Laudan Nooshin

Improvisation as ‘Other’: Creativity, Knowledge and Power – The Case of Iranian Classical Music

This article traces the discourses which have dominated the musicological study of creativity over the last 50 years or so, focusing on the concept of improvisation and its relationship to composition, particularly as applied to musics outside the notated Western tradition. Arguing that such discourses have served specific ideological purposes, the author illustrates the ways in which these continue to be implicated in an essentializing and orientalist exercise of power over ‘other’ musical traditions. Considering the specific case of Iranian classical music, the author discusses the impact of Western discourses on concepts of musical creativity in Iran and, through detailed musical analyses, illustrates the problematic nature of such discourses in the context of this musical tradition.

Underground, overground: Rock music and youth discourses in Iran

The Tehran basement (zir-e zamin) is an interesting phenomenon. A standard feature of the ubiquitous apartment blocks that were built from the 1960s onwards and became one of the most prominent signs of modernity in the rapidly expanding city, the basement is rooted in traditional architectural designs in which the space below ground offered seclusion as well as coolness in summer and warmth in winter. Nowadays, the basement serves many purposes. More often than not a parking area, it also represents a liminal space in which the boundaries between private and public domains become blurred. Such boundaries remain important in Iran and are reinforced architecturally through the high walls and metal gates that surround residential buildings and protect the internal, private space from the outside world. But basements transgress this. Regularly used for wedding receptions or parties where men and women mix freely (in contrast to receptions held in public places), women’s beauty salons are often located in basements away from the public gaze, but not quite in the private domestic realm. Basements also served as air raid shelters during the Iran-Iraq war. In recent years, however, something else has taken refuge in the basements of Tehran where, twenty-six years after the 1979 Revolution, a revolution of a rather different kind is taking place. Following the relaxation of government restrictions on popular music in 1998, many young people began to form their own bands, something that has led to the emergence of a grass-roots popular music for the first time in Iran since 1979. In particular, many bands are developing a new style of music, largely rock-oriented, but also drawing on a range of other (predominantly Western popular) idioms, effectively creating a localized brand of Iranian rock.

The song of the nightingale: Processes of improvisation in dastgāh Segāh (Iranian classical music)

Iranian classical music, known in Iran as musiqi‐e assil or musiqi‐e sonnati, is a largely improvised tradition in which the creative role of the individual performing musician is central. This paper examines some of the creative processes involved in the performance of this music, through analyses of different versions of dastgāh Segāh. The paper will also look at some of the concepts and terminology used by musicians in discussing this dimension of the music, as well as looking briefly at the broader implications of possible parallels between creative processes in music and those found in other areas of human creativity.

Introduction to the Special Issue: The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music

In her 2001 article on the early music scene in Boston, Kay Kaufman Shelemay offers what she hoped would be ‘useful insights into the collapsing musical boundaries in our changing world and the new agendas that might unite musical scholarship through a shared pedagogy and practice of musical ethnography’ (2001:1). She goes on to discuss the ways in which historical musicologists have begun to engage with ethnographic method previously seen as the reserve of*and indeed characterising* ethnomusicology. Shelemay notes in particular the work of Gary Tomlinson (for example, 1993), Leo Treitler (1989) and Peter Jeffrey (1992), all of whom have in various ways thematised notions of historical ‘Otherness’, as well as some of the contributors to the 1995 special issue of the Journal of the American Musicological Society on ‘Music Anthropologies and Music Histories’. As I discuss below, Shelemay’s observation (citing her earlier 1996 article) that ‘On the ground, wherever scholars actually practice a musical ethnography, it is becoming increasingly difficult to discern where boundaries conceptualized and named geographically can in fact be drawn’ (2001:4) has especial salience for the articles presented in this themed issue of Ethnomusicology Forum; this is symptomatic both of the trend towards ethnography within musicology (that is, the musicology of western art music, or ‘historical musicology’ in the United States; henceforth simply ‘musicology’), and more broadly of changes within the discipline since the late 1980s which have led to a growing interest in and engagement with ethnomusicological thought and method. More or less concomitant with these changes within musicology, ethnomusicologists became increasingly interested in the study of urban traditions, particularly as part of what has been termed ‘ethnomusicology at home’. In turn, this engagement with the familiar led to greater attention to what Bruno Nettl*in his study of an exemplar music school in the American mid-west*described as ‘the last bastion of unstudied musical culture’ (1995:2): western classical music; unstudied, that is, from

Whose liberation? Iranian popular music and the fetishization of resistance

ABSTRACT This article explores a number of issues concerning the representation of Iranian popular music outside Iran, and specifically the somewhat romanticized discourses of “resistance” and “freedom” that have tended to characterize both journalistic and scholarly writings. The article discusses a number of examples, but focuses primarily on the case of the music video “Happy in Tehran,” which was posted on YouTube in 2014 and which challenged certain local cultural and legal boundaries on behavior in public space. As a result, those responsible for the video were arrested, prompting an outcry, both within Iran and internationally; they were released soon after and eventually received suspended sentences. The article discusses the ways in which the “Happy in Tehran” incident was reported in the media outside Iran and offers alternative readings of the video and its meanings. Ultimately, the article considers how such reductionist views feed into wider regimes of orientalist representation and asks whose agenda such fetishization of resistance serves.

Music and the disney theme park experience

The papers that follow were originally presented at the Annual Meetings of the British Forum for Ethnomusicology in 2002 (Nooshin) and 2003 (Carson). At the time of writing, neither author was aware of the other’s work in this area, but the papers touched on many similar issues regarding the use of music by the Disney Corporation in the context of its theme parks. Moreover, both papers sparked interesting discussions which highlighted the particular topicality of the issues raised. Following the 2003 conference, the journal editors approached the authors with the idea of publishing the two papers alongside one another, and we are pleased to be able to do so in this issue. Both papers focus on the role of music in the Disney theme park experience and suggest particular readings of the theme park ‘‘text’’. Carson discusses the nature and function of live music in ‘‘Mainstreet USA’’ and the EPCOT World Showcase at Disneyworld Florida, commenting in particular on the way in which Disney uses music to create ‘‘a whole new world’’. Nooshin explores the ways in which cultural difference is represented and commodified, focusing on one particular ride: It’s a Small World at Disneyland, Paris. Both papers attempt to unravel the relations of power embedded in the Disney theme park experience, especially the symbolic reinforcing of orientalist and colonialist power structures, and to ask what the implications are for musical meaning. Given the centrality of music to the Disney experience / whether in the context of theme parks or films / the relative absence of any cultural commentary in this area is quite striking, particularly when one considers the vast Disney and theme park literature and the growing body of scholarly work on film music. These papers are offered in the spirit of work in progress. We hope that they will play a part in sparking debate and in opening up what we believe to be a potentially ripe area of study. Ethnomusicology Forum Vol. 13, No. 2, November 2004, p. 227

“Our Angel of Salvation”- Towards an Understanding of Iranian Cyberspace as an Alternative Sphere of Musical Sociality

This article explores the emergence of the internet as an alternative sphere of musical circulation, focusing on the case of Iran and specifically certain kinds of music for which the internet has become the primary arena of musical sociality, in some cases replacing its physical public presence entirely. In particular, it asks how the spaces opened up by new media technologies have shifted the conceptual boundaries between public and private. The article begins with an overview of recent scholarly work on Iranian cyberspace and on the relationship between “public” and “private,” which provide a grounding for the case examples that follow.