Recent Posts
- “They Took the Heart of Mugham!”
- Strand 7: Bastakor and maqām-based creativity in Uzbekistan
- Connecting through Nava
- Giovanni De Zorzi: Istanbul fieldwork 2024-25
- Masterclass with Ilyos Arabov
- Neva Mugham in post-Soviet Azerbaijan
- Geopoetics
- Ensemble Bezmara performing in Venice
- New article by Polina Dessiatnitchenko
- THE 2024 BLACKING LECTURE
- SEM 2024 annual conference
Masterclass with Ilyos Arabov
Concert at SOAS: Music and Dance of Tajikistan
The Team
- Rachel Harris
- Giovanni De Zorzi
- Polina Dessiatnitchenko
- Saeid Kordmafi
- Mukaddas Mijit
- Aziz Isa Elkun
- Rosa Vercoe
- Eugene Leung
- Will Sumits
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Strand 7: Bastakor and maqām-based creativity in Uzbekistan
Eugene Leung This strand explores creativity in Tajik-Uzbek ‘national’ music through the figure of the bastakor, the creator of new works in traditional styles by drawing on the maqām traditions of Bukhara, Khorezm, and Ferghana-Tashkent, as well as more popular genres influenced by them. Although these maqām repertoires are viewed as closed, manybastakor compositions are recognised as extensions that sustain the tradition’s vitality. This practice of creative adaptation has endured from the […]
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Strand 1: Maqām across the Soviet-Chinese divide
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Strand 2: Migrant memories, migrant creativities
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Strand 3: Neo-Ottomanism and maqām revival
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Strand 4: Pre-national links across Iran and the Caucasus
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Strand 5: Post-Soviet Muslim transnational musical subjectivities
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Strand 6: New Creativities in Iranian Classical Music
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Project Strands
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Project People
Maqām Beyond Nation
Maqām Beyond Nation explores a field of music-making that stretches from North Africa to Central Asia; a set of historically fluid and inter-connected creative practices which were transformed under 20th century nationalisms into fixed repertoires. The project seeks to understand the major changes which are now weakening these nationalist models. We attend to the musical materials and their potential for new creativity, and to the social: how a focus on expressive culture can further our understanding of the aesthetics of religious revival and cultural responses to the experience of forced migration. Our case studies are fault lines across the maqām world – among them the former Soviet-Chinese border, and the border between Iran and Azerbaijan – key spaces where shared traditions of music-making were split apart by the formation of new nation states. To understand these spaces, we draw on archival, analytical and ethnographic research, as well as practice- based creative collaboration. Our findings will be shared through an exciting programme of workshops and conferences, publications and films, collaborative performances and compositions. Read more >>