Below is the paper I gave at MESA on Sunday, November 23, at the session, “Social Media, the Digital Archive, and Scholarly Futures,” I co-organized with Rebecca Stein. The other papers, which were really fabulous, were: Negar Mottahedeh's
"Tweeting Judgment Day, Rebecca Stein's
"The Perpetrator's Archive: Israel's Occupation on YouTube", and Amahl Bishara,
"A Popular Digital Archive of Resistance: Facebook Posts of Protests and Arrest Raids." Our terrific discussant was Elliott Colla of Georgetown University, the author of
Baghdad Central. Below is the paper, pretty much as given, along with the images I showed, plus added hyperlinks and some asides.
This
paper has its origins in my efforts, beginning in spring 2012, to
learn more about the development of pop-rai in Algeria, about that
transitional period in the seventies and early eighties when rai was
transformed from a genre of music that was rooted in the rural, sung
chiefly to the backing of the gasba (reed flute) and guellal
(hand-held frame drum), into the very contemporary and urban-sounding
music that eventually blew up in the West's world music scene during
the late eighties, sung to the accompaniment of electric guitar,
synthesizers, drum machines, and trumpets. The written sources I have
consulted cited a handful of specific songs considered to be seminal
in the development of this new musical form, but these recordings,
released on 45” vinyl or, by the late seventies, on cassette, were
rare and out of print. Only a very small portion of rai music from
this period has ever been released on rai compilations (which started
to appear in the late eighties) for the commercial market, and none
of the songs in question appear there. When I began my quest in 2012,
however, I was able to find the recordings in question, as well many
others from the period, posted on YouTube.
Here's one of the key recordings I located, “Zarga ou Masrara,”
by the group of trumpeter Messaoud Bellemou, from the town of Aïn
Témouchent in northwestern Algeria. Let's listen to a bit. [L’ensemble de Belemou, “Zarga ou Masrara” (Brown and Radiant). Vocals: Hamani Hadjoum Tmouchenti, Sax: Messaoud Bellemou, Trumpet: Mouafaq (“Mimi”) Bellemou.]
[Here I played a bit of the opening of the song.]
At
the beginning my chief interest in such YouTube videos was for the
data they contained: the recordings themselves, plus the photos and
the details about the artists that the contributors and commenters
posted. I used a great deal of that material in a long piece ["In search of the origins of "pop-rai": Bellemou, Bouteldja, Boutaiba...and Cheb Khaled"] I posted
on my blog, hawgblawg, in January 2013, and you can
read my account of the emergence of pop-raï there. (But I will not
be discussing those findings today.)
As
I was gathering and analyzing the data, however, I quickly came to
realize that I was dealing with a rather novel sort of archive, one
that I had on occasion consulted in other research, but not nearly to
such a degree as I did for my investigation of the origins of
pop-rai. And I had not previously given much thought to the nature of
the archive. This paper represents my preliminary efforts to try to
make some sense of the specificities of this data and this archive,
what motivates those who produce it, how it is consumed, the
discussions and affects it inspires, and so on.
The
early pop-rai YouTube archive I consulted is part of a much larger
array of online sources that have proliferated over the last several
years (YouTube was officially launched in November 2005; the earliest
YouTube contributor upon whom I've relied, lunakhod, started posting
in October 2006.)
There are also a number of music blogs and other websites that
variously offer webcasts, mixes, singles and entire albums of rai
music either for downloading or online listening, usually via
SoundCloud. The rai archive in turn is part of a much, much larger
array of online sources that are making available recordings from
many other Maghrebi music genres (I've paid attention mostly to music
from Morocco and Algeria). The sources I've relied on, moreover, do
not limit their postings to rai music. (As an aside: two very
noteworthy blogs in this universe are curated by MESA members:
ethnomusicologist Tim Abdellah Fuson's Moroccan Tape Stash and
historian Chris Silver's Jewish Morocco. Both are notable for the
rare quality of the Maghrebi music they post as well as their
scrupulous documentation and commentary.) I focus here on the YouTube
component of the online rai phenomenon, in part because, of all the
online sources for this genre, YouTube one perhaps the most “social”
of all the relevant “social media.”
The
flurry of online rai music postings by afficionados, fans and
collectors can be considered in part a response to the fact that the
Algerian state has done virtually nothing to preserve, archive and
make available this vast and important musical resource. This despite
the fact that at least since the early nineties, rai music has been
regarded as an important part of Algeria's national patrimony as well
as very critical to the tolerant image of the nation that the state
has promoted, especially since the early nineties. Beginning in the
mid-eighties, and especially over the last decade, the Algerian
regime has invested substantial sums of money to put on annual rai
festivals, which were at first held in Oran, and since 2006, in Sidi
Bel Abbès. But it seems not to have devoted any serious resources to
archiving, preserving, documenting or distributing music from the
vast rai tradition, and so only a few songs from the period I'm
concerned with have been circulated commercially.
