ED
EMERY
THE ZAJAL IN LEBANON AND PALESTINE
by Ed Emery [SOAS]
ABSTRACT: In 2007 the muwashshah finally came
into public view in the West when Lebanon’s Ghada Shbeir won the BBC Radio 3
World Music Awards. However the cognate zajal form appears to be resistant
to public performance in the West.
The reasons are not hard to find. Since this
improvised art depends on text, it necessarily requires an audience which can
understand the deep meanings, cross-references, puns and interplays of the
text. And since audience feedback and social rooting are a pre-requisite for
the poets to perform their art, zajal would have difficulty transferring
to the alienated spaces of the World Music stage.
However it thrives in various parts of the Arab world.
In Lebanon it has been elevated to the status of national art form; in
Palestine it functions as a bearer of national cultural values and political
resistance to occupation.
This paper will examine the available scholarship on zajal
as the art of poetic duelling. An excerpt of a haflet involving Lebanese
poets Moussa Zgheyb and Tali’ Hamdane will be shown, and the text examined.