The Congrès du Caire (First Congress of Arab Music; Arabic: مؤتمر الموسيقى العربية الأول; Mu'tamar al'mūsiqā al-'arabiyya al-awwal) was a large international symposium and music festival that was convened by King Fuad I in Cairo, Egypt, from March 14 to April 3, 1932. The idea had been suggested to Fuad by the French ethnomusicologist Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger, and the congress was the first large-scale forum to present, discuss, document and record the many musical traditions of the Arab world from North Africa and the Middle East.[1]
By a royal decree of January 20, 1932, a commission was appointed to organize the congress. It was headed by the Minister of Public Education Muhammad Hilmi Isa Pacha, with d'Erlanger serving as vice-chairman and Mahmud Ahmed El-Hefni in charge of the General Secretariat.
The festival was held at the National Academy of Music, at 22 Malika Nazly Street (now Ramses Street) in the Azbakeya district of downtown Cairo.[2] It drew scholars and performers from throughout the Arabic-speaking world as well as from Turkey, including Muhammad Fathi, Ali Al-Darwish, Kamil Al-Khulai, Mahmud Hefni, Tawfiq Al-Sabbagh, Rauf Yekta Bey, Mohammed Gnanem, Mohammed Ben Hassan, Mohammed Cherif, and Mesut Cemil) as well as European scholars, composers and musicologists such as Henry George Farmer, Béla Bartók, Paul Hindemith, Alexis Chottin (the head of the National Conservatory for Arab Music in Rabat), Father M. Collangettes, Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, Curt Sachs and Robert Lachmann. Nations sending delegations of musicians included Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia as well as Turkey, representing its own musical tradition.
The Congress' sections focused on the past, present and future of Arabic music, and believing such music to be in decline, it made recommendations for its revitalization and preservation. 360 performances of Arabic music by the visiting groups were recorded, and many of these recordings survive in the Phonotèque of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris.[3] 162 of these records were released by the HMV company, and a collection of those records was given to the Guimet Museum in Paris by King Fuad I.[1]
In addition, proposals for the modernization and standardization of Arabic music were presented, including a proposal to standardize the Arabic tuning system to 24 equal steps per octave including quarter tones, thus substituting an equal-tempered system for the traditional non-tempered system. The Egyptian delegate Muhammad Fathi recommended that Western instruments be integrated into Arabic ensembles, due to what he believed to be their superior expressive qualities.[4]
Three similar congresses were held in subsequent years, but none were of the scale and influence of the one held in 1932.