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Embroidered ramrunner
“Every Arab village has its own Debka, with its special tune” (Kaufman, 1951)
The popular nature of the dance is grounded in its origination in the villages. As a folk dance in Palestine, debka has endured an interesting transition through Ottoman rule, British colonial mandate, the establishment of the state of Israel and subsequent occupation of Palestinian land. Because of the history of occupation and conflict are so pervasive in the history of Palestine, there is little chance the significance of debka to the culture is unaffected by these historical and contemporary events. In fact, these events becoming the conditioning effects of the significance of debka to the Palestinian people. The specific construction of meanings for Palestinians is often associated with the regional and historical conditions from which those people descend.
Palestinian village wedding Debka.
Weddings in the Levant exist as a space for ritual tradition and social cultural practice. Arab village weddings, where dabke is most often danced, consist of initial parties for the kitab (engagement with a legal marriage contract signed in front of a judge) with the celebrations of the farah (wedding and changing of residence) following (Bates, & Rassam, 2001).
Zeitoon Youth Debka Troupe
The farah parties can last for several days and can include parties for the family, neighbors, a traditional shower, luncheon, hefla ‘arees (party of the groom), and hefla ‘arousa (party of the bride). Although these parties can be mixed in gender depending on region, family, and religious practices, villages often have separate parties for helfa ‘arees and helfa ‘arousa, which are attend by men and women respectively. This gender separation has affected the practice of debka in some regions, the West Bank in Palestine being one such area. In some West Bank villages, Deir el Ghosson and Atil being two of many, men and women dance a different debka step from one another. The variations are slight, but women’s movement is often less flamboyant and slower than mens. Often older women in these villages are the only women who dance debka, while younger women prefer raqs al-sharqi (dance of the east – often assumed to be belly dance by western viewers) at weddings.
Palestinian Debka Troupe in the U.S.
Regional variation and familial affliation is visible, as referenced above concerning gendered differences in Deir el Ghosson and Atil, in performances of debka. These differences are reflected not only in debka, but in food, clothing, religion, music/songs, and modes of production and subsistence. Often regional differences contained markers of modes of these production and subsistence for populations, varying between agriculturalists in large parts of the North, Jordan Valley, and central regions of Palestine, with fishing being a predominant occupation along the Sea of Galilee, Red Sea, and Gaza Strip. Nomadic pastoralists or Bedouins also live in Palestine to the south and Negev, near the borders of the Sinai and Jordan. Merchants predominated urban areas like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Nablus, where Biblical tourism and large markets attracted consumers nationally and internationally (Bates, & Rassam, 2001) (Kawar, 1980). The folk culture of these regions continues to have general similarities, but nuanced differences can be found in both the clothing worn in traditional troupe debka performances and the older members of the village, as well as the steps performed by these groups.
Atil, West Bank Palestine. regional embroidery and traditional dress.
Haji (pl. respectful title for elderly men) and Hajjat (pl. respectful title for elderly women) continue to wear traditional regionally identifiable clothing while younger generations often dress in western styled apparel. This traditional clothing is also worn by debka dance troupes. In Northern Palestine, Hajjat often wear a long white robe that has a traditional panel of geometric and colorful embroidery on the front. This robe is tucked into a red and gold fabric belt, with the pillow like billows created from the tucking as significantly functional for the carrying of vegetables and fruits during harvest. To the west in the Jordan Valley, Hajjat often wear bloomer like pants with a less elaborate embroidered top robe. Between these two regions in the area outside of Tulkarm in the West Bank, the blending of these two forms of dress is apparent with women wearing both a long tucked robe as well as pants under the robe like those worn in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian embroidery and cross-stitch: Pillows and embroidered Dress
Culturally, embroidery is one of the many skills Palestinians utilize to represent ties to specific regions and identities as Palestinians. Although embroidery on clothing is common, embroidery also take the form of pillows and wall art. One piece of embroidery frequently reproduced and found in visitors parlors in homes all over the West Bank depicts a traditional Palestinian village wedding scene (Palestinian Embroidery). The scene includes the various traditional practices involved in the heflat (parties) of the farah, including a line of men dancing debkeh with a lawih, identifiable by his holding a white scarf leading the men in dance. (Palestinian Embroidery).
