MofA Week 1: What is “music of the Arab world”?
Unity in Music of the Arab world?
Category of "Arab music" - is it coherent? Note that this question can be answered by recourse to discourse (do people use such a category? (Is it "emic"?) If so, what does it mean for them?) or by recourse to sound (can we list a set of attributes which define such a category?)
Let's take the latter approach, considering objective audio-visual data presented in class. What features recur? Try to fill in the following list by editing the following pages, before reviewing my own list below. (Emotional and behavioral features require that you watch the music - via video.)
- Audio examples on CD
- Video examples on DVD
(x4ng)
thought questions:
To what degree do these features gather musics of the Arab world? To what degree do these features exclude musics of other worlds?
Is "music of the Arab world" an objectively coherent category? What about "Arab music" - can a satisfactory definition be established, independent of discursive use?
Unity of Arab music (my list; don't look until you've thought about the issue yourself!)
