The Social Life of the Tunisian Musical Modes: Fingerprinting Sound through Theory and Practice

The ṭubū‘, or musical modes, of North Africa are a system of music theory and a collection of performance practices. These modes build the repertoire of the nūba, a suite form that contains multiple poetic and musical genres and – along with the ṭubū‘ – are recognized as expressive culture within the broader Arab music tradition and in the Andalusi tradition, more specifically (Guettat 1980, 2000; Reynolds 2015a:260; 2021:207). The period of al-Andalus, or medieval Muslim Spain was a significant span of history in the Mediterranean that lasted from the 8th to 17th centuries and contributed many political, social, and cultural developments across the region which continue to the present. Today, Tunisian musicians, pedagogues, and scholars transmit sixteen musical modes. Thirteen of these modes constitute the traditional nūba repertoire called mālūf in Tunisia. Many Tunisian individuals and institutions value this repertoire and its modes for the history and identity they represent. In this dissertation, I study the systems through which the Tunisians transmit the ṭubū‘ and also the process through which these systems constitute identity.One of the most significant aspects of the ṭubū‘ is the degree to which Tunisian musicians and pedagogues articulate how the ṭubū‘ relate to a modal system in the Eastern Mediterranean (Ar. mashriq) called the maqāmāt. Part One of this dissertation presents the ṭubū‘ through this articulation. In Chapter One, I describe how my collaborators structure and conceptualize the ṭubū‘ by tetrachordal theory – an approach to melodic analysis that is rooted in ancient Greek music theory and has become common in Arab and Ottoman-Turkish tradition musics since the early 20th century (Zouari 2006; Marcus 1989a; Farraj and Abu Shumays 2019; Signell 1977; Aydemir 2010; Ederer 2015). Tunisian musicians and pedagogues greatly value this lingua franca, or “common language,” for analyzing melodic movement. In Chapter Two, however, I analyze how the ṭubū‘ are distinct and different from other modal traditions through practice and performance. My Tunisian collaborators transmit certain musical phrases that reoccur in performance practice and have become characteristic for a mode, in terms of their melodic and, at times, rhythmic qualities. They teach these “phrases” or “imprints” in the classroom with various words, including (in the singular): jumla (Ar.), cliché (Fr.), formule (Fr.), ṣīgha (Ar.), khalīya (Ar.), empreinte (Fr.), and baṣma (Ar.) – the latter of which refers to a “fingerprint.” To Tunisian musicians, these characteristic melodic-rhythmic phrases are not just musical. They also provide a musical means to constitute social and cultural distinctiveness in the region; and they cultivate these distinctions as they conceptualize and practice the ṭubū‘ in classrooms and perform them on stages.The high degree to which my Tunisian collaborators articulate these melodic-rhythmic phrases enables a study of how musical modes have specific effectivity (Ar. ta’thīr), that is the capacity to relate participants to their social, cultural, and natural environments. Ancient Greek, medieval Arab, and present-day scholars and theorists have documented this point for centuries but have not explained how modes actually assist people in assembling these meaningful relations. Part Two of this dissertation explores this process in three chapters. In Chapter Three, I consider how extra-musical associations are made when participants perform musical modes. Relying on the post-structural philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his concepts of difference, immanence, and transcendence (1968/1994, 1997; 1991/1996 with Guattari), I consider how the distinct melodic-rhythmic phrases of the Tunisian ṭubū ‘ enable participants to presence their difference in the moment. In Chapter Four, I analyze how one Tunisian mode inscribed the meanings of Arab and Andalusi at the 2019 Testour Music Festival. Adding theorists Félix Guattari (1980/1987) and Elizabeth Grosz (2008), I discuss the process of “territorialization” and specifically how sound – as a mattered object – comes to cause effect within and upon these assemblages of meaning. Lastly, in Chapter Five, I bring together my ethnographic and theoretical work to introduce “sonic stamping,” a phrase I coin in this dissertation to describe how Tunisian musicians and pedagogues utilize the ṭubū‘ to inscribe difference and form social and cultural meaning. Metaphorically, this process is fingerprinting sound, an expressive phrase that captures how musicians talk about these melodic-rhythmic clichés as social function. Relying on Alexander Galloway (2012), I view these clichés as a musical “interface” that activates effects. Participants perceive the interface in practice and transition to various relations to their environment.This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of the Tunisian ṭubū‘ in the English language – a study that is ethnographic in how I present the ṭubū‘ through my collaborators’ articulations; archival in my substantial use of French and Arabic sources, especially written by Tunisian scholars; and interdisciplinary as I consider how musical modes come to have social lives