Michael Frishkopf

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After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music -- Aldous Huxley

Ethnomusicology is "the meaningful social practice of studying music as a meaningful social practice" (Frishkopf 2013).

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.” -- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Music is living sound.

"I have nothing to say and I'm saying it" -- John Cage

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Dr. Michael Frishkopf
Professor, Department of Music
Associate Director, Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology (CCE)
Research Fellow, folkwaysAlive!
Mail: Michael Frishkopf, Department of Music, Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta, 3-82 Fine Arts Building, Edmonton, AB CANADA T6G 2C9
Office: 334D Old Arts Building
Tel: Skype: (617) 275-2589; office: (780) 492-0225. Music Dept: (780) 492-3263
Fax: Music Dept: (780) 492-9246. CCE (780) 492-0242
Web: http://bit.ly/mfwiki
Email is preferable for all initial communications. Note: I am on sabbatical Fall 2013 through Summer 2014. Please email me with any questions.

Introduction

Michael Frishkopf, Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include Sufi music; the Arab music industry; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music], digital music repositories; music in West Africa; music of refugees (mainly Liberian refugees in the Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana); participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music therapy as memory therapy...

His research and teaching combine a number of different fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory... He is a lifetime member of both the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He has received numerous fellowships supporting his research, including grants from Fulbright, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Killam Foundation (Canada), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, supporting his extensive fieldwork in Egypt.

In performance, Michael specializes in the nay (Middle Eastern reed flute), and also performs the song-drum-dance traditions of Ghana. He is the founder (in 2004) of the University of Alberta Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble, as well as the University of Alberta West African Music Ensemble (in 1999). Both ensembles perform frequently in public in the Edmonton area, especially to support progressive causes. He also performs “Third Stream” and world music inflected jazz on the piano, following studies with Ran Blake and others in the Third Stream program at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Some current projects include:

• Sounds of Islam and Sufi ritual
• Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam
• Music media and the music industry in the Arab world
• [Virtual (world] music) - world music and ethnomusicology in cyberworlds
• Giving voice to hope: popular music towards sustainable development and peace (Liberia, Ghana...)
• Sustaining traditional musical culture in collaboration with local organizations (Egyptian music, Arab music, West African music)
• Digital repositories and metadata for ethnomusicology
• The transmission of musical taste in Canada
• Music culture as social network (social network analysis)
• Developing a computer-based system for microtonal ear training.

