Anti-music Islamists Destroy Shrine

William Dalrymple on the destruction of a Sufi shrine in Pakistan (full article in yesterday's Observer):

'Rahman Baba, "the Nightingale of Peshawar," was an 18th-century poet and mystic, a sort of North West Frontier version of Julian of Norwich... For centuries, Rahman Baba's shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass has been a place where musicians and poets have gathered, and his Sufi verses in the Pukhtun language made him the national poet of the Pathans. As a young journalist covering the Soviet-mujahideen conflict I used to visit the shrine to watch Afghan refugee musicians sing their songs to their saint by the light of the moon.

Then, about 10 years ago, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrasa was built at the end of the track leading to the shrine. Soon its students took it on themselves to halt what they saw as unIslamic practices. On my last visit, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper, Tila Mohammed. He described how young Islamists now came and complained that his shrine was a centre of idolatry and superstition: "My family have been singing here for generations," said Tila. "But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble. "They tell us that what we do is wrong. They ask people who are singing to stop. Sometimes arguments break out - even fist fights. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems, so gradually have stopped coming."

... Behind the violence lies a long theological conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries. Rahman Baba believed passionately in the importance of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Qur'an that bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition.

At Attock, not far from the shrine of Rahman Baba, stands the Haqqania, one of the most radical madrasas in South Asia. Much of the Taliban leadership, including its leader, Mullah Omar, were trained here, so I asked the madrasa's director, Maulana Sami ul-Haq, about what I had heard at Rahman Baba's tomb. The matter was quite simple." Music is against Islam" he said. 'Musical instruments lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers.'

...Later, I returned to the shrine and found Tila Mahommed tending the grave. Making sure no one was listening, he whispered: "We pray that right will overpower wrong, that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist," he said." As Baba put it, 'I am a lover, and I deal in love. Sow flowers, So your surroundings become a garden. Don't sow thorns; for they will prick your feet.We are all one body, Whoever tortures another, wounds himself''.

I thought of this conversation, when I heard that the shrine of Rahman Baba had finally been blown up on Thursday, a few hours after the Sri Lankan cricketers were ambushed in Lahore'.

Nigerian Islamists ban Dancing on Screen

Islamic authorities in Kano State (northern Nigeria) have been enforcing a ban on showing 'singing and dancing on screen' claiming it is 'necessary to protect Hausa culture against the influence of Indian Bollywood films, hugely popular in northern Nigeria'. In December 2008, film maker Iyan Tama was jailed for releasing a film without the approval of Islamic censors, and featuring singing and dancing. Last month a mob attacked his home and threatened his family (source: BBC News, 29 January 2009)

Pope promotes another fascist

No it's not just disco bombing Islamists who think that people who enjoy nightclubs deserve to die. Pope Benedict 'has promoted to bishop an ultra-conservative Austrian clergyman who called Hurricane Katrina "God's punishment" and condemned the Harry Potter books for "spreading satanism"... Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, is to become auxiliary bishop in the Austrian city of Linz, where he is viewed as a controversial figure by churchgoers and clergy alike. In 2005, he wrote in a parish newsletter that Hurricane Katrina was an act of "divine retribution" for the sins of a sexually permissive society.

He said it was worth considering whether environmental catastrophes should not be seen as a result of "spiritual environmental pollution" - a type of "divine retribution" for New Orleans' relaxed attitude towards sexual promiscuity and homosexuality. "It is surely not an accident that all five of New Orleans' abortion clinics, as well as nightclubs were destroyed," he wrote, adding: "It's not just any old city that has gone under, but the people's dream city with the 'best brothels and the most beautiful whores'.' (more in today's Guardian)

The news comes just a couple of weeks after another extreme right wing bishop, the holocaust denying Richard Williamson, was readmitted to the Church.

India: moral vigilantes attack women

In an incident of moral policing in Karnataka, a group of men in Mangalore attacked a group of women in a pub on Saturday afternoon.The attack was carried out by members of the Sri Ram Sena, who said they had received complaints from the public about the presence of young women. The five or six women in the pub were chased out and hit by the self-appointed moral police....

"About 15 to 20 activists, reportedly belonging to Sri Ram Sena [Hindu nationalist group], barged into the pub late last night and assaulted boys and girls dancing there," said Inspector General of Police (Western Range) A M Prasad. Even the girls were not spared by the agitated activists who chased and thrashed the victims when they tried to flee from the pub on the busy Balmatta Road in the heart of the city, eyewitnesses claimed...

Prasad said the attackers accused the pub owner of allowing the boys and girls to dance and act in an "obscene manner"... "Those people (attackers) simply came in and started beating the girls. It was a bad scene. Our waiters tried to stop them but they did not listen and kept assaulting the girls," pub owner A Krishna said.

(source: NDTV, 25 January 2009)

Banning Christmas

Still a few days to go of the Twelve Days of Christmas festivities. In the 16th century though, protestant churches in Scotland sometimes tried to ban mid-winter celebrations - even Christmas carols - as pagan and papist:

'at St Andrews, in 1573... the kirk session, the local unit of church govern­ment, punished a number of people for 'observing of superstitious days and specially of Yuil-day.' The following year it made a particular example of a baker, for filling his house with lights and guests on New Year's Day and shouting 'Yuil! Yuil! Yuil!' In that year, too, the kirk session at Aberdeen tried fourteen women for 'playing, dancing and singing of filthy carols on Yule Day at even'...

