the Egyptian dialect, which I now
speak fluently; years of navigating through life there resulted in my language
skills becoming pretty close to native. Currently, I speak, read, and write
Arabic at both of my jobs on a daily basis. It is thus a major part of my life
and livelihood. (As a side note, I am offering online classes in Egyptian and
classical Arabic. Contact me for more details.)
Finally, a note about the
sources I used for my research. There is some English language literature on mawaweel,
however its target audience is ethnomusicologists and is thus full of dense
jargon. I’ve therefore used Arabic sources for my research. I will provide
links to the English language literature at the end of this entry for those who
would like a more specialized look into this topic. I really hope you enjoy it,
and I thank you for joining me.
________________________________________________
It’s probably safe to say that
you can recognize a mawwal by now. Basically, it's the part of a
song that most of us with editing software edit out and simply refuse to dance
to. But what exactly is it? A mawwal is a traditional genre of
non-metric vocal music that usually takes the form of a small poem at the
beginning of a song. We find them in both classical 'tarab' songs,
and in shaabi music as well. Some examples of popular songs
with mawaweel that you probably know include Ahmed
Adawiyya's Bint Il-Sultan; Um Kulthoum's Inta Omri;
Abdel Halim's Mawood; Abdel Wahab's Min Gheir Lee.
Sometimes, a mawwal can be found in the middle or towards the
end of a song too. And sometimes, you can find two or three of them within a
single song! A good example of this is Adawiyya's Ya Layl Ya Basha. And wait!
Some entire songs are just really long mawaweel, though
this is more the case with shaabi than it is with classic
songs. These poems are usually written in colloquial Arabic and contain 4 to 7
lines, though some can have many more. They are usually sung with solo
instrumental accompaniment, usually by a qanoon, oud,
accordion, or violin. Shaabi mawaweel are often accompanied by
instruments such as the rababa,
the arghol, which
is a sort of nay dating back to Pharaonic times, and the nay itself. What these
instruments do is follow the singer's lead and summarize each phrase he sings.
They do NOT create melody or rhythm. Rather, the singer must prove his skills
by improvising the melody as he sings the mawwal,
holding notes, elongating specific consonants and syllables, raising the tone
of his voice, and modulating to different maqamaat (singular is maqam.
It is Arabic music’s modal scale).
In addition to allowing
singers to show off, the purpose of mawwal is to introduce the
subject matter of the song. Sometimes it is to summarize it, or to add to it,
or philosophize about it. This is assuming the mawwal was
written for a particular song, like the mawwal in Inta
Omri, or the mawwal in Um Kulthoum’s Sirt El-Hob. However
there are many mawaweel that were written to be sung on their
own, not necessarily to be attached to a particular song. Bint
Il-Sultan is an example. The mawwal we're used to hearing
at the beginning of this song is actually its own entity. It's called Rahoo Il-Habayib (My
Friends Have All Gone), and it has nothing to do with the lyrics of the
song Bint Il-Sultan. So technically that mawwal could
be sung before any song.
Another such mawwal
is the one at the beginning of one of Hakim's more recent shaabi songs, Halawit Rooh. This mawwal is
actually pretty old, but the composers of Halawit Rooh attached
it to the beginning of the song. This is typically the case with a lot of shaabi mawaweel.
What I love about them is that they always tell a story, give advice, pass down
popular wisdom, or philosophize about the state of affairs. This is much more
interesting than the countless songs about being happily in love. The
Egyptian mawaweel especially are known for their humor. Though
mostly all of the newer mawaweel whine about how difficult
life is (perhaps a reflection of the times?). Even so, like all poetry,
these mawaweel are rich in rhymes, metaphors, puns, and wit.
Oftentimes they are anecdotal, such as in the famous mawwal called Al-Talmeez wa Ustazo (The Student and His
Teacher), which highlights some of the meanings
of love, respect, appreciation, and gratitude. These types of mawaweel are
a great way of gaining insight into local mentalities.
