Series Editor: Theodore Levin & Jonas Otterbeck
The Music & Performance in Muslim Contexts (MPMC) is a joint series with the Aga Khan Music Programme and published in association with Edinburgh University Press which presents innovative scholarship in music, dance, theatre and other performative practices and varieties of expressive culture inspired or shaped by Muslim artistic, cultural, intellectual, religious and social heritage, including in new creative forms. Bringing together outstanding new work by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, the series embraces contemporary and historical cultural spheres both within Muslim-majority societies and in diasporic subcultures and micro-cultures around the world.
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Music Making in Iran from the 15th to the Early 20th Century
Amir Hosein Pourjavady
Music Making in Iran looks at the change and evolution of music in Iran from both social and theoretical perspectives.
Amir Hosein Pourjavady scrutinises the emergence and development of modal entities, rules for modulation, the formation of court repertoires, the progress of rhythmic structures, vocal and instrumental genres and forms of composition. Through this lens, Hosein investigates how Iranian music has been impacted by Western influence, socio-political developments and contact with other musical cultures.
Based on primary sources, the book reveals many new discoveries in its examination of music making during this period, including its centres of patronage, the social organisation of musicians, courtesan and concubine culture and performance contexts.
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From Rumi to the Whirling Dervishes: Music, Poetry and Mysticism in the Ottoman Empire
Walter Feldman
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets.
Yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the remarkable musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin – the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes.
This accessible introduction to the relationship between music and the performative elements of Sufi practice presents the biographies of the principal Mevlevi musicians, showing both their creation of the music of the ayin and their key role in the development of Ottoman court music. It also includes numerous original translations of Turkish verse by major Mevlevi poets and presents music examples with explanation, both in the book and freely available on the Aga Khan Music Programme website.
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The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music
Jonas Otterbeck
Awakening – an Islamic media company formed in London – has created the soundtrack to many Muslim lives during the last two decades. It has produced three superstars (Sami Yusuf, Maher Zain and Harris J.) among a host of other artists. As the company celebrates their first 20 years in the industry, Jonas Otterbeck examines their remarkable rise to success and their established reputation as one of the most important global enterprises producing pop music inspired by Islam.
Otterbeck thoroughly describes the history and development of new Islamic popular music genres, in particular pop-nashid and Islamic pop, for the first time. He argues that Awakening – a company with the ambition to portray itself as Islamic – is best understood in relation to the ethical turn in Islamic thinking. In analysing the turn to ethics, he explores how the Islamic pop industry is, in effect, altering the very formulations of Islamic thought.
Closely examining the ethical masculinity of the Awakening artists, alongside their personas in songs, on stage and on social media, the book analyses how popular culture and the creative arts challenge Islamic (re)thinking.