A.J. Racy, a scholar of ethnomusicology, provides an intimate portrayal of the Arab musical experience in this pioneering book. Racy focuses on tarab, a multifaceted concept that has no exact equivalent in English and refers to the indigenous music and the ecstasy associated with it. His book examines aspects of musical craft, including basic skills, musician's inspiration, love lyrics as tools of ecstasy, and the relationship between performers and listeners.

Frishkopf, Michael: Introduction: Music and media in the Arab world and music and media in the Arab world as music and media in the Arab world : a metadiscourse. - S. 1-64 Nassar, Zein: A history of music and singing on Egyptian radio and television. - S. 67-76 Abdel-Aziz, Moataz: Arabic music videos and their implications for Arab music and media. - S. 77-89 Wassimi, Mounir al-: Arab music and changes in the Arab media. - S. 91-96 Cestor, Elisabeth: Music and television in Lebanon. - S. 97-110 Ulaby, Laith: Mass media and music in the Arab Persian Gulf. - S. 111-126 Abdel-Latif, Yasser: Music of the streets : the story of a television program. - S. 129-136 Grippo, James R.: What's not on Egyptian television and radio! : locating the 'popular' in Egyptian Sha'bi . - S. 137-162 Elmessiri, Abdel-Wahab: Ruby and the checkered heart. - S. 163-172 Kubala, Patricia: The controversy over satellite : music television in contemporary Egypt. - S. 173-224 Barghouti, Tamim al-: Caliphs and clips. - S. 225-230 Armbrust, Walter: What would Sayyid Qutb say? : some reflections on video clips. - S. 231-254 Darwish, Hany: Images of women in advertisements and video clips : a case study of Sherif Sabri. - S. 255-263 Khachab, Walid El-: Arab video music : imagined territories and the liberation of desire (or sex lives in video (clip)). - S. 265-275 Abdel-Fattah, Wael: The biographies of Stalets today : revolutions in sound and images. - S. 277-290 Meizel, Katherine: Real-politics : televised talent competitions and democracy promotion in the Middle East. - S. 291-308.

The Music of Multicultural America explores the intersection of performance, identity, and community in a wide range of musical expressions. Fifteen essays explore traditions that range from the Klezmer revival in New York, to Arab music in Detroit, to West Indian steel bands in Brooklyn, to Kathak music and dance in California, to Irish music in Boston, to powwows in the midwestern plains, to Hispanic and Native musics of the Southwest borderlands. Many chapters demonstrate the processes involved in supporting, promoting, and reviving community music. Others highlight the ways in which such American institutions as city festivals or state and national folklife agencies come into play. Thirteen themes and processes outlined in the introduction unify the collection's fifteen case studies and suggest organizing frameworks for student projects. Due to the diversity of music profiled in the book—Mexican mariachi, African American gospel, Asian West Coast jazz, women's punk, French-American Cajun, and Anglo-American sacred harp—and to the methodology of fieldwork, ethnography, and academic activism described by the authors, the book is perfect for courses in ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, folklore, and American studies. Audio and visual materials that support each chapter are freely available on the ATMuse website, supported by the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University.

In recent years we have become interested in the diffusion of “small” Western technologies in the countries of the Middle East during the 19th and 20th centuries, the era of Imperialism and first globalization. We postulated a contrast between “small” and “big” technologies. Under the latter category we may understand railway systems, electricity grids, telegraph networks, and steam navigation, imposed by foreign powers or installed by connected local entrepreneurs. But many “small” Western technologies, such as sewing machines, typewriters, pianos, eyeglasses, and similar consumer goods, which had been developed and manufactured in Europe and America, were wanted, and willingly acquired by the agency of individual users elsewhere. In a few cases, however, the inventions had to be adapted, or were overstepped, and even delayed. Some were adopted as social markers or status symbols only by elites who could afford them. Processes of adoption and diffusion therefore differed according to cultural settings, preferences, and needs. Social and cultural historians, and social scientists, not only of the Middle East, will find in this collection of essays a new approach to the impact of Western technological inventions on the Middle East.

