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Palestinian Debka
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Link to Debka as memory and resistance
Return to Palestinian Debka Index I |
Debka, a folk dance in the Levant (the Greater Sham region including: Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Israel, parts of southern Turkey and Northwestern Iraq) requires communal participation, often taking place at social occasions varying from weddings to small gatherings (Malouf, Malouf, & Evans, 2004), (Mosaic). This social performance, staged at ceremonies and now as performances of solidarity, provides a unique case of communal cultural resistance to colonization, occupation, and everyday violence, in the case of Palestinian debka.
Students from Bethlehem dance debka at a univeristy performance. The dance consists of a line of dancers holding hands following the six step pattern in unison behind the lead of a dance master (Stern, 2007). The dance master, or lawih retains this position only so long as they command the line and dance with a high level of skill. Reputation and skill as well as status and age of the dancers determines who will be the lawih for a given period of a song or songs. Because the line of dancers and the pattern of dance varies and the length of the songs used for debka, lawihat (pl.) shift as the dance proceedes (Van Aken, 2006, 210-211). The dance itself consists of rhythmic steps that follow a walking (mashi) and stamping (debka) interchange. Depending on the number of people participating and the size of the event or celebration, multiple concentric lines take semicircle form behind one another with the most central line being the focus. Orientalist portrayal of raqs al-sharqi
Debka varies from raqs al-sharqi (popularly known as belly dance in the west, a form of improvised individual dance) in that its rallies communal participation. Globalized affordable travel has made belly dancing a tourist industry in many parts of the Levant (Malouf, Malouf, & Evans, 2004). Belly dance in this form has been the primary dance form from the Middle East studied by scholars, often analyzed for the romantic and Orientalist portrayals of dancers and the assimilation of belly dance into western exoticism (Shay, & Sellers-Young, 2003).
raqs al-sharqi Neither raqs al-sharqi nor debka are considered forms of high art, but rather are both seen as folk performance. Both have popular use in both urban and villages areas, with raqs al-sharqi being improvised individual dance, entertainment not art; while debka is a communal dance also performed for entertainment, as well as social solidarity. As for debka, which is also a popular dance there is little attempt to recognize debka as art.
Friends debka together Although debka’s contemporary presence at weddings lends to its cultural roots, little is known of the dance’s origin. Debka is thought to have developed during the Ottoman Empire. Debka mandates a communal participation and hence works to retain communal and ethnic identities amongst the dancers. Although Arabs, Kurds, Israelis, and Kurds all dance debka, the cultural significance and identity constituted by the dance varies by community (Bates, & Rassam, 2001). With little to ground authenticity of the origins of the dance, it is interesting that it has become culturally significant as a mechanism for identification. Even with unknown roots, debka is claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians, although the forms of identification vary greatly between the two (Shipler, 2002).The variability of debka from region to region makes a generalizable form and cultural significance difficult to pin down. “Every Arab village has its own Debka, with its special tune” (Kaufman, 1951). Regional differences provide both continuity with local roots of the dance, as well as a hint to the changing nature of debka over time and space, through the onset of modernity, and under duress.
Debka Troupe performs in the United States Palestinian identification with and through the performance of debka is closely related to the ongoing occupation and dispossesion faced daily under the Israeli military. Culture and political identification are inherently tied to the dispossesion Palestinians faced during Al-Nakba and subsequent occupation after the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinian use of debka has thus become rooted in dispossession, uprootedness, cultural retention, cultural memory, resistance, and identity.
Emily Wachsmann | |
