Inshād and Language Performance. Islamicate music.

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Tuesday (3a)

Islam as Sonic Ritual (Islamic "Music" = Language Performance)

Due today

1-2 page report on the following:


Optional (you don't have to include them in your report):


Also:

Class

Reports on readings/viewings/listenings

  • Everyone is doing great!
  • Please submit text rather than a Word file if possible (i.e. if there's no image, diagram, or link. But for proposals and papers, and ppts, of course, use the upload feature.)
  • I know I'm assigning a lot. Feel free to skim. It's an important skill you'll need to develop. Read in depth as needed, or when you are particularly fascinated by something.
  • Sorry the Schimmel didn't open - I fixed the link eventually (it was the same source as in the previous week). Anne Marie Schimmel was an extraordinary scholar who dedicated her life to making Islam accessible to a wider public, with great attention to arts (poetry, calligraphy...) and was therefore not so welcome in the science-oriented German academy (she wound up at Harvard where Ali Asani is continuing her legacy). (She was female, btw.)
  • Discuss: background music in documentary films. Risks: "authentic music"? Faux/ersatz Middle Eastern intervals or sounds? Or Western music of the usual documentary? More generally: style in documentary film (also a preoccupation of ethnomusicology)

Projects and Research proposals

Any project ideas to discuss? Questions? Next time we'll just go around the room to share, and we'll discuss your ideas for a minute or two

Research proposal due 4b: AIM and SIGNIFICANCE. What issue or topic do you wish to investigate, and why do you think it's important? One page only. Optionally: include a few secondary sources, links to online media, etc.

Language Performance (LP) and its principal genres

Islamic LP (language performance): the mainstream sounds of Islam in social life and the social implications of sound.

Islam is a religion centered on sound, or more precisely language performance, as I call it. This sounds are closely intertwined with sacred history and the rituals that result via unfolding across cycles are almost always either centered entirely on language performance or involve it to a great degree. The sounds of Islam unfold across time, as well as space.

LP is linked to time (and space), including cyclic (repeating) and linear (non-repeating) varieties of time (and space).

Linear time: events

  • Creation
  • Alastu & covenant with God (recalled in dhikr of all types; labayka of the hajj)
  • Adam and Eve expelled from Garden (janna), descend at Arafat
  • Abraham builds Kaʿba; Ismaʿil, sacrifice and subsequent pilgrimage
  • Birth of Muhammad - mawlid
  • Cave at Hira, "iqraʾ!", and Ramadan
  • Israa wa Miʿrāj (621) and the possibility of closeness to God, emulating the Prophet's example
  • Hijra (622). Islamic hijri calendar dated from Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina in 622.
  • Prophet's own pilgrimage towards the end of his life, upon conquering Mecca. Sermon on Arafat
  • Yawm al qiyama, resurrection at (or resembling) Arafat

Cyclic time: projecting the linear on cycles of varying scales.

Note that the Islamic calendar is based on a purely lunar system of 12 month years. The crescent moon (hilal) marks the start of a new month. Most Islamic holidays are set according to this calendar. Exceptions often mark syncretisms with pre-Islamic systems, e.g. the mawlid (saint day) of Ahmed al-Badawi in Egypt (always in October - a harvest festival), or spring festivals like Nawruz and Shamm al-Naseem.

NB: converting between Hijri and Miladi (western) dates is a bit tricky, due to changes in the latter, and sometimes results in numbers that are off by one. Some online tools are available.


Rhythms of ...

The year:

  • New year: 1 Muharram
  • Ashuraʾ (10th of Muharram)
  • Mawlid: 12 rabia al awwal
  • Three holy months, Rajab, Shaaban, Ramadan, and Eid al-Fitr
  • Four sacred months: Dhu al-Qaʿida, Dhu al-Hijja , Muharram, and Rajab
  • Pilgrimage (8-12 Dhu al-Hijja) and Eid (10 Dhu al-Hijja)

The month:

  • Hilal, sighting the moon
  • layali qamariyya, mid-month

The week:

  • Fridays
  • Mondays
  • Sufi hadra

The day

  • 5 prayers

Each ritual:

  • Prayer, loose rhythm
  • Sufi hadra, periodic rhythm


Upcoming Islamic holidays: Isrāʾ wa Miʿrāj (Feb 8), Nisf al-Shaʿban (Feb 25), Ramadan (Mar 11), Eid (Apr 10)

At the spacetime coordinates of Hajj pilgrimage (and Eid), where linear and cyclic time and space coincide, all the genres of LP are combined as well, accompanied by a soundtrack: the "talbiya": "Labayk allahumma labayk. Labayk la sharika laka labayk. In al-hamda wal-niʿmata laka wal-mulk. La sharika lak." (We are at your service, you have no partner, all praise and blessing and the kingdom is yours, you have no partner), performed throughout the ritual (Dhu al-Hijja 8-12), (recently in new vocal versions [4][5][6][7][8][9]). followed by the Eid's Takbir (takbirat al-Eid), performed before Eid prayer and subsequent prayer during the Eid: Allahu akbar (3x) la ilaha illa Allah. Allahu akbar wa lillahi al-hamd. Again there are traditional and contemporary studio versions. [10][11]


LP in Theory - main points...