Traditionally, mawaweel are
referred to as hurr in Arabic musician speak. Hurr in
Arabic means free. Liberated. The reason they referred to mawaweel as
free is because as previously mentioned, they are free of melody and rhythm,
and because the content itself used to be improvised. In Arabic this
improvisation is called irtigaal. In this way it is very similar to
freestyle rap, in which the rapper performs with no previously composed lyrics,
and is expected to produce them off the top of his head. Here’s an example of two men
improvising mawaweel in Egypt.
Egyptian musicians still
use the words mawwal and hurr interchangeably,
but the reality is that most mawaweel are no longer hurr. At
this point in history, they are almost all memorized and recorded. The great
composer, song-writer and singer Mohamed Abdel Wahab put an end to the truly
improvised and free mawwal. Abdel Wahab composed songs for the
greats like Um Kulthoum, Abdel Halim, and even himself, and he composed
their mawaweel to have fixed melodies and maqamaat.
He even 'choreographed' the freest part of any mawwal, the 'ya
ayni ya layls.' In certain songs, he set them to specific melodies, such as
in Daret El-Ayem,
in which Um Kulthoum sings Ya ayni ya layl to the melody of
the song. She doesn't improvise its melody as would normally be the case in a
truly free mawwal.
What this means is that any
star singer, or even just any wedding singer or dancer's singer, has to sing
the mawaweel exactly as they are in the original recordings.
They are not free to rework the melody or words of the mawwal in Inta
Omri, for example. I mean, they can, and sometimes they do. It's not
illegal or anything, but then it wouldn't exactly be Inta Omri.
I find this extremely
fascinating. As I was delving into this topic, listening to different types
of mawaweel, I started asking when and how this all started. Why
this obsession with poetry, so much so that almost every Egyptian song has
a mawwal? In digging deeper for its origins, I found that they
reach as far back as pre-Islamic Arabia. That is over 1500 years ago. This next
section discusses the history of mawaweel, as well as the function
they served in Arabic-speaking societies over many centuries. Then I'll explain
how mawaweel are classified according to structure and
thematic content, and provide examples of famous mawaweel.
The Role of the Arabic Language
The
first thing we need to know in order to understand why mawaweel are
so common in Arabic music is that Arabic speakers are in love with their
language. I'm talking, illicit love affair type of love. Professor Hitti, a
Lebanese American scholar who virtually created the discipline of Middle
Eastern Studies in the United States, famously wrote:
“No people in the world manifest such enthusiastic admiration for literary expression and are moved by the word, spoken or written, as the Arabs. Hardly any language seems capable of exercising over the minds of its users such an irresistible influence as Arabic.”
That's
understandable given how fascinating the Arabic language is. It is expressive,
rhythmic, melodic, and methodical, and it lends itself nicely to poetry. In
pre-Islamic Arabia, Arabic was mainly a spoken language with an oral literature
of elaborate poetry and, to a lesser extent, prose. Writing had not yet fully
developed, so memorization was the most common method of preserving literature.
Rhyming makes it easier to memorize things. So people made poetry about
everything. Politics, social issues, matters of the heart, war, women, wine.
Basically, back then, poetry functioned in a way similar to today’s ‘free’
press. Poets were the writers, the journalists, the historians, and the
critics. They would discuss current affairs and express their opinions on them,
and would even praise and defame public personalities in the process, much like
we do today. Those who found themselves being ridiculed would respond by
creating equally powerful poetry. The Arabs thus enjoyed a high level of
freedom of expression, more than we'd think possible of a pre-modern
civilization.
Point
of clarification: The reason I used the term ‘Arabic speakers’ is because not
all native Arabic speakers identify as Arabs. As early as the 7th century,
the Arabs had become a military power, creating an empire that ruled over
various non-Arab populations in the neighboring region. Some mixing occurred
between these local populations and the Arabs, but there were some communities
that avoided the incursions by fleeing to less accessible areas of their
homelands. The Maronite Christians of Lebanon are an example. When many areas
of modern-day Lebanon fell to Muslim Arab invaders between the years 635 and
637, many Maronites sought refuge in Mount Lebanon. Until this day, they do not
identify as Arabs despite speaking Arabic. The same is true of Copts, Kurds,
and Berbers, even if they speak Arabic and/or practice Islam. This is why I
hesitate to refer to all Arabic speakers as Arabs. Not only is this inaccurate,
it is a misrepresentation of these communities' historical experiences.