The first in-depth study of diverse and radical innovation in Arab music From jazz trumpeters drawing on the noises of warfare in Beirut to female heavy metallers in Alexandria, the Arab culture offers a wealth of exciting, challenging, and diverse musics. The essays in this collection investigate the plethora of compositional and improvisational techniques, performance styles, political motivations, professional trainings, and inter-continental collaborations that claim the mantle of "innovation" within Arab and Arab diaspora music. While most books on Middle Eastern music-making focus on notions of tradition and regionally specific genres, The Arab Avant Garde presents a radically hybrid and globally dialectic set of practices. Engaging the "avant-garde"—a term with Eurocentric resonances—this anthology disturbs that presumed exclusivity, drawing on and challenging a growing body of literature about alternative modernities. Chapters delve into genres and modes as diverse as jazz, musical theatre, improvisation, hip hop, and heavy metal as performed in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the United States. Focusing on multiple ways in which the "Arab avant-garde" becomes manifest, this anthology brings together international writers with eclectic disciplinary trainings—practicing musicians, area studies specialists, ethnomusicologists, and scholars of popular culture and media. Contributors include Sami W. Asmar, Michael Khoury, Saed Muhssin, Marina Peterson, Kamran Rastegar, Caroline Rooney, and Shayna Silverstein, as well as the editors.

The Routledge Handbook of Women’s Work in Music presents a unique collection of core research by academics and music practitioners from around the world, engaging with an extraordinarily wide range of topics on women’s contributions to Western and Eastern art music, popular music, world music, music education, ethnomusicology as well as in the music industries. The handbook falls into six parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the rich variety of subject matter the reader can expect to encounter in the handbook as a whole. Part II focuses on what might be termed the more traditional strand of feminist musicology – research which highlights the work of historical and/or neglected composers. Part III explores topics concerned with feminist aesthetics and music creation and Part IV focuses on questions addressing the performance and reception of music and musicians. The narrative of the handbook shifts in Part V to focus on opportunities and leadership in the music professions from a Western perspective. The final section of the handbook (Part VI) provides new frames of context for women’s positions as workers, educators, patrons, activists and promoters of music. This is a key reference work for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in music and gender.

In the last decade of the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first, Israelis and Palestinians saw the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the escalation of suicide bombings and retaliations in the region. During this tumultuous time, numerous collaborations between Israeli and Palestinian musicians coalesced into a significant musical scene informed by these extremes of hope and despair on both national and personal levels. Following the bands Bustan Abraham and Alei Hazayit from their creation and throughout their careers, as well as the collaborative projects of Israeli artist Yair Dalal, Playing Across a Divide demonstrates the possibility of musical alternatives to violent conflict and hatred in an intensely contested, multicultural environment. These artists' music drew from Western, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Afro-diasporic musical practices, bridging differences and finding innovative solutions to the problems inherent in combining disparate musical styles and sources. Creating this new music brought to the forefront the musicians' contrasting assumptions about sound production, melody, rhythm, hybridity, ensemble interaction, and improvisation. Author Benjamin Brinner traces the tightly interconnected field of musicians and the people and institutions that supported them as they and their music circulated within the region and along international circuits. Brinner argues that the linking of Jewish and Arab musicians' networks, the creation of new musical means of expression, and the repeated enactment of culturally productive musical alliances provide a unique model for mutually respectful and beneficial coexistence in a chronically disputed land.

Focus: Music and Religion of Morocco introduces the region and its history, highlighting how the pressures of religious life, post-colonial economic struggle, and global media come together within Moroccan musical life. Musical practices contextualize and clarify global historical and contemporary movements—many of which remain poorly understood—while articulating the daily realities of the region’s populations in ways that rarely show through current news accounts of religious extremism, poverty and inequality, and forced migration. As with other volumes in the series, Focus: Music and Religion of Morocco addresses large, conceptual issues though interwoven case studies, in three parts: Part I – Memories and Medias: Who We Are highlights how issues of religion, colonialism, nationalism, and globalization transcend boundaries through music to create a sense of personal and national identity, whether hundreds of years ago or on today's satellite television stations. Part II – Contesting Mainstreams: Where We're Going explores Morocco’s sacred and secular music practices as they relate to the country's diversity and its contemporary politics. Part III – Focusing In: Faith and Fun in Fez highlights Fez’s sacred music industry by introducing musicians who navigate musical and religious expectations to appeal to both their own devotional ethics and their audiences’ wants. Links to music examples referenced in the text can be accessed on the eResource site www.routledge.com/9781138094581

The study of listening—aurality—and its relation to writing is the subject of this eclectic edited volume. Theorizing Sound Writing explores the relationship between sound, theory, language, and inscription. This volume contains an impressive lineup of scholars from anthropology, ethnomusicology, musicology, performance, and sound studies. The contributors write about sound in their ongoing work, while also making an intervention into the ethics of academic knowledge, one in which listening is the first step not only in translating sound into words but also in compassionate scholarship.

V. 1. Cognitions -- v. 2. Critical theories