From 1583 the Glasgow kirk sessions ordered that those who kept Yule were to be excommunicated and also punished by the secular magistrates. A few years later bakers at Perth were questioned for making 'Yule Bread', and in 1588 the Haddington presbytery forbade the singing of carols at this time. In 1593 the minister of Errol equated this pastime with fornication and in 1599 the local elite of Elgin prepared for the season by forbidding 'profane pastime ... viz. footballing through the town, snowballing, singing of carols or other profane songs, guising, piping, violing and dancing.' In that decade also a piper from Dunblane was forced to promise not to play upon Christmas Day or any other old festival, having been hired to do so by Yuletide revellers in villages along the Allan Water.


The same sorts of record (which are all that we have) also make clear the large amount of opposition which these measures encountered. The ruling at Glasgow had to be repeated four times up to 1604, a sure sign of resistance to it. At Aberdeen in 1606, thirty years after the campaign of repression began, the kirk session had to condemn anew 'the superstitious time of Yule or New Year's Day' and direct that henceforth the citizens should not 'presume to mask or disguise themselves in any sort, the men in women's clothes, nor the women in men's clothes, nor otherways, be dancing with bells, other on the streets of this burgh or in private house'. The Elgin session ruling of 1599 had been the third, and most detailed, of its kind within five years. Every one of those before had been defied by revellers disguised by blackened faces, masks, handkerchiefs, or fancy dress; traditional festival costume now assuming a practical advantage. So was this order, by at least two young women going abroad attired as men. At Yule in 1603 a man rode through the town with a cloth over his head, while another was accused of 'singing and hagmonayis' at New Year. Two years later a set of Aberdonians got into trouble by going through the streets 'masked and dancing with bells'.

Source: Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: a History of the Ritual Year in England (1996)

New Year's Eve

I know millions of people have been partying and having a good time in the past 24 hours (from a free party in Kent to Melbourne where 40,000 partied at Sensation rave at the Telstra Dome. So sorry for highlighting two bad news stories, one tragic, one farcical but with serious implications for people who live in the Maldives and enjoy dancing.

Thailand: 61 die in nightclub fire (Guardian, 1 January 2009)

'The death toll from a fire at a Bangkok nightclub, packed with New Year's Eve revellers, has risen to least 61 with 200 people injured... The cause of last night's fire was unclear; some clubbers blamed it on fireworks while others said it had been caused by an electrical fault in the Santika club. Video footage of the disaster showed bloodied, bruised and burned victims being dragged out of the still burning, two-story club, or managing to run through the door or shattered windows. "We were all dancing and suddenly there was a big flame that came out of the front of the stage and everybody was running away," Oh Benjamas told Reuters. Another survivor told how the ceiling caved in, burying victims in the rubble...'

Maldives: Islamists spoil the party

'Disco organisers have blamed the ministry of Islamic affairs for the poor turnout at their New Year’s Eve events after the ministry asked police to ban all discos on the night... Ibrahim Manik, the organiser of a disco held at Dharubaaruge hall said many young people were afraid to attend the discos after it was announced that they were illegal and would be stopped by police... Although the discos were not banned on the night, organisers say they were continually disrupted by police officers inspecting the venues every hour. Security was tight all over the Male', with hundreds of police officers patrolling the streets, in particular in areas where discos were being held... A 26-year-old woman, who did not wish to be named, said she was very annoyed with the ministry’s decision.“I can’t believe it. I planned to go to a disco but changed my mind when the announcements were made saying they were cancelled,” she said. Likewise, Seni Naim, 18, said her friends were planning to go to a disco but decided against it after the ministry’s announcement' (Maldives News, 1 January 2009).

The ministry of Islamic affairs appealed to the Maldives Police Service on Wednesday to end to all the discos organised for New Year’s Eve celebrations. Police sergeant Ahmed Shiyam confirmed Dr Abdul Majeed Abdul Bari, the minister of Islamic affairs, had made an official request to the police commissioner, Ahmed Faseeh, for police to take action regarding this matter... Sheikh Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed, the state minister of Islamic affairs, said the ministry had formally requested the police stop the discos from taking place because they were contrary to Islam. He added the ministry had received complaints from the public. “We have received hundreds of complaints asking for a ban on the DJs,” he said. “So, the number of people who are against having DJs is greater than the number who wants them. Even a police official has informed us that they have also been receiving complaints.” he said. According to Shaheem, it is haram or forbidden in Islam for both sexes to dance together (Maldives News, 31 December 2008).

O Come O Come Emmanuel

I am a bit of sucker for Christmas carols - well, even uber-atheist Richard Dawkins enjoys singing along to them. And of all the carols, my favourite is O come, O come, Emmanuel

For me, there's something about the continuity of human expression. On a personal level, a continuity with songs sung in childhood at school and on our family's sporadic visits to church. On a deeper level, a continuity with generations who have sung the same song. OK so this hymn in its current form only goes back as far as the mid-19th century, but the words are a translation by John Mason Neale of a Latin text ("Veni, veni, Emmanuel") parts of which date back at least as far as the 8th century. The tune likewise is believed to originate from a 15th Century French processional for Franciscan nuns, although it may be even older.

The text is based on the biblical prophesy from the Book of Isaiah (7:14) that states that God will give Israel a sign called Immanuel (Hebrew for 'God with us'.). The prophet Isaiah is generally dated to the 8th century BC, so the subject matter of the song is getting on for 3,000 years old. I like the idea that - language barriers notwithstanding - a Jewish refugee in Babylon, a Roman slave, a medieval French peasant and a 17th century Digger would immediately understand what this song was about.

Of course continuous tradition is a double-edged sword - there is a continuity of religiously-sanctioned oppression and war, the dead weight of superstition and prejudice. Hearing the present day Pope's absurd statements about homosexuality reminds me of why it is important to hold on to a critique of religion and clericalism.

