Launch of Music and identity in the Middle East and Central Asia Seminars
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies
And
Cambridge Central Asia Forum
University of Cambridge
Music and identity in the Middle East and Central Asia
This programme of lectures is jointly hosted by Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies and Cambridge Central Asia Forum, University of Cambridge, Michaelmas term, 2009 (13 October- 17 November). The lectures are to be held in the Faculty of Middle Eastern and Asian Studies, at the Sidgwick Site.
Programme Convener: Dr Razia Sultanova
For Information please contact: Secretary@cis.cam.ac.uk
Music is a fundamental art which reveals ethnic identity in a simpler way than other arts. Merely by listening to the first sounds of the music we recognise the area of origin, the time period when it was created, the intended audience and the proposed content of the performed genre. This series of seminars, to be held from 13 October to 17 of November of the Michaelmas term 2009, is intended to illustrate how music is received in the Middle East and Central Asia, how and when it is played, what the main value of music is, and for whom it is performed.
The aim of this Seminar is to consider the role and the function of music in the construction of identity in different ethnicities of the Middle East and Central Asia (Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, the Uyghur province of China). Each presentation is planned to end with a musical performance.
In reconsidering different national musical styles - whether they concern popular music, folk, or art music - the seminars aim to show how they can be interpreted by nations in order to define themselves. Discussion will therefore concentrate on different aspects of identity construction in the field of music, aiming to clarify the extent of influences common to different nations - for example, political context, sociological context, or ideological context.
Programme
Tuesday 13th Oct, 2009
Dr Razia Sultanova, Cambridge Central Asian Forum/ SOAS
Music and Identity in Central Asian Wedding Celebrations
Dr Razia Sultanova, Fellow of Cambridge Central Asia Forum, University of Cambridge, is a graduate of Uzbek State Conservatory and of the Moscow State Conservatory, where she completed her PhD in musicology. She has taught musicology and ethnomusicology at Uzbek State Conservatory, Moscow State Conservatory, Goldsmiths College and SOAS, University of London, and at Leeds University. Her primary areas of research are Central Asian and Middle Eastern music, Islam and music, and gender and music. For the last fifteen years she has been conducting intensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the Central Asian republics (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan), publishing many articles in English, German, French, Chinese, Russian and Uzbek. Her recent publications concern the musical traditions of the Islamic world, at present produced by I. B. Tauris as a monograph ‘From Shamanism to Sufism: Women and Islam in Central Asian Culture’. She also edited ‘Sacred Knowledge: Schools or Revelations’. Master-Apprentice Music Training in the Turkic Speaking World for Lambert Academic Publishing, Germany.
Tuesday 20th Oct, 2009
Jane Lewisohn, SOAS.
The Golha radio programs and the preservation of Persian Music
Jane Lewisohn lived in Iran during the 1970s for over five years and is a graduate of Pahalavi University, Shiraz, Iran. She has been involved in the research and promotion of various aspects of Persian Studies for the last three decades. Since 2005 she has been directing the Golha Project under the auspices of the British Library, London, and the Music Department of SOAS, University of London. She has archived and digitalised the whole archive of the Golha radio programmes broadcast on Iranian Radio from 1956 through 1979. She is now working in collaboration with the Iran Heritage Foundation to make this Golha Archive and all the related research concerning the Golha Archive available over the internet.
Wednesday 28th Oct, 2009
Professor John Baily, Goldsmiths College
Afghan music and Afghanistani identity: From Ariana to Australia
John Baily came into ethnomusicology from experimental psychology, with a doctorate on human spatial coordination and motor control from the University of Sussex. In 1973 he became a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology, Queen’s University of Belfast, and in collaboration with John Blacking conducted two years of ethnomusicological fieldwork in Afghanistan. In 1978 he was appointed Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at Queen’s. From 1984-86 he trained in anthropological film making at the National Film and Television School, and directed the award-winning film Amir: An Afghan refugee musician’s life in Peshawar, Pakistan. From 1988-1990 he was Associate Professor in the Centre for Ethnomusicology, Columbia University, New York. He joined Goldsmiths in 1990, and later became Professor of Ethnomusicology and Head of the Afghanistan Music Unit. Baily’s principal research interests are: cognitive ethnomusicology, performance, ethnomusicological film, and music & migration.
Tuesday 3rd November, 2009
Dr Rachel Harris, SOAS
The London Uyghur Ensemble:
Performing Central Asian Muslim identity in China and in the UK
Rachel Harris is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in ethnomusicology and on the music of Central Asia and China. She was co-editor of the journal ‘Ethnomusicology Forum’ between 2004 and 2007. Her book, ‘Singing the Village: memories, music and ritual amongst the Sibe of Xinjiang’ is published by Oxford University Press (2004). Her current research specialism is in Uyghur music; she has published on aspects of the music culture from ritual contexts to globalisation, pop and identity politics. She co-edited the cross-disciplinary volume ‘Situating the Uyghurs between China and Central Asia’ (Ashgate 2007), and her latest book is on the Uyghur Muqam: ‘The Making of a Musical Canon in Chinese Central Asia’ (Ashgate 2008). She has collaborated in the production of several CD recordings, and plays dutar with the London Uyghur Ensemble.
Tuesday 10th November, 2009
Dr Laudan Nooshin, City University, London
We have to become Universal: Popular Music and the Play of Identities in Contemporary Iran.
Laudan Nooshin gained her BA in Music from the University of Leeds in 1984 and her MMus in Ethnomusicology from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, in 1986, where she also taught between 1987 and 1991. Her PhD thesis (Goldsmiths’ College, 1996) was a study of creative performance in Iranian classical music. Prior to joining City, Laudan taught in the Department of Performing Arts at Brunel University between 1993 and 2003, where she was Course Director for Music from 2001-3. Laudan has carried out fieldwork both in Iran - in 1999, 2000 and 2002, for which she received funding from the British Institute of Persian Studies - and among Iranians in the UK. Laudan regularly reviews CDs for the world music magazine Songlines and is often contacted for advice and information on Iranian music. She has acted as a consultant on Iranian music to the Horniman Museum and is regularly invited to present research seminars at UK Universities. Laudan has convened a number of conferences for the British Forum for Ethnomusicology and is currently on the Editorial Boards for the journals Twentieth Century Music (Cambridge University Press) and Ethnomusicology Forum (Routledge).
Tuesday 17th November, 2009
Dr John O’Connell (Cardiff University)
Music in Moderation:
Music and Identity among Jews in Istanbul (1923-1938)
Dr O’Connell is a graduate of Oxford University, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the University of California (Los Angeles) where he completed his PhD in ethnomusicology on Turkish music. He has taught ethnomusicology at Otago University and the University of Limerick, having held a number of visiting positions at The Queen’s University of Belfast and Brown University, amongst others. His publications concern in principle the musical traditions of the Islamic world. He is co-editor of Music in Conflict: Ethnomusicological Perspectives (Illinois UP, forthcoming) and author of many articles on Middle Eastern topics. He is at present completing a book on the alaturka phenomenon in Turkey and publishing a monograph on the madoh tradition in Tajikistan. His research interests also include the traditional music of Europe and he is currently editing a collection of relevant essays for Scarecrow Press concerning the place of ethnomusicology in different European nation states.