Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Foreword by Professor Clive Holes
- Introduction
- The Transcription of Both Classical and Colloquial Arabic
- Part 1 Fact Finding
- Part 2 Single or Related Items
- 5 The Prophet‘s Shirt: Three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad Journal of Semitic Studies, 26, 1 (1981)
- 6 An Uncommon Use of Nonsense Verse in Colloquial Arabic Journal of Arabic Literature, 14 (1983)
- 7 An Early Example of Narrative Verse in Colloquial Arabic Journal of Arabic Literature, 21, 2 (September 1990)
- 8 An Incomplete Egyptian Ballad on the 1956 War Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, ed. J. R. Smart (Richmond, 1996)
- 9 An Honour Crime with a Difference first published as ‘Three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad’, Proceedings of First International Conference on Middle Eastern Popular Culture, Magdalen College, Oxford (17–21 September 2000)
- 10 Pulp Stories in the Repertoire of Egyptian Folk Singers British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 33, 2 (November 2006)
- 11 Karam il-Yatīm: A Translation of an Egyptian Folk Ballad Journal of Arabic Literature, 23, 2 (July 1992)
- 12 Of Loose Verse and Masculine Beauty Quaderni di Studi Arabi, Nuova serie, 2 (2007)
- 13 A Zajal on the Mi
Oriente Moderno, 89, 2 (2009) - Part 3 Cultural and Social Implications
10 - Pulp Stories in the Repertoire of Egyptian Folk Singers British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 33, 2 (November 2006)
from Part 2 - Single or Related Items
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Foreword by Professor Clive Holes
- Introduction
- The Transcription of Both Classical and Colloquial Arabic
- Part 1 Fact Finding
- Part 2 Single or Related Items
- 5 The Prophet‘s Shirt: Three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad Journal of Semitic Studies, 26, 1 (1981)
- 6 An Uncommon Use of Nonsense Verse in Colloquial Arabic Journal of Arabic Literature, 14 (1983)
- 7 An Early Example of Narrative Verse in Colloquial Arabic Journal of Arabic Literature, 21, 2 (September 1990)
- 8 An Incomplete Egyptian Ballad on the 1956 War Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Language and Literature, ed. J. R. Smart (Richmond, 1996)
- 9 An Honour Crime with a Difference first published as ‘Three Versions of an Egyptian Narrative Ballad’, Proceedings of First International Conference on Middle Eastern Popular Culture, Magdalen College, Oxford (17–21 September 2000)
- 10 Pulp Stories in the Repertoire of Egyptian Folk Singers British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 33, 2 (November 2006)
- 11 Karam il-Yatīm: A Translation of an Egyptian Folk Ballad Journal of Arabic Literature, 23, 2 (July 1992)
- 12 Of Loose Verse and Masculine Beauty Quaderni di Studi Arabi, Nuova serie, 2 (2007)
- 13 A Zajal on the MiOriente Moderno, 89, 2 (2009)
- Part 3 Cultural and Social Implications
Summary
When I was collecting Egyptian narrative ballads, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s, by far the most popular were accounts of ‘honour crimes’, so-called because they celebrated violent deeds committed to avenge the murder of a kinsman as in the story of l-Adham iš-Šar>˜āwī, or to punish a woman's offence against sexual ethics as in the many versions of Šafī>˜a w Mitwalli and of Ḥasan u Na<īma. It was these that one performer after another sang, each in his own words. It was these that the folk singers most commonly offered if the choice was left to them. Even national events, including the wars that have wracked the Middle East since 1948, held the folk poets’ attention only for a brief span.
And yet in my collection is a handful of songs that are placed in a contemporary setting, but are of a more universal and less distinctively Egyptian character. They tell at length of dastardly deeds, of the sufferings of their victims and of the eventual triumph of justice, often through the intervention of the police and the courts.
The performers are unquestionably genuine folk singers, the delivery is characteristic of their style and the texts all display, to a greater or lesser extent, their delight in zahr, literally ‘the flower’ which requires rhymes to be inflated into multiple and usually polysyllabic paronomasias achieved by extensive distortion of the normal pronunciation of words.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Exploring Arab Folk Literature , pp. 119 - 129Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011