Playing Out: Women Instrumentalists and Women's Ensembles in Contemporary Tunisia.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the performances and lived experiences of conservatory-educated women instrumentalists in Tunis, Tunisia. Throughout the Arab-Muslim world, women musicians have been appreciated as vocalists but rarely as instrumentalists, and it has often been considered disreputable for women to play instruments in public. Tunisia, however, is unique due to government reforms passed since independence (1956) concerning women’s rights and the national music heritage. In recent decades greater numbers of women in Tunis have been “playing out” as instrumentalists for mixed-gender audiences, particularly as they have created their own women’s ensembles and received advanced degrees in music. During the past six years the number of ensembles playing at gender-segregated wedding celebrations has also increased.

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tunis between 2007 and 2009, I argue that women instrumentalists have transformed the Tunisian music scene and Tunisian society. By playing out in public they have expanded the parameters of women’s performance and of gender roles in the public and private spheres. Yet they face multiple criticisms about their work. Their performances hold complex meanings concerning Tunisian national identity, and they are frequently subject to state control and mediation. These women instrumentalists demonstrate, however, that musicians have the power to play out, play with, and reconstruct concepts of national identity and gender identity in performance. In addition, their work illustrates how gender affects music performance, and how women have the potential to transform Tunisian and Arab music genres that have previously been dominated by men. Through their performances and their perspectives on playing Tunisian music, women musicians are reshaping and expanding Tunisian musical identity—especially when they create music in women-only spaces. Although such gender-segregated spaces are criticized as backwards, musicians’ performances at women-only parties offer new possibilities for expanding women’s empowerment. Above all, by forming their own spaces for women’s performance, women instrumentalists have enacted change themselves, thereby challenging stereotypes of Tunisian women as passive recipients of state reforms.