PERMANENT SEMINAR OF THE RESEARCH GROUP ON ETHNOMUSICOLOGY AND STUDIES IN POPULAR MUSIC
10.12.2025 | 2:30 PM | NOVA FCSH, Av. de Berna, Lisbon | Tower A, Room A006 | Online
Free access, in person and online.
Revisiting the Heritagization of Arabic Music in Post-Colonial Cairo
Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco | INET-md/NOVA FCSH
In this presentation, I revisit and expand my research on the heritagization of Arab music in postcolonial Cairo, between the late 1960s and the present. I discuss several perspectives on Arab music heritage (turath), the cultural policies that frame the heritagization of this musical practice, the models that were configured for its representation, the underlying ideologies and discourses and the agency of selected musicians in heritage production. I also examine the intersection of cultural politics, and elite class positionality with Arab music heritage. My main argument is that the initial model for the heritagization of Arab music, represented by state ensembles, censored the performance practices associated with tarab that constitute fundamental ingredients of aesthetics and attempted to regulate musicians and audience behavior, imposing the adhesion to a fixed text and the behavioral norms of Western “art” music. I also contend that the heritagization of Arab music transformed, re-signified and (re)positioned a largely mass mediated urban popular musica practice, represented by artists such as Um Kulthum, into a highbrow expressive domain, a discourse of privilege that confers cultural and social capital to music, musicians and audiences.
Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco | Professor Emerita of Ethnomusicology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of Nova University Lisbon, and founder and President Emerita of the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Center for Studies in Music and Dance, based at the same institution. She holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University (New York). She has taught at several North American universities, including New York University (1979-1982) and, as Visiting Professor, at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley. She was also a Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She has conducted field research in Portugal, Egypt, and Oman on cultural policy, musical nationalism, identity, music and media, modernity, heritage preservation, and music and conflict, subjects on which she has several national and international publications, of which the following stand out: Music and the Making of Portugal and Spain, with Matthew Machin- Autenrieth and Samuel Llano (Illinois University Press 2023), a book that won the Ellen Koskoff Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology (2024); and the Encyclopedia of Music in Portugal in the 20th Century (ed., 4 vols Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores/Temas e Debates 2010). Among the positions she has held are President of the International Council for Traditional Music (2013 – 2020); Vice President of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2007 – 2009) and of the International Council for Traditional Music (1997-2001 and 2009-2013); Vice-Rector of the Nova University of Lisbon (2007-2009); President of the Portuguese Association of Musical Sciences (1996 – 2006). She was elected an Honorary Member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences (2024). She received the Immaterial Prize (2024), the Scientific Merit Award from the Foundation for Science and Technology (2022), the Glarean Award for research in music from the Swiss Society for Musicology (2013), the Gold and Silver Medals of Cultural Merit from the Municipal Chambers of Lisbon and Cascais respectively (2012 & 2007), and the Pro-Author Award from the Portuguese Society of Authors (2010).