Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000 Issue No. 470
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

The word, the tune, the stone Arrested in midstream, plans to rejuvenate the Arabic Music Institute await the munificence of devoted patrons. Fayza Hassan recalls more harmonious times The music institute today (photo: Sherif Sonbol)

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The idea of creating a music institute in Egypt began to take root in 1913, in the home of Mustafa Reda, who wanted a venue for regular musical evenings that would cater to a small group of amateurs and professional musicians, annoyed by the increasingly European sway they could detect in Arabic traditional musical genres. By the end of that year, having discussed several avenues of redress, the members of the group agreed during a formal meeting on the establishment of a club, where "Arabic music lovers" could gather to play, listen to and teach the richly various numbers of the authentic Arabic musical repertoire. A large audience of enthusiasts soon rallied around the founders of the club. Its board of directors included: Mustafa Reda, chairman; Mohamed Hamed, administrative manager; Naguib Madi, cultural director; Mohamed Tawfiq Omran, secretary; Hassan Murad El-Mulla, deputy secretary; Hassan Anwar Amin, treasurer; and Ahmed Sadeq, Abdel-Khaleq Ayyad, Safar Ali, Sheikh Mohamed Abdel-Mutteleb, Mohamed Zaki Sirri, and Mahmoud Hamdi, members of the board.

An exquisite mashrabiya motif on the facade

The Institute's founders rented premises on Mohamed Ali Street and, when these became too small, larger accommodations were sought in Al-Busta Al-Qadima Street in Ataba. The voices of Ibrahim Osman, Ibrahim Hassan and Aziz Osman, accompanied by Mustafa Reda at the qanun, Hassan El-Mulla on the lute, Mustafa Mumtaz playing the violin and Mustafa El-Aqqad manning the rhythmic instruments, periodically delighted the guests of the budding club, leaving them still hankering for more in the wee hours of the morning.

During the 1919 Revolution, the club opened its doors to a host of unknown young artists and performers with political aspirations, becoming the natural gathering place for nationalist singers, poets, composers and libretto writers, who fought their battle against the occupation with words; their productions fired the imagination and temper of an audience only too ready to pour out into the streets after each representation, intoning the patriotic poems and chants they had just heard.

Many new talents were born during that period, which nurtured artists of the calibre of Sayed Darwish, Daoud Hosni and Zakariya Ahmed. The Music Institute often extended financial help. It was their surest channel of dissemination, and also bought their original compositions for safe-keeping (Zakariya Ahmed's operetta Sidi Munged is one such libretto, for which the institute paid the composer LE300).

Quite naturally, the music lovers began to plan for the future on a grander scale: the members of the club decided that the time was ripe to establish an academy of Arabic music, the first in the Middle East at the time. The proposal met with the enthusiastic approval of the government. A plot of land in Queen Nazli (now Ramses) Street was granted to the club for a period of 50 years at a nominal rent. Among the architects called upon to design and erect the building, completed in 1923, at least two, Farag Amin and Tawfiq Shar (the others were Pasteur and Verrocci) were members of the music club. This may explain why, in the early 1920s, considered the golden years of European influence on Egyptian architecture, the style adopted for the Institute of Arabic Music was resolutely Islamic.

Umm Kulthoum; Abdel-Wahab; Farid El-Atrash

The first artists to inaugurate the new building were Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Ahmed Abdel-Qader, with the Italian conductor Cantoni leading the full orchestra, a daring innovation at the time in Arabic music.

Apart from establishing an official curriculum for the teaching of traditional Arabic music, the institute created a unique music library and a museum in which ancient and rare instruments were placed on display. One of the institute's proudest moments, however, was its hosting of the famous Symposium of Arabic Music, held from 14 March to 3 April 1932, during which specialists from all over the Middle East and Europe discussed, the past, present and future of an art many believed was endangered. One of the chief reasons for the convening of the symposium had been a latent apprehension that Arabic music was being infiltrated by foreign and specifically Western influences.

Advocates of a return to tradition had become aware of certain changes, which over the years had slowly overtaken and corrupted "genuine" Arabic music. The transformation had started during the 1820s, when Mohamed Ali founded his military music academy, which was aimed at emulating its European counterparts. By 1869, the creation of an opera whose saisons were attended by foreigners as well as the Egyptian elite, and which featured only European music, had compounded the damage. By the mid-1920s, two distinct trends could be detected in Arabic music: the old, strictly adhering to the inherited compositions, and championed by Abduh Al-Hamouli; and the new, whose composers were not adverse to the introduction of novel attributes such as harmony, alien dance rhythms, modified instruments and, finally, the accompaniment of a grand orchestra. Significantly, Abdel-Wahab, the most enthusiastic proponent of this modernist drive, shunned the symposium held at his alma mater.

More than half a century after the symposium issued its final recommendations, few still believe that it had a lasting influence on the evolution of Egyptian music in subsequent decades. "The powerful current of innovation came from within," wrote Scheherazade Qassem Hassan in Musique Arabe, Le Congrès du Caire 1932 (CEDEJ, 1992). "The learned opinions and suggestions of the participants were never taken seriously by those who actually made the Egyptian music." The 1932 symposium, never equalled in importance by the three others that followed, was a great success nevertheless and served to shroud the institute in an aura of legitimate authority.

Delegates to the first Arabic Music conference, 1932

In 1947, women were admitted for the first time to the institute, which by 1955 had reduced the age of admission to 18 and the number of years necessary to obtain a degree from six to five, then three, as the demand for music teachers increased in primary and secondary schools across the country. In the 1960s, it changed hands several times as different ministries attempted to apportion the responsibility of running it. The academic section -- excluding the library and the museum -- was finally placed by decree under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture in the early '70s.

It is not clear who was in charge of the building's maintenance and renovation during that period. What transpired, however, was that it was not considered worthy of preservation for the best part of a quarter of a century. It was finally deemed unsafe, closed and abandoned to the ravages of weather and time. Only recently did the Ministry of Culture, recognising its architectural value, decide to give it a complete face-lift with the able help of architect Ass'ad Nadim, who is known for his restoration of ancient mashrabiya and intricate woodwork, in this case the most striking decorative motifs adorning the building. Good intentions alone could not get the work completed, however, and recently activity around the old institute has considerably slowed down, mainly, explains Nadim, because funds have dwindled. One can only hope that this particular restoration project, which showcases an exceptional building from both historical and architectural perspectives, will be placed on a shortlist of priorities by the ministry concerned.

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