Maqām Tree of Life, a musical & scientific program of the Maqām Festival, presented within Tales from Earth by AEON Collective & TBA21.
Maqām Tree of Life curated by Professor Nidaa Abou Mrad, Artistic and Scientific Director of the Maqām Festival
- Roundtable Panel Discussion: “Modal/Tonal Musical Tree, Neuroscience and Therapy”
- Concert “4000 Years of Maqām Music in the Mediterranean”
Tales from Earth curated by Princess Mashael AlShalan, Co-Founder – AEON Collective, and Dr. Abdelkader Damani, Artistic Director – AEON Collective
Date: 11 May 2025
Location: The Ocean Space, San Lorenzo Church, Venice, Italy
The musical traditions of West Asia, North Africa and Medieval Europe are based on a common modal melodic system. The maqām mode of a traditional musical work provides the melodic alphabet and the typical formulas from which the phrasing is elaborated, at the same time as it colors the emotions conveyed, inducing ecstasy. If these great traditions converge on the level of this common melodic system, similar to the trunk of a very old tree, their cultural diversity is expressed by the traces that the prosody of the sung languages and the ritual and choreographic gestures, specific to the contextual cultures, leave in their rhythm and their musical styles and forms, thus generating a multitude of traditional musical branches. Thus, the important anonymous Arabic treatise on musical grammar a-š-Šajaratu ḏāt ul-akmāmi l-ḥāwiyatu ḏāt al-anġām (The Tree With the Calices Bearing the Essences of Modes) uses in the 16th century the modal tree symbol to describe the generative grammar of maqām modes: a maqām 'aṣl, original/fundamental trunk mode, generating maqāmāt furū’ branches-modes and melodic phrases. But this symbol, which is taken up by Goethe (1749-1832) in his Urpflanze (the original plant of all plants), Schenker (1868-1935) in his Ursatz (the original structure of all tonal compositions) and Chomsky in the generative arborescent elaboration of all the sentences of a language, does not but recapitulate the mystical archetype of the Tree of life of the Book of Genesis, becoming the Christic True-Vine in the Gospel of Saint John and the Bright Olivier of the Surah of Light. This mystical dimension is underlined by the etymology of the word maqām (degree) borrowed from Sufism and its maqāmāt, ascetic gradations generating aḥwāl, ecstatic states of divine closeness. This illumination is combined with a healing of the soul and the body, as witnessed by the chronicles of the Arab hospitals where sedative music therapy was practiced, as well as another anonymous Arabic musical treatise of the 16th century that teaches the art of healing various pathologies through the ethos (emotional color) of maqām and its cosmological inscription (elemental and humoral) which induce a ṭarab sedative ecstasy or a ṭarab cathartic trance.
AEON Collective is a non-profit WAQF driving impact and regenerative development in Saudi Arabia and globally. Through a human-centric, nature-positive approach, we integrate science, culture, and innovation to empower communities and restore balance between people and planet.
TBA21 is a global art and advocacy foundation committed to social and environmental transformation. Through its collection, exhibitions, and Ocean Space in Venice, it supports artists and cultural practices that foster peace, affirm life, and celebrate diversity.
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