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Cairo Congress of Arab Music

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Participants of the Cairo Congress of Music

The Congrès du Caire (First Congress of Arab Music; Arabic: مؤتمر الموسيقى العربية الأول; Mu'tamar al'mūsiqā al-'arabiyya al-awwal) was a large international symposium and music festival that was convened by King Fuad I in Cairo, Egypt, from March 14 to April 3, 1932. The idea had been suggested to Fuad by the French ethnomusicologist Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, and the congress was the first large-scale forum to present, discuss, document and record many musical traditions of the Arab world from North Africa and the Middle East.[1]

Overview

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Algerian ensemble under the direction of Larbi Bensari [fr]

By a royal decree of January 20, 1932, a commission was appointed to organize the congress. It was headed by the Minister of Public Education Muhammad Hilmi Isa Pasha, with d'Erlanger serving as vice-chairman and Mahmud Ahmed El-Hefni in charge of the General Secretariat.

The congress was held at the National Academy of Music, at 22 Malika Nazly Street (now Ramses Street) in the Azbakeya district of downtown Cairo.[2] It drew scholars and performers from throughout the Arabic-speaking world as well as from Turkey, including Muhammad Fathi, Ali Al-Darwish, Kamel al-Khola'ie, Mahmud Hefni, Tawfiq Al-Sabbagh, Rauf Yekta, Khemaïs Tarnane, Mohammed Gnanem, Mohammed Ben Hassan, Mohammed Cherif, Larbi Bensari, M'hamed El Kourd, and Mesut Cemil, as well as European scholars, composers and musicologists such as Henry George Farmer, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Alexis Chottin (the head of the National Conservatory for Arab Music in Rabat), Father Xavier Maurice Collangettes, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, Curt Sachs, Robert Lachmann and Mady Humbert-Lavergne. Nations sending delegations of musicians included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia as well as Turkey, each of them representing their own musical traditions.

The Tunisian ensemble at the Cairo Congress

The Congress' sections focused on the past, present and future of Arabic music, which had been called "Oriental music" before. Believing such music to be in need of modernization in the face of 20th-century developments of the entertainment industry, it made recommendations for its development and definition as part of Arabic culture. In addition, proposals for the modernization and standardization of Arabic music were presented, including a proposal to standardize the Arabic tuning system to 24 equal steps per octave including quarter tones, thus substituting an equal-tempered system for the traditional non-tempered system. The Egyptian delegate Muhammad Fathi recommended that Western instruments be integrated into Arabic ensembles, due to what he believed to be their superior expressive qualities.[3]

Recordings

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360 performances of Arabic music by the visiting groups were recorded, and many of these recordings survive in the Phonotèque of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris[4], the British Library and the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.[5] 162 of these 78 rpm records were released by His Master's Voice, and a collection of those records was given to the Guimet Museum in Paris by King Fuad I.[6][1]

The complete collection of these records was digitized by the French National Library (BnF) and resulted in the first complete remastered edition of the recordings in 2015. Supported by a partnership between the BnF and the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi, this edition was published as a set of 18 CDs accompanied by a trilingual booklet in Arabic, French and English.[7][8]

Later regional initiatives for Arabic music

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The Cairo Congress was later followed by similar meetings to document and institutionalize Arabic and regional musical genres. In May 1939, the First Congress of Moroccan Music for Andalusi classical music was held in Fez with participants from the Maghreb countries, France, and Spain.[9] Two more pan-Arab music congresses were organized by the Arab Academy of Music, including a congress in Tripoli in 1961 and another one in Fez in 1969. The Arab Academy of Music is a body affiliated to the Arab League and the International Music Council.[10] It was created with the aim of developing and standardizing music education as well as the promotion of musical culture, collecting Arab musical heritage, and overseeing the production of Arabic music.[11] Further, the Arab Academy of Music has awarded prizes for musical authorship, academic studies and the teaching and publishing of Arabic music.[12]

Discography

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  • 1988 - Congrès du Caire, 1932: musique arabe savante & populaire / Muhammad al-Qubanchi, Dawood Hosni, Muhammad Ghanim, etc. 2 CDs made from historical recordings in the occasion of Cairo Congress in 1932: v. 1. Musique savante de Bagdad/Irak; Musique populaire/Égypte—v. 2. Musique citadine de Tlemcen/Algérie; Musique savante de Fès/Maroc; Musique citadine de Tunis/Tunisie. Includes a special booklet in Arabic, English, and French. Paris: Édition Bibliothèque Nationale - L'Institut du Monde arabe (Ma`had al-`Alam al-`Arabi), APN 88-9,10.
  • 1989 - Maroc: Musique Classique / Congres du Caire 1932 Cheikh Mohamed Chouika and Omar Jaïdi / Moroccan famous musicians. Paris: Club du Disque Arabe/Artistes Arabes Associés AAA006.
  • 1994 - Le Maqam en Iraq vol. I Congres du Caire 1932 / Muhammad al-Qubanchi / Iraqi singer Muhammad al-Qubanchi, et al. Paris: Club du Disque Arabe AAA087.
  • 1994 - Malouf Tunisien: La Musique Classique Tunisienne - Congres du Caire 1932. Tunisian classical music performed by Mohamed Ben Hassan and Mohamed Cherif. Paris: Club du Disque Arabe AAA094.
  • 1994 - Le Maqam en Iraq vol. II Congres du Caire 1932 / Muhammad al-Qubanchi / Historical recordings of Iraqi Muhammad al-Qubanchi, et al. Paris: Club du Disque Arabe AAA097.
  • 1995 - Musique Classique Arabo-Andalouse - Ecole de Tlemcen Congres du Caire 1932 / Elhadj Elarbi Bensari et Rodwane. Historical recordings of Algerian Larbi Bensari (1857-1964) and his son Redouane. Paris: Club du Disque Arabe AAA098.
  • 2015 - Congrès de musique arabe du Caire (The Cairo congress of Arab music), 1932. Sous la direction de Jean Lambert et de Pascal Cordereix. Texte original de Bernard Moussali, (Complete remastered edition)[13]

