Lecture 4 Music & Religion

Case studies in Music & Islam

Music in Religion

Music plays a role in all religions:

Binds together a community with common purpose
Articulates religious ritual
Engenders states of heightened spiritual receptivity
Makes the ordinary extraordinary
In most societies, music celebrates God
But in Islam, music viewed by many (clergy & orthodox thinkers) as mundane,
sensual distraction from spiritual path
Music = Un-Islamic?

Taliban

Campaign to eradicate music in Afghanistan & NW Pakistan

Murder of musicians
Destruction of instruments, property
Harsh treatment of women
Paradox?
Taliban songs?
Sung unaccompanied or with frame drum

Text:

Taliban commitment to Islam

Readiness for sacrifice for their country
Addresses Taliban who died for the cause

Afghans and music

Afghans have rich musical heritage

Love of music and dance
People celebrated with music on fall of Taliban
Hidden radios
Hidden radio archives

Herati Song

Herat (Western Afghanistan)

Local folk song
Female vocalist
Mullah Mohammad Jan song about lovers separated by the class system
Armonia, rubab, dutar, tabla

Professional vs amateur

Amateur (shauqi) those who know or play music but do not earn from it
The science of music is revered
Long line of philosophers / music theorists:
Al-Kindi (9C), Al-Farabi (10C), Averroes (12C)
Professional (kesbi) hereditary occupational specialization, earn money from
music
Low status, necessary for entertainment (weddings, events, etc.) but socially reviled
/ treated with suspicion

Kabuli music

Borrows from India

The music of professionals
Vocal example (from Radio Afghanistan, 1973) with armonia (harmonium),
delruba (bowed lute) and tabla
Illustrates the art-music Ghazal style
Complex rhythmic fluctuations and tempo changes

Contesting musical space?

Blue Burqa Band

Afghan women
Burqa as
Protest (against Taliban / orthodoxy)
Disguise (safety)
Means of attracting attention (irony?)

www.freemuse.org

Website for the freedom of musical expression

Information on musical repression worldwide
Read interview with John Baily & Marie Korpe
also, Can you stop the birds singing? by John Baily (long report on Taliban
censorship PDF with musical examples)

Music in Islam

Any music associated with Islamic religious ritual is not called music, even if it
has musical qualities
Azan (adhan): the call to prayer by a muezzin

Translation of Azan

God is great! (x4)

I bear witness that there is no God but Allah (x2)
I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah (x2)
Hasten to worship! (x2)
Hasten to success / well-being! (x2)
God is great! (x2)
There is no God but Allah!

Sabri Mudallal

1918-2006
Aleppo, Syria
Great singer & composer of classical tradition
Trained as a muezzin
Film (by EM-ist Anne Rasmussen) from 1993

Reading

The Quran (or Koran): holy book of Islam the word of God as revealed to his
Messenger, the Prophet Muhammad (570632 CE)
Not sung but read (qiraah) by a reader (qari)
Qiraah
Pronunciation, supremacy of the text
Segmentation
Mode
Melodic contour
Range (ambitus)
Tempo, rhythm, metre
Volume and timbre
Individuality and style (through improvisation)

Surah 97: Al-Qadr

In the Name of Allah the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful

Verily, we sent it down in the night of al-Qadr.

And what will make you know what the night of al-Qadr is?
The night of al-Qadr is better than a thousand months.
Therein descend the angels and the Spirit by their Lord's permission with all
Decrees.
Peace! Until the appearance of dawn.

Role of musicality?

See Kristina Nelsons article (on the website) called Reciter and Listener
Paradox?
Musicality draws in listener, heightens the spiritual experience of the text
May also compromise separateness of reading from art of music
Group readings
Rhythmic recitation coordinates reading by group (religious brotherhood)
Heterophony (two slightly divergent or alternative versions of a melodic line)
Musical?
Surah al-Fatiha (opening verse of Quran) equivalent of Lords Prayer in
Christianity

Sufism

Islamic mysticism
Science of the direct knowledge & experience of God
Doctrine must be balanced by method
Method = focus on the reality of God through an act that helps achieve Divine
Union (ecstasy)
Considered by many as heretics: Sufis revere music as method

Dhikr (or Zikr)

Remembrance Chanting Gods name(s)

Hyperventilation produces exhilaration, altered state of consciousness
Sufi brotherhoods

The Mevlevi

Turkish Sufi order

Followers of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, 120773
Whirling Dervishes
Sema (the ritual)
High brown cap: symbolizes tomb stone

Black cloak: grave

White gown: death (shroud)
Naat (praise of Prophet) & taqsim (ney)
Devr-i veled (bowing the Divine Breath)
Four Selam (orbits of planets around the sun): journey from recognition of God
through ecstasy of total surrender to Divine unity and peace of the heart (acc. suite
of Turkish classical music)
Qiraah & prayer

Qawwali

Pakistan and northern India

Performed primarily at Sufi shrines
Song form: soloists and their parties
Mystical Sufi poetry interspersed with socio-religious commentary
Qawwals: professional musicians
In shrine, qawwali singers help bring members of audience to trance
Money offered to Sheikh is then blessed and passed on to the musicians

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Popular qawwali singer (194998)

Remembered for crossover into popular genres
Part of world beat scene
Allah Hu, disco-qawwali
Mast
Elements of repetition, call-and-response, rhythmic beats, volume, tempo build to a
climax that totally envelops listener, transports to another plane
Qawwali generates spiritual arousal (mast intoxication), drives home the
message of the poetry
Qawwals lead audience into / out of ecstatic trance

Read Qureshi (website)

in this intimate atmosphere already charged with powerful emotion, one significant
phrase of the song so moves an elderly Sufi that he cannot contain himself; he rises and
begins a dance of ecstasy. For the performers this signals a moment of extreme
responsibility, for unless the ecstatic person continues to hear the phrase that so moved
him, he may die. While all the listeners rise in awe, the singers comply, hoping that upon
this spiritual blessing the material reward of offerings will follow. As the crucial phrase is
repeated over and over, woven into the fabric of the song in ever varying ways, this one

phrase becomes the vital centre of the entire performance, and indeed of the mystical
experience itself.
Tumhe dil lagi

Qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

In Urdu
It exhorts the listener to give up worldly attachments and, however hard, to follow
the path to God, the True Love

First three verses

Tumhe dil lagii bhool jaanii paregii / muhabbat kii raahon me aakar to dekho
Tarapane pe mere na phir tum haasoge / kabhii dil kisii se lagaakar to dekho
Zakham pe zakham khaake jii. Apane lahoo ke ghoont pii / Aha! na kar, labo ko sii, ishq
hai ye dil lagii nahii!
You'll have to forget all these worldly attachments / enter the paths of Love and you will
see
You'll no longer laugh at my anguish / if you take a chance at the True Love
Suffer wound after wound. Survive by drinking your own blood / Don't complain and
shout, this is the True Love, not some minor attachment!
Insertions

There are small insertions in Tumhe dil lagi: here, improvised amplifications of
the text by Nusrat Fateh Ali
These serve to drive the point home, comment on it, illustrate it in some way
Girah: an insertion, sometimes another verse of poetry added as a temporary
diversion

Music and Islam

Complex relationship
Revered as a science, not as a profession
Encouraged in some Islamic cultures, discriminated against in others
Yet integral to worship and ritual ( music)
Integral to Sufi practices across Islamic world
Music is enjoyed widely in most Islamic societies
Site of contestation