The
online explosion of rai music also seems connected to the recent rage
in the West for collecting and curating “vintage” or “retro”
recordings, what music critic Simon Reynolds (2011) dubs
“retromania.”
It is appropriate to link the rai collectors/curators and fans to the
retromania phenomenon, as many of them are Arabs resident in France,
and all use the same online technologies deployed by other music
retromaniacs.
In
part, then, the rai phenomenon I am examining is about obsessive
music collecting, a phenomenon that, as Reynolds observes, was once a
minority pursuit in the West but has become, since the 2000s, very
mainstream, in part due to the availability of new distribution and
storage technologies (2011: 95). The new breed of music collectors is
typically not just concerned with acquiring vintage music but also
with “documentation” of that music (Reynolds, 99). Fortunately
for us, this concern for documentation is true of many rai collectors
as well. (And like in the West's music retro scene, the rai
collection field is strongly dominated by males [Reynolds, 101].)
The
developments in distribution and storage have also enabled a shift in
the nature of collecting, traditionally thought of as the effort to
acquire what no one else has got. The recent trend in online
collecting is to try to get one's hands on a rare/vintage recording
but then to make it available to everyone (online), a collecting
tendency known as “sharity.” In
the sharity realm a person accrues cultural capital not so
much due to his/her ownership of a scarce and valuable item but due
to his/her possession of special knowledge about the item (Reynolds,
106). Collectors who share music in this way are typically quite
scrupulous, and generous, about passing along whatever information
they've got, including providing reproductions of the record or
cassette jackets, and so on (Reynolds, 109).
Through
sharity, the act of obsessive collecting also becomes available to
the avid fan, who may not have the cash or inclination to pay for
rare recordings, but who can now track down such music through
constant Google searches, by endlessly scanning relevant websites,
and through subscriptions to YouTube contributors and music bloggers
and so on. For this new breed of collector, “collecting” in large
part involves the act of indulging in excessive, extensive, binge
downloading.
Some
argue that the value of music has depreciated as a result of the
shift from analog to digital recording. At first, and for many
decades afterwards, when music was recorded (analog), it was reified,
turned into a thing (a vinyl record, a cassette tape) that you could
purchase, store, and keep under your personal control. When music was
rendered digital, turned into MP3s and the like, it was liquified, in
order that it might be transferable anywhere (Reynolds, 122). Even if
users do still speak of digital music files as things, in the sense
that they own them and make use of them, the materiality, the
“thing-ness,” of the digital is not readily perceptible to the
senses in the way that vinyl records, cassette tapes, or even CDs are
(Sterne 214: 194, 214). It has also been suggested that
liquefaction/digitalization has resulted in a shift in views towards
recorded music. The fact that dizzying quantities of music are now
massively available has, some argue, resulted in feelings of
information overload as well as a growing indifference to recorded
music and a sense that it is somehow now valuelessness, because it is
“free” and easily acquired (Reynolds 2011: 127-128).
In
some ways one might think of the rai posts on YouTube as efforts to
resist the liquefaction, the dematerialization, the devaluation, of
recorded music. The YouTube posts in question hearken back to a day
when music seemed to have a tangible materiality, and they seem to
prompt affects associated with the reified objects that existed in
the past. YouTube rai videos could be seen as efforts to re-enchant
recorded music, in response to the liquefied state of the recorded
music of today.
YouTube
enables contributors and commenters to attempt re-enchantment and
re-valuation in a number of ways. First, there is the matter of the
music itself. Most of the recordings from the early, transitional
pop-rai period are 45” vinyl records. What we notice immediately
when we listen to the YouTube rai recordings is the crackle of the
needle on the record (or, sometimes, but less remarkably, the hiss of
the tape playing on a cassette recorder). According to critic Mark
Fisher such crepitation (or hiss) reminds us of the materiality of
the vinyl (or cassette), and it seems to mark a return of materiality
in a world where musical sound has otherwise dematerialized into the
MP3 ether. It also reminds us of a loss that is at the same time a
recovery. The recovery of a forty year-old pop-rai recording is a
collector's “find” that we can participate in, at second hand
(Fisher 2014: 144). (And we can download it.)
YouTube
is a technology that allows, invites in fact, contributors to post
images (static or moving) of their choosing, which are displayed
onscreen as the music plays. The
sense that the rai track we are listening to is material, not liquid,
is enhanced by the fact that in some videos the contributor places the phonograph playing arm on the record, and so as we listen to the
song we also see the record rotating, the needle moving in the
grooves of the vinyl.
