MUCT 2360: Music Cultures of Central Asia

John Miles Foley offers an innovative and straightforward approach to the structural analysis of oral and oral-derived traditional texts. Professor Foley argues that to give the vast and complex body of oral "literature" its due, we must first come to terms with the endemic heterogeneity of traditional oral epics, with their individual histories, genres, and documents, as well as both the synchronic and diachronic aspects of their poetics. Until now, the emphasis in studies of oral traditional works has been placed on addressing the correspondences among traditions-shared structures of "formula," "theme," and "story-pattern." Traditional Oral Epic explores the incongruencies among traditions and focuses on the qualities specific to certain oral and oral-derived works. It is certain to inspire further research in this field.

Research is beginning to unearth the astounding wealth of oral traditions that have served as a vital cultural activity and verbal art for peoples throughout the world, from antiquity to the present. In this thirteenth volume of the MLA series Options for Teaching, forty-two scholar-teachers bring these discoveries and rediscoveries from the scholarly forum to the classroom. The essays in this exciting field touch on more than a hundred traditions and draw from the methodologies of literary studies, folklore, anthropology, and linguistics. They are filled with vivid specifics. Among the subjects discussed are the unwritten roots of the Bible; the genesis and art of the Homeric poems; Native American traditions, like the Zuni "Deer Boy" tale and the Quechua proverb "Corn-Planting Day"; the performance of the African American toast "Stagolee"; Old English charms for afflictions; Mexican American corridos; the Travelling People of Scotland; African trickster tales; women's songs of mid-eleventh-century Andalusia; a Yiddish picaresque narrative; the fifth-century Indian Tale of an Anklet; South Slavic epics; the oral traditions behind Beowulf and behind the Canterbury Tales; the professional entertainers (jongleurs) of medieval France; and Icelandic sagas. Teaching Oral Traditions demonstrates the importance of performance and challenges many current assumptions about the authority of the written word.

In his final book, the late Arthur Hatto analyses the Khanty epic tradition in Siberia on the basis of eighteen texts of Khanty oral heroic epic poems recorded and edited by a succession of Hungarian and Russian scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book examines the world view of an indigenous culture as reconstructed from its own words, demonstrates a flexible outline for organising an analytical dossier of the genre of oral heroic epic poetry in a specific culture, and presents an abundance of new information to compare with better-known heroic epics. Consisting of main sections on The Cosmos, Time, The Seasons, Geography, Spirits, Personae, Warfare, Armour and Weapons, and Men's Handiwork, the book also includes a section of background information on the Khanty people. Marianne Bakró-Nagy contributes specialist knowledge of the Khanty language to the linguistic interpretation of the texts, and there is an afterword by Daniel Prior.

Albert Bates Lord here offers an unparalleled overview of the nature of oral-traditional epic songs and the practices of the singers who composed them. Shaped by the conviction that theory should be based on what singers actually do, and have done in times past, the essays collected here span half a century of Lord's research on the oral tradition from Homer to the twentieth century. Drawing on his extensive fieldwork in living oral traditions and on the theoretical writings of Milman Parry, Lord concentrates on the singers and their art as manifested in texts of performance. In thirteen essays, some previously unpublished and all of them revised for book publication, he explores questions of composition, transmittal, and interpretation and raises important comparative issues. Individual chapters discuss aspects of the Homeric poems, South Slavic oral-traditional epics, the songs of Avdo Metedovic, Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon poetry, the medieval Greek Digenis Akritas and other medieval epics, central Asiatic and Balkan epics, the Finnish Kalevala, and the Bulgarian oral epic. The work of one of the most respected scholars of his generation, Epic Singers and Oral Tradition will be an invaluable resource for scholars and students of myth and folklore, classicists, medievalists, Slavists, comparatists, literary theorists, and anthropologists.