Back
to Arabia before the onset of the Islamic conquests. In the year 622, Mohamed
founded the religion of Islam when he claimed that God had spoken to him
through the angel Gabriel. To make a long story short, Mohamed received (or
created) over 6,000 verses of instructions and stories from God, which were
posthumously organized into what became the Qur’an. Interestingly, all of the
verses take the form of poetry. They even rhyme. Muslim theologians explain
this by saying that in a culture that had attained such literary eloquence, it
would take a literary work of unparalleled excellence—basically a miracle—to
convince the Arabs that Mohamed was a prophet. This is what they believe the
Qur’an to be—a work of unparalleled excellence. Of course, not all of Mohamed's
contemporaries were impressed or convinced. Some of them doubted Mohamed's
prophethood and questioned the divine authorship of the Quran. Interestingly,
the Quran seeks to convince doubters of its divine authorship with a verse that
challenges them to produce a work of similar caliber-- the idea being that even
the best among them would fail at such a pursuit.
After
Mohamed's death ten years later, his followers immediately began expanding
their empire. Amazingly, despite their military exploits, their interest in
poetry never waned. In fact it reached its peak during the Abbasid Era, which
lasted from 750 to 1258. At this time, the caliphate (ruling authority of the
empire) was based in Baghdad. Before that, it had been in Damascus, after
having been transferred from Mecca. The interesting thing about the Abbasid
phase of Islamic history is that it was more ‘secular’ than other periods. It
was friendlier to poets and writers from all ethnic and religious backgrounds.
During this time, many great writers and poets started to appear in what is
today Syria and Iraq. Some of the more famous ones (for those who study
Arabic), are:
Abu
Nawas (750-810) served in the court of the
famous Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, and is well known by his poetry that celebrated
wine and male homosexuality. (There is a restaurant named after him in the famous
Mena House Hotel in Giza.)
Al
Mutanabbi (915-965) is largely considered to be
the most famous Arab poet of all time. He actually took the Qur’an challenge
and authored his own Qur’an while claiming to be a prophet (hence his name,
which is a variation of the Arabic word for prophet). He later apologized to
save his life.
Ibn
Sina (980-1037), a Muslim philosopher and doctor
of Persian descent, better known to the West as Avicenna. He is famous for
relaying his medical and scientific teachings through the medium
of poetry, which helped people transmit and memorize his medical
knowledge. He wrote Al-Urjuzah Fi Al-Tibb, which basically translates as
"The Medical Poem." It consists of 1326 meticulously classified
verses, and is a poetic summary of his encyclopaedic textbook, "The Canon
of Medicine". The Medical poem became very popular in the East, and later
in Europe, where it was widely used in universities up until the 17th century.
The 'Highly Unusual' Origins of Mawwal
Now
that I've provided a snapshot of the historical context in which mawaweel developed, we can discuss their origins.
Scholars differ as to exactly when and how they first appeared, but most
accounts agree that it was in the Abbasid Era, during the reign of Harun
Al-Rashid, to be precise. Even if you're unfamiliar with Islamic history,
there's a good chance you've heard the name Harun Al-Rashid. Especially if
you've read The Arabian Nights, or if you've gone to the Semiramis
Hotel in Cairo to watch belly dancing; the nightclub there is named after him.
His name translates into Aaron the Just, and he was the 5th caliph
of the Abbasid era. During his reign, music and art flourished significantly,
and Harun's life and his court have been the subject of many tales, some
factual, but mostly fictitious. The most famous (and fictitious) is The
Arabian Nights, or Alf Layla wa Layla, as it's called in
Arabic. It contains many stories that are fantasized by Harun's magnificent
court and even Harun himself.
When
it comes to mawwal, legend has it that it all started when Harun
beheaded a man named Ja'afar ibn Yahya (Jaffar in Disney's Aladdin).