Alternatively, we see the contributor punch the play button on the
tape player and then, the revolutions of the cassette. This of course
is the very opposite of the experience of playing songs on the
computer, smartphone, or iPod, where we see no moving parts.
Alternatively, the video simply shows us a still photo of a record
jacket and the 45” record placed atop a turntable, as
in this photo posted on a YouTube vid of a 1973 recording by Cheikh
(or Cheb) Younes Benfissa.
Or a cassette jacket in
front of a tape player, as in this YouTube video photo of a 1979
recording ["Ana Ma Halai Ennoum"] by Fadela (soon to shoot to national fame in Algeria as
Chaba Fadela) backed by the Bellemou ensemble, a recording said by
some (but I think incorrectly) to have launched the pop-rai era.
The photos of the pop-rai cassette or 45" record jackets
likewise also serve to emphasize the music's materiality, especially
as these almost never look new. The fact that these jackets are worn
and aged in fact seems to be part of the point (and no effort has
been made to spiff the images up with photo-editing software like
Photoshop).
 |
| L'ensemble Belemou & Hamani Tmouchenti “Mani M'heni” 1974-75 (source) |
|
|
 |
| Ensemble Bellemou and Remitti (later: known as Cheikha Rimitti) (source) |
|
Sometimes
the contributor posts photos of the pop-rai musicians, and these too
often serve to create a sense that the music in question is a
material thing, as the photos are often faded, torn, marked with
creases and stains.
Troupe Bellemou (Messaoud, upper right) while still amateurs, wedding procession, late sixties (source)
L to R: Kerbiche, kerakeb: Messaoud and Mimi Bellemou, trumpets;
Hocine (with soft drink), accordion and organ; Hamdane, tbal
(L to R): Messaoud Bellemou, Hamani Tmouchenti, Kerbiche (source)
(As an aside, it
should be noted that the photos that produce this sense of musical
materiality are in fact digital photos or scans of the originals,
that is, simulations of a real, just as the scratchy, seemingly
“thing-y” pop-rai music we listen to is digital as well.)
YouTube
also provides space for written comments by contributors, who
frequently provide details about the song and the artist(s). Viewers
who sign up (free) for YouTube accounts can also post comments. The
early pop-rai songs I was particularly interested in, however, did
not typically inspire a
large number of comments. Usually comments are put up soon after the
video is uploaded, and are posted by a small number of comments
posters, most of whom seem to know each other, at least online, and
in some cases personally. Often no further comments appear after
those posted a couple weeks or months after the video is uploaded.
Discussions are typically geeky, the remarks of music enthusiasts,
who add information, for instance, about when a song was recorded and
the artists who played on it. Some contributors and discussants know
the artists in question personally. Many comments assert that hearing
the song on YouTube evokes a time or a mood in the past, when one
first listened to the song at the time of its release. Here's a somewhat typical comment – written by attafi, himself a
contributor of rai videos on YouTube, in a mixture of Algerian
dialect and French, in response to a post by YouTube contributor
maghrebunion.
Attafi addresses maghrebunion by his (I think) nickname, Mutanabbi, and he writes that he remembers where he
was when he first he heard the song. He adds that if someone had told
him back then he'd be listening to the song again, forty years later,
in Germany, he'd have considered that person crazy. Comments on the
whole are mostly informational or nostalgic, and very rarely
political. In one set of comments, a person who is presumably
Moroccan comments on a discussion about Algerian pop-rai artists, and
asserts that rai's true origins are in Oujda, Morocco, and not in
Algeria – the commonly accepted origin. Other commenters, all of
them – I think – Algerians, simply ignore or dismiss the
Moroccan's claims out of hand, but they do not engage with him. (Perhaps this is because he writes in Arabic script, whereas the
ususal discussion on such spaces, whether in Arabic or French or
both, uses Latin script.) The character of YouTube comments about
pop-rai therefore in no way resembles the sort that one often
encounters on YouTube posts of music by Palestinian, Israeli or
Jewish-Arab artists, where remarks are often political, have nothing
at all to do with the music in question, and are unproductive,
vituperative, ad hominem, and endless.
YouTube
contributors who post pop-rai music tracks also often resort to other
visual strategies. Some post images
of Oran (Arabic: Wahran), considered in standard accounts of rai to
be the cradle of the music (whereas most YouTube posts I consulted
point to Aïn Témouchent as the chief incubator of pop-raï). The
images of Oran are typically historic scenes, often from the colonial
period, and designed, it would seem, to induce nostalgia. Other
YouTube posts feature images or video footage that is imagined to fit
the mood of the song, such as a belly dance scene from an old
Egyptian movie. Other relevant material I found posted on Youtube was
footage of rai performers in concert, sometimes filmed by amateurs,
sometimes taped from a television broadcast, in both cases “rare”
and vintage. Other useful posts included interviews with a rai
artist, taped from an Algerian or a French television show, and in
one case, an important documentary film about rai.
