“Protest Soundscapes in the Middle East”

Abstract:

The Tahrir and Gezi Park protests were, amongst many other things, moments of energetic artistic creativity, in the sound world as well as other domains. Though well documented, and clearly a vital component of the political energies and transformations of the moment, they have proved difficult to think about. This talk, a musicologist's perspective, will explore them in the light of some recent thinking about crowds and social movements. 

Bio:

Martin Stokes  is King Edward Professor of Music at King's College, London. He is an ethnomusicologist, working primarily on the questions of ethnicity, identity, emotions, globalization in the context of the Middle East. His most recent book,  The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (University of Chicago Press, 2010), has received the Merriam Prize from the Society for Ethnomusicology. Among his other publications are Celtic Modern: Music on the Global Fringe (Scarecrow 2004), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place (Berg 1994), and The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey (Oxford 1992).

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum, the CDDRL Program on Arab Reform and Democracy, Department of Music, and Department of Anthropology