On the other hand, there is another tradition of radical Jews and Christians drawing on Biblical verses for inspiration for rebellion and social transformation - from peasant revolts to liberation theology. 'O come, O come, Emmanuel' with its call to 'ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here' can certainly be sung with such meanings in mind. And its source, the Book of Isaiah is full of admonitions against those who 'grind the face of the poor' and fail to 'seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow'. Famously it pictures a future world where 'they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more'.

While Christians believe that Isaiah's prophecy was fulfilled in the form of Jesus Christ, religious Jews dispute that the promised Messiah has already come and gone. I am sure that one of the reasons for Christian anti-semitism was the Church's hostility to a minority in the midst of Christendom who publically questioned their absolutist interpretation of the Bible. For instance in Barcelona in 1263 there was a famous four day disputation in front of King James I of Aragon between a Dominican friar, Pablo Christiani, and Nahmanides, a rabbi. The latter denied that Jesus was the Messiah on the simple basis that he had failed to deliver - work, war and death were still very much around - 'these punishments were not annulled by the advent of your messiah'. The King rewarded Nahmanides for his rhetorical victory in the debate - even if he disagreed with him - but later he was to be banished from Spain (source: Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier).

Nahmanides certainly had a point - where was the new heaven and new earth promised in Isaiah? But personally I tend towards the sentiments of the secular hymn that declares 'No saviour from on high delivers, No trust we have in prince or peer, Our own right hand the chains must shiver, Chains of hatred, greed and fear'. Still I guess I have moved to a position where I no longer see atheism as a necessary indicator of radicalism (for instance there are some quite dubious aspects of Richard Dawkins' politics in my view). Similarly I no longer assume that anybody who uses religious language is a superstitious bigot. And I can certainly appreciate a good hymn!

I have included three versions of this song here for your listening pleasure (just click on links to download).



Blyth Power - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)
The first is by Blyth Power from a 1986 tape they put out called 'A little touch of Harry in the night'. Although they played countless anarcho-punk benefit gigs, Blyth Power always had a broader frame of reference than most bands on that scene (Shakespeare, Shelley, trainspotting) and liked to challenge the moral certainty and narrow-mindedness of some Crass punks - for instance by playing a hymn!

Belle and Sebastian - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)

B & S's version was recorded live for a Xmas 2002 radio session at John Peel's house (the female part is sung by Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura). The band's Stuart Murdoch is one of the people who has challenged my bigoted conception that all Christians are bigots - a former church caretaker who is a sex-positive socialist (sample lyric 'she was into S & M and Bible studies, not everyone's cup of tea, she would admit to me').

Sufjan Stevens - O Come O Come Emmanuel (MP3)

Sufjan Stevens has released a whole series of Christmas albums with a mixture of his own and traditional songs, now nicely collected in boxed set, Songs for Christmas.

Have a good holiday!

Iraq: cleric calls for dancing ban

'A cleric's call to ban partying and dancing in the Shiite holy city of Karbala has triggered a heated debate among residents, just when they had begun living without fear of hardline militias. In his Friday sermon, Sheikh Abdel Mahdi al-Karbalaie, the representative of revered Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on residents of Karbala to put a halt to dancing, partying, listening to music loudly and displaying "provocative" women's garments in shops...

The call from Sheikh Karbalaie, aide of Ayatollah Sistani who is known as a moderate religious leader, has divided the local population, with many welcoming the sermons and others terming it an attempt to return to the "dark old days". During the former regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was known for its more secular lifestyle but after he was toppled in 2003 by invading US-led forces, local Shiite militias began enforcing a strict Islamic code of living. Attacks on shops selling music CDs, women's beauty products and dresses were common in Karbala as the militias, mainly loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, became the city's new moral police. Sameer, a shopkeeper who used to sell women's dresses, recalls how one day militiamen stormed his shop and ordered him to put a veil even on the dummy of a model. "At that time there was a woman in my shop and she asked the militiamen why they didn't go and veil dummies of male models in other shops," said Sameer, who gave only his first name'.

Source: AFP 26 October 2008

Humans and dancers

Human, the new single by The Killers, confirms their place as the new U2 of epic pop complete with grandiose themes of faith and mortality. I was struck by the chorus where singer Brandon Flowers seems to repeat 'Are we human or are we dancer?'.

Not sure what he means here - obviously I think it is a false dichotomy, dancing is part of what makes us human, moving to music as social beings.

Does Flowers mean that the state of being a dancer is less than fully human? There is a dubious notion of humanity, or rather masculinity, as being tied up with individual self-possession and separateness from which perspective dancers who 'lose' themselves are surrendering to music like puppets at the expense of their subjectivity.

On the other hand, perhaps Flowers means that the state of being a dancer is more than human, a step beyond to a higher state of grace. Knowing that Flowers is a Mormon I wonder if there are clues in the theology of the Church of the Latter Day Saints? Actually unlike some sects, Mormons seem to have historically been pro-dancing - indeed one article refers to them as the Dancingest Denomination, pointing out that founder Joseph Smith wrote approvingly that 'Dancing has a tendency to invigorate the spirit and promote health'. A more detailed consideration of Mormonism and music shows that the attitudes of some early Mormons was more ambivalent, but dancing has always been popular among many believers.

Anyway, perhaps none of this is relevant and The Killers were just looking for a line to rhyme with 'on my knees, looking for the answer'.

Haredim move to eradicate 'foreign' pop

Haredi Judaism is often labelled as 'ultra-orthodox', but that hasn't stopped many people in Haredi communities in Israel from enjoying and making pop music - evidently incurring the wrath of some Rabbis.