CV

Curriculum Vitae

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Publications

• Against ethnomusicology: Language performance and the social impact of ritual performance in Islam, Performing Islam, Volume 2, Number 1, December 2013 , pp. 11-43(33)
• Майкл Фришкопф. 2013. “Этноджаз". Этноджаз в Центральной Азии: 17-21. ”Ethnojazz.” EthnoJazz in Central Asia: 49-52. In: EthnoJazz in Central Asia: Sociocultural design in the sphere of culture. Bishkek: Central Asian Arts Management, 2013
• "Music as debate: Social forces shaping the heterodoxy of Sufi performance in contemporary Egypt." To appear in Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World: Performance, Politics and Piety. Ed. Kamal Salhi. London: Routledge. (In press.)
• "Tradition and modernity: the globalization of Sufi Music in Egypt." In Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook, edited by Walid El Hamamsy & Mounira Soliman. London: Routledge, 2012.
• "Prediction of dissimilarity judgments between tonal sequences using information theory"[1], in Proceeding HCCE '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Joint International Conference on Human-Centered Computer Environments, Pages 194-199, ACM New York, NY, USA ©2012
• “Ritual as strategic action: the social logic of musical silence in Canadian Islam”, in Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater: Artistic Developments in the Muslim World, edited by Karin van Nieuwkerk. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011
• Review of The Rough Guide to Sufi Music, Asian Music, Summer/Fall 2011.
• "Folkways in Wonderland: A Cyberworld Laboratory for Ethnomusicology"[2], (Rasika Ranaweera, Michael Frishkopf, and Michael Cohen), in Proceeding CW '11: Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Cyberworlds, Pages 106-112, IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA ©2011
• “Technology, Change and the Music of Sufi Chanting in Egypt.”[3] Earle Waugh & Michael Frishkopf. Musica Humana 3(1), 2011
• Music and Media in the Arab World[4], edited & with an Introduction by Michael Frishkopf. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, distributed by Oxford University Press (2010).
• "(virtual [world) music]: Virtual world, world music: Folkways in Wonderland" in Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Principles and Applications of Spatial Hearing, Zao, Miyagi, Japan, November 2009. (co-authored: Rasika Ranaweera, Michael Cohen, Nick Nagel, and Michael Frishkopf).
• "Mediated Qur’anic recitation and the contestation of Islam in contemporary Egypt", in Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East. Ashgate, 2009. Audio examples: ex 3.1, ex 3.2, ex. 3.3,
• "Globalizing the soundworld - Islam and Sufi Music in the West", in Sufis in the West (Routledge, 2008)
• “Music”, in The Islamic World, edited by Andrew Rippin (Routledge "Worlds" series). New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 510-526.
• "Music, Nationalism, and the development of Egypt's phonogram industry: Muhammad Fawzy, Misrphon, and Sawt al-Qahira" (SonoCairo) Asian Music, 2008.
• “‘Islamic Music in Africa’ as a tool for African Studies”, in Canadian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 42, #2/3, 2008, pp. 478-507.
• “Metadata Infrastructure for Sound Recordings", Proceedings of ISMIR 2007 (International Conference on Music Information Retrieval, September 23rd-27th 2007, Vienna, Austria). Co-author.
• Islamic Music, in New Encyclopedia of Africa, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2007, pp. 643-648.
• Music of Makran: traditional fusion from coastal Balochistan, in Asian Music, Summer/Fall 2006
• Sufi music review: (1) Soufis d'algerie: Mostaganem/Algeria: The Sufis of Mostaganem. 2003. Prophet Collection 31. Philips 472 503-2; (2) Chant soufi de Syrie: Dhikr Qadiri Khalwati de la Zawiya Hilaliya, Alep /Sufi chanting from Syria : Dhikr Qadiri Khalwati of the Zawiya Hilaliya, Aleppo . 2002. Maison des Cultures du Monde, Inedit W 260109. (3) Maroc: L'art du sama' a Fes/Morocco: The Art of Sama' in Fez . 2002. Disques VDE-GALLO, VDE CD-1104. (CD reviews). In Yearbook of the International Council for Traditional Music, 2003.
• Review of “The Yemen Tihama: trance & dance music from the Red Sea coast of Arabia” International Music Collection of the British Library National Sound Archive. Topic World Series, Topic Records Ltd. TSCD920. (CD review). Asian Music, Fall/Winter 2003/2004, XXXV:1.
• "Authorship in Sufi Poetry", in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, #23: Intersections: Literature and the Sacred (2003)
• “Spiritual Kinship and Globalization”, in Religious Studies and Theology v. 22 #1, 2003
• "Some Meanings of the Spanish Tinge in Contemporary Egyptian music", in Mediterranean Mosaic, edited by Goffredo Plastino (in the series entitled Perspectives on Global Pop, edited by Gage Averill; Routledge Publishing) (2002).
• "Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami: A typical layla performance", Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 6 (2002).
• "al-Inshad al-Dini (Islamic religious singing) in Egypt", Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, vol. 6 (2002).
• Review of Asmahan’s Secrets: Woman, War, and Song (No. 13 in the Middle East Monograph Series ( Austin: UT Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 2000), by Sherifa Zuhur), International Journal of Middle East Studies (fall 2002). Arabic version in Weghat Nazar.
• Musical transformations of time, in "Eighth International Conference on Human Interface Technology", March 14-20, 2002, Aizu University, Japan.
• "Inshad Dini and Aghani Diniyya in 20th c Egypt : a review of styles, genres, and available recordings", Bulletin of the Middle East Studies Association, Winter 2001. (Arabic translation: Wijhat Nazar (Viewpoints), #35, vol. #3, December 2001, under the title: “al-inshad al-dini wa al-aghani al-diniyya fi masr al-qarn al-‘ishrin”, pp. 68-72. Cairo : Egyptian Company for Arab and International Publication.)[5]
• "Changing modalities in the globalization of Islamic saint veneration and mysticism: Sidi Ibrahim al-Dasuqi, Shaykh Muhammad ‘Uthman al-Burhani, and their Sufi Orders". Religious Studies and Theology, v. 20 nos. 1 & 2(2001).
• "Tarab in the Mystic Sufi Chant of Egypt", in: Colors of Enchantment: Visual and Performing Arts of the Middle East, edited by Sherifa Zuhur. American University in Cairo Press, 2001, pp. 233-269
• The Magic of the Sufi Inshad: Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami (compact disc liner notes). Paris: Long Distance, Real World Works, 1998
• M. Garner, V. Haimo, I. Loobeek, D.Davis, and M. Frishkopf. Type-of-service routing: Modeling and simulation. Technical Report 6364, BBN Communications Corporation, January 1987.