  • Syntactic, semantic, sonic, and pragmatic aspects
  • Communicative, affective, and ritual modes
  • Tendency of sonic and pragmatic aspects to localize, resulting in a ramified (branching) structure, while syntactic and (especially) semantic aspects remain more fixed, over space and time.
  • Music/non-music distinction is not relevant, and our ethnomusicological focus on music's boundaries is unhelpful - the disciplinary bias tends to distort the reality: connection between all language performance genres


LP in practice

One possible taxonomy based on the 5 "pillars" - arkan: at least four are associated with sound (excepting Zakat)

  1. Shahada
  2. Salat (namaz), including special prayers (Salat al-Eid, Tarawih)
  3. Sawm (Ramadan), including Tarawih, and the Misahharati (March 11 - April 10, 2024)
  4. Hajj, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia (to take place in June 2024)


We have already considered adhan, the call to prayer, and tilawa, Qur'anic recitation. Today we'll consider a few other ritual genres: duʿāʾ, inshād, khutba, and ṣalāh or "salat" (prayer).

  • Salat: a compound ritual:
    • Ibtihalat (sung supplications at dawn)
    • Adhan
    • Qur'an
    • Adhkar al-Salat
    • Adʿiyya (supplications within the prayer)
  • Ramadan & Hajj are even more complex compound genres, involving all of the above. See my slideshow (visit to Mecca, in 2021)
  • Examples, including
  • The Hajj as a central meeting point for Muslims everywhere, a point of exchange and driver of Islamicate emergence via connection, fusion, and exchange
  • The Hajj and Eid, and their sounds.
  • My Paris ICTM forum talk (basis for the Yale paper)

Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam: sound and space, mutually constitutive

  • VR mosque in Istanbul
  • My Ithra talk: The Sonorous Audible Mosque (Sounds of Islam - and architecture)
  • Book chapter coming out this year.

Thursday (3b)

Islam as Musical Catalyst (Islamicate Music)

Due today

Watch, read, and report:

Also please do the following (you need not report on these items)

  • Prepare a few ideas for your research projects to be discussed in class (you don't have to limit yourself to just one). A short written version will be due next week.
  • Review Shiloah reading from Week 2.

Class

Your research ideas

Brief presentation and discussion

Language performance, and its impact on Islamicate music, culture, and society

Consider wider socio-cultural impact of...

  • Adhan: marking the day
  • Qur'anic recitation: training in the kuttab; various uses for listening
  • Duʿaʾ
  • Khutba: discourses
  • Inshad (mainstream & Sufi)
  • Eid and Hajj

Presentations

  • Music and Architecture
  • LP

Islamicate Music

  • Discuss readings: Shiloah, Danielson. Questions? observations?
  • Mostly what we know is the elite, court music... “art music"
  • Formation through Islam as catalyst:
    • adaptability of Islam especially at the level of culture (less so in text or theology/doctrine), including sonic and pragmatic aspects of LP
    • relative tolerance of Islam (at least during many periods), allowing "people of the book" (ahl al-kitab) as dhimmi, to practice their religion and maintain their personal law, upon payment of jizya. (This tolerance apparently even encouraged some conversion of Orthodox Christians chafing under Roman rule, or of Egyptian Copts under the Byzantines, though it's hard to know the extent of this phenomenon.)
    • Combined with power of Islam's simple and universal articles of faith, and desire for material accumulation, these features enabled rapid expansion through a series of empires (Umayyad, Abbasid, Seljuk, Fatimid, Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal...), connecting people through empire (freedom of travel), language (Arabic, Persian), religion; gathering wealth to support literary and musical culture at court. All this catalyzed musical culture.
    • Even when Muslim empires were defeated Islam tended to resurface (e.g. Mongol and Seljuk conquests), sometimes elsewhere (Umayyad dynasties of Andalusian Spain)
    • Desire of early Arab rulers to learn from the peoples they conquered, to maintain rather than oppress or obliterate their cultures, incorporating administrators, scholars, teachers, musicians, and culture from Persian, Byzantine, Egyptian communities, including those of Christian, Zoroastrian, or Jewish faiths
    • common emphases of Islam in all its formations (the word - kalima, i.e. language performance)
    • contexts of training (tilawa and Sufi hadra) and cultivation (primarily Sufi), but also:
    • imposing legal restrictions (e.g. primacy of the voice, controversy over musiqa as potentially harām)
  • Commonalities across Islamicate zones:
    • Focus on language, combined with timbral, textural, tonal, and temporal similarities
    • music: tonality, temporality; nasality; heterophony
      • maqam, microtones, melodic emphasis
      • iqaʿ (darb, wazn, usul): rhythmic cycles
    • Shaped by Islamic discourse and practice (tilawa, Sufi hadra, musical training)
    • Shaping local Islamic practices
  • Variations across Islamicate zones:
    • culture, contexts, articulation with pre-Islamic culture
    • ideological differences, e.g. Sunni and Shia presents different soundscapes
    • social and political factors: immigration/borders/state policies; Islamic ideology may trigger/represent political divides, restricting interactions
    • language, dialect, pronunciation: vary from place to place
    • Ramification of sound: localization adaptation, random or accommodating (Suwarian tradition of West Africa)
  • Impact of Islam
    • Discourses of Islam (e.g. attitudes towards music)
    • Practices of Islam (e.g. tilawa, Qur'anic recitation)
    • Islam as civilizational catalyst (e.g. formation of an empire that could absorb and fuse numerous traditions from a broad region)
  • Examples:
    • Egyptian Wasla
    • Turkish Fasil
    • Moroccan Nawba
    • Persian Dastgah


Lecture on Islamicate Music

Islamicate Music, and the relation to the Sounds of Islam

Music and Islam talk

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