In the movie, Jafaar was portrayed as an evil minister and sorcerer. He was in
fact Harun’s minister, and what happened was that Harun had a half-sister whom
he was madly in love with. Her name was Abbasa. He couldn’t marry Abbasa for
obvious reasons, and he feared that when she married, he would never see her
again. He thus arranged to have Jaafar marry Abbasa without consummating the
marriage. In this way, Harun would still have access to her. Jafaar agreed to
grant him this favor. But when Jafaar actually met Abbasa, he had a change of
heart. Some historians say he immediately fell in love with her, regretting the
arrangement and his promise not to touch her. And so they inevitably bore twins
(or triplets, depending on the source). Other historians say he regretted the
arrangement because he found her repulsive. According to these sources,
however, Abbasa didn't feel the same way. She fell in love with Jafaar and
tried everything in her power to be with him. She finally succeeded after
paying his mother to escort her into his bed chamber disguised as a slave girl,
when he came home drunk one night. Not realizing that this slave girl was
actually Abbasa, Jafaar unwittingly consummated the marriage and bore twins.
There’s no way to know which version of the story is correct, but the fact is
that they bore children, and they hid them from Harun by sending them to be
raised in Mecca. But Abbasa's jealous sister, Zobeida, told Harun of the
affair. Harun subsequently had Jafaar beheaded.
Apparently,
Jaafar was quite the ladies’ man. One of his slave girls who was probably a
concubine mourned his death with this poem, which is considered the birth of
the mawwal.
يا دار أين ملوك الأرض أين الفرس
..... وامواليا
أين الذين حموها بالقنا والترس
......... وامواليا
قالت تراهم رمم تحت الأراضى الدرس ...وامواليا
سكوت بعد الفصاحة ألسنتهم خرس ...
وامواليا
Ya dar
ayna molook alard ayna il-fors wa amwalleeya
Ayna alazeena hamooha bil qina wil tirs, wa
amwalleeya
Qallit
torahom rimam taht ilaradi ildirs, wa amwalleeya
Sokoot
ba3d ilfasaha alsinat-hum khars wa amwalleeya
Translation
O house where are the kings of the earth, where are the
Persians? Wa mawwaliyya.
Where are those who have protected it with our sackcloth? Wa mawwaliyya.
She saw them rebuilt under the ground. Wa mawwaliyya.
There is silence after the eloquent tongues have been
pierced. Wa mawwaliyya.
Notice
how she finishes each sentence with the word ‘wa mawwaliyya.’ Scholars
think this term means ‘my lord,’ and so it was clear that the girl was mourning
her master, Jafaar. Shortly after, the mawwal became a popular
mode of expression amongst Jaafar's large extended family, the Baramka family.
Every time they composed one of these poems, they would end each line with ‘ya mawwaliyya.’
Ever since, the word mawwal has been used to refer to this
genre of Arabic poetry, which mostly deals with sad topics.
A second theory about the origin of mawwal holds that it originated amongst the working classes in Baghdad, particularly amongst those who did hard labor. Men would sing and improvise poems while working, in order to distract themselves from their grueling tasks. Specifically woodworkers would vocally improvise while creating a beat as they hammered away. Here's an example:
منازل كنت فيها من بعدك درس ..... يا مواليا
خراب لا للعزا تصلح ولا للعرس ..... يامواليا
فأين عينيك تنظر كيف فيها الفرس ... يا مواليا
تحكم وألسنة المداح فيها خرس ......
يامواليا
Manazil kuntu feeha min badak dars, ya mawaliyya
Kharab le li 3aza tasloh wa lil 3ors, ya mawaliyya
fa ayna 3ynaka tanzor kayfa feeha il fors, ya mawaliyya
tahko wa ilsinat almadah feeha khars, ya mawaliyya
Which
translates into:
Homes I hide in after you go……. Ya Mawwali
It is ruin, not suitable for consolation or wedding….Ya
Mawwali
So where you eyes look, there are the horses…..Ya
Mawwali
Judge it, and the eulogists’ tongues are mute…..Ya
Mawwali
Here
too, each line ends with ‘ya mawwali.’ Hence the term mawwal.
