ABSTRACT
Bedouin women historically sang a variety of work songs and lullabies, but their primary social music entails collective arts performed at wedding celebrations. Traditionally, like Bedouin men, women do not play instruments but form two facing lines and present poems and texts through the singing of simple repetitive melodies: this setup is called ṣaff (الصف, “line”) or ṣaff badū. Ṣaff songs tend to be in a duple meter, and participants will often add hand claps on the weak beat (as with village fraysni), that is, on beats two or four. This general ṣaff performance practice has been taking place for hundreds, if not thousands of years. In fact, on Saudi rock carvings dating back to the Neolithic Era (from 10,000 bce), there are images of figures standing close together with their hands held before themselves as they engage in line song-dance (Arabian Rock-Art 2012). The main purpose of ṣaff songs is madīḥ (المديح) that is, to provide praise and compliments, which is obligatory at Bedouin weddings and a main function of the music. Burckhardt in the early 1800s wrote about badū women’s glorifying songs in the desert (1992, 82–83):
On occasion of feasts and rejoicing, the women retire in the evening to a place at some small distance behind the tents. They divide themselves into choruses of six, eight, or ten women: one party begins the song, and the other in turn repeats it … The song is always in praise of valour and generosity … The first line of the song is repeated five or six times by the leading chorus, and then echoed by the other parties. In the same manner the second line is sung; but the third, which always contains the name of some distinguished warrior, is repeated as often as fifty times. The ladies, however, pronounce that name in such a manner, as to render it difficult for the men, who listen, to know who is the happy mortal.