Musicians who use rock, rap, reggae and trance influences will not receive rabbinic approval for their CDs, nor will they be allowed to play in wedding halls under haredi kosher food supervision, according to a new, detailed list of guidelines drafted with rabbinical backing that differentiates between "kosher" and "treif" music. The guidelines, which are still being formulated, also ban "2-4 beats and other rock and disco beats;" the "improper" use of electric bass, guitars and saxophones; and singing words from holy sources in a disrespectful, frivolous manner.

"Michael Jackson-style music has no place in our community," says Mordechai Bloi, a senior member of the Guardians of Sanctity and Education, an organization based in Bnei Brak that enforces what it sees as normative haredi behavior. We might be able to adopt Bach or Beethoven, music with class, but not goyishe African music and beats. We haredim want to protect ourselves from what we see as negative foreign influences. We are trying to maintain our own authentic music styles. We admit that times are changing, but we are trying to stay loyal to our roots."

This is the first time that specific, detailed criteria, including comments on playing styles, will be used to add transparency to the delineation between acceptable or "kosher" Jewish music and forbidden or "treif" music. The man responsible for drafting the list is Rabbi Efraim Luft of Bnei Brak, who heads an organization called the Committee for Jewish Music. Luft works in conjunction with Bloi's organization and with the Jerusalem-based Council for the Purity of the Camp headed by Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Safronovitch. These are the two most important and influential "modesty patrols" in the haredi community.

Bloi and Safronovitch have managed over the years to consolidate their power by successfully courting the backing of the major halachic authorities. A large portion of the haredi community, which numbers between 500,000 and 700,000, is loyal to its rabbis. Calls by rabbis to boycott a business, to take to the streets to demonstrate or to vote for a particular candidate are taken seriously... Similarly, enforcers of haredi norms are monitoring, supervising and censoring the haredi pop music scene, with Luft spearheading the campaign. Luft has already issued a list of "kosher" and "non-kosher" bands and musicians. He said that dozens of yeshiva heads have agreed to refuse to come to the wedding of a student who hires a non-kosher band. Halls with haredi kashrut supervision who host non-kosher bands run the risk of losing their supervision, and hence their clientele. Companies that help promote haredi concerts expose themselves to the danger of a consumer boycott.

Luft said that music is just part of a much larger problem in haredi society. "We see that the same people who are involved in the treif pop scene are also the ones in the unapproved news media, in the so-called religious radio stations, in film and in advertising," said Luft. "All of these things come together to demoralize haredi society and to lower the spiritual level of our youth. This is an issue that people over 30 understand very well what I am talking about and those under 30 have more difficulty understanding," Luft continued. "This music is pushing into our community a generation gap similar to one created by the rock music of the '50s in the US. The whole idea is that there are types of music that have no place with respectable people. Respectable people listen to decent music and immoral people list to indecent music, and it does not make sense that a community that has high moral standards should be listening to this type of music. The influence of music has a very profound effect on people in general. It has been proven that rock music has a very negative effect on people and on animals and plants, while classical music has a very positive effect."

Over the past several years haredi activists have enlisted almost all the major rabbinical authorities to stifle a burgeoning haredi pop music scene. Last year, a letter forbidding all public music concerts, even when men and women in the audience are separated, was signed by a who's-who of Israeli rabbinical authorities...

This summer, haredi activists banned a concert in Netanya that featured popular haredi singer Avraham Fried, who appeared together with secular performers. Despite the ban, there was a large turnout... However, performers who do not appeal to a wider, non-haredi audience have been hurt by the rabbinic ban. For instance, Yaakov Shwekey's concert this summer in Kiryat Motzkin, near Haifa, was a failure. Instead of attracting a few thousand, Shwekey managed to draw an audience of just a few hundred.

Avrahim Fried - banned in Netanya:


Menahem Toker, a popular haredi DJ who was reportedly fired from Radio Kol Chai under pressure from haredi activists because he promoted "treif" shows, said that the blanket prohibition against all shows is doing more harm than good. "Maybe a lot of people will listen to the rabbis and stop going to shows altogether," said Toker. "But there will be tens of thousands of people who, deprived of a kosher option, will end up going to mixed shows. And not just to frum, wholesome performers like Fried and Elbaz, but to secular performers also. So maybe in a way the anti-pop music activists have won a victory. But they also lost because they have not offered a kosher alternative."

Sources in the haredi music scene who spoke off the record for fear they would hurt their relationship with the rabbinic representatives said they doubted the rabbinic establishment would succeed in their newest crusade against CDs. "What are they going to do listen to every single disc that is released? What about the thousands of discs that are already in the market?"

Luft admitted that listening to all the discs on the market would be a formidable challenge. "The main aim is to focus on new songs before they get to the recording studio. So far there have only been two cases in which discs have been banned by rabbis", said Luft. "One by controversial haredi vocalist Lipa Schmeltzer called Bli Ayan Hara (Without the evil eye) and a Yiddish rap CD by David Kalish. There are certain types of music, such as rap and reggae, that are disgusting and have no place in our community."

(source and full article: Jerusalem Post, 9 September 2008)

Morality Police in Yemen

'The Egyptian crooner Ehab Tawfiq has bedroom eyes, smouldering good looks and a voice that enchants Arab audiences. Sadly he won't be perfoming any time soon in Yemen, where he has been blocked by a controversial new Saudi-style "religious police" charged with enforcing austere standards of public morality. Tawfiq sings catchily about love and relationships. But a concert he was due to give in Sana'a was postponed and then cancelled last month after a campaign by the country's newly-formed "virtue committee", which distributed posters and leaflets — and, say some, encouraged death threats and intimidation — condemning the handsome Egyptian for promoting "sedition, immorality and nudity".

