[Bilimsel Haber] LECTURE SERIES- Music and identity in the Middle East and Central Asia, U. of Cambridge, Fall 2009

[Gonul Pultar]

LECTURE SERIES- Music and Identity in Middle East and C. Asia, U. of 
Cambridge

Posted by: Razia Sultanova <rs59 at soas.ac.uk>



Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies
(www.cmeis.cam.ac.uk)
And
Cambridge Central Asia Forum
(www.cambridge-centralasia.org)

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  rs588 at cam.ac.uk
For information please contact: Secretary at 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.


Dr Razia Sultanova
Music Department
SOAS
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1H OXG
tel: (44)2078984564
email:rs59 at soas.ac.uk
razia.sultanova at soas.ac.uk




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