Part I: The theory -- Introduction -- Singers: performance and training -- The formula -- The theme -- Songs and the song -- Writing and oral tradition -- Part II: The application -- Homer -- The odyssey -- The Iliad -- Some notes on Medieval epic

As the Soviet Union stood on the brink of collapse, thousands of Bukharian Jews left their homes from across the predominantly Muslim cities of Central Asia, to reestablish their lives in the United States, Israel and Europe. Today, about thirty thousand Bukharian Jews reside in New York City, settled into close-knit communities and existing as a quintessential American immigrant group. For Bukharian immigrants, music is an essential part of their communal self-definition, and musicians frequently act as cultural representatives for the group as a whole. Greeted with Smiles: Bukharian Jewish Music and Musicians in New York explores the circumstances facing new American immigrants, using the music of the Bukharian Jews to gain entrance into their community and their culture. Author Evan Rapport investigates the transformation of Bukharian identity through an examination of corresponding changes in its music, focusing on three of these distinct but overlapping repertoires - maqom (classical or "heavy" music), Jewish religious music and popular party (or "light") music. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation and music lessons, Rapport interprets the personal perspectives of musicians who serve as community leaders and representatives. By adapting strategies acquired as an ethno-religious minority among Central Asian Muslim neighbors, Bukharian musicians have adjusted their musical repertoire in their new American home. The result is the creation of a distinct Bukharian Jewish American identity-their musical activities are changing the city's cultural landscape while at the same time providing for an understanding of the cultural implications of Bukharian diaspora. Greeted with Smiles is sure to be an essential text for ethnomusicologists and scholars of Jewish and Central Asian music and culture, Jewish-Muslim interaction and diasporic communities.

Contains the article “Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutar" by John Baily.

After the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Turkey's secularized society disdained the ney, the Sufi reed flute long associated with Islam. The instrument's remarkable revival in today's cities has inspired the creation of teaching and learning sites that range from private ney studios to cultural and religious associations and from university clubs to mosque organizations. Banu Şenay documents the years-long training required to become a neyzen--a player of the ney. The process holds a transformative power that invites students to create a new way of living that involves alternative relationships with the self and others, changing perceptions of the city, and a dedication to craftsmanship. Şenay visits reed harvesters and travels from studios to workshops to explore the practical processes of teaching and learning. She also becomes an apprentice ney-player herself, exploring the desire for spirituality that encourages apprentices and masters alike to pursue ney music and its scaffolding of Islamic ethics and belief.

From the cymbals and gongs used by Chinese priests use to invoke deities to the oboes and drums of Turkish weddings, music and its related instruments are an integral part of life throughout Asia. Sounds of the Silk Road surveys the instruments of Asia and the traditions that have engendered them, offering the reader ways to approach these often unfamiliar objects and the music they produce. This beautiful book is the first to deal with this topic in such depth and breadth, and is the first to feature of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's world-renowned collection of Asian instruments. Each chapter focuses on a specific country's musical traditions and instruments. Some 50 instruments are highlighted, ranging from silk-stringed zithers to shell trumpets and from double-headed drums made from human skulls to the complex Javanese gamelan. Intended for the general reader, this visually stunning volume introduces the uses, sounds, history, playing technique, decoration and symbolism of Asia's skillfully crafted and fascinatingly diverse musical instruments.

""This erudite, absorbing volume chronicles the travels of ethnomusicologist Theodore Levin through urban and rural Transoxania... He writes in evocative, imaginative, personalized prose that vividly captures the flavor of his everyday experiences, providing plush visual detail, trenchant character profiles, attention to perplexing local hospitality codes and the shaping hand of gender, throughout."" -- Slavic Review .."". extremely informative, using music as a platform for a much wider discussion of cultural and political issues."" -- Times Literary Supplement, London ""The subject is music, but Levin uses it to cast a wider light, revealing places of considerable sorrow long hidden in the shadows of Soviet power, and to create a travelogue with wide potential appeal.... Candor about his own uncertainties and personal struggles helps make this a personal as well as a scholarly adventure."" -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""Not to be missed by those interested in music and world culture... "" -- Library Journal .."". may be destined to become the definitive work on the music of this newly accessed region."" -- Dirty Linen The Hundred Thousand Fools of God assembles a living musical and ethnographic map by highlighting the fate of traditions, beliefs, and social relationships in Muslim and Jewish Central Asian cultures during and after seventy years of Soviet rule. Theodore Levin evokes the spectacular physical and human geography of the area and weaves a rich ethnography of the life styles, values, and art of the musical performers. Photographs, maps, and an accompanying CD (featuring 24 on-site recordings) make The Hundred Thousand Fools of God a unique reading and listening experience.

