Music in Arabia

"The volume's wonderful essays are intriguing in the paradoxes they reveal about Arabian heritage projects: the paradox of once oppressed and marginalized musical cultures now 'representing' the nation; the paradox of performing the 'local' by outsourcing its production to diasporic musicians and production facilities abroad; the paradox of proud provincialism shot through with cosmopolitan outlooks; and more. Especially welcome is the contribution of scholars from Arabia, not to mention their deep collaborations with ethnomusicologists from Europe and the US. This is a truly collective endeavor and a model for post-colonial scholarship in this or any other part of the world."

~Steve Caton, author of Peaks of Yemen I Summon, Khalid bin Abdullah Abdurahman Al Saud Professor of Contemporary Arab Studies, Harvard University

"Music in Arabia: Perspectives of Heritage, Mobility and Nation is a major contribution to the study of music and other modes of expressive culture in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf region. It provides multiple readings by younger scholars and established intellectuals, natives to the region and outsiders, on the diverse and rich cultural practices that thrive in this vast area and their articulation with the cosmopolitan, dynamic and changing environment in which they are embedded. The book highlights the centrality of the historical and contemporary transnational circulation across Africa, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean in the configuration of the cosmopolitan formations that shape the region's expressive practices. It also addresses the safeguarding, folklorization, heritagization and commodification of the traditional arts and their uses in national identity building processes and in cultural diplomacy. It deals with music and dance in gendered spaces, past and present, and the uses of technology and the internet in the production and dissemination of music. Additionally, it offers a critical reflection on alternative spaces where artists who engage in transnational expressive practices such as hip-hop and heavy metal interrogate essentialist representations of identity and the dynamics of democracy, globalization and public protest in the Arab World. Music in Arabia challenges the reader to rethink the conventional conceptual mappings, the ideological underpinnings, and the sound referents associated with 'Arab and Middle Eastern music.'"

~Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco, Professor Emerita of the Nova University of Lisbon, President of the International Council for Traditional Music

"The authors here have brought us an authoritative account of the musical traditions of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf. Here, one can hear the mournful wailing of the pearl diver, the somber plucking of the oud-strings, and the beat of the hand drum, and can see the changing backdrop against which music in the Gulf has been produced and performed. This is a musical world unbounded, pulsing through the coasts and port cities of Arabia and across the water – a tradition with arms stretching in many different directions. Historians of the Middle East ought to pay attention, but so too should historians of music and recording around the Indian Ocean world."

~Fahad Bishara, Professor of History and Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies, University of Virginia, author of A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950

"This instantly indispensable volume will transform scholarly conversations and university courses on musics of the Middle East and the Indian Ocean world. More than an introductory survey, it opens the door to a dynamic ethnomusicology of the Arabian Peninsula, by drawing out its key themes of heritage, nation-building, and the musical constitution of community within, across, and beyond national boundaries."

~Andrew Eisenberg, Assistant Professor of Music, NYU Abu Dhabi

"Music in Arabia, a comprehensive collection of solid research on the diverse and ever-changing music traditions of the Arabian Peninsula is beautifully written and a delightful read. The little-known contributions of the region's varied linguistic and ethnic populations to its music, dance and poetic heritage are well-documented, and the collaboration of local and international experts is notable. This is a valuable resource on the 21st Century music of the Peninsula and its Red Sea-Indian Ocean network."

~Najwa Adra, Senior Researcher, Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences

"Music in Arabia is a well put together book, offering an intergenerational, multivocal arrangement of short essays that put up many signposts for future research. . . . This anthology breaks new ground in content and form, and the music traditions discussed coexist and co-resist reformatting or the compression needed to fit neatly together. It is an important contribution."

~Amy Horowitz, Indiana University, Journal of Folklore Research

"Music in Arabia is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of studies of culture and heritage in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region. . . . In conjunction with emerging scholarship on culture in and around the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf, this valuable work should also open up new avenues of critical scholarship on the Indian Ocean region—a zone of circulation and contact par excellence—akin to recent advances in Mediterranean studies."

~Jonathan H. Shannon, Hunter College, CUNY, Journal of Anthropological Research