Situated on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa between Algeria and Libya, Tunisia is the northernmost country on the continent. Its ancient population consisted of Berber tribes in the Atlas Mountains and Phoenicians who settled the coast and built Carthage, who were supplanted by Romans and Visigoths and, finally, in the 7th century, Muslim Arabs. In the 15th century its coastal cities were periodically seized by Spain and the Ottoman Empire. Modern day Tunisia became an independent country in 1956, following 75 years of French control. While culturally Tunisia reflects the various groups that inhabited or ruled the country, it is the Arabic language and cultural heritage overlaid over the ancient Berber culture that have predominated in the country as a whole.
Musically, the country is best known for ma'luf. Maluf means standard, or customary – the type of Andalusian music that became predominant in Tunisia, as opposed to the strains of Andalusian music that were developed by communities of Iberian exiles that settled in neighboring Algeria, Libya and Morocco. Andalusian music was imported by Muslim and Jewish refugees, who were fleeing the Christian re-conquest of Spain between the 10th and the 15th centuries. In part, the development of separate strains of Andalusian music in the different countries of North Africa had to do with the period of resettlement and the refugees' place of origin in Spain.
Of the four North African Arab Andalusian repertories the Tunisian ma'luf is probably the most comprehensibly documented. In the 1930s and the 1940s the entire repertory known to the shaykhs of Tunis was transcribed into Western notation by the Rashidya Institute, which was founded in 1934 to conserve and promote Tunisian music. But until independence in 1956 the ma'luf was generally confined the urban communities of the coastal musicians, performed by aristocrats in private and by Sufi, lower class and Jewish musicians in public. The ma'luf associated with the Sufis was considered raw. It consisted of a male chorus, a variety of percussion instruments and hand clapping, and in secular contexts, it was performed by small, solo instrumental ensembles that included the rabab (2 stringed fiddle) or violin, oud (lute), qanun (zither), and percussion, with the occasional addition of European instruments of fixed pitch, like the harmonium, mandolin and piano. The instrumentalists doubled as chorus. Ensembles were directed by a shaykh (older, knowledgeable member) who was responsible for teaching the pieces and controlling tempo and transitions. In Tunis, the original ma'louf of Andalusia was greatly influenced by Ottoman music and more modern versions of ma'louf contain rhythmic elements of Berber music.
The Rashidya institute introduced several innovations in ensemble and performance practice inspired by European and Egyptian ensembles as well as by formal training. The institute's ensemble developed into a standard one that included the sonorities of Western and Egyptian orchestras but excluded instruments of fixed pitch; it contained a large string section, mixed chorus of males and females, percussion, ouds, nay (flute), and rabab. Following independence in 1956 the ma'luf was designated national musical heritage and became a key ingredient in the government's cultural policies. New ensembles were created across the country, and its the official canon was published by the Tunisian Ministry of Cultural Affairs. In the 60s and 70s the government began to repress Sufi orders, confiscating Sufi lands and possessions and suppressing their ritualistic trance practices. Sufi lodges ceased to function. But despite the suppression of the rituals and accompanying music of Sufi orders, former Sufi ensembles continued to co-exist alongside the modern, state sponsored ones, performing to public demand in the traditional communal context, in cafes and local weddings and circumcisions.
As the ma'luf was integrated into cultural policy, it created a gulf between this music and the more pan-Arab popular sounds, highly influenced by popular Egyptian music, which received the attention of Tunisian mass media. In the past couple of decades various groups attempted to liberate the ma'luf from its official institutional network, and introduce more flexible approaches to performance practice. Some study the ma'luf without notation, encouraging the return to its improvisational, soloistic practices of early ensembles. Other ensembles forge new experiments. Firqat El Azifat, for example, is an all women's ensemble that mixes Arab and western string instruments with the piano. In the mid 90s, the Tunisian international star Lofti Bouchnak began to balance his recitals of Egyptian music with the love-song repertoire from the Tunisian ma'luf as well as other old songs, repopularizing the tradition. These experiments have brought the ma'luf out of academic and state institutions and back into the urban mainstream.
Lyrically, the ma'louf is based on qasidah, a kind of formal classical Arabic poetry; the post-classical muwashasha, not governed by qasidah formulas; the zajal, a newer poetic genre based on dialectical forms, and the shgul – an elaborate form of traditional singing. Musically, the structural heart of the ma'luf is the nuba – a kind of musical suite based on a specific mode, called maqam, the sequencing of vocal and instrumental parts and complex structure of meters that generally increase tempo as the nuba progresses.
While the ma'luf is at the heart of Tunisian musical expression, in recent decades Tunisian artists have begun to experiment with other Tunisian folk musics or sounds emanating from North Africa, the Mediterranean, and beyond. Mizwid is a type of danceable urban folk song that takes its name from the instrument used to accompany the singing, a type of bagpipe from said to have originated in Libya. Mizwid bands consisted of the bagpipe, a solo singer and a percussion section. Traditionally, it has been associated with marginalized groups in Tunisian society, especially with poor migrant workers in Tunis. The upper classes and the religious establishment associated it with drunkenness, obscenity and violence. The first recordings of mizwid songs were made in the 1970s with the female singer Hedi Habouba, one of the genre's primary stars. Despite the fact the mizwid did not receive attention from the Tunisian media until the early 90s, it became the highest selling genre on the cassette market in Tunisia, and was adopted by the growing number of young Tunisians as their version of rebellious music.
At the westernized end of the musical spectrum are artists such as Anouar Brahem, an oud player known for his recordings on the ECM label, who perpetuates tradition while remaining open to Mediterranean influences and jazz idioms. Tunisian-born Dhafer Youssef uses his voice and the oud, to introduce his audience to his new mix of traditional, classical, and jazz blended music. In Paris, Tunisian born singer Amina and guitarist, engineer and producer Smadj have developed their own eclectic blends of orient and occident with both acoustic and electronic sounds. —Nili Belkind