These
are two very different theories about the origins of mawwal. As
much as I'd love to believe the almost fairy tale-like Harun Al-Rashid version,
the second theory about workers seems a little more realistic. Not that Harun
didn't behead Jafaar, or that Jafaar's concubine didn't mourn him. I don't
think the history books are lying about that. But it is also possible that
the mawwal was becoming a more popular mode of communication
at the time, with everyone from the royal court to the lowest of workers using
it.
There
are several types of mawaweel, and music scholars classify them
according to their rhyme scheme, as well as their thematic content. In the next
section, we'll take a look at this classification system, and then I will
provide you with examples.
Types
of Mawwal
The
first type of mawwal is called the Baghdadi mawwal
because it originated in Baghdad. It consists of four concentric lines with the
same rhyme scheme, which is why it is also known as the quardrant mawwal.
The first two mawaweel we just covered are
Baghdadi mawaweel because they each have four lines with the
same rhyme scheme. And sometimes each line ends in the same word, such as in
this example:
يا عم تاجر بلا مال يبقى الجد رس ماله
ماشي في أمان الله وحب الخلق رس
ماله
يسعى في الخير والطيب والمعروف رس ماله
اذا كان مالـوش حد يبقى طيـبه رس ماله
_ (و يقصد برس ماله .. رأس ماله )
Ya a’m
tagir bila maal yibqa algid ras maalo
mashee
fee amaan illah, wa hob ilkhal rasmaalo
yasa’a
fil kheir wal teeb wal ma’roof rasmaalo
iza
kan maloosh had yiba tibto rasmaalo
Which
translates as:
The trader without money, his hard work is
his capital
Walking in god's safety and people's love is
his capital
Seeking charity and good are his capital
And he has no people, but kindness is his
capital
Another
(Egyptian) example:
Even
though this mawwal is Egyptian, it is considered Baghdadi because it has four concentric lines.
ليه أمشي حافي ونا منبت مراكيبكم؟
ليه فرشي عريان ونا منجد مراتبكم؟
ليه بيتي خربـان ونا نجار دواليبكم؟
هو كـده قســمتي ... الله يحاســبكم؟
Lee amshee hafee wana monabit morakibkum
lee farsha 3riyan wana managid maratibkum
lee bayti kharbaan wana nagaar dawalibkum
howa kidda qismiti alla yehasibkom
Which translates as:
Why do
I walk barefoot, meanwhile I’m the one who made your shoes?
Why is
my bed without a cover, meanwhile I’m the one who made your covers?
Why my
house is broken, while I was your carpenter?
It is
my destiny, may god forgive you all?
And for a modern-day Baghdadi mawwal,
let's take a look at the following video, which
mourns Saddam Hussein after he had been killed as a result of the 2003 invasion
of Iraq:
For additional
modern examples of Baghdadi mawaweel, click here.
A
second type of mawwal is the lime mawwal, or
the quintet, which consists of five lines in which all but the fourth line
rhyme with each other.
يا بنـت ردي
البـاب باقفـاله
قالـت حبيبي خطر في الدرب واقفـاله
دا حبيبي زي عيد رمضان كل الناس واقفاله
وحق النبي اللي الغزالة استـجارت بيـه
لا زمزم الكاسات وأبات طول الليل واقفاله
Ya binti rudi ilbab bi ifaalo
aalit habibi khatar fil dard wa'afaalo
da habibi zay 3id ramadan kul in nas wa'afaalo
wa ha ilnabi ili istagaarit istagaarat bi
le zamzam ilsakit wa abaat tool il layl wa'afaalo
Which translates
as:
Young girl, close the door with its locks
She said my love is at risk and I'm waiting
for him
My love is like Ramadan's feast; everyone is
waiting for it
For the sake of our Prophet who saved the
deer
I'll not put water in the glasses and I'll
wait for him all night
Another
example:
من رقة أهل البها بالوصل راح مني
لكن عقلي أنا باللطف وقت راح مني
يا عيون حبيبي بنظرة وقت راح مني
على فؤادي وقوللي ودوا تهنا
دا أمر للحسن صاد وقت راح مني
Min ri'it ahl ilbaha bil wasl rah minee
laakin a3'li ana bil lotf wa't rah minee
ya 3yoon habibi bilnazra wa't rah minee
la foadee o'oloolee wido atahana
Da amr lil hosn saad, wa't rah minee
Which translates into:
Because
she was so fluffy I lost it
By
mind has gone, I lost it
My
eyes, my love, when I look to you, I lost it
For my
heart, and tell me how to heal it
It was
an issue of beauty, but I lost it
A
third type of mawwal is the inlaid mawwal. It
consists of six lines, all of which rhyme except the fifth line.