Theses

• Sufism, Ritual, and Modernity in Egypt: Language Performance as an Adaptive Strategy Abstract (UCLA dissertation, 1999)
• The Character of Ewe Performance (Tufts University MA Thesis, 1989)

Some recent talks

• Giving Voice to Health: “Sanitation” in Liberia, for Music and Global Health: Toward Collaborative Paradigms, Society for Ethnomusicology Preconference, 2013, Lilly Auditorium (UL0130), University Library, 755 West Michigan Street, IUPUI Campus, Indianapolis.
• The Social Power of “Shahid” (Martyr) Metaphors in Music Videos Produced by Football Fan-activists in Egypt’s 2011-12 Revolution: A Durkheimian Perspective, Society for Ethnomusicology annual meeting 2013, Indianapolis.
• Narrowcasting Enabled Immersive Music Browser for Folkways World Music Collection. In Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents. May 2013, Istanbul, Turkey. (Rasika Ranaweera, Michael Cohen, and Michael Frishkopf).
• Differentiating traditional and popular music by analyzing the social structure of fame: a computer simulation of fan-artist affiliation networks (Aizu, Japan, 2013) (PDF version of the ISSM presentation)
• Forging New Transnational Actor-Networks through Participatory Action Research: socio-musical dimensions of the “responsibility to protect” Liberian refugees (Halle, Germany, 2012)
• Tarab in Sufi Music (for A night of Sufi & Inshaad, Royal Opera House Muscat, Muscat, Oman, 2012)
• Cultural dimensions of the UN's "Responsibility to Protect" norm (Kigali, Rwanda, 2012)
• Venerating the Cairo’s Saints through Music and Monument: Islamic Reform, and the Architextual Colonization of the Lifeworld (University of Alberta, 2011)
• Ray Smith Symposium (Syracuse, 2011)
• The Possibility and Necessity of Tarab (ecstasy) in the Mystic Sufi Chant of Egypt (Bremen, Germany, 2011)
• MuDoc (Multimedia/Music Documentation): a dynamic digital multimedia archive for world music (Proceeding HC '10 Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Humans and Computers, Pages 2-2)
• Muslims, Music, and Tolerance in Egypt and Ghana: A Comparative Perspective on Difference (UNC, 2010)
• Music Moves Islam in the Indian Ocean (Syracuse, 2008)

Applied Ethnomusicology

Music for Global Human Development

In recent years, I’ve moved sharply towards an engaged ethnomusicology, centered on what I call music and global human development, collaborating on production of “traditional” and “popular” musics (including media and music education) as tools for global development of communities marginalized and disempowered by colonialism and its aftermath, on either side of the North-South divide between “developed” and “developing” nations. Such work follows a participatory action research paradigm, ideally engaging local communities as equals, and subjecting all work to critical reflective scrutiny.

There are two main directions to this work:

• Songs for sustainable peace and development
• Music for cultural continuity and civil society

Songs for sustainable peace and development

A set of participatory action research projects centered on the use of popular music to disseminate development messages, especially for key development issues in public health, education, religious/ethnic tolerance, and peace. I have been working primarily in collaboration with Liberian refugee musicians in Ghana, and recent returnees to Liberia, helping them articulate and disseminate musical messages of peace and development, producing media with a triple purpose: catalyzing positive social change locally, raising awareness globally, and generating a revenue stream to support their musical communities. Several songs have been completed; see http://bit.ly/songsspd.

