The Zajal Tradition
Poets: Edgar Chouieri, Youssef Abdelsama, Danny Sfier, Adel Khaddaj
MC: Lina Beydoun
Cinematography: Charles Krezell, Bob Madey
Editor: Lee Eaton
Zajal performance support provided by: Lloyd Baroody, Zeina Mehio, Raymond Debbane, Wadih Jordan, Anis Obeid, Nicolas Choueiri, and The New Pen League.
To watch the full documentary, In the Moment: Poetry Duels and Improvisations click here.
Table of Contents
The Tradition
Zajal, a sung oral poetry tradition, is improvised in colloquial Arabic with two or more poets competing, usually accompanied by percussive musical instruments and sometimes a chorus.
Scholars trace the tradition back to the poet Ibn Quzman of al-Andalus (1078-1160), and the tradition still thrives in Lebanon, Morocco, and Algeria as well as other Arab-speaking countries. It is considered the continuation of pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabic poetry.
As Saad Abdullah Sowayan writes,
Although folk traditions are rapidly disappearing in Arabia as it is suddenly transformed from an illiterate society to a modern state, poetic dueling remains one of the most popular and spectacular folk performances. Oral poets are paid handsomely at weddings, festivals, and similar public occasions to entertain spectators with their verbal jousts. Encouraged by eager audiences and by an accompanying chorus that repeats their improvised verses, the competing poets can stay up singing and playing until the call of the morning prayer.
~“Tonight My Gun Is Loaded”: Poetic Dueling In Arabia,” (Saad Abdullah Sowayan, Oral Tradition, 4-1-2 (1989): 151-173).
In her essay, “Zajal: When Competitive Poetry Was a Better Sport than Soccer” (Arablit Quarterly, January 27, 2015), the literary scholar Marcia Lynx Qualey quotes the Lebanese author Zein al-Amine describing entertainment before the arrival of electricity to his village.
The nightly entertainment was aunts, uncles and neighbors telling stories, and kids engaging in rounds of Zajal. Today we might call it a poetry slam. If you think that the rules of poetry slams are intimidating then you will find the rules of zajal difficult to follow, impossible to sustain. Basically one poet – and know that we all considered ourselves poets – would recite a stanza usually with couched or open insults against his opponent. The opponent would fire back with a stanza flipping the insults back on the first person. Now here is the kicker: whenever someone responds they must start with the last word of the stanza that was thrown at them. What’s more: the response had to follow the same set meter and rhyme.
My grandmother’s house formed a L shape around a concrete patio. One uncle along with two aunts and one grandmother lived on the upper level. Another uncle and his family lived on the ground floor. My brother, my cousins and I would play in the courtyard while the grown ups would talk politics, smoke cigarettes and engage in rounds of zajal. My cousin Wissam was fascinated with the art and I was intrigued by his intrigue. So we would run upstairs every time we heard the cadence that told us a verse battle was starting.
It was miraculous how fast competitors were able to come up with comebacks that sizzled. To do it, you’d have to memorize hundreds of poems and also know how to compose something on the spot. We gasped every time a poet ended with an impossible word. We would whisper to each other, “he just ended with MULE! How are you supposed to start a stanza with MULE? But just when we thought the combatant was stumped a stanza would shoot back at the attacker. Soccer had nothing on Zajal. In our house the courtyard was the main arena for zajal.”
Field Notes
In 2011, City Lore and Poets House sponsored the program “Illuminated Verses: Poetries of the Islamic World,” funded by the NEH’s Bridging Cultures Initiative and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. The multidisciplinary series culminated with an all-day symposium on May 7th at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Among the scholars and performers curator Catherine Fletcher brought the event were Princeton University prominent astrophysicist and zajal aficionado Edgar Chouieri and his zajal mentor Youssef Abdelsama. We interviewed Edgar at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. Together, we met in Manhattan along with Lina Beydoun to plan an event bringing two master zajal performers from Lebanon, Danny Sfier and Adel Khaddaj to share a meal and perform the zajal traditions at the Lebanese American University on May 8th, 2017.
Resources
“Tonight My Gun Is Loaded”: Poetic Dueling In Arabia,” Saad Abdullah Sowayan, Oral Tradition, 4-1-2 (1989): 151-173.
Saad Abdullah Sowayan, Nabatī Poetry.
Transcript
Home of Edgar Choueri, Princeton Physicist, Zajal Aficionado
&
Lebanese American University, New York
ADEL KHADDAJ
On this stage our zajal
Becomes a theme for us all
With our distinguished guests
Our garden is lovely and blessed
For this is not a superficial tease
But ink to color our melodies
Magic colors align with the Divine
A volcano explodes to our surprise
How beautiful is the improvised
EDGAR CHOUIERI
Zajal Afficianado and acclaimed Physicyst, Princeton / Lebanon / New York
I’m an academic, a physicist by training. I teach, I do research but I do have a love of poetry, specifically a form of colloquial poetry called zajal. Zajal can be very moving, express very tender, very subtle emotions. Literally two small lines (in Arabic). . . Simply it says, “Cheek to cheek, hand in hand, I miss you while your are next to me let alone when you’re far away. Very simple but very universal.
When I recited the poem it picked up the interest of Youssef Abdelsamad who took it up himself to teach me all the rules, and after a few months he said “now you’re good enough, let’s go compete in public and I was very scared.
As I was debating my one teacher, he took on, “defending Earth”, and I was supposed to defend Mars because I work in space !
Youssef claims astronomy is fake
Thinks all science is second rate
My spaceship penetrates the skies
The planet Mars to colonize.
When earth completes its devolution
Destroyed by war and by pollution
I will take from humans all the best
A spaceship on a knowledge quest
I will mimic Noah’s plan –
From each country – the smartest woman, strongest man
From each civilization the renowned
Who for their poetry were crowned.
You will plead with me to save you
I say, sit in the back, keep quiet too!
Now, in the great tradition of Zajal, you have to respond to that. And if you read poets you an not say “no, you can not have a spacecraft and you can not save the world, and who are you to ask me?” YOu must play along and outplay the other poet.
YOUSSEF ABDELSAMAD
I may sit way back behind you
I may sit crooked, but what I say is true
I will end your history and your talk of Mars
Because I always speak truth to the stars.
You may be sitting in the driver’s seat, Monsieur
But in this spaceship, you’re only my chauffeur.
Right on the spot in the same meter, in rhyme and of course the audience will crack up laughing, it was witty, smart, and the great part about the tradition of Zajal is that he took on his place in the back of the spaceship but he turned me into his new chauffeur.
LINA BEYDOUN
Welcome to LAU New York to celebrate this very special evening of Lebanese Zajal. We have with us tonight two masters of Zajal.
DANNY SFEIR
I understand every word you say
No onto a topic I choose, if I may –
Mothers! – Adel, how pure is a mother in her home?
In my heart she takes the throne.
I love a mother at home without anxiety,
A mother makes up half of society.
Only today she keeps a job outside,
But I wish she’d keep her work inside.
ADEL KHADDAJ
Stop with your senseless verse,
With ideas that need to be reversed.
To the mother we must pay the utmost homage,
She is our moral compass,
Our spring of knowledge.
The mother is half of our society,
But that makes all the difference.
She is our liberation from ignorance,
A woman’s work is to have the job she wishes,
But it isn’t to iron and clean dishes