أن من عشقي في الزرع جبت عود مرير ونشيته
وجبتله ميه في كف إيدي وسقيته
وجبت غربال وفضلت أغربل فيه ونقيته
وصبرت عليه حول لما انطرح جيته
وجبت أدوقه لقيته مُر لم ينداق
تعتب عليه ليه ماهو أصل المر من بيته
Ana min 3ashee fil zar3 gibt 3ood mareer wa
nasheeto
wa gibtilo maya fi kafh eedee wa sa'ayto
wa gibto ghorbal wa fadilt agharbil fee wa
na'ayto
wa sibirt 3lay hawal lama antarah geeto
wa gibt ado'oo la'ayto mur lam yenda'a
ta3bt 3lay lee ma howa asl ilmor min bayto
Translation:
Because
I love plants, I got one and strength it
I
bring it water and irrigate it
I
bring a sieve, and I kept separate it
I wait
for him for a year, when it flowers I got it
I
tried to taste it but it was bitter
Why
you blame me, while you are the one who bring bitter
A fourth type of mawwal is
called the saba’awi, from the Arabic word saba’a, which
means seven. As its name suggests, this type of mawwal contains
seven lines. In the mawwal sabaawi, we find that lines 1,2,3, and
7 have the same rhyme, while lines 4,5, and 6 have other rhymes.
الأهيف اللي بسيف اللحظ جارحنا
بيده سقا الطلا ليلا وجا ريحنا
رمش رما سهم قطع بين جوارحنا
آهين على لوعتي في الحب ياوعدي
هجره كواني وصبرني على وعدي
ياخل واصل ووافى بالمنى وعدي
من حر هجرك ومن نار الجوى رحنا
ِIl-aheeyaf ilee biseef al-haz garahna
Bi
yado sa'a il-talla laylan wa ga rihaana
Rimsh
rama sahm ata’a bayn gawarihna
Aaheen
a’la ‘o’aatee fil hob ya ‘a’dee
higrat
kawaanee wa sabarni a’la wa’dee
ye khaal
waasil wa waafee bil mona wa’dee
min
harr hagrak wa min naar ilgawaa rohna
Translation:
The slender that hurts me with love
He irrigates the night by his hand, and smells our odor
Eyelashes were as arrows, hurts us
I'm suffering of love
His desertion hurts me, and cause some pains
Please dear contact me
You desertion cause pain that hurts me
These
are just a few examples of the most commonly-occurring mawaweel. Some
of them contain more than ten verses. There are also story mawaweel,
which are similar to epic poems. These can have as many as 400 verses, and
singers use them to tell stories about love, politics, and social conditions.
One of the most famous story mawaweel is Hassan &
Na'ima. It is Egypt's equivalent of Romeo and Juliet, except that it is
accompanied by the nay (reed flute). It was made into a film in 1959 starring Soad Hosny and
Moharram Fouad.
Classification
of Mawaweel
In
addition to the number of lines and their rhyme scheme, mawaweel are
also classified according to their thematic content. Mawaweel that speak of
unrequited love, and passion, war, tribal feuds, and that lament the decline of
social traditions are called red mawaweel, red being the color of
blood and wounds. The mawwal about Hassan & Naima is therefore
a red mawwal.
Green mawaweel deal
with simple love stories, and white mawaweel deal with nature.
Generally speaking, most mawaweel are red, as they deal with
serious and sometimes depressing subject matter. These are the ones I like the
best, because there is always a moral to the story that the singer wants to get
across.
