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and ancWritten by Kay Hardy Campbell 6 Illustrations by Judy Laertini

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H er dark, kohl-rimmed eyes sparkled as she stepped forwardand turned slowly in place, showing off a gold-embroideredgreen silk brides costume from Jaizan, her home town onSaudi Arabias southwestern coastal plain of Tihama. A row of gold coins

decorated her forehead below a jasmine-covered headdress whose scent

enveloped her like a mist. Floral designs traced in henna danced on her

forearms. Finishing her turn, she gazed out at the audience of women that

filled the festival hall outside Riyadh during the first of three womens

days at Janadriyah, Saudi Arabias national festival of traditional culture.

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Stepping off the stage, she presentedherself first to the events patron, HRHNawf bint Abd al-Aziz, to give her aclose look at her headdress, and thenparaded through the crowd of students,homemakers, professors, writers, artists,journalists and international guests. Asshe approached, conversations stopped,and the only sound was the jingling ofher ankle bracelets.

The young woman from Jaizan wasone of many who modeled traditionalbridal costumes that evening, whenwomen from eight southwestern dis-tricts presented not only their weddingtraditions, but also their centuries-oldfolk songs and dances, all of which arerarely heard or seen outside theirhome region.

Since 1985, the annual festival ofJanadriyah, named for the plain whereit is held some 30 kilometers (19 mi)northeast of Riyadh, has become theannual focal point of Saudi Arabiascultural life. It attracts an estimated 1.5 million visitors, and discussions ofits events appear for weeks in magazinesand newspapers and on live call-in television shows. Its opening night features the Operette, a performanceof music, folk dance, poetry and nar-rative recitation that involves a cast ofhundreds; poets, writers and intellectu-als illuminate nightly literary sessions;falconers, potters, weavers, traditionaltailors, woodworkers and perfumers allparticipate in an artisans village, andthere are horse and camel races, too.

Each year a few days of the festivalare given over to the arts of Saudiwomen, during which programs arepresented to audiences of women only.In recent years, the womens programshave focused respectively on traditionsof the Najd, the central province; theHijaz, in the west; and the EasternProvince. In 1998, they honored thewomen artists, poets, singers and folkdancers of Asir, in the southwest.

Womens songs, which are generallyaccompanied by multilayered drum-ming, are an ancient tradition of theArabian Peninsula that continues to this day in all regions. Until now largelyunknown to the outside world, thismusic is becoming available to a globalaudience, thanks in no small part to the recording and video-production

The young woman from Jaizan was one of many who modeled traditional bridal

costumes at the opening. Other women presented centuries-old folk songs and dances.

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industries in the Arabian Gulf countries.In Saudi Arabia, womens folk songs aremost frequently heard at womens wed-ding parties, and thus remain an art by and for women. At Janadriyahswomens days, folk groups from thesouth sang wedding songs that hadrarely, if ever, been heard outside theirhome region. The singers were moun-tain shepherds, farm women of the terraced hills, and homemakers of thecoastal towns. Women radio reporterstaped some of their singing for broad-cast on Radio Riyadh, and so, for thefirst time, the whole kingdomheard their voices.

Womens folk dances, too,are an age-old celebratory tradition. Like their male coun-terparts, Arabian women dance in groups, with occasional brief solos. The dances are performed in the context offamily celebrations like wed-dings, religious holidays,national holidays andmorerecentlyschool graduations.Each region, and each townwithin each region, has itsunique dance customs, thoughthey share other, broader tradi-tions. For example, al-khatwahis a line dance popularthroughout Asir in which thewomen link arms and bob tothe music while shifting theirweight in tiny steps, sometimesadding slight bows forwardand little kicks. This dance isalso performed by men, but the womens version is softerand more graceful. But not allwomens dances are so: Thetroupe from the upland town ofMahayil, whose members donned whitecotton dresses reminiscent of costumesof Sudan and Ethiopia, took the audi-ence by storm when they began astamping dance holding small daggers,their ankle bracelets sounding out thefeverish rhythm. This dance featuringa mens weapon has its parallels inEgyptian womens cane dances andSyrian womens sword dances.

