The recent surge in Latin American popular entertainment that features portrayals of Arab people and culture is a trend that includes orientalist and stereotypical representations of Middle Eastern life and traditions. How do the Arab immigrant populations in Latin America react to such representations? Furthermore, how do these populations prefer to represent themselves? With a sizeable presence (in Argentina, the people of Syro-Lebanese descent comprise approximately ten percent of the total population), there is no question that the Arab diaspora thrives and influences Argentine economic, political, social, and cultural spheres (Karam, 2). However, nationalist movements from the late 19th well into the 20th centuries not only failed to include the Arab Argentine population, but also successfully supported anti-Arab sentiments (Civantos, 5). This milieu, in combination with a detachment from the homeland, provided that Arab Argentines improvised new traditions that are now accepted as legitimate cultural representations of various Arab peoples in Argentina. This study seeks to examine contemporary Arab cultural representation in Argentina through the production of what is labeled “traditional” Arab music. By exploring the communal and festival practices of the Social Club of Syrian Argentines in Rosario, Santa Fe, I demonstrate how nostalgia and the immigrant experience have effected contemporary conceptualizations of tradition, and how a communally false sense of a traditional past leads to the reproduction and reinforcement of trivialized Arab musical practices. Civantos, Christina. <i>Between Argentines and Arabs<i>. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Karam, John Tofik. <i>Another Arabesque: Syrian-Lebanese Ethnicity in Neoliberal Brazil<i>. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.

This paper focuses on the performance process in Egyptian-style Oriental dance and the phenomenon of tarab, or emotional ecstasy. Music frequently identified as being tarab music includes musiqa al-gadid, specifically that of Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum. Oriental dance is customarily performed to this genre of music, which dancers acknowledge as an inseparable part of the dance. Another important component in the overall Oriental dance performance is the folkloric section, which includes the raqs assaya, or cane dance, and music identifiable through specific rhythms and musical instruments as originating from the Said region of Egypt. This paper will illustrate how the Oriental dancer, in tandem with the music of Umm Kulthum and references to the folkloric culture of the Said region, engages with the audience to create the experience of tarab—a deeply emotional state generated by the invocation of personal, public, and cultural memories that are often collectively experienced by dancer, musicians, and audience. While the compositional elements of musiqa al-gadid (maqam, instrumentation, improvisation, and decoration) and the lyrics of Umm Kulthum drive the tarab experience, I argue that the memories which emerge associated with the great singer Umm Kulth?m, the physical engagement of the audience during the Saidi section, and the various levels of interaction that unfold over these portions of the performance create the potential for an enhanced tarab experience. This study is based on interviews with both Egyptian dancers and North American dancers who performed extensively in the Middle East as well as data collected over a period of ten years observing Oriental dance performances. This paper, while both building on and theorizing from the current ethnomusicological research on tarab music, foregrounds the dancer’s voice and her experiences while embodying and performing to this music, offering a new analysis that brings the dancer into the discourse and expands our understanding of Oriental dance as a performance and aesthetic experience apart from the traditional notions of Orientalism.