Popular Islamic music: local and global: Difference between revisions

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** Commodified
** Commodified
** Professional
** Professional
** Non-participatory - at least in sound
** Crafted: Arranged, edited, less spontaneous, little improvisation
** Centrality of "music"
** Crafted: staged (amplification, lighting, seating) or produced (studio art)
** Non-participatory - at least in sound: performer/audience barrier (physically, psychologically, culturally)
** Centrality of "music" as sound, exploited to the fullest (arrangements, diversity of sonorities and timbres)
** Entertainment/aesthetic function is present
** Entertainment/aesthetic function is present
** Importance of beauty, attractiveness
** Importance of beauty, attractiveness
** Linked to music industry, which also shapes or even creates it
** Linked to a music industry, which also shapes or even creates it
** Other attributes?
** Other attributes?
* Turino's four fields of music practice:
* Turino's four fields of music practice:

Revision as of 15:38, 26 March 2024

New genres of popular Islamic performance: within the Muslim world, and beyond it...


Tuesday (12a)

World Music, Folklorization, and Festivalization in the Muslim World

Due

Submit a brief review on these works, noting their connections, as two perspectives on this famous festival.

Also sample a bit of each of the following videos - songs and concerts by famous regional and international nasheed stars:

Class

  • What is popular music? Key features (none necessary or sufficient, but often present in clusters):
    • Widespread, not narrowly limited (by social class, ethno-linguistic or religious group, age group)
    • Mediated or staged
    • Commodified
    • Professional
    • Crafted: Arranged, edited, less spontaneous, little improvisation
    • Crafted: staged (amplification, lighting, seating) or produced (studio art)
    • Non-participatory - at least in sound: performer/audience barrier (physically, psychologically, culturally)
    • Centrality of "music" as sound, exploited to the fullest (arrangements, diversity of sonorities and timbres)
    • Entertainment/aesthetic function is present
    • Importance of beauty, attractiveness
    • Linked to a music industry, which also shapes or even creates it
    • Other attributes?
  • Turino's four fields of music practice:
    • Participatory
    • Presentational
    • High fidelity recording
    • Studio audio art
  • An experimental typology of popular Islamic music
    • 1. Traditional ritual/ceremonial genres, performed by specialists and others in traditional contexts
    • 2. Popular versions of those genres, performed by genre specialists, influenced by the wider field of popular music; new contexts
    • 3. Similar genres or themes, but mixed or embedded in the wider field of popular music, performed by broader class of singers and musicians of broader genre classes. In the West especially (but also globally) these include hip hop, r&b, punk, rock, folk, country, etc. Western Muslim performers may bring in Islamic themes, either adopting a full-time Islamic identity or a part-time one/ spoken word and hip hop is of both types. But in the West, as minorities, there is another variable: a continuum between overtly Islamic and cryptically Islamic - themes for those in the know.
    • 4. Folkloric and festival presentations: staged versions, communicating across cultural/religious boundaries, held to represent the "authentic" ("quotation marks"), focus on the "culture". Touristic, nationalistic, mainly live performance. Signifying: the ethnic, the national, in the realm of national-ethnic-cultural discourse
    • 5. World music ("world beat") presentations: more focus on the music and artist(s). Commercial product (live or recorded). Signifying: the aesthetic, the musical, the sacred? In the realm of "musical diversity"
    • 6. Fusions: new forms of music, mixed, in the realm of music.
  • Some examples - how to analyze? classify?
  • Fez Festival

Thursday (12b)

Beyond Nasheed: Popular Islamic Music in the West

Due

  • Watch Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam
  • Read Islam in the Mix: Lessons of the Five Percent, by anthropologist Ted Swedenburg (University of Arkansas) [Note: unfortunately many of his links are broken, but you can google to get the same or similar information]. Locate two examples of Islamic hip hop online. Explain how each conveys an Islamic orientation, based on lyrics or images or other features, and how they contrast. (You may locate examples from Swedenburg's article if you wish, or may broaden the search to hip hop worldwide.) 1 page total.

Some links related to Swedenburg's article you may like to sample as you read:


A broader sampling of Islamic hip hop (including Nation of Islam, NGE, and Sunni - along with nashid and Islamic pop generally) can be located here: Muslim Hip Hop

Ironically for some, Islam has opened a space for women especially those dissatisfied with the objectifications of mainstream hip hop culture, and sometimes deeply politically engaged. See especially:

Beyond music there is also a range of spoken word "language performance", such as "Dead Man Walking" by Amir Suleiman (whom I saw perform live at the UofA in the early 2000s, invited by the Muslim Student Association)

Class

  • Trajectories in African American Islam
  • Musical messaging in multiple genres
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