Over the past 150 years, the European violin has grown from a new import to a fundamental fixture in the Arab music of Egypt. Due to the violin's history, physical attributes, and symbolic importance, violinists regularly work between categories often set in opposition, especially Western classical and Arab musics. In this dissertation, I argue that it is this very in-betweenness that makes the violin a powerful tool for Egyptian violinists and composers. Through a series of biographies organized historically, I show how violinists have infused the instrument with different clusters of meaning, performing complex senses of identity and complicating musical categories in the process.

I begin with the history of the violin's entrance into Egypt, spanning the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, when violinist Sami al-Shawwa and others used the instrument to negotiate the space between colonizer and colonized, and Europe and Egypt. My next chapter, centered on the so-called Golden Era of Egyptian film and song (1930s-1950s), examines narratives and media examples placing violinists Ah&dotbelow;mad al-H&dotbelow;ifnawi and Anwar Mansi at opposite ends of a tradition-modernity spectrum. I then investigate how Sa'd Muh&dotbelow;ammad H&dotbelow;asan and other teachers negotiate contemporary tensions resulting from the intersection of Arab music aesthetics and Western pedagogical legacies in the Higher Institute for Arab Music's violin program. Subsequently, I address violinists who seek performance and teaching opportunities outside of state-sponsored institutions and the transnational Arab popular music market, such as 'Abduh Daghir. Lastly, I consider violinists' changing role in that market in conversation with the strong sense of nostalgia present for earlier players, as violinists refer to their predecessors to situate themselves vis-a-vis contemporary identity debates.

Throughout this work, violinists' negotiations of in-between spaces reveal the diverse set of ideas that their instrument can embody, encompassing progress, potentiality, sophistication, and nostalgia. Violinists play, teach, and discuss the violin and other violinists in particular ways to express their multifaceted senses of self. By bringing these individual and interrelated stories to light, I contribute a unique perspective and analysis to our understandings of the continued impact of historic musical exchanges and the rich potential created by positions of in-betweenness.