Let's
take a look at an example. The following is one of my favorite mawaweel sung
by one of my favorite contemporary shaabi singers, Mahmoud
Il-Leithy. It's called ‘Tool
Il-O’mar,’ which means ‘My Whole Life.’ I don't really care for the title,as it
doesn't reflect the content of the mawwal. It starts with a father telling
his daughter he has three suitors for her. The first is very rich, the second
is very handsome, and the third is poor. He says that if she marries either of
the first two, she will live happily ever after, but if she marries the poor
man, she will live miserably. The girl responds by saying that the first two,
by virtue of their money and good looks, would eventually find her dispensable,
whereas a poor man appreciates what he has.
I've relentlessly searched for more
information about this mawwal, but
the author and the year it was written is a mystery. Suffice it to say that it
has been part of Egyptian mawwal culture
for generations.
Ahmed Adawiyya
Ahmed
Adawiyya is considered the king of shaabi music (though definitely not the father). Here is an
Adawiyya mawwal called ‘Agabi Ya
Zaman.’ It translates into ‘Time is So Strange.’ I
purposely picked this one because it's a little more obscure than his
famous Rahoo
Il-Habayib mawwal. ‘Agabi Ya Zaman.’ is interesting because it is a form of social
commentary. Adawiyya was notorious for that, and many of his songs were banned
when they first came out. This one made it into a film, starring
famous actors Adel Imam and Zizi Mostafa. The gist of the mawwal is how unfair life is because some people are poor
while others are rich.
Classical Mawaweel
Let's step away from
the shaabi and check out some classic mawaweel.
I've noticed that unlike shaabi, classic mawaweel do
not deal with contemporary issues or concern themselves with teaching a lesson.
There are some exceptions, such as the mawwal in Mohamed Abdel
Wahhab's ‘Min Gheir Lee,’ which philosophizes about the meaning of
life. But aside from this example, the content of classical mawaweel is
usually more light-hearted. Let's take Farid El-Atrash as an example. In my
opinion Farid had one of the most beautiful voices of all the singers of his
time. He also played the oud, which made him extremely popular in
the film industry. Here's a classic Farid mawwal
from a song called Awil Hamsa, which means the First Whisper, which
he sings to Tahiyya Karioka.
Let's analyze this mawwal
before going on to other examples. When watching it, we notice two
things. The first is that Farid is playing his oud. This is
important because it is a typical way for mawaweel to start.
Though we already said that mawaweel are unaccompanied by
rhythms and melodies, there is usually a single instrument accompanying the
singer. This instrument introduces the maqam, creates ambiance,
frames, highlights, accents, punctuates, and most importantly, translates the
singer's words. This is called targama, which literally means
translation, and it happens when the soloist musician mimics the melody of the
singer's voice with his instrument, these instruments do not carry on the
essential melody of the song in which the mawwal is contained.
Nor do they create a separate melody for the mawwal. In the past,
the oud and qanoon were the instruments most
frequently used for this task. However as time went on, we see other
instruments accompanying singers, such as the nay and violin. Here's another Farid mawwal,
this one accompanied by the nay. It's called ‘AklIl-Balah,’ or Eating
Dates.
Notice how the nay
player introduces the mawwal with a little
improvisational taqsim. In Arabic this is called the tahmeela, from
the root hml, which means to carry or to transport. The tahmeela acts
as a bridge, connecting the mawwal to the full on
orchestration that usually precedes it. Even if the mawwal occurs
relatively early in the song, the song will still most likely start with
complete orchestration, and then simmer down into a soloist improvising on
the oud or qanoon or nay to introduce
the mawwal.
The second thing to take
note of in this video example is that the tahmeela is
immediately followed by Farid singing ‘ya ayni ya layl.’ This
literally translates as ‘oh my eyes, oh night.’ It sounds a little weird in
English, but it rhymes in Arabic and it creates an ambiance of harmony and
coexistence with the audience. It also lets the audience know they are about to
hear a mawwal. Farid opened his previous mawwal like
this too. So just like the improvisational solo instrument, starting the mawwal with
‘ya layli ya ayni’ is part of the standard mawwal template.
