America's Other Orchestras: Arab American Ensemble Series Episode 8
The Cal Poly Arab Music Ensemble
Third Generation Ensemble Shakes Central California
Sami Asmar/Contributing writer
Earlier episodes in this series featured the UCLA Near East Ensemble, directed by Professor AJ Racy and considered the pioneering Arab American orchestra. The UC Santa Barbara episode featured the role of its founder, Professor Scott Marcus, who himself graduated from UCLA under Racy and later founded what can be called the second-generation ensemble. When a student of Scott Marcus graduated and founded an ensemble at another campus that can be called the third generation ensemble. Professor Kenneth Habib is currently the director of the Arab Music Ensemble at Cal Poly, a state university in the town of San Luis Obispo, or SLO, Spanish for St. Louis the Bishop of Toulouse. The small beautiful California coastal town is far from the large population centers of San Francisco and Los Angeles, about half way between them, and would not be anybody’s first guess for a lively Arab music scene.
Dr. Habib is a composer who completed a doctorate in ethnomusicology from UC Santa Barbara with specializations in the music of the Middle East and particular interest in the Lebanese music of Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers. When he became a member of the Cal Poly SLO music faculty in 2006, he immediately started an ensemble, planning upfront the elements of its success. These include frequent guest artists, vocalists and instrumentalists, and incorporating dance performances in beautiful colorful costumes. Habib was born in Detroit and raised in Los Angeles and himself a second generation Lebanese-American. A rare Los Angeles Fairuz concert in LA was a life-changing event in his life that motivated him to study music and specialize in this idol’s music – – Habib has a Fairuz book project.
The Rahbani influence is clear in every concert, as it is deservedly so throughout the world since the Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers practically gave the modern shape to contemporary Arab music. There is also the classic selection from Egypt’s Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Sayyid Darwish from Egypt as well as a selection of the muwashshah genre and Ottoman court style instrumental compositions such as Samaii, Dulab, and Bashraf propagated from the first and second-generation ensembles.
Common guest artists including Los Angeles’ Egypitan violinist Adel Iskandar as well as San Francisco’s Syrian drummer Faisal Zedan. However, one of the most notable guest artists with the ensemble is UC Santa Barabara’s professor of religious studies Dwight Reynolds who is a specialist in the Egyptian epic poetry called Sirat Banu Hilal (the chronicles of Hilal’s descendants). Whenever he performs this demonstration throughout the country, Reynolds accompanies himself on the rababa, a two-stringed spike fiddle, and sings and recites the poetry describing the migration of the Bani Hilal Bedouin tribe from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, embellished with typical stories of love and Bedouin hospitality as well as the violence of battles. The most interesting part of this occasional ensemble segment is that it has practically vanished from art performances in the Arab World itself, yet possible to witness in California.
The thriving Cal Poly Arab Music Ensemble features diverse performances from modern and classic Arab music and dance, which provide a tremendous educational experience for the students and the extended community; friends travel from throughout the state to attend their concerts. As with other orchestras featured in this series, the majority of the students are Americans with no ethnic connection to the Arab World, which means the mission of sharing the beauty of a culture to gain acceptance and better relationships is succeeding. Artists from the community also perform with the orchestra and, it seems, the Earthquake country is enjoying shaking to a different beat.