The geography of the southernregion has great variety, with itsmountains, its plains, its desert, and its green-ness, said HRH Nura bint

Muhammad, one of the organizers anda former director of a womens charityin Asir. These different terrains resultin a variety of cultural traditionsclothing, cuisine and the folk arts. Weconsider it a really rich region.

The towns and districts of Rijaal al-Ma, Mahayil, Shahran, Bani Shahr,Bisha, al-Qahtan, Najran and Jaizan all sent womens dance troupes toJanadriyah. As they reflected influencesfrom contacts with Africa, India, thedeserts to the north and Yemen to the south, each troupe became a living

example of the cultural interchange thatthrough the centuries has shaped Arabia.

To Laila Bassam, an expert on tradi-tional costume and a professor of homeeconomics at Riyadh Womens College,one of the most surprising performancescame from a troupe from the southernSaudi coastal town of Jaizan. I thinktheir costumes are so different becauseof the sea, she said. You see howmuch the sea affects people who livenear it, because it gives them contactwith other places? Oman and Indiaaffected us all here in Najd too, even inthe names we give material. She gives

the word for Indonesian cotton, jawaderived from Javaand that forwool: kashmir (from which English alsotakes its cashmere).

Even some visitors from Asir itselfwere surprised at what they saw. RadioRiyadh reporter Ghada Muhammadsaid that although her maternal grand-mother came from Tuhamat Asir,between Abha and Jaizan, I neverlearned these traditions, because shepassed away long ago. I knew somethings, because when her family visitedus, they always brought jasmine, jewelry,

and some of the costumes asgifts. But I never really knewthese traditions exactly. NowIve learned.

I n few places do thesetraditions have moresway than in marriages.Today, even if both bride andgroom have college degrees andshop in air-conditioned mallsmore often than open-air suqs,for their wedding the bridesfamily almost always hires awomens folk band to entertainthe female wedding guests. Itsan old custom, for since theearly days of Islam and before,Arabian women have been cele-brating weddings with songand the simple accompanimentof the frame drum (tar) andtambourine (daff). Modernwedding musicians make agood living on the wedding-party circuit, and althoughmost are known only locally,some will venture out of townto play for brides who marry

into a family from another province.Other formal performances of

womens music occur at the request of a patron who hires a folk band for a private party in her home to entertainher family and women friends. Thistoo is an old custom that has beenchronicled by Arab music historianssuch as Abu al-Faraj al-Asfahani,author of the 10th-century, 20-volumeKitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs). Thebook describes the musical life of thetwo preceding centuries, including per-formances for well-to-do women of the Hijaz by formally trained women

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singers and instrumentalists. While theculture of high art singing ultimatelymoved eastward to Baghdad, then to theother capitals of the Islamic and Arabnation, both male and female musi-cians of the Arabian Peninsula inherit-ed the practices of those early years.

In some ways, the basic structure

of the musical performance remains little changed. A lead singer, or mutriba,heads a group that usually has between10 and 15 players as chorus anddrummers, many of whom are friendsand family. In addition to the tar invarious sizes, in Asir both mens andwomens folk bands use the zir ardhi,

a shallow clay drum played on theground with a stick; the zalafa, a multihandled drum that looks like a spoked wheel; and the tanaka, aninstrument fashioned from a large rectangular date or olive tin and playedas a hand drum. At Janadriyah, agroup from the village of Rijal al-Ma

In Saudi Arabia, womens folk songs and dancesare most frequently performed at womens wedding parties,

and thus remain arts by and for women.

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added three women playing the mortarand pestle to accent the end of eachrhythmic phrase.

Throughout the Peninsula, womensfolk songs consist of simple repeatedmelodies overlying complex repeatedpolyrhythms that pulse steadily throughsongs lasting up to 15 minutes. The

melody usually stays in a single maqam(mode or scale) and is repeated through-out a series of verses, sung in colloquialArabic, as well as both choral andinstrumental refrains. The singer embel-lishes the melody with modest ornamen-tation, if any at all. While the structureis simple, the interplay between the

melody and the layers of percussion is hypnotic. This simplicity of struct