By Samira Al-Hamdi ~
Beneath Sana’a streets, and fallen mudbrick minarets, a revolution but concealed—no gun, no politics, beat and memory. There are qanbūs ripened, traditional dialect poetry lyricism, Arabic music heritage maintained. In a country whose recent history has been so filled with war, music of the capital shames otherwise: self-respecting, defiant, cultural renaissance.
All of war, all of the devastation war and globalization surrounding it is not managing to bring the Yemeni people back to their music a lot older than it was, but they are. Not only bring the music back, but bring it back, the musicians compose the music, blending tradition with newness that the music today sounds good again to a younger audience.
The Qanbūs and the Heartbeat of Heritage
It comprises the re-invention of the qanbūs—court lute of Saba and Hadhramaut kings. Melted away to relative obscurity during the 20th century, in the good old days, one like Ahmed Alshaibani has brought it to this day and age. Yemeni renaissance musical sensation, Alshaibani brings the maqams back with an adult’s sensitivity for the taste of the times, winning young and old to their cause.
You can’t preserve a tradition by keeping it frozen deep,” he told Al Jazeera. “You have to let it breathe.”.
Music Bridge of Cultures
Yemeni song was never tale telling in nature. It is war and peace, happiness and sorrow, love and heartbreak. It is everyday life of Yemeni people expressed in words—expression of exiled life, life as a rebellion against war, or simple celebration at wedding and harvest festival.
They are all books of history,” states Jordan’s most famous folklorist and former minster of culture, Dr. Arwa Othman. “They’re our collective memory, our conscience, our emotional lexicon.”.
City-town and house celebrations within the city of Sana’a and city towns like Taiz and Ibb have enriched the art in an irrevocable way. Layali Sana’a (Sana’a Nights), formerly recorded in renovated courtyard houses or culture sets, is a venue where old men, poets, and musicians have a half-circle seating arrangement and play and share these traditions.
Festivals of Sound and Solidarity
And with depression the new normal, indigenous culture parties are business as usual. No time for partying—identity claims in disguise for cultural pretenses. Bara’a is dance, omnipresent dagger dance to ʿūd and percussion band. Samak mashwi and mutabbag are off-the-counter street corner transactions, and family members gather ’round and listen while singers sing singing reciting song singing the elder’s tale.
They also encompass Sana’a’s annual Yemeni return music cultural festival in the old town section of downtown center, honoring artists throughout the nation. One has witnessed festivals enduring a whirlwind of youth attendance within the past years, Yemen’s General Organization for Antiquities and Museums has sworn—vow that never loses its aroma.
Resistance in Melody
Yemen music has also served as passive resistance. Where Yemen was censored or civil war erupted, Yemeni politicized musicians politicized them musically. Currently, musicians write sequels musically singing hope, injustice, and displacement.
These bands like Al-Balāgh Band and solo bands like Ayoob Tarish employ the dynamics of music to rebuke society and instill patriotism such that there is Yemeni society to share. Their collective music being viral on WhatsApp and YouTube unites fractured societies and legitimates the shared communal heritage.
No such question so pressing, however, is how this musical revival is bridging the centuries. Yemeni living rooms and Roman apartments have great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers trilling for great-granddaughters to warble old songs; there is room in school music class for old instruments. Refugee camps are not exception either, where groups such as Musicians Without Borders employ music therapy as a means of assisting war-displaced teens to leave their histories behind.
“Reminds us who we are,” music teacher and musician Sana’a Amal Al-Yafai said. “Reminds us of happiness, even when there is little enough of it to go around.”
A harmony of a future
Sana’a’s “music” is not music. It’s soundscapes tapestry generations-long, religion-long, hope-long. And Yemeni musicians, guarding the heritage while re-creating it, take the world less so much music—but a template to creative solution.