What is it about the history, geographical position and cultures of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia that has made music such a potent and powerful agent? This volume presents the first direct look at the complex relationship between music and power across a range of musical genres and countries. Discourses of power in the region centre on some of the most contested social issues, most notably in relation to nationhood, gender and religion. Individual chapters examine the ways in which music serves as a forum for playing out issues of power, ideology, resistance and subversion. How does music become a space for promoting - or conversely, resisting or subverting - particular ideologies or positions of authority? How does it accrue symbolic power in ways that are very particular, perhaps unique? And how does music become a site of social control or, alternatively, a vehicle for agency and empowerment, at times overt and at others highly subtle? What is it about music that facilitates, and sometimes disrupts, the exercise and flows of power? Who controls such flows, how and for what purposes? In asking such questions in the context of countries such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia and Tajikistan, the book draws on a wide range of relevant theoretical and critical ideas, and many disciplines including ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, politics, Middle Eastern studies, globalization studies, gender studies and cultural and media studies. The countries and areas explored share a great deal in historical and cultural terms, including a legacy of colonial and neo-colonial encounters and predominantly Judeo-Muslim religious traditions. It is hoped that the volume will contribute ultimately to a richer understanding of the role that music plays in these societies.

The Turkic soundscape is both geographically huge and culturally diverse (twenty-eight countries, republics and districts extending from Eastern Europe through the Caucasus and throughout Central Asia). Although the Turkic peoples of the world can trace their linguistic and genetic ancestries to common sources, their extensive geographical dispersion and widely varying historical and political experiences have generated a range of different expressive music forms. In addition, the break-up of the Soviet Union and increasing globalization have resulted in the emergence of new viewpoints on classical and folk traditions, Turkic versions of globalized popular culture, and re-workings of folk and religious practices to fit new social needs. In line with the opening up of many Turkic regions in the post-Soviet era, awareness of scholarship from these regions has also increased. Consisting of twelve individual contributions that reflect the geographical breadth of the area under study, the collection addresses animist and Islamic religious songs; the historical development of Turkic musical instruments; ethnography and analysis of classical court music traditions; cross-cultural influences throughout the Turkic world; music and mass media; and popular music in traditional contexts. The result is a well-balanced survey of music in the Turkic-speaking world, representing folk, popular and classical traditions equally, as well as discussing how these traditions have changed in response to growing modernity and cosmopolitanism in Europe and Central Asia.

For the Sufis of India and Pakistan, the Qawwali songs are 'food for the soul', a means of attaining union with God, the ecstatic culmination of mystical experience. Regula Burckhardt Qureshi's study carefully describes and documents the performance of this music in the traditional Sufi assembly, the ritual of sama', first presenting the rich musical repertoire of Qawwali song, and then exploring everything else that is relevant to an understanding of the ritual: the profound belief system and its powerful articulation through mystical poetry in three languages (Farsi, Hindi, Urdu), the social and economic relationships between Sufi listeners and musicians, and, finally, all the specific rules governing the making of and listening to Qawwali in the Sufi assembly. All this leads up to a moment-by-moment account of actual Qawwali performances where the interplay between the musical sound and the diverse and often dramatic audience responses is described and analysed by the author.

David MacFadyen delves into influential and widely disseminated songs that had a profound social significance in the Soviet Union. He discusses each singer's life, showing what it was that made them famous while placing the differences in their careers and fame in the context of Soviet culture as a whole. MacFadyen's multi-layered study considers national identity, gender, and the development of individual celebrity in a socialist state. He also looks at whether it is possible for artists to achieve genuine self-expression in a public arena under continuous political scrutiny. Both bold and penetrating, MacFadyen reveals a part of the Soviet Union that, while touching millions of people, has remained almost completely unexamined.