Music – Memory – Minorities: Between Archive and Activism (Ukázka, strana 99)

spontaneous outcome of it, will be his surest guide provided he listens to it with sympathy instead of disdain” (Davis 2013b, 6).

A Magical Substance Flows into Me 19 1. “[T]he present is giving advice to the past” Manna’s film A Magical Substance Flows Into Me was premiered at the Chisenhale Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in London’s East End, on 18 September 2015, where it ran for three months. The screen and the informal block seating were placed within a sculpture installation consisting of hollow, vase-like plaster casts propped on plastic chairs and trash bins about the room. The 70-minute film was projected on a continuous loop and the spectators were free to move seamlessly between the film and sculptures, entering and exiting the room as they wished. Asked whether these were conceived as a single work Manna replied: “No, they are separate works that I choose to put in dialogue with each other in this exhibition. The sculptures relate to the film by way of evoking the physical experience of music, as well as the connection between voice, skin, and resonance.” 20 The film begins with a recording of Lachmann addressing a meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Palestine Broadcasting Service in December 1936, over a blank screen. His precise, reedy voice with its slightly clipped Germanic accent projects slowly and clearly through the hiss and crackle of the recording as he announces: “Meeting of the Advisory Committee of the Broadcasting Service in December 1936: The Postmaster General, Gentlemen, I have invited you because of the shocking attacks and protests directed against our programmes, and especially the musical programmes, both by the Arabs [sic] and the Hebrew newspapers.

Do you know, that we have spared no trouble in securing the very best and noblest representants [sic] of music to be found in Palestine. We have persuaded Mr Lababidi to take charge of Arab music and Mr Salomon to superin19 The film takes its title from the chapter “A beautiful blue substance flows inside of me” in Michael Taussig’s book What is the Color of the Sacred? https://chisenhale.org.uk/wpcontent /uploads/Chisenhale_Interviews_Jumana_Manna-1.pdf, 9.

20 Interview with Christine Antaya for Kunstkritikk. https://kunstkritikk.com/ten-questions -jumana-manna/.

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tend European music. Both of them, after considerable reluctance, naturally springing from the modesty of the two artists, have accepted to work with us.

I believe that we could have chosen no better. Still, our ardent efforts have been met with ill feeling and insulting criticism.

I would ask you now to give me your most valuable advice as to possible changes in our programmes and our methods. Advice likely to stop those attacks. It goes without saying that I cannot promise to accept your advice.”

As the screen lights up, Manna is shown reading aloud extracts from Lachmann’s “Oriental Music” programmes. The strategic placing of the recording of Lachmann’s voice, framing each round of the film, gives the impression that the attacks of which he speaks are directed against those very programmes. Crucially, it allows Manna to position her film as a direct response to Lachmann’s project. That this is intended is clear from her exchange with Katie Guggenheim of the Chisenhale Gallery, London: “KG: At the beginning of the film Lachmann talks about the criticism that the radio programmes received from both Arab and Hebrew newspapers. You’ve spoken about making the film answer to the question that he poses, or the problem that he poses.

JM: In a sense, Lachmann’s project in Palestine was somewhat of a failure.

Through my film, I try to ask why it failed, and ask what the stakes might be for such a project today. In the recording I’ve used he asks for advice about what changes could be made to the musical programs [of the PBS] to stop these attacks by the [Hebrew and Arabic] press. I feel like this film is trying to give advice: the present is giving advice to the past.21”

Yet, as I explained to Manna when I sent her my copy of the recording, I thought it highly unlikely that the attacks of which Lachmann speaks in his address to the Advisory Committee were directed against his “Oriental Music” programmes.22 The recording lasts about two minutes and was made on two celluloid discs (D121 and D122) cut from discarded X-ray material. A fragment of the recording is included on the CD accompanying Ruth Katz’s book The Lachmann Problem.23 21 https://chisenhale.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Chisenhale_Interviews_Jumana_Manna-1 .pdf , 9.

22 Ruth Davis, email to Jumana Manna, 30 July 2014.

23 I am grateful to the late Avi Nahmius, sound engineer at the Israel National Sound Archive, for copying this recording for me. The responses of the Advisory Committee were not recorded.

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Lachmann does not record the exact date of the meeting. Nor does he specify which musical programmes in particular the press is attacking. However, by December 1936 he would have presented at most two programmes of “Oriental Music” that contain music: Programme 2, on Yemenite Jewish cantillation, broadcast on 2 December 1936, and Programme 3, on Coptic chant and hymns, broadcast on 16 December 1936.

(The introductory programme on 18 November contains no music.) As I suggested to Manna, even if the meeting had taken place late in December, after both music programmes had been aired, it would be difficult to imagine the liturgical offerings of the Yemenite cantors and the Coptic priests causing so much offense in so many quarters as to immediately warrant a special meeting of the Advisory Committee. Indeed, a search for any reactions to Lachmann’s “Oriental Music” programmes across the Arabic and Hebrew press of Mandatory Palestine to the end of 1936 reveals that there were no reactions whatsoever.24 Since its inauguration nine months earlier, Lachmann had played an active role in recommending musicians he worked with to the PBS including, most famously, the Iraqi Jewish ‘ūd player Ezra Aharon (Hirshberg 1995, 198–200). Lachmann’s recording diaries contain several other examples of musicians he recorded in person performing similar repertories on the Radio. It is quite feasible that, over the course of that period, there would have been heated objections to some of Lachmann’s recommendations (especially from musicians he had overlooked),25 just as there were to other aspects of the musical programmes for which Yahya Labidi and Karl Salomon were responsible. As Andrea Stanton has observed “the PBS was contentious from the outset” and dissatisfaction with its musical offerings was widespread. 26 Commenting on Wauchope’s commitment to music lovers she notes that “Zionist [sic.] immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, whose numbers included a high percentage of amateur and professional classical musicians … complained effusively about the quality of the music (recorded and live) that the PBS broadcast” (Stanton 2013, 5).

A rather different picture of the reception of Lachmann’s “Oriental Music” programmes emerges when they are considered in the light of 24 My search included all the Arabic and Hebrew newspapers available in the digitised archives of the National Library of Israel.

25 Yehoash Hirshberg cites a complaint by the Yemenite singer Yehiel Adaqi in the Hebrew paper Davar (7 March 1937) that the wedding songs sung by the three Yemenite singers in Lachmann’s Programme 8 “lacked authentic integrity” (Hirshberg 1995: 202).

26 Andrea Stanton, email message to Ruth Davis, 28 March 2013.

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