For many Yemenis, and for women in particular, this was another alarming sign of the growth of Salafi extremism — an unwelcome import from neighbouring Saudi Arabia where the "mutaween" religious police are part of the scenery. "These people scare the hell out of me," complained Nadia al-Sakkaf, the editor of the Yemen Times. "Yemeni youth are frustrated and depressed. There's nothing for them to do. And since when did we need to act against pop singers?"

The first signs appeared a few months ago in the Red Sea port of Hodeida, where young men and women began to be accosted by bearded vigilantes demanding proof that couples were related. A hotel disco and bar were closed down and several Arab women dancers deported. Daoud al-Jeni, a self-styled "virtue activist', described his mission as being to curb "obscenity and prostitution". Anti-vice teams, some armed with sticks, have also been operating in Aden, the former British colony in the south.

In mid-July the Authority for Promoting Virtue and Combating Vice — exactly the same name as used in Saudi Arabia for 80 years — was launched in Sana'a and quickly moved to pressure the authorities to raid and close down two Chinese restaurants that were allegedly being used for "immoral" purposes, including selling alcohol....

Ironically, the virtue committee idea appears to be taking off in Yemen just as the Saudis, angered by some high-profile excesses, try to loosen the stranglehold of their own mutaween, who police the ban on women drivers, on women travelling without a chaperone and whose latest activity is to enforce a prohibition on selling dogs and cats for domestic pets.
Yemen is a highly traditional Muslim country where most men wear tribal robes and carry curved jambiya daggers in their belts. But it has never been comfortable with the brand of dour Salafi/Wahabi fundamentalism promoted by the Saudi religious establishment. "If these vigilantes start approaching couples and asking them for their marriage certificates in Sana'a you will soon see jambiyas flying," warned a middle-class resident of the capital.

Arwa Othman, an author and folklorist who is defiantly bareheaded in a land where most women wear the hijab, is horrified by the virtue campaign and the zealots behind it. "This idea will kill this country," she says. "They've been talking about it for a long time in schools and mosques and in the army. Now they're in alliance with the government. These people appear when there is poverty and hunger and dictatorship. These are the right circumstances for extremists."

From article by Ian Black in The Guardian, 3 September 2008. Read full article here.


Here's a bit of what they object to - Ehab Tawfik's song Allah Allaik Ya Seedi:

Powwow - the Dream Dance

An account of the Powwow ceremony- also known as the Dream Dance or Drum Dance - which spread amongst Native Americans from the 1870s. It apparently went into decline from the 1950s, although it is still performed today - the photographs are from a Shinnecock Nation powwow festival in 2004 .


The introduction of the Drum Dance was the work of a Sioux girl who, in 1876, whilst fleeing from the white soldiers who had killed all the other members of her band, concealed herself for about twenty hours in a lake. Eventually the spirits offered her help, and told her that she must teach a new dance to all the Indian tribes. The girl apparently went from tribe to tribe teaching the dance, enjoining Indians to put away the small drums they had used and to use larger ones, and to discontinue their war and pipe dances in favour of the new dance. Only the new large drum would be sufficient to keep away bad spirits. The dance appears to have spread to the Chippewa in the late 1870s, and from them to the Menomini. To the original story there was an accretion of various myths-of the girl acquiring invisibility and so escaping the soldiers, for example- but the more important aspects are the organization of the cult, the rituals and the ethical injunctions.

The central rituals of the Powwow consisted of both weekly and seasonal performances. The drum, which was invested with power from the spirits, was the central object of the cult. It was itself sacred, and was a symbol of the supernatural, much as the cross or the altar in Christianity. It was also a symbol of the world. In the rituals the beat of the drum, undertaken in unison by the principal officers of the cult, was all-pervasive. To this beat the dances were performed. The officers of the organization symbolized different spirit beings. One, usually the drum-owner, impersonated the Great Spirit; others the thunderbirds who were protective agents for the tribe; yet four more represented the spirits of the four cardinal points of the compass...

....The drum chief was responsible for selecting the other members of the organization, all of whom had important ritual functions- drumming, singing, dancing, offering sacrifices, attending to the dancing ground, and looking after the pipes which form so important a part of the sacrificial system. Women participated as helpers to the singers, and one, the drum woman, represented the Sioux woman to whom the cult had been first revealed.

The purpose of the rituals was to strengthen the ties between the members and the spirits. The normal weekly rite consisted of songs, most of which were sung four times. It is possible that the first songs which were sung were intended to discharge bad spirits, with later ones that expressed the joy of living, although this does not appear to have been formally established. Special handshake songs are included… The dancers danced as each song was sung, although over the years the dancing became less ecstatic and more of a formality. There were prayers and the drum chief usually preached, both on the ethical injunctions of the faith and on the original myth of the acquisition of the cult. The pipes were smoked by the officials as an offering to the spiriits, they symbolized a pipe of peace among mankind. Like the drums, the pipes were embellished with symbolic designs. The seasonal rites secured the the help of the spirits for the forthcoming season.

Gatherings on these occasions used to last several days, until the influence of the white man’s working week made such prolonged religious festivities difficult to organize. Food was also consecrated (invested with spirit power) and became part of the sacrificial offering in these rites, which also included private songs for the support of the male officials, each of whom danced while his song was being sung. The elaborate belts, decorated with feathers, were used by the men who represented the thunderbirds, and who danced to protect the weaker members of the community: others also danced with the belts, to acquire special protection. Special rites were undertaken to bring individuals who were in mouring back into the community of their fellows, and in the early days of the dance there were customs acquired from the Plains cultures, particularly the divorce songs, in which divorces were solemnized, and warrior songs-although these were somewhat inconsistent with the brotherly ethic of the Powpow… An important feature of the seasonal rituals was the presentation of gifts to people from other tribes who were present. This epitomized the central ethical ideals of the Powwow.

