MI week 7

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Tuesday (7a)

Sufism, Sufi music, and its relation to Islamicate music (continued).

Due today

  • Assignments to submit: none. But: Please catch up! If you're caught up, work on Thursday's assignment, or on your proposals (due next week).

Class

  • Research projects: discussion
  • Overviews:
    • Research topic (Research topic = research area + basic research issue)
    • Research aim and value: in a few sentences ("elevator summary"), explain: what is your main research question? What do you want to find out? Why is it important to know?
    • Research Area and Scope: what is the domain of research, and how can you limit that domain so that the research is feasible given constraints (time, money): perhaps compare 2-3 cases...
    • Research methodology. What and where is your "data"? How will you find the data, critique it, analyze it? Think of innovative sources and ways to treat it (e.g. youtube videos, stories from accounts in Sufi literature, newspapers talking about music...)How will you answer it? Be careful of overly broad scope.
  • Some practical research techniques:
    • What is a secondary source? Tracing secondary sources bibliography forwards and backwards; worldcat, ILL...mine bibliographies of works you've found already, then look at who cites them.
    • Use of primary sources - not fieldwork, but youtube videos, magazine articles, treatises
    • Zotero or Refworks, providing multiple functions - data mining, database, automatic citation formatting

Thursday (7b)

Sufism, Sufi music, and its relation to Islamicate music (continued)

Due today

  • Assignment:

Locate a connection between a Sufi music and a secular music in any part of the Muslim world. Explain: where in the world are these musics located, and how are they related? Does the sacred become secular or the reverse? Or are they related in some more complex way? 1-2 pages.

Class

  • Happy New Year! Today is the Islamic New Year (ra's al-sana): the first day of Muharram, the first month of the lunar Islamic calendar, al-taqwim al-hijri.
    • The 10th of Muharram is `Ashura' (a word whose root means "ten", `ashara).
    • For Sunnis, this is the day that: Noah's ark landed on dry land; Moses led his people from Egypt; Sunnis traditional fast on the 10th, and also the 9th or 11th, according to Tradition (Hadith), to differentiate themselves from the Jews. The day is clearly the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur (day of atonement), with Rosh Hashana (New Year) corresponding to the Islamic ra's al-sana.
    • For Shia, the day primarily marks the martyrdom of Hussein (the Prophet's grandson, and the 3rd Imam) at Karabala' (present-day Iraq) in the year 680, after the Umayyad caliph Yazid tried to compel Hussein's allegiance; it is a day of mourning.
  • Sufism and (non-religious) Islamicate music: a two way street.
    • Sufi music draws on the broader musical system
    • that musical system also draws on Sufism for musical training
    • sometimes Sufi music becomes popular music too.
    • Thus: the boundaries between Sufi ritual, Sufi popular, and Islamicate are open and fluid. (The same is true of the boundaries between Sufi and mainstream Islamic rituals and language performance genres; in many cases the word "Sufi" is used etically, and simply marks the transition into a more aesthetic and experiential approach to spirituality.)
  • Complete presentation of tarab and Sufi music in Egypt
  • More examples:
    • Egyptian Sufi inshad, within the sufi order (tariqa) and in more public contexts
    • The Mevlevi Ayin and Turkish classical music; the Ayin as touristic entertainment
    • Ghanaian Tijaniyya music, Akwashirawa, incorporating Hausa music - and in conflict with the Salafis
    • Moroccan Gnawa and entertainment
    • Qawwali and Hindustani music of south asia; Qawwal as popular music
  • See:
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