Arab Art Music between Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Mandate Palestine

This article examines Arab art music, or tarab, during the British Mandate for Palestine as the sonic harbinger of Palestinian modernism. It shows how the production, consumption, and dissemination of professionalized Arab art music in early twentieth-century Palestine was linked to the emergence of a Palestinian elite at a time when Palestine was undergoing rapid developments and becoming an important node of cultural exchange in the region. Arab art music thus provided a site for the construction of a cosmopolitanized urban identity across Palestinian cities, one that operated on two political registers: local Palestinian nationalism and regional pan-Arabism. The article concludes with a discussion on how Palestine’s political elite negotiated the inherent contradictions of colonized modernity through Arab art music.