MAKAM \u2013 Jewish Musicians of Arab Music<\/p>\n
Makam \u2013 a word in Arabic meaning a musical scale or a site \u2013 is the name chosen for photographer Micha Simhon\u2019s homage to a group of musicians and performers in their seventies and eighties, who dedicated their life and career to a musical style silenced in the Israeli context: classical Arab music. Formerly, they used to play in the Israel Broadcasting Authority\u2019s Arab Orchestra (1951-1994), which enabled them to retain musical traditions imported from their countries of origin, mainly Iraq and Egypt\u2026 (Tali Tamir) accompanied
\nSimhon chose to portray them using meticulously stylized studio photography, as they play their instruments: oud, kanun, violin, ney (bamboo flute) and darbouka (goblet drum). The photographic space is dark, with only the figure lit by a bright halo. The musician and his instrument are free of any temporal, local or cultural context.
\nSimhon\u2019s choice of frontal portrait photography, with dramatic lighting, echoes another classic genre \u2013 Western portrait painting, traditionally representative of the higher social classes, those whom society deems worthy of commemoration. In other words, the artist seeks to present his subjects as people relocated from their marginal position in the new Israeli culture to canonical status, to the iconic status of classicists.
\nIt is precisely thanks to the voiceless nature of his medium that Simhon\u2019s photography raises Arab music\u2019s world of sounds to the conceptual level: these are the guardians of a glorious musical culture excluded by the Zionist selection mechanism in its persistent demand to sire a \u201cnew Jew\u201d who denies his Diasporic origins. These performers and musicians are dedicated markers of attention, listening, excitement and experience, who refused any stylistic compromise. They rejected the so-called Oriental-Israeli music, which adapted itself to the new environment, remaining loyal to Arab classical music at its finest.
\nThe Makam series of photographs is a monument to Arab music and its performers in Israel, as well as a warning sign against attempts to homogenize and trivialize. Today, when this mechanism is no longer able to blur identities and silence voices, these musicians from the past rise again, shrouded in a halo of knowledge and culture.
\nTali Tamir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6693,"template":"","categories":[204],"artists":[4117],"exhibition":[3490],"curator":[3491],"years":[487],"class_list":["post-3292","exhibitions","type-exhibitions","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-solo-exhibitions","artists-micha-simhon","exhibition-makam-jewish-musicians-of-arab-music","curator-tali-tamir","years-2010-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions\/3292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibitions"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibitions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"artists","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artists?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"exhibition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"curator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/curator?post=3292"},{"taxonomy":"years","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/art.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/years?post=3292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}