Palestinian Embroidery of a Palestinian Wedding: debka, zaffa, preparation of mugluba, the groom's shower.
Close up of embroidered debka in depiction of a Palestinian Wedding.
Debka troupe from Beit Jala.
Regional specificities in clothing, embroidery, and dance styles are typically identifiable to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. These changes are rooted in a history of colonization by Greek/Byzantine rule, Islamic empires, Ottoman rule, and even colonial French and British influence (Kawar, 1980). Modernity has also had its play in the variations of cultural dress and dance. Under British colonial rule, many urban Palestinians had adopted western attire, but shifted back to identifiably Arab clothing life the keffiyeh (black/red and white checked head scarf typically worn by farmers in rural regions) and hijab (the woman’s headscarf) as a form of national and regional identification after the 1936 Revolt (Kawar, 1980).
For Palestinians, attachments to the land function as important traces of a claim to nationhood that still has been unrealized. “The village as signifier of the nation allows Palestinians from all social sectors to share in “peasant-ness.” Everyone who consumes national dishes which come from the village, eats za’tar (thyme) for breakfast, dances the dabka, and savors the subtle flavors of olive oil, is endowed with the peasant’s symbolic power and comes to regard him or herself as part of the people” (Swendenburg, 1990). This, in turn expresses rootedness and a relationship to the land that can only exist in the imagination of Palestinians due to their dispossession and ongoing occupation (Swendenburg, 1990).
Extensive cactus fencing in Palestine
The ongoing nature of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the duration of dispossession has provided that al-saber (patience) has become a tremendous cultural feature and reference to the continued enduring of violence and oppression. Al-saber also means cactus in Arabic, and functions as a symbolic double entendre for Palestinians. Al-saber (cactus) were used around villages as a natural form of fencing and position marker near the turn of the century and are identified symbolically with the villages disposed during Al-Nakba (Swendenburg, 1990). Thus, peasantness has deep roots in the cultural imagination of Palestinians. Displaced from the village, this symbol recurs in contemporary times in political forms. Abu Amar (Yasser Arafat), himself a refugee, as well as leader of the Fatteh political party and founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and elected president of the Palestinian Authority, adorned the keffiyeh almost constantly in public. This symbolic use of a traditional fellahin head scarf reified use of ‘peasant-ness’ as having attachment to the ideological and national constructs for the Palestinian cause (Swendenburg, 1990).
Debka Troupe performs in the United States.
The performance of identity is found in debka for many varied communities of Palestinians. Although some have been briefly discussed above, Arabs who remained in what became the state of Israel (Israeli Arabs, or Israeli Palestinians) also perform the dance with a slightly different association of identity involved (Santiago, 2003), (Stern, 2007). Recently in Acre, Israeli-Arabs took the Guiness Book of World Records for the largest and longest performance of debka, with 2,743 people joined hands in a debka line that ran down the main street of Acre, dancing for seven minutes straight.
Although performed within Israel as a form of traditional dance by both Jews and Arabs, Palestinians under occupation and refugees both use the dance as a form of cultural resistance to occupation. The historical implications of the establishment of the State of Israel and the subsequent exclusion of a state for the Palestinian people resonate in cultural symbols of both countries. Cultural practices and performances thus become inextricably linked to identity and nationalism, usually signifying strong political messages. Debka functions as a simultaneous cultural symbol, as well as, political message. For many Palestinians, this message is one of peace and solidarity (Ibrahim, 2006).
Debka troupe from Washington D.C.
Emily Wachsmann
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2001 by University of North Texas. All rights reserved.
Revised:
10 Dec 2007 02:54:41 -0600