The ethical injunctions recounted as the instructions of the Great Spirit (or the spirits) to the Sioux woman emphasized a few simple propositions, which are remarkable when the warlike virtues of the Indian past are recalled. The dance was given for all Indians, and the drum was a manifestation of the Great Spirit's will to help his people, the Indian people. Indians were not to fight each other or cheat each other. They were not to be angry, nor to be jealous. They were to help each other in every way. The ethic was taught by exhortation and by formal didactic orations in the Powwow. The cult had no specific eschatology but inherited the general pantheon of Indian spirit beings, both good and evil, and accepted the need to make offerings to the good, and to placate the evil (although this last item became in­creasingly vestigial). The spirits themselves, as represented in the drum, were the fountain-head of help for all Indians in all their enterprises, including such common tasks as deer-hunting and berry-picking.

The Powwow and its dances superseded the older dances of the tribes in which it gained adherents. The war dance and the buffalo dance, for reasons which their very names suggest, were rarely performed by the early 1950s. The medicine dance still lingered on among the older people… In its early days, the Powwow cult was also known as the Dream Dance and this presumably related to the vision experience of the Sioux girl.

Source: Bryan Wilson, Magic and the Millennium (London: Heinemann, 1973).

See also Ghost Dance and Comanche Sun Dance

Maya Deren

At Tate Modern today I watched Meshes of the Afternoon, a 1943 film by Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid. Deren (1971-1961) was to say the least a very interesting character - Jewish refugee from the Ukraine, sometime trotskyist, dancer, anthropologist, avant garde film maker and vodou practitioner.

Meshes of the Afternoon is concerned with dreams, shadows and reflections. It is not a dance film as such, but it certainly features dancerly movements - see for instance the section from about 4:30 in this extract where Deren ascends the stairs and then moves around at the top of the staircase (this is part one of the film - the second half is also on Youtube here).



Dance is more central to Deren's Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946 - discussed
by Erin Brannigan here), with the second half of this silent film featuring an extended dance in the open air. The party scene includes appearances by Gore Vidal and Anais Nin.



Deren was particularly interested in the relationship between music, dancing and states of apparent possession - it was this interest that led her to Haiti to study vodou. In a 1942 article, Religious possession in dancing, Deren wrote:

“just as various mechanical devices such as crystals and light are employed in hypnotism, so, I believe, drum rhythms are extremely important in inducing possession. As we know, rhythm consists in the regularity of the interval between sounds. Once this interval has been established, our sense-perceptions are geared to an expectation of its recurrence... Even more important, sustained rhythmic regularity and the fact that the source of it is outside the individual rather than within, means that consciousness is unnecessary, as it were, in the maintenance of concentration’.

A time to mourn, a time to dance

Is there ever a time when it's not OK to dance? Of course there have always been priests telling people not to dance on sabbaths, but what about dancing at a time of war and misery? My general view is that dancing as the affirmation of life is irrepressible even in the darkest times, but sometimes doesn't defiance become indifference to others' suffering?

There's a bit of a fuss at the moment about an exhibition of photographs of Parisians apparently enjoying themselves under Nazi occupation, including nightclubbing. Was this simple collaboration? Undoubtedly in some cases, although the history of the Zazous - denounced by fascists for defying bans on dancing - suggests that dancing in wartime France was more complex.

But clearly there are times when a line is crossed, and here's an unambiguous example. When the Nazis and their Bulgarian allies occupied Greece they massacred the majority of the country's Jewish population. In the city of Salonica, 95% of Jews were rounded up and deported to death camps, with around 45,000 being killed at Auschwitz. When the few survivors returned to the city in 1945 they found that 'Jewish tombstones were to be found in urinals and driveways, and had been used to make up the dance-floor of a taverna built over a corner of the former cemetery itself'.

Source: Salonica: City of Ghosts - Christians, Muslims and Jews 1430-1950 - Mark Mazower (Lonon, Harper Collins, 2004)

Trance Dancing

I originally wrote this article for ‘Head’ magazine where it was published in issue no.10, ‘Altered States’, 2000.

After more than ten years of the instant altered states offered by drugs, dancing and electronic beats it has become almost a cliche for people to see themselves as following the shaman’s footsteps on the dancing ground. A typical example talks of 'techno trance parties as the new contemporary ritual', embodying “the power of ecstatic trance dancing' like 'the temple dancers of Egypt, the ecstatic Dionysian dances in the temples of Greece', Sufis, Native American Sundancers and Australian Aboriginals (Return to the Source).

Music, dance (and sometimes pyshcoactive plants) are certainly key ‘archaic techiques of ecstasy’ (Eliade) used to achieve trance states throughout history and in most parts of the world. But it is misleading to think of a universal, unchanging trance dance. There is a great deal of variation in terms of the kind of music used (and in some cases there is even dancing without music); the bodily movements of the dance, which range from the calm to the frenetic; and the kind of mental state induced. Most importantly, the meaning given to the trance state varies according to the ritual context and the beliefs of the participants.

Clearly there are parallels with modern dance scenes, but it is arrogant to assume that all the various techniques of trance dancing amount to the same thing as staying up all night at a club in South London. It implies that we already know it all, and have nothing more to learn. Considering the differences may be more instructive.

