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.

LP and its principal genres

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

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:

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

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