As the title of Adnan Haydar’s new book announces, New Words to Old Tunes, in this episode we are brought into the fascinating world of recited and sung verbal duels, rooted in Lebanon’s oral poetry tradition.
Zajal is a creative game filled with rhetoric, metaphors, mockery, and clever wordplay, touching on both frivolous and serious themes—daily life, emotions, history, politics, famous figures, and, more broadly, opposing ideas that generate a poetic joust between two or more poets. These poets improvise their verses while adhering to different Arabic metrical forms. 

The living zajal tradition was inscribed in 2014 on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and continues to flourish in convivial gatherings that draw large audiences. In a traditional public zajal encounter, the poets divide into two teams of two or four, with a small choir behind them, singing the last couplet of each poet’s verse as a refrain.

As a profound connoisseur of this tradition, Prof. Adnan Haydar offers a detailed account of the structure and characteristics of the main meters that define and shape Lebanon’s oral poetry tradition within a broader Mediterranean context. 

About Adnan Haydar
Adnan Haydar is head of the Arabic section in the department of world languages, literatures, and cultures and professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the University of Arkansas, where he also directed the King Fahd Middle East Studies Program from 1993 to 1999. Dr. Haydar has taught at the University of California, the University of Pennsylvania, Middlebury College, and the University of Massachusetts. His fields of specialization and areas of teaching include modern and classical Arabic literature, Arabic language, folk literature, oral poetry, and European and Arabic poetics.  He has directed SINARC,  BAALI, and SCALE, three summer institutes in Lebanon for intensive Arabic language and culture from 1997-2010.
He has authored, co-authored and co-edited eight books, including Naguib Mahfouz: From Regional Fame to Global Recognition, and published numerous translations and interpretations of poetry and fiction, including Adonis’ Mihyar of Damascus, His Songs, Khalil Hawi’s Naked in Exile, and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s celebrated novels The Ship and In Search of Walid Masoud. He has edited numerous modern Arabic novels in translation for Syracuse University Press. His many articles on modern literary theory and oral poetry have appeared in premier literary journals in the U.S. and in the Middle East. His translation (with Michael Beard) of Adonis’ Mihyar of Damascus, His Songs, published by BOA Editions, has recently been awarded the Modern Language Association’s prestigious Lois Roth Award for the Translation of a Literary Work. 

Episode's musical sources list
Zein Sheib, Zajal 1968 Lebanese Tradition Freestyle Battles, 1968
https://www.facebook.com/reel/922711795564597  

Jiryis al-Bustani (sung by Adnan Haydar), Boasting

Edward Harb clip 2, Zajal 1968 Lebanese Tradition Freestyle Battles, 1968
https://www.facebook.com/reel/922711795564597

Reddadeh (chorus), Zajal 1968 Lebanese Tradition Freestyle Battles, 1968
https://www.facebook.com/reel/922711795564597

Zaghloul al-Damour (sung also by Adnan Haydar), Opening ode, Beit Mery, Lebanon, 1972

Zaghloul al-Damour, Opening ode, Beit Mery, Lebanon, 1972 

Unknown, (sung by Adnan Haydar), Qarradi with English and French Words 

Another clip from Zajal 1968 Lebanese Tradition Freestyle Battles, 1968
https://www.facebook.com/reel/922711795564597

Maʿannā sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/1-ma-anna-1.mp3

Maʿannā 2 sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/2-ma-anna-2.mp3

Qarradi 1 sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/3-qarradi-1.mp3

Qarradi 2 sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/4-qarradi-2.mp3

Qarradi 3 sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/5-qarradi-3.mp3

Aframiyya
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/6-aframiyyat-ya-salihan.mp3

Layya w layya sung by Mansour Ajami
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/7-Layya-w-layya.mp3

Alyadi
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/8-al-yadi-source.mp3

Ya ghzayyel
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/9-ya-ghzayyil.mp3

Mijana
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/13-mijana-refrain.mp3

Ataba
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/14-ataba.mp3

Hida
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/18-al-hida.mp3

Nadb
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/20-nadb-iii-ghaybitak.mp3

Qasid
Zaghloul’s opening ode repeated

Mkhammas Mardud
Fayrouz, Wadi al-Safi, Nasri Shamseddine, Baalbek, 1973
https://cdn.openbookpublishers.com/resources/10.11647/obp.0424/28-mkhammas-mardoud-fayrouz-and-nasri-shamseddine.mp3


Disclaimer
Mediterranean Intangible Heritage Soundscape is a podcast by Paolo Scarnecchia, produced by UNIMED, Mediterranean Universities Union. Musical works included in the Podcast are used for purpose of illustration for teaching, and not for commercial purposes.