Maltese and Arab Soundscapes

I must admit I really enjoyed this politically incorrect comedy clip by Harry Enfield; if for no other reason that  he takes the mickey out of both British and Arab ways of expressing emotion:

Actually celebratory gunfire is not a uniquely Arab ritual. It seems North Americans are also particularly fond of this practice, judging by the Wikipedia page dedicated to it, which is dominated by accounts from the Middle East and the USA. Trawling through the internet revealed this gem of a question, which also indicates an affinity between the way some North Americans and Arabs think: "Muslims shoot guns i the air to celebrate .why cant we?


So what is it all about? Perhaps we in Malta may be in a good position to understand it if we compare Arab forms of celebratory gunfire to Maltese festa fireworks:  

This goes to show how festa celebrations are at least partly about triumphing over the enemies of your village or faction and that a feasting/warfare model is a better analytical framework for thinking about festas than religion/ritual as such. By linking Maltese village feasts to warfare, we are in a better position to build on Jeremy Boissevain's path-breaking work in this field back in the Sixties:

At the same time, the close and ambiguous relationship between feasting and warfare is the subject of this classic ethnographic film:

I tried to address this subject in a lecture I gave to some Australian students a while back. I'm reproducing the abstract here:

"This lecture will seek to explain the uncomfortable status of religious feasts (or festas) as a tourist attraction by advancing a theoretical explanation of these events which places the social dynamics of rivalry between equals at their heart. Inspiration will be sought from Rene Girard and Simon Harrison, to compare festas to feuds and to argue that they are a kind of symbolic warfare which requires transformation of self in order to achieve victory, which is identified with a temporary reconfiguration of patterns of dominance within the community. It is against the backdrop of this symbolic warfare that the statue of the saint acquires totemic presence, both as representing the unity of the group and as a sacrificial figure which can unite the warring doubles."

Finally here is a Spanish Flamenco dancer. I seem to hear the same explosive tense rhythms in her dance as I do in the fireworks and the gunfire: