Return to home page

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE ^[1]

The idea for this conference developed out of discussions with colleagues at the last Mediterranean Music Studies colloquium, held in Marseilles on 26-30 June 2023.

Over the years our discussions have been very land-based, and it has become obvious that any discussion of Mediterranean musics has to address questions that arise directly out of the experience of the sea.

So we decided to organise a conference on Sea Songs of the Mediterranean.

Furthermore, we were determined that the countries of the North African coast should be fully represented in this conference, so we travelled to Tunisia, and in particular to the historic port town of Mahdia.

Among the local cultural associations our proposal was met with enthusiasm, and so Mahdia was chosen as the venue for our conference. [Note 1]

Furthermore, there is a rich musical culture in the region, and we have been able to meet musicians who will participate in the conference proceedings.

We are particularly grateful to colleagues at the Maison de la Culture, and the fisheries association Dar al-Hout for their help in establishing the conference

What is clear is that the Mediterranean, although a space of perennial historic enmities, is also a unified cultural space, with multiple sharings and crossovers of cultures, technologies, marine practices. The Mediterranean as a commons. And often these commonalities find expression in song.

For example, in 1054 the Pisans and Genoese sailed to Tunisia to defeat the North African pirates who were threatening their trading interests. They landed in Mahdia. They slaughtered the population, burned the ships, and took away large amounts of treasure. This is all recorded in the contemporary Carmen Victoriae Pisanorum – ‘Song of the Victory of the Pisans’. Crucially, they also observed the advanced shipbuilding facilities of the Arabs. The song describes a portum mirabiliter factum – ‘a port most marvellously constructed’. From Mahdia the Pisans brought back the Arab term for shipyard – dar sin’a. That term, and its associated shipbuilding practices, immediately became naturalised into the Italian darsena and arzana, and gave us eventually what became the pride of the Venetian maritime republic, its Arsenale – and also our own Arsenal.

A similar unexpected circulation takes place in the sociology of the sea as expressed in its songs. As we know, the head of a troupe of fishermen engaged in the southern Italian tuna-fishing communities was known as the ra’is – precisely, Arabic for ‘chief’ or ‘head’. That person would be responsible for the rhythms of the work-songs that accompanied the nettings of the tonnara [see our home-page photo] as recorded by musicologist Alan Lomax. In Greek sea-related songs, however, there is the unfamiliar term tsourma, meaning ‘crew’. Tracing back its origins, we find this in the medieval Genoese ciurma. According to the dictionaries this term relates to galley-rowing, and derives from the Byzantine and ultimately from the ancient Greek keleusma – the ‘giving of orders’. In other words, the beating out of the rhythms by which the men would row the galleys for trade and for war. A tight-knit complex of maritime practices, terminologies and song that open to new understandings of the Mediterranean as a social and cultural commons.

Of course Mediterranean song also records historical traumas through the ages. The perils of emigration are recorded in ‘The shipwreck of the SS. Sirio’ from 1906, and also in the burgeoning genre of today’s harraga migration songs coming out of North Africa. The hardships endured by sea-borne pilgrims are equally featured in the remarkable Sea Song of Yehuda Halevi [c.1075-1141], and in an anonymous song of the pilgrimage to Compostella. War and naval battles add to the picture. Trade patterns are uncovered unexpectedly in Greek rebetiko songs about sponge-fishing expeditions to North Africa. And there are intriguing veins of work songs that traverse the region (for instance the avowedly working-class genre of dangari dance in Tunisia, which may have connections to the port towns of western India and to ship-caulking work-songs recorded in Qatar).

There are many treasures waiting to be discovered.

We expect that our Mahdia conference will offer many new and original perspectives on the musical and maritime cultures of the Mediterranean, and we look forward to seeing you there.

By way of conclusion it remains only to extend special thanks to Mr Rafik Sfar of Mahdia and Mr Nabil Sfaxi of the Mahdia Maritime Museum who gave much help in laying the original basis of our conference, and Mr Fadhel Sakka of the Hezb Mahdia, who initiated us into the musics of the town.

NOTE

1. Six weeks before the conference, the local authorities and the cultural associations of Mahdia (with the exception of the Dar al-Hout) withdrew all the support that they had promised. No explanation was given. We have been fortunate that the Higher Institute of Music at the University of Sousse has stepped in to save the day. Our conference is being transferred 60km up the road to Sousse. We are grateful to the University authorities for their generous support.

The conference includes a specialist panel of speakers from the Mediterranean Music Study Group of the ICTMD, and we are grateful to the colleagues of the MMS secretariat for their logistical support.

Last updated: 21.iii.2025