Of course there are exceptions, but this is the norm. What usually happens is
that the singer sings ‘ya ayni ya layl’ in different tones and
moods, according to the vibe of the audience. Then he starts singing the
actual mawwal. Let's look at yet another Farid video that
contains a mawwal, so that we can pinpoint
the tahmeela, mawwal, and ya layli ya ayni.
This video will be a real treat, as it features him serenading the beautiful
Samia Gamal.
Dancing to Mawaweel
We talked about the love
affair that Arabic speakers have with their language. I'm mentioning it again
because it explains something I've observed as a belly dancer in Egypt—that
Egyptian audiences are way more interested in songs with lyrics than they are
in instrumental pieces. They like the tried and the tested—Um Kulthoum, Abdel
Wahab, Abdel Halim, Warda, Adawiyya, and so on. Once they hear songs with
lyrics they know and love, they start singing, clapping, and swaying. They
experience saltana. This is why a lot of times, an Egyptian
audience can forgive a mediocre dance performance if they are moved by the
music.
Mawaweel are
often improvisational and acapella, so there is a lot of room for the singer to
show off here. And that's what it's really all about. Keep in mind that mawaweel were made
to be sung, not danced to. Yet that is exactly what we're going to do. In order
to do this, the dancer has to become the singer. Once we know the meaning of
the lyrics, we have to figure out how to 'sing' them with our bodies. It is
always helpful to watch music videos and analyze singers’ movements, gestures,
and posture. This is more beneficial
than watching other dancers. Don't forget, the mawwal is the
singer's time to show off, not the dancer's. We don't want to overdo it with
exaggerated or violent movements. We want to *compliment* the singer, not
overpower him. As a side note, I like to think of the mawwal/dancer
relationship as analagous to the relationship between a broadcaster and the
person translating the broadcast into sign language. The signist is often
displayed in a little box on the bottom corner of the screen. They do not take
the whole screen, or even half of it, from the broadcaster. In the
same way, the dancer is at the bottom of the screen, or stage, giving the
singer room to show off.
The dancer’s ‘words’ are
figure 8s, undulations, and shimmies. These movements are how we speak. We then
have to break many of the dance rules we're so used to, like keeping upright
posture. A lot of times the lyrics are sad but abstract, and a good way to express
that is by slouching, keeping the head and eyes down, collapsing, briefly
closing the eyes. Things you'd normally avoid while dancing to regular music.
We also need to get
comfortable with the idea of moving stillness. The idea here is not to move
around a lot, but to express a lot with posture, head position, eyes, and
gestures. And we have to stop moving when the singer stops singing, unless the
violin or accordion has something *important* to say and we
want to translate it. The idea is to keep the energy flowing when you stop
moving. Don't actually stop moving. Don't ever finish your last movement so
thoroughly that you’re just standing there waiting for the next phrase to kick
in. Use the silence to finish it ever… so… slowly…
We can enhance what we're
doing by using the last syllable(s) of the singer's sentence as an accent, and
we can use his inflections to undulate or shimmy. It’s impossible to teach
dance on paper, so at this point, if you’ve gone through the trouble of reading
all of this, I’d encourage you to take the Drop the Prop:
Dancing to Mawwal online workshop.
****************************************************
Big thank you to everyone
who has purchased this instructional. I really hope you enjoyed it, and I look
forward to hearing from you with questions, comments, suggestions for
improvement and for future online workshops, and any insights you may have. I
do apologize if there were any technical issues. I hope to iron them out for
future recordings.
********************************************************
The following
is a list of songs that contain mawaweel and that are dancer friendly.
1.
Ana Mosh A’rifni by
Abdel Basset Hamouda
2.
Esmaooni by
Warda
3.
Sahirt Il-Layl by
George Wassouf
4.
Ay Dam’at Hozn Le by
Abdel Halim Hafiz
5.
Ah Laow La’bt Ya Zahr by
Ahmed Shiba
6.
O’yoon Il-Alb by
Nagaat
7.
Moghram Sababa by
Mohamed Rushdie
8.
Ya Sabr Tayyib by
Abdel Min’am Il-Madbooli
9.
Waffar Dawaak by
Ashraf Il-Masree
10. Mawwal 30
Gamal by Magdi Tal’at
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