In most settings, trance dance is not just about hedonism (although pleasure is often part of it) or even the mystical state of oneness. Typically, trance involves some notion of possession, with spirits being invoked in a controlled ritual context. These spirits may be ancestors, nature sprites or aspects of Gods and Goddesses. Furthermore these rituals tend to be undertaken not just to achieve altered states of consciousness but to bring about change in the material world, such as curing sickness or making it rain. These rituals can be very complex, with the trance dance only one element. For instance the all night dance of the Navajo’s healing ‘medicine sing’ marked the conclusion of a nine-day ceremonial featuring prayers, sand paintings, sweat baths and medications.

It follows from this complexity that to be able to master the trance experience can take years of training. It is perhaps typical of the commodified New Age spiritual supermarket that people imagine they can achieve the same results for the price of a pill and a ticket.

To say that contemporary mass dancing offers a different kind of trance experience is not to say that it is always inferior. Practitioners of esoteric/magical trance dancing sometimes bemoan the lack of focus for the energy raised in a club or party, but in some ways the key to this experience is precisely the pleasure of abandon and excess without purpose, an anti-economic expenditure of energy without return (Bataille).

There is a clear political aspect to many traditional trance practices. I.M. Lewis refers to spirit possession/trance as a ‘ strategy of mystical attack’ by which people of low social status are able to act and speak in ways which would not otherwise be socially permitted. He gives examples of spirits which possess women and servants, demanding that their husbands or masters treat them with respect or offer them gifts. Since it is the gods or the sprits who are responsible, this ritualised rebellion is tolerated within certain limits, beyond which people risk being labelled as witches or sorcerers.

Trance dancing is also characterised by what the anthropologist Victor Turner calls ‘liminality’ (from the Latin for threshold). This describes the way that people in ritual activity ‘separate themselves... from the roles and statuses they have in the workaday world’ crossing the threshold to a space emphasising ‘equality, anonymity and foolishness when compared with the heterogeneous, status-marked, name-conscious intelligence of the social order’ (Driver).

An example is the medieval phenomenen known as St Vitus Dance or tarantism. In Germany, Holland, Belgium and Italy ‘In times of misery, the most abused members of society felt themselves seized by an irresistable urge to dance wildly until they reached a state of trance and collapsed exhausted... peasants left their ploughs, mechanics their workshops, house-wives their domestic duties, children their parents, servants, their masters - all swept headlong into the Bacchanialian revelry’ (Lewis).

Trance dancing ceremonies often involve reaffirming the bonds between people, between the living and the ancestral dead; between humans, animals and the land. Turner calls this ‘communitas’, a spirit of unity and mutual belonging generated by ritual that is more than simply the fact of living in a common space implied by ‘community’.

Prior to their last stand against confinement in a reservation in the 1870s, the Comanches held an elaborate sun dance: ‘the people danced in bands for five days before the sun dancers themselves danced, drummed and sang for three further days, doing without food and water for the duration of the dance’ (Wilson). We can trace a similar link between dance, community and resistance today. On Reclaim the Streets parties for instance dance music is much more than just a soundtrack. It is the act of dancing together that help creates a collectivity from a collection of isolated individuals, giving us a sense of our power and a vision of a different way of being.

Anybody who has been out dancing in the last ten years will recognise something of their own experience in these ideas of liminality and communitas. (I would add that this applies not just in the self-defined trance scene, but in dance music scenes generally whatever the soundtrack.). Of course, it is possible to criticise this experience as illusory, compensating for, but not challenging the ruling society that denies real community. In this sense, the contemporary dance scene could be said to perform the same role as religion as ‘the heart of heartless world... the opiate of the masses’ (Marx). And there is a truth in this. In clubs you sometimes get an incredible mix of people dancing together, but whatever the feeling of togetherness, at the end of the night some go back to stately homes, some to children’s homes. Yet, however fleeting this feeling, it is never entirely a fiction - even if it only provides a glimpse of how different things could be.

References:

- G. Bataille, Eroticism, 1962.
- T.F. Driver, The magic of ritual: our need for liberating rites that transform our lives and our communities, 1991.
- M. Eliade, Shamanism: archaic techniques of Ecstasy.
- I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: an anthropological study of spirit possession and shamanism.
- Return to the Source, Deep Trance and Ritual Beats booklet, 1995
- B. Wilson, Magic and the Millenium, 1973.

Ghost Dance

‘All Indians must dance, everywhere, keep on dancing. Pretty soon in next spring Great Spirit come… All dead Indians come back and live again. They all be strong just like young men, be young again. Old blind Indian see again and get young and have fine time. When Great Spirit comes this way, then all the Indians go to mountains, high up away from whites. Whites can't hurt Indians then. Then while Indians way up high, big flood comes like water and all white people die, get drowned. After that. water go way and then nobody but Indians everywhere and game all kinds thick. Then medicine man tell Indians to send word to all Indians to keep up dancing and the good time will come’ (Wovoka, the ‘Paiute Messiah’).

In the wake of military defeats and conquest, millenarian hopes of divine intervention spread among the desperate Native American survivors of the West in the 19th century. The most widespread movement was the Ghost Dance, at the heart of which was the hope that a better world could be brought into being through dance. In 1870, a prophet called Wodziwob amongst the Northern Paiute people (who lived on the California/Nevada border) told of a vision that the ancestors would return on a train, the whites would disappear and heaven would be created on earth. ‘These miracles were to be hastened by ceremonial dancing around a pole and by singing the songs that Wodziwob had learned during a vision’ (Farb). Although the movement faded away, it was revived twenty years later by Wovoka the prophet, son of an assistant of Wodziwob. In his vision he was told by God ‘about a dance that the people must perform to bring the dead Indians back to life again, for the dance generated energy that had the power to move the dead’ (Farb).

