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.
This book interrogates musicological discourses of creativity from the perspective of critical theory and postcolonial studies, examining their ideological underpinnings and the relationships of alterity which they sustain. The repertoire which forms the book’s main focus is Iranian classical music, a tradition in which the performer plays a central creative role. Addressing a number of central issues regarding the nature of musical creativity, the author explores both the discourses through which ideas about creativity are constructed, exchanged and negotiated within this tradition, and the practices by which new music comes into being.
Defining Iran presents a new and revealing analysis of the way in which Iranian political discourses compete with each other by examining them within the framework of national identity construction. By deconstructing the intellectual roots and development of Iranian national identity, Shabnam Holliday advocates the need to study Iran's heritage and historical experience to understand key shifts and processes in contemporary Iranian politics. Holliday convincingly argues that competing discourses of national identity advocated by political figures from Musaddiq to the current administration demonstrate a politics of resistance to both internal and external forces. With a particular emphasis on Khatami’s presidency, this study compares the meanings attached by significant members of the Iranian political elite to concepts including Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage, Islamic heritage, civilization, 'democracy' and the 'West'. Furthermore, discourses of Iranian national identity exist not in isolation but rather as part of a continuous process construction and reconstruction in Iran's journey of political development; a process manifested so vividly in the revolution of 1979 and the fallout from the 2009 presidential election. Defining Iran simultaneously furthers our understanding of the conceptualization of national identity both generally and specifically in the case of Iran and political dynamics which shape contemporary Iran.
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