Music and Sound in the Muslim World

Date: Wed, Apr 11, 2018 06:30PM - Wed, May 16, 2018 08:30PM
Price: $140, $120 Friends, $100 students and seniors 50% parking discount available during course

Discover the various sonic and musical practices of Muslim societies and the Muslim diaspora! In this multi-session course, instructor Hamidreza Salehyar discusses the diversity of Muslim discourses on music. Engage with selected audio-visual examples ranging from Quranic recitations to “traditional” musical performances; new popular genres such as Turkish religious pop, Palestinian hip-hop, and diasporic Muslim punk; and Sufi world music.

Through these examples, the course aims at developing familiarity with a diverse range of social, cultural, historical, religious, and political contexts in which such sonic and musical practices have emerged, providing a deeper understanding of their significance in the Muslim world.

Hamidreza Salehyar is a musician, music researcher, and instructor with experience exploring various forms of musical expression in the Muslim world. He is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto, and his doctoral research focuses on Shia Muharram rituals in Iran. Hamidreza has presented at major ethnomusicology conferences in Canada and the US as well as in the UK, where he received the 2017 British Forum for Ethnomusicology Student Prize. He received his MA in Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta. His academic research also benefits from his expertise in Iranian classical music as a tar player; he holds a BMus in Iranian Instrument Performance from the University of Art in Tehran.