The dance spread quickly to the Cheyenne, the Sioux and many other tribes. Some wore ‘ghost shirts – dance shirts fancifully decorated with designs of arrows, stars, birds, and so forth’ believing that they could ward off bullets. In 1890 Kicking Bear and his brother Short Bull brought news of the movement to Sitting Bull of the Sioux. Kicking Bear told of a vision he had of Christ: ‘Kicking Bear had always thought that Christ was a white man like the missionaries, but this man looked· like an Indian. After a while he rose and spoke to the waiting crowd. ..”I will teach you how to dance a dance, and I want you to dance it. Get ready for your dance and when the dance is over I will talk to you”… They danced the Dance of the Ghosts until late at night, when the Messiah told them they had danced enough.’ (Brown)

“By mid-November Ghost Dancing was so prevalent on the Sioux re­servations that almost all other activities came to a halt. No pupils appeared at the schoolhouses. The trading stores were empty, no work was done on the little farms. At Pine Ridge the frightened agent tele­graphed Washington: 'Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy ... We need protection and we need it now. The leaders should be arrested and confined at some military post until tbe matter is quieted and this should be done at once’.'' (Brown)

Orders were given to arrest leaders of the movement, and on December 15 1890, Sitting Bull was killed during an attempted arrest. Two weeks later at Wounded Knee Creek a group of Ghost Dance believers – 120 men and 230 women and children – were surrounded by the US military. They opened fire indiscriminately, killing between 150 and 250 people. It was the last stand of the Ghost Dance.

Sources: Man’s Rise to Civilisation – Peter Farb (1969); Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown (1970). See also: Comanche Sun Dance.

Radio anniversary

On this day just over 100 years ago - 24 December 1906 - the first audio radio broadcast of music took place in an experiment by Reginald Fessenden - the inventor of Amplitude Modulation (AM radio). Inevitably the first piece of music broadcast on AM was a Christmas song, with Fessenden playing O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage, Luke Chapter 2, from the Bible. The transmission from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, was mainly heard by shipboard radio operators along the Atlantic Coast.

Listening to the radio in London today Christmas songs are still going strong, I just wish they didn't just play the obvious ones when there's so much good midwinter music, old and new. For the latter check out the Asthmatic Kitty website where an incredible 600 songs were submitted for the Sufjan Stevens Xmas Song Swap. Or visit Belle and Sebastian's myspace where on Christmas Day only you can download their new song 'Are you coming over for Christmas?'. For older stuff, take a look at the huge amount of material at the Hype Machine or Sir Shambling's great collection of soulful Christmas songs.

Come forth o children

'Come forth, o children, under the stars, & take your fill of love! I am above you and in you. My ecstasy is in yours. My joy is to see your joy'

(Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law)

Photo by JaMmCat from an excellent collection documenting rave culture in Canada. This one taken at a Hullabaloo rave in Toronto in July 2007.

Kill the Spirit of Gravity: Nietzsche on Dance

The 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche clearly appreciated dance, and in his imagining of the “the glowing life of the Dionysian revellers” he seems to be not only looking back to Ancient Greece but anticipating future raves. I would be interested in finding out more about his own experiences of dancing, as opposed to writing about it, so if anybody has any knowledge of this, let me know.

“Under the charm of the Dionysian not only is the union between man and man reaffirmed, but Nature which has become estranged, hostile, or subjugated, celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.... Now the slave is free; now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice or ‘shameless fashion’ have erected between man and man, are broken down... Each one feels himself not only united, reconciled, blended with his neighbour, but all as one with him... In song and in dance man expresses himself as a member of a higher community; he has forgotten how to walk and speak; he is about to take a dancing flight into the air... He feels himself a god, he himself now walks about enchanted, in ecstasy... He is no loner an artist, he has become a work of art: in these paroxysms of intoxication the artistic power of all nature reveals itself to the highest gratification of the Primordial Unity” (The Birth of Tragedy, 1872)

"I should believe only in a God who understood how to dance. And when I beheld my devil, I found him serious, thorough, profound, solemn: it was the Spirit of Gravity - through him all things are ruined. One does not kill by anger but by laughter. Come let us kill the Spirit of Gravity!" (Of reading and writing, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"Do not cease your dance, sweet girls! No spoil sport has come to you with an evil eye, no enemy of girls... How could I be enemy of divine dancing, you nimble creatures... A dance-song and a mocking-song on the Spirit of Gravity, my supreme, most powerful devil" (The Dance Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883)

"And once I wanted to dance as I had never yet danced: I wanted to dance beyond all heavens. Then you lured away my favourite singer. And then he struck up a gruesome, gloomy melody: alas, he trumpeted into my ears like a mournful horn! Murderous singer, instrument of malice, most innocent man! I stood prepared for the finest dance: then you murdered by ecstasy with your tones! I know how to speak the parable of the highest things in the dance - and now my greatest parable has remained in my limbs unspoken!" (The Funeral Song, Thus spake Zarathustra, 1883).

Photos via Flickr from Tel Aviv, Israel - top by Orenziv of a rave, October 2007; bottom from Love Parade 2004 by Ehud

Indian dance

A couple of interesting posts focusing on different aspects of dancing in Indian cultures.

Richard at Rough in Here... has become an enthusiast for Mujras , and has posted some footage of the dancer Megha so you can see what all the fuss is about.

Meanwhile Blackdown has an interview with a participant in the recent Navrati celebrations in London, a Hindu festival featuring nine nights of dancing.