Also see:

• Buduburam music - audio CD project
• Popular music in Buduburam - video documentary
• Sustainable Peacebuilding through Popular Music, York University 2010
• Capturing the sound of hope[6]
• The color of hope
• Liberia: Refugees Produce CD of Music With Canadian University (Allafrica)
• Influence of music in foreign conflicts (The Daily Orange, Syracuse University)
• Cultural Dimensions of the UN’s “Responsibility to Protect” Norm, presented at Conflict, Memory, and Reconciliation: Bridging Past, Present, and Future, an international conference sponsored by the School for International Training, January 10-13, 2012 (Kigali, Rwanda)

Music for cultural continuity and civil society

Projects for cultural continuity, supporting Ewe music of Ghana, El Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Folk Music, the Egyptian Centre for Culture and Art, and AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut, including consulting as a member of the Board. Media products are designed to catalyze local social progress, raise global awareness, and generate a revenue stream for local musicians.

• Traditional Ghanaian music culture
  • Collaboration with traditional Ghanaian musicians on Kinka: Traditional songs of Avenorpedo, to sustain and develop traditional music
  • Mobilizing scholarship for talented but underprivileged Ghanaian musicians, such as Kofi Avi, so they can complete a well-rounded education.
• Traditional Egyptian music culture
  • Collaboration with El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music, Cairo, to preserve, archive, document and develop Egyptian music. We are developing an applied research project to support digitization and metadata tagging for El Mastaba's extensive collections, while simultaneously providing training in these procedures to enable sustainability, with in-kind support through secure offsite storage at the University of Alberta.
  • Collaboration with Egyptian Center for Culture and Art, Cairo: To encourage the diversity, specificity and vibrancy of Egypt's cultural scene. Have provided advisory support.
  • Collaboration with AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut: to preserve and disseminate archival recordings of traditional Arab music from the early 20th century. Member of the Board of Directors.
• World music presentations to local Edmonton schools and daycares (ongoing series of presentations, at the University of Alberta, or onsite)
• Local community outreach through performance U of A Senate to celebrate campus volunteers

Multimedia projects

Documentary video

• Giving Voice to Health: Sanitation and Safe Water - Music for Social Justice in Liberia: (music video), and (documentary). Collaborations with Liberian artists.
• Shadow and Music in Buduburam(longer version). Collaborative documentary video on and with Liberian refugee music producer. Produced with support from the President’s Fund for the Performing and Creative Arts, in collaboration with musicians of the Buduburam refugee camp.
• Songs of the New Arab Revolutions: A collaborative documentary film by members of the Society for Arab Music Research and members of the Facebook group Songs of the New Arab Revolutions[7]
• Music and Architecture in Islam (website and film, in progress...), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada ($136,000).
• The weekly Saturday hadra at the saha of Sidi Ali Zayn al-Abidin (Sufism in Cairo) (2011)
• Five Sufi hadras: Sufi chanting in Egypt 1996-1998
• Videographer for Celebrating the Prophet in the Remembrance of God: Sufi Dhikr in Egypt, an educational video produced by Dr. Valerie Hoffman, Professor in the Program for the Study of Religion, University of Illinois, 1997.

Documentary audio

• Producer and writer for cassette/CD recording: Giving Voice to Hope: Music of Liberian Refugees. Audio CD with 28 page descriptive booklet (2009), documenting music produced by musicians living in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. Since 1990s this camp has sheltered refugees from conflict in nearby Liberia. Production is designed to raise public awareness about the camp, while returning profits to its participating NGOs and artists. (http://bit.ly/buducd)
• Kinka: Traditional songs from Avenorpedo. Producer of cassette, audio CD and website (http://kinkadrum.org), and author of accompanying 40 page booklet (November 2010), based on MA thesis (1989).
• Prepared extensive liner notes for Magic of the Sufi Inshad: Sheikh Yasin al-Tuhami.

Digital repositories

• Principal Investigator and project director, VMCTM: Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music. Sponsored by Virtual Museum Canada and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. (funded by Canadian Heritage Information Network). Managed complex three year development, including over a dozen participants, a partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, and a $175,000 budget. In French and English.
• Musical change in a West African Village. Ongoing (2007-2010) collaborative research project carried out together with students participating in the UofA Ghana summer program, led by Michael Frishkopf.
• SonoCairo searchable web 2.0 catalog. Relational database containing metadata for several thousand cassette recordings produced by the Egyptian state recording company (SonoCairo) from 1962 to present, based on Egypt research 2003-04 (in development)

