- The Holy Qur'an, 96:1-2
- The Holy Qur'an, 96:1-2
The West does not have a tradition of studying the Qur'an as a living, breathing testament of faith. Most of the Western scholars who have studied the Qur'an at all have focused on its qualities as a written religious document, much like the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. Some scholarship has been done in this field in the last century, and it has brought much to light about the history, textual lineage, and exegesis of the written Qur'an. The tradition of melodic recitation, however, has received little attention outside of the Islamic world, perhaps partly because we in the West no longer have a tradition of meaningfully reciting or chanting our holy texts, and are ill-equipped to place such supreme emphasis on recitation as the sole vehicle of religious expression. The evidence, however, overwhelmingly demonstrates that, in an Islamic context, the written text of the Qur'an is inextricably bound to its aural recitation.
Two general styles of recitation exist, each with its own separate and distinct usages. The murattal style is private, quiet, and unornamented. It is primarily for the average Muslim, who does not recite professionally and publicly. It is instructional and devotional, and its main goal is clarity of text. In practice, murattal recitation rarely exceeds the range of a perfect fourth or fifth, even over the course of an entire prayer session.
The mujawwad style, by contrast, is only for public performance. It is vocally virtuosic, extremely demanding and very taxing. It is improvisatory, and as such the reciter must have absolute command of the maqâmât. It is frequently accompanied by dramatic hand gestures and body movements, the most common of which is for the reciter to raise both of his hands to the sides of his face. This is probably a vestige of what must have been necessary before electronic amplification in order to project the sound as far as possible. Mujawwad recitation is intensely musical, from a Western standpoint, but this is not to say that members of the Muslim community consider recitation of the Qur'an to be "music", in the conventional Western sense.
In many circles of Islamic thought, music is sinful, as it inevitably leads to dancing, which, of course, inevitably leads towards inappropriate thoughts of the obvious sort. This taboo is probably millenia old, and is not exclusive to Arab or Muslim society (it is especially prevalent among orthodox Jews and certain sects of Christianity). Other, less fundamentalist nations or groups accept music as a valid form of expression, but insist that it have some limitations, and especially that it must be kept separate from recitation. There has been almost constant debate, sometimes very heated, on the subject of musical approprateness raging in Muslim society (primarily the Arab parts) for at least a thousand years. One of the first to raise the issue was Abâ Khâmid al-Ghazâlî, who led the life of a wandering ascetic and part-time teacher in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Kristina Nelson calls this debate the sama' (lit. "listening" or "audition") polemic. According to her, "the sama' polemic is an attempt to deal with a strong suspicion on the part of many Muslims that the recognized power of music is somehow antithetical to the ideals of Islam."[1]
Indonesian Muslims, however, do not have such problems with separating the sacred and the secular. This country, which has the largest Muslim population of any other single nation, does not have a tradition of musical taboo, so the ideological gap between normal musical singing and reciting the Qur'an is much narrower. Where Arab Muslims would avoid using rhetoric applied to popular singing in the context of recitation, Indonesians do not. This, and other differences in Islamic practice, allow for a contrast of disparate cultures (Arab and Indonesian) which share one very important and fundamental trait (Islam).
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The largest and most obvious difference between the Arab and Indonesian schools of recitation is the position of female reciters. In Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, there are no female reciters. A few recordings of women reciting the Qur'an survive from the 1920s and 1930s, but they are forbidden from reciting outside the private home. This is true even in small, private prayer gatherings. Secular music is, of course, a wide open field for all interested. In Indonesia, however, women not only play a major role in presentation of the Qur'an, but are even encouraged by the prevailing cultural mores to participate. But,
Vocal artistry is equally important for women as it is for men. In Egypt, men dismiss female recitation as "having no art." The previously mentioned women who recited the Qur'an in the early twentieth century were secular singers first (most notably Umm Kalthûm, a highly respected figure among female reciters in Indonesia and Malaysia). The not-altogether-unexpected explanations for disallowing female reciters in Arab nations is that "a woman's voice makes one thinks of things other than Allah."[4] These Arab attitudes towards women in a religious context made Kristine Nelson's visit somewhat of a novelty. It can't be often that an American, non-Muslim woman approaches a well-known and respected Egyptian Shaykh and asks, in all seriousness, to learn to recite the Qur'an.
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In order to become a competent reciter, one must study, learn, and internalize vast amounts of information regarding the text and its musical interpretation. The single most important area of study is tajwîd, or the system of rules defining the proper pronunciation of the Qur'an. The word tajwîd literally means "doing well". These rules range from general questions of text sectioning (by phrase, ayat, or section) to very specific and highly technical questions of proper pronunciation and phonetics. Tajwîd is believed to preserve the raw sound of revelation as given to Muhammad by the Archangel Gabriel.[5]
To recite acording to the rules of tajwîd is frequently seen as a divine command. The verse "Recite the Qur'an with tartîl"[6] is usually interpreted to mean "Recite the Qur'an according to the rules of tajwîd." According to a basic manual used in Cairo,
Tajwîd covers the following areas:[8]
Supplemental to tajwîd learning are the seven qirâ'ât.[9] These are slight variations in the acutal pronunciation or phonetic articulation in the text itself. They are named after medieval Arab scholars who codified or propagated their usages. In Egypt, the most commonly heard is Khafsh 'an 'Âshim. After that, qirâ'at Khamzah and qirâ'at Warsh are frequently heard. Qirâ'at Warsh is characterized by long vowels and dropped glottal stops (e.g., mûminûn for mu'minûn), and by imâlah, a shift from [â] to [ê] (e.g., dhukhêha for dhukhâha, also attested in the Attic dialects of Classical Greek). Qirâ'at Khamzah is characterized by imâlah and an abrupt pause before the glottal stop. Qirâ'at Khamzah also adds the phrase 'allâhu akbar ("God is great") to the bismillah.[10]
The rules of tajwîd and qirâ'ât are universal in the Islamic world, as they are considered absolutely essential for proper recitation of the Qur'an. Anywhere that people are trained to recite the Qur'an, one will learn (and hopefully, internalize) tajwîd and qirâ'ât before ever reciting in public or auditioning for radio, television, or a recording.
