Inshād and Language Performance. Islamicate music.

Tuesday (3a)

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

Due today

1-2 page report on the following:

• Read Paralinguistic Ramification of Language Performance in Islamic Ritual. Follow YouTube links; Duʿaʾ is here.
• 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?
• Watch this documentary about Mecca: Inside Mecca (navigate via Films on Demand if it doesn't come up).

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

• Optional: Watch this BBC documentary film about the Hajj. Here's a text that may help explain from a more insider angle
• Virtual Hajj
• Sounds of Hajj and Umra:
  • Talbiya[1]
  • The text of the Talbiya
• Sounds of Eid prayer:
  • Takbir al-Eid: performed before Eid prayers on the days of Eid (Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha) also: [2][3].
  • The text of the Takbir

Also:

• 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

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.

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).

Time: Islamic hijri calendar dated from the Hijra (Muhammad's emigration from Mecca to Medina) in 622. Linear historical time includes:

• Creation
• Alastu
• Adam and expulsion from the Garden (meeting Eve at Arafat)

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.

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

• Syntactic, semantic, sonic, and pragmatic aspects
• Communicative, affective, and ritual modes

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.

• VR mosque in Istanbul
• My Paris ICTM forum talk
• My Ithra talk: The Sonorous Audible Mosque
• Examples at this link, including
  • 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.

Thursday (3b)

Islam as Musical Catalyst (Islamicate Music)

Due today

Watch, read, and report:

• Watch Umm Kulthum: A Voice Like Egypt (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.

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

Islamicate Music

• Discuss readings: Shiloah, Danielson. 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), legal restrictions (e.g. primacy of the voice), emphases (the word), training (tilawa and Sufi contexts), contexts of cultivation (primarily Sufi).
• 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