Finally, one contributor posted clips of a television interview with
pop-rai pioneer Boutaïba Sghir and spliced them with clips from
Boutaïba's major songs of the period. All these are also postings of
rare, otherwise unavailable material, and examples of the practice of
“sharity.”
Some
Conclusions
1.
The portion of the Maghrebi archive I've discussed here is a somewhat
marginal one. Some of the YouTube videos I consulted have attracted a
decent number of views, and a few as many as 40,000.
Only a rather small number of devotees, however, are involved in the
discussions that occur in the comments section, and as noted above,
many of them appear to have personal contacts with the artists whose
vintage work they are posting. This then is social media, but it is
of nowhere near the massive social scale or intensity that my
co-panelists are discussing/have discussed. I don't know why more
people who view the videos don't participate in discussions. Perhaps
because the knowledge on already display is rather specialized and
they feel they have nothing to add; perhaps it is that one has to be
a truly devoted geek to put in the time it takes to comment. Perhaps
it is because of the glut of available music postings on Youtube and
other online sources.
Despite the fact that the artists in question are respected, and some
continue to perform at the annual state-sponsored raï festivals in
Algeria, their contributions to the development of the genre have not
really been well-promoted, nor are they well-documented in mainstream
histories and studies of rai. The sources I've consulted are an
essential source of documentation.
2.
I worry about this archive and its longevity. Is anyone archiving
the archive, preserving the recordings and comments and images, all
invaluable for the cultural history of Algeria, in some other form,
in some other place/space, more permanent than YouTube? I personally
convert the videos I'm concerned with to MP3s, I download and save
the useful interviews and documentaries, and I screensave many
images. But this is very haphazard archiving, and only available to
me. I hope some of our Middle East librarians are at least thinking
about these archiving issues, for when it comes to North African and
Middle Eastern music more generally, extremely valuable sources for
research are now available – but in a very haphazard and perhaps
even ephemeral form.
3.
Contributors are adding to this archive constantly. While working on
this paper over the last two weeks I discovered that the YouTube
contributors I follow had posted a good deal of new pop-rai material
since last I checked (some of which I incorporated into the slides
I've shown). So even when working with 35-40 year old material, it's
difficult to keep up with additions to the archive, and I now feel
the need to post an update to my 2013 conclusions about pop-rai.
Among other things, I'd want to emphasize the important contributions
of Younes Benfissa, who I only discuss
briefly in my 2013 post. [This song from 1973 is particularly intriguing.]
And perhaps also Boussouar
Maghnaoui (who may or may not be Moroccan or Algerian). [Check out these two songs, courtesy Phocéephone.]
4.
I've had no luck engaging the rai YouTube contributors I follow and
whose material I've used, with one exception. I did, however, at
least attempt to make my own contribution to the discussion, by using
the online archive (and other material) in writing my analysis of
pop-rai published on hawblawg, referred to earlier. The piece, at
7,000 words the length of a short article, has to date had over 2,600
views, but unfortunately received no substantive comments. Perhaps in
order to receive such comments I need to translate the post into
French.
5. I am not aware of many studies of YouTube and its effects in our (Middle East) field, but I believe this a topic very worth of pursuit. Martin Stokes in a forthcoming article discusses the web of commentary, emotionality, and construciton of community that has occrred via the posting of YouTube Islamic videos by Turkish Islamists. On the other hand, in the case I've studied, it seems that if we can talk about any "community" constructed around these videos, it is a very small and somewhat exclusive community of geeks and afficionados. These two examples suggest that we should not expect that the YouTube technology and social medium will have the same impact and political effects in all cases, and that we should expect to encounter a range of uses and social significances. I hope others who investigate such phenomena will be willing to look at segments of the social media universe that are not necessarily caught up in political movements, but are nonetheless worthy of attention, even if only for the sake of very nerdy scholarship.
References
Fisher,
Mark. 2014. Ghosts
of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures.
Zero Books.
Reynolds,
Simon. 2011. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past.
New York: Faber and Faber, Inc.
Sterne,
Jonathan. 2012. MP3:
The Meaning of a Format.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Stokes,
Martin. Forthcoming. “Islamic Popular Music Aesthetics in Turkey,”
In Islam
and Popular Culture.
Karin van Nieuwkerk, Mark LeVine and Martin Stokes, eds. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Footnotes
