Maqām Beyond Nation
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Strand 1: Maqām across the Soviet-Chinese divide
Rachel Harris, Giovanni De Zorzi, Mukaddas Mijit This strand aims at “unbordering” Central Asian maqām repertoires across the former Soviet-Chinese divide. It focuses on repertoires canonised in the twentieth century as the separate Uzbek and Tajik Shashmaqām, and the Uyghur Twelve Muqam, and also less recognised regional maqām traditions from Khorezm, Ferghana and Turpan. Since the mid-twentieth century these repertoires have been extensively nationalised, and the overwhelming thrust of scholarship, […]
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Strand 2: Migrant memories, migrant creativities
Rachel Harris, Mukaddas Mijit, Aziz Isa Elkun This strand attends to human mobilities impelled by political violence and repression, the experience of migrants and the role of music-making in precarious lives; how music-making meets everyday needs for intimacy and belonging across borders, and the intersections of artistic and activist projects undertaken by migrants. Working with a transnational network of exile Uyghur Sufi devotees, we will document their cross-border histories, and […]
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Strand 3: Neo-Ottomanism and maqām revival
Giovanni De Zorzi This strand concerns the revival of Ottoman art music and Sufi-inspired forms of spirituality in contemporary Turkey. Under the Turkish Republic, Ottoman art music underwent a long period of neglect, Sufi lodges were closed, and their musical ceremonies prohibited. Since the 1980s, the revival of Ottoman culture has become a major transnational trend. In the sphere of music, the revival process has involved the rediscovery of repertoires […]
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Strand 4: Pre-national links across Iran and the Caucasus
Polina Dessiatnitchenko, Saeid Kordmafi This strand comprises a comparative study of maqām-based dastghī repertoires which were spread over Iran and Caucasus in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, we explore shared networks of exchange and patronage among Iranian and Azerbaijani musicians, the presence of Iranian religious singers (ta‘ziyya khâns) in urban centres in Azerbaijan, and the majlis gatherings which hosted Iranian musicians and nurtured these […]
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Strand 5: Post-Soviet Muslim transnational musical subjectivities
Polina Dessiatnitchenko This strand focuses on how mugham is part of the current increasing ties between Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey and other regions in the Muslim world, and the emergence of post-Soviet Muslim transnational musical subjectivities. Significant aspects of the revival in Azerbaijan include the reintroduction of neutral tones, efforts to rediscover lost repertoire, new discourses around Divine love (ishq); emphasis on the prosodic meters (‘arūḍ) and spiritual meanings of the ghazal […]
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Strand 6: New Creativities in Iranian Classical Music
Saeid Kordmafi This strand explores the potentials for incorporating into contemporary Iranian classical music performance musical materials, techniques and structures drawn from three neighbouring music cultures: Arab, Tajik and Azerbaijani classical traditions. One of the key issues of concern to Iranian musicians over the last few decades has been a perception of the stagnancy of creativity in contemporary Iranian classical music. One response has come from a group of revivalist […]
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Project Strands
MAQĀM BEYOND NATION is designed in the form of six interlinked research strands based in different contact zones across the maqām world. Strand 1: Maqām across the Soviet-Chinese divide Rachel Harris, Giovanni De Zorzi, Mukaddas Mijit This strand aims at “unbordering” Central Asian maqām repertoires across the former Soviet-Chinese divide. It focuses on repertoires canonised in the twentieth century as the separate Uzbek and Tajik Shashmaqām, and the Uyghur Twelve […]
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Project People
Advisory Board: Abduvali Abdurashidov (Tajikistan)Jean During (France)Sasan Fatemi (Iran)Denise Gill (US)Anne Rasmussen (US)Owen Wright (UK) Rachel Harris Rachel Harris (Principal Investigator) is Professor of Music at SOAS, University of London. Her research centres on China and Central Asia, and especially on Uyghur expressive culture. She has conducted fieldwork in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over a period of twenty years. Her work focuses on intangible cultural heritage, […]
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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 […]