Dear all,
The next University of Cambridge Music Faculty colloquium (27th January,
5pm) will be given by Dr Laudan Nooshin, who is Reader in Ethnomusicology
at City University London.
Dr Nooshin will be speaking about *"Re-Imagining Musical Difference:
Creative Process, Alterity and ‘Improvisation’ in Iranian Music from
Classical to Jazz".*
"Since the late 1980s, an important strand of my research has sought to
understand the underlying creative processes of Iranian classical music
(musiqi-ye asil), a tradition in which the performer plays a central
creative role and which is therefore often described as ‘improvised’.
However, analysis of performances shows the music to be highly structured
around a series of what might be termed ‘compositional procedures’, but
which are not explicitly discussed by musicians. Through this work I came
to problematise the dominant binary discourses which reify improvisation
(bedāheh-navāzi) and emphasise the oral, ephemeral nature of Iranian
classical music against something more planned and structured as
represented by the concept of (usually implying notated) composition
(āhang-sāzi).
More recently, I have been working with younger musicians -
university-educated and cosmopolitan - who are developing new discursive
frameworks for their creative practice, including an explicit articulation
of compositional intent and an intellectual-analytical approach to
performance which is quite new to Iranian music. Of particular interest are
the ways in which these musicians are moving beyond oppositional discourses
of creativity and re-imagining notions of musical difference.
This seminar will explore various issues arising from this work, including
broader questions concerning musicological paradigms, particularly where
these have been mobilised as a marker of ‘otherness’."
Please do join us at 5pm next Wednesday (27th January) in the Recital Room
of the Faculty of Music, West Road, Cambridge. As usual, the colloquium
will be followed by drinks in the Faculty foyer.
We hope to see many of you there.
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