Inshād and Language Performance. Islamicate music.

Tuesday (3a)

Islam as Musical Catalyst (Islamicate Music) and Islam as Sonic Ritual (Islamic "Music" = Language Performance)

Due today

Two page report on the following three works (2 readings and 1 film excerpt).

• Watch Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt at least to 18:40 (NB: the subtitles contain errors) or on Rutherford Reserve (ML 420 U46 U46 2006). What was the role of Islam (through Qur'an, religious song, Sufi festival) in selecting singers and shaping or training their voices?
• Read "Min al-Mashāyikh": A View of Egyptian Musical Tradition, by Virginia Danielson. Asian Music. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Autumn, 1990 - Winter, 1991), pp. 113-127. (Note: if you're not on campus you may have to use this link instead.
• Read Paralinguistic Ramification of Language Performance in Islamic Ritual. Follow YouTube links; Duʿaʾ is here.
• Optional: read "Against ethnomusicology: Language performance and the social impact of ritual performance in Islam, Performing Islam, Volume 2, Number 1, December 2013 , pp. 11-43. Consider: why do I reject "music" (and "ethnomusicology")? What is "language performance" in Islam and why is it important? How can it be applied to ritual performance in Islam? How does it sonically localize through ramification, and what can we understand from such localization?

Also:

• Review Shiloah reading from Week 2.
• Last week I mentioned my new article on non-maqam localized styles of Qur'anic recitation; if you'd like to browse through it, please click here.

Class

Projects and Research proposals

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.

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

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.

LP and its principal Genres

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

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. Ramadan, including Tarawih, and the Misahharati.
4. Hajj, now in process in Mecca, Saudi Arabia

• We have already considered adhan, the call to prayer, and tilawa, Qur'anic recitation
• Salat: a compound ritual:
  • Ibtihalat (sung supplications at dawn)
  • Adhan
  • Qur'an
  • Adhkar al-Salat
  • Adʿiyya (supplications within the prayer)

The theory and practice of LP

LP in Theory and LP in practice

• (ppt from Paris ICTM forum)
• Examples at the above link:
  • Dawn in Egypt
  • Friday prayer in Kazakhstan
  • Eid prayer (Salat al-Eid)
• Rituals and sounds of the Hajj

ʿUmra, Hajj and Eid al-Adha

• 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.

Islamic ritual: language performance, and its impact on Islamicate music

• Adhan
• Qur'an
• Duʿaʾ
• Khutba
• Inshad (mainstream & Sufi)

Sounds of the mosque:

• VR mosque
• The sonorous audible mosque (talk)

Thursday (3b)

Due today

There are no new readings for today - I want you to catch up!

But please do the following:

• 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.
• Watch this documentary about Mecca: Inside Mecca (navigate via Films on Demand if it doesn't come up).
• Optional: Watch this BBC documentary film about the Hajj. Here's a text that may help explain from a more insider angle

Optional: You may also like to learn more about the Islamic rituals such as prayer or hajj through other sites, for example:

• Virtual Hajj

Islamicate Music, and the relation to the Sounds of Islam

Music and Islam talk

• Readings in Shiloah - questions? observations?
• Mostly what we know is the elite, court music... “art music"
• Formation through Islam as catalyst (connecting people through empire, language, religion; gathering wealth) and also restrictions (e.g. primacy of the voice)
• 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:
  • ideological differences, e.g. Sunni and Shia
  • language, dialect, pronunciation
  • culture, contexts, articulation with pre-Islamic culture
  • social and political factors: immigration/borders/state policies
  • Ramification of sound: localization adaptation

Class

Your research ideas

Brief presentation and discussion

Islamicate Music

• Readings: Shiloah, Danielson
• Mostly what we know is the elite, court music... “art music"
• Formation through Islam as catalyst (connecting people through empire, language, religion; gathering wealth), legal restrictions (e.g. primacy of the voice), emphases (the word), training (tilawa and Sufi contexts), contexts of cultivation (primarily Sufi).
• Commonalities across the Islamicate zone
  • Focus on language, combined with sound system: tonal and temporal
  • music: tonality, temporality
    • maqam, microtones
    • iqa (darb, wazn, usul)
  • Shaped by Islamic discourse and practice (tilawa, Sufi hadra)
  • Shaping local Islamic practices
• Variations:
  • 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