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The Egyptian and Levantine tradition has also been exported to the rest of the Islamic world. This tradition uses modes called maqâmât (singular maqâm). These modes consist not only of a particular scale pattern, but also of characteristic melodic motives and cadential formulae. Many maqâmât have microtonal elements, and few of them map exactly to Western church modes. Maqâm tunings are based ultimately on the ancient Arab quarter-tone scale, codified and put into practice by tenth-century musician Abû Nashr al-Farâbî, whose Kitâb al-Mûsîqâ al-Kabîr (Grand Treatise on Music) encompassed all common practice music, both sacred and secular, found in the medieval Middle East.[11] A dozen modes are in common use in Egypt and the Levant (b- indicates a quarter-tone lower):[12]
| Râst: | C | D | Eb- | F | G | A | Bb- | (C) |
| Bayyâti: | D | Eb- | F | G | A | Bb- | C | (D) |
| Shaba: | D | Eb- | F | Gb | A | Bb | C | Db- |
| Sikâh: | Eb- | F | G | A | Bb- | C | D | (Eb-) |
| Huzâm: | Eb- | F | G | Ab | B | C | D | (Eb-) |
| Nahawand: | C | D | Eb | F | G | Ab | B | (C) |
| 'Ajam 'Ashîrân: | Bb | C | D | Eb | F | G | A | (Bb) |
| Khijâz: | D | Eb | F# | G | A | Bb- | C | (D) |
| Khijâz Kâr: | C | Db | E | F | G | Ab | B | (C) |
| Kurd: | D | Eb | F | G | A | Bb | C | (D) |
| Nâkrîz: | C | D | Eb | F# | G | A | Bb | (C) |
| Nawâ 'Athar: | C | D | Eb | F# | G | Ab | B | (C) |
The professional reciter is essentially an improviser in mujawwad style. No two performances of the same text by the same reciter are identical. All of a reciterıs training in tajwîd, qirâ'ât, and maqâmât are moulded into a powerful and entrancing act of religious devotion. Some general trends can be observed, however. A reciter will generally start low in his range; he sings quietly and usually in maqâm bayyâti. Some reciters will begin with the 'allâhu akbar (a characteristic of qirâ'at Khamzah), but a recitation typically begins directly with the bismillah. As his voice warms up, usually over a period of fifteen to twenty minutes, the reciter will begin to move higher in his range. He will also begin to venture further afield from maqâm bayyâti. Transposition and modulation create tension, as does the sometimes sudden shifts in tessitura. The cadential formulae (called qaflah or waqf) are the hallmark of the mujawwad style.[13]
Among the Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia, Turkey and Siberia, Pakistan and the United States, the prestigious Egyptian school of Qur'an recitation is faithfully and lovingly propagated as the highest form of religious melodic chant. The professional Egyptian reciters become quite famous, some of them worldwide, and they travel extensively to other Muslim communities to give recitals, masterclasses, private lessons, and seminars to eager and respectful students.
In spite of some of the strong statements that some Muslims make about music and recitation, as well as their similarities and differences, the native consensus is that Qur'an recitation is an art form of itself, but that it is held to be distinct from the conventional arts, and from other forms of vocal and musical expression. It is more the uniqueness of the Qur'an than anything strictly musical that create this distinction. When one recites a unique text, one must have a unique medium through which to do so. The contradictions inherent in the sama' debate, and the rulings and fatwas given by the 'imams, 'ayatollahs and mullahs of the Islamic religious community have merely served to accent the popularity, uniqueness, and beauty of the centuries-old tradition of reciting the Qur'an.
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Both Kristina Nelson and Anne Rasmussen went about their musicological studies by actively participating in the tradition which they wished to study. Nelson chose to contact professional reciters and pursue private instruction, due to the non-existence of any public or communal mechanism in Egypt for teaching women to recite the Qur'an. That several teachers openly embraced her efforts is difficult to analyze without getting into long-winded cultural and individual psychoanalysis. Nelson herself mentioned that several of her teachers were tickled by the novelty of an American woman interested in the liturgical recitation of a religion not her own. Perhaps Arab reciters (and, to a lesser degree, Arab culture in general) are not so strictly male-dominated as is generally assumed.
Rasmussen appears to have had an easier time of getting instruction. Indonesians do not have a tradition of attaching sexual taboo to certain religious activities, so the opportunities for women in religion are much greater than in Arab society. Girls' schools teach recitation as part of the regular scholastic curriculum, and women are seen reciting Qur'an in most private and many semi-public situations. Rasmussen did not speak of any resistance or odd reactions to her intentions to study Qur'an. She even got an opportunity to recite in a semi-public situation, and was received with nothing but praise from her instructors and fellow students.
In a predominantly oral tradition like Qur'anic recitation, it is absolutely necessary for those wishing to study it in any depth to participate in its production and learn its principles. Without such instruction, true understanding cannot come.
Notes: