Music in Arabia

Issa Boulos is Director of the Harper Community Music and Arts Center at Harper College. His compositions are commissioned and performed by nationally acclaimed orchestras and ensembles, and his original scores are featured in documentary films. Virginia Danielson is Associate of the Harvard Music Department and Visiting Scholar at NYU Abu Dhabi. She is author of "The Voice of Egypt": Umm Kulthūm, Arabic Song, and Egyptian Society in the Twentieth Century and editor (with Dwight Reynolds and Scott Marcus) of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 6: The Middle East. Anne K. Rasmussen is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Bickers Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the College of William & Mary. She is also Director of the William and Mary Middle Eastern Music Ensemble and past president of the Society for Ethnomusicology. She is author of Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Contemporary Indonesia and editor (with Kip Lornell) of The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States and (with David Harnish) of Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia.

• PrefaceNote on TransliterationNote on Accompanying Website1. Introduction, by Virginia Danielson2. Aspects of the Musical Traditions in the Arabian Peninsula: Distinctive Features, Institutional Preservation, Patrimonial Negotiation, by Scheherazade Hassan3. The Oil Economy and the Perpetuation of Musical Heritage in Abu Dhabi, by Virginia Danielson4. (Re)Patriating the Business of Music in Oman: Examples of the Tangible and Intangible in an Omani Arts Economy, by Anne K. Rasmussen5. Kuwaiti Pearl Diving Music and The Mayouf Mejally Folkloric Ensemble: Beyond an Authorized Heritage Discourse, by Ghazi Al Mulaifi6. Which Lute was Played in the Sawt of the Gulf before the 20th Century?, by Jean Lambert7. The Recordings of 'AbdullaIf al-Kuwaiti: 1927-1947, by Ahmad AlSalhi8. Līwa: A Tale of Adaptation, Survival, and Sustainability, by Aisha Bilkhair9. The Art of the Tambūra in Qatar: African Identity Reimagined, by Issa Boulos and Yassine Ayari10. Beyond Aesthetics: Political Diplomacy and Cultural Policy in the Musics of the Sultanate of Oman, by Majid H. al-Harthy11. Songstresses of Saudi Arabia, by Kay Hardy Campbell12. Wedding Music: An Ethnography of Male Songs and Dances at Traditional Weddings in the United Arab Emirates, by Khalid Albudoor and Issa Boulos13. Gender and Genres of Arab Music in the Collection of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936), by Anne van Oostrum14. The Oman Center for Traditional Music: 1983-2016, by Musallam al-Kathiri and Majid H. al-Harthy15. Baloch Cultural Circuits in the Context of the Musical Ethnography of the Gulf Region, by George Mürer16. Reimagining Protest, Reform, and the Public Sphere in Bahraini Hip-Hop and Heavy Metal, by David A. McDonald17. Afterword, by Ruth M. StoneGlossaryIndex

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 (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 (Journal of Anthropological Research)