Culture Palaces launches a series of popular lessons on Arab folklore

Recently, a series of folk studies at the General Authority for Cultural Palaces headed by artist Hisham Atwa published the book “From the Egyptian Folk Singing Arts.. Mewil and Popular Lyrical Stories” by Safwat Kamal, an expert in Arab folklore, and a professor of folklore at the Higher Institute of Folklore.

The book is a role model in ethnographic studies (descriptive) that is concerned with accurate, organized and comparative field collection, and it was based on collecting material during his work at the Folk Art Center – by Tawfiqia – based on ethnographic research methods that he studied in Poland in 1958, and from material he prepared for the two “Art” programs. Al-Sha’abi” 1961 on Egyptian TV, and “From Our Folklore” on Egyptian Radio 1964. The book includes three highly artistic texts, namely “Salama and Salman,” “Fahim and Fahima,” and “Khaled, Jamil and Shelbaya.” The first and second are collected from The head of the money is the artist Youssef Sheta, and the third is an unknown narrator.

Kamal wrote on the cover of the first edition of the book what crystallizes his methodological vision as follows: “This book deals with a group of texts of songs, mawwals, and folk lyrical stories, which are characteristic of the Egyptian folk singing arts.. with a brief study of this style of artistic creativity. The folklore, explaining and interpreting the texts of this oral literary art in its cultural context and social connotations, the writer was keen to present a diverse number of this lyrical art, to be a direct expression of the artistic and literary vision of the Egyptian man towards various issues of life, and his social and moral values ​​that govern and regulate patterns behavior in current life.

The Popular Studies series is published under the chairmanship of editor-in-chief of researcher Hassan Sorour, managing editor Mahmoud Anwar, editorial secretary Mohamed El-Sayed, cover by artist Nasreen Mahmoud.