Technology

• FiW (folkways in Wonderland): [cyber(world]music). An immersive collaborative virtual environment for browsing world music and doing ethnomusicology. Constructed in collaboration with colleagues in computer science at the University of Aizu, Japan, and in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, with support from folkwaysAlive! and SSHRC (approx. $20,000 to date) [8]
• MuDoc (Music/Multimedia Documentation) peer-reviewed federated world music web digital repository. Designed digitial repository for music multimedia (text, score, audio, video), supported by funding from Sun Microsystems and the University of Alberta (over $300,000 total, including $150,000 from the Province of Alberta).
  • Website will enhance Folkways collection
  • FolkwaysAlive interactive centre honours ‘sounds of the people'
• biofeedback microtonal ear training... (in progress)

Educational programs

• West African Music, Dance, Language, and Culture: summer program in Ghana (initiated in 2007)
• Studies in Ethnomusicology and World Music at the University of Alberta
• Courses taught at the University of Alberta:
  • Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble] (founder, 2004; director 2004-2012)
  • West African Music Ensemble (founder, 1999; director 1999-2003)
  • Music and Religion
  • Music and Religion in Africa (665)
  • Arab and African Music (365)
  • Ethnomusicology of the Arab World
  • Music culture as a social network
  • Field methods in ethnomusicology
  • Music and Islam
• World music programs developed for Edmonton public schools (K-12)

Musical composition and improvisation

http://bit.ly/mfwikicomp

Some recent work:

(Click for notes on several of the following compositions) ...

• Helen's Necklace (several versions, and score), composed and performed for Carole Frechette's acclaimed play, and performed in 2005, at the Shadow Theatre
• Spacings, for two pianos and two flutes, inspired by forms of traditional Zimbabwean mbira music (2007)
• BaAka Soundings, a stochastic piece for variable-sized ensemble including mixed chorus, bell, and percussion sticks. Programmed in R, drawing on melodic cells and polyphonic style of the BaAka people, Central African Republic. Composed for a production of The Ik, by Colin Turnbull; directed by Heather Fitzsimmons, and performed at Edmonton’s Walterdale Playhouse, 2000.
• e-Dhikr, inspired by Sufi sounds of Cairo. Composed and performed (entirely) by M. Frishkopf, with nay, percussion, voice, and looper. (2008)
• Kurd, neo-takht composition/improvisational frame, premiered at the Dignity of Difference conference, 2009.
• For Marcel Khalife (rough sketch version). (2010)
• 40,000[9], Third Stream composition/improvisation (performed at Amnesty International's Small Places concert, University of Alberta, October 2008, towards awareness of political prisoners of the Arab world,). Inspired by Ran Blake, 3rd Stream, Arabic maqam, the Muslim adhan (call to prayer), and Olivier Messiaen's birdsongs and modes of limited transposition.

Nay improvisations...

• Nay 1 (Edmonton Sound Sessions) (2010)
• Nay 2 (Edmonton Sound Sessions) (2010)

Concert, workshop, and conference organization

(a random sample)

• I am a bird from Heaven's Garden: Music, Sound, and Architecture in the Muslim World. I co-organized this complex international conference held September 2013. Funded by a major SSHRC grant for which I serve as Principal Investigator, in collaboration with the Aga Khan University and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, as well as the Faculty of Arts and the Office of the Provost at the University of Alberta.
• Sounds and spaces of Muslim Piety. Collaborated in organizing this international conference at the University of Alberta, May 2011.
• The Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble at the Winspear, Edmonton (2011)
• The Music of Rumi, a celebration of his 800th birthday (2007).
• Master of Islamic vocal arts to perform on campus : organized visit of acclaimed Egyptian Islamic reciter (munshid) Shaykh Mohamed el-Helbawy, including workshops, concerts, and community-linked events (2005)
• Annual World Music Sampler, 2005 to present (yearly concert featuring our three world music ensembles: the West African Music Ensemble, the Indian Music Ensemble, and the Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble)

In the media...

• CBC: Music and Development in Ghana (Radio Active)
• BBC Arabic: music of the poor[10]
• Afro-pop worldwide:
  • on Qur'anic recitation
  • on Sufism and the moulid
  • on Giving Voice to Hope
• Influence of music in foreign conflicts (The Daily Orange, Syracuse University)
• Sustainable peacebuilding through popular music (York University)
• Thus Spake the Reed Flute (al-Ahram Weekly)
• Liberia: Refugees Produce CD of Music With Canadian University (Allafrica)
• Célébrer tout en musique (CBC)
• Salsa de Arabia (World Changing)
• University of Alberta composers