References

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  1. 1 2 Hachlef, Amine (November 1993). "The Cairo Congress of Arab Music 1932". www.bolingo.org. Archived from the original on 2006-10-26. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  2. ↑ As of 2008, the building was still standing.
  3. ↑ Racy, A. J. (2004-05-20). Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-31685-9.
  4. ↑ "Saudi Aramco World : The Musical Pulse of Tunisia". archive.aramcoworld.com. Retrieved 2020-08-21.
  5. ↑ "Conversation with Jean Lambert, ethnomusicologist. – Beyond 1932". 1932muscon.kcl.ac.uk. Department of Music in the School of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London. 2025-12-02. Retrieved 2026-08-23.
  6. ↑ "Conversation with Dr. Scheherazade Hassan, ethnomusicologist – Beyond 1932". 1932muscon.kcl.ac.uk. Department of Music in the School of Arts & Humanities at King’s College London. 2026-03-19. Retrieved 2026-08-23.
  7. ↑ Bensignor, François (2015). "Congrès de musique arabe du Caire. L'intégrale publiée par la BnF". archive.wikiwix.com (in French). pp. 174–179. Archived from the original on 2022-08-31. Retrieved 2026-09-22.
  8. ↑ "Congrès de musique arabe du Caire | Editions de la Bibliothèque nationale de France". editions.bnf.fr (in French). Retrieved 2026-09-22.
  9. ↑ Llano, Samuel (2026-06-01), Llano, Samuel (ed.), "French Racial Policy and Musique Berbère", The Empire of the Ear: Music, Race, and the Sonic Architecture of Colonial Morocco, Oxford University Press, pp. 60–90, doi:10.1093/9780197628300.003.0004, ISBN 978-0-19-762827-0, retrieved 2026-09-24{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)
  10. ↑ "الأنشطة على الساحة الدولية" [Activities on the international scene]. www.arabmusicacademycom.arabmusicacademy.org (in Arabic). Retrieved 2026-09-24.
  11. ↑ "Comités et forums régionaux et mondiaux - Ministère de la Jeunesse, de la Culture et de la Communication". Ministère de la Jeunesse, de la Culture et de la Communication (in French). Archived from the original on 2026-01-18. Retrieved 2026-09-24.
  12. ↑ "المقررات والتوصيات". www.arabmusicacademycom.arabmusicacademy.org (in Arabic). Retrieved 2026-09-24.
  13. ↑ Congrès de musique arabe du Caire (The Cairo congress of Arab music) - 1932 [BNF 01 CD-01-18] (2015), 2015, retrieved 2026-09-22

Bibliography

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  • Bartók, Béla, with contributor Benjamin Suchoff (1992). Music/History and criticism series. Univ. of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-6108-X.
  • Danielson, Virginia (1994). Musique Arabe: Le Congres du Caire de 1932 by Philippe Vigreux." Yearbook for Traditional Music, vol. 26, pp. 132–36.
  • Qassim Hassan, Shéhérazade and Philippe Vigreux, (eds.) (1992). Musique arabe; Le Congrès du Caire de 1932. Cairo: Cedej.
  • el-Ḥefnī, Maḥmūd Aḥmed (ed) (1934). Recueil des travaux du Congrès de Musique Arabe qui s’est tenu au Caire en 1932 (Hég. 1350) sous le haut patronage de S.M. Fouad Ier, Roi d’Égypte. Cairo.
  • Katz, Israel J., with the collaboration of Sheila M. Craik (2015). ″Henry George Farmer and the First International Congress of Arab Music (Cairo, 1932)". Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts, vol. 115. Leiden: Brill, 2015. ISBN 978-90-04-26319-2
  • _____. "Congress of Arab Music 1932" (2018), in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden, iii, pp. 17–21.
  • Moussali, Bernard; Lambert, Jean (2024). Le Congrès du Caire de 1932: la musique arabe à la recherche de son identité (in French). Paris: Geuthner. ISBN 978-2-7053-4124-4.
  • Racy, A.J., "Historical worldviews of early ethnomusicologists: An east-west encounter in Cairo, 1932 (1991) in S. Blum, et al (eds.), Ethnomusicology and modern music history. Urbana-Chicago 1991, 68-91.
  • _____ (2003). Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Ṭarab. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • _____ (2015). "Comparative musicologists in the field: Reflections on the Cairo Congress of Arab Music, 1932 (2015) in V.L. Levine and P.V. Bohlman (eds.), This thing called music: Essays in honor of Bruno Nettl, Lanham, MD, pp. 137–50.
  • Sawa, George Dimitri (1993). The World of Music 35, no. 3, pp. 107–11.
  • Shannon, Jonathan Holt (2006). Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria. Social life and customs series. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-6798-1.
  • Vigreux, Philippe, ed. (1992). Musique arabe: Le Congrès du Caire de 1932 (in French). Le Caire: CEDEJ - Égypte/Soudan. doi:10.4000/books.cedej.1922. ISBN 978-2-900956-23-6.
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