Arabic as a Secret Song

by Leïla Sebbar
Arabic as a Secret Song
Author: Leïla Sebbar
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 107
Release: 2015-06-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0813937582
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The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision. The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar’s bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar paints an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father’s Arabic language and culture, depicting her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and to convey the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised "between two shores"--the colonized and the colonizer. CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

Inside Arabic Music

by Johnny Farraj
Inside Arabic Music
Author: Johnny Farraj
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2019-07-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 019065838X
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What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim (traditional instrumental improvisation) that performers and listeners implicitly know? How can Arabic music be so rich and diverse without resorting to harmony? Why is it so challenging to transcribe Arabic music from a recording? Inside Arabic Music answers these and many other questions from the perspective of two "insiders" to the practice of Arabic music, by documenting a performance culture and a know-how that is largely passed on orally. Arabic music has spread across the globe, influencing music from Greece all the way to India in the mid-20th century through radio and musical cinema, and global popular culture through Raqs Sharqi, known as "Bellydance" in the West. Yet despite its popularity and influence, Arabic music, and the maqam scale system at its heart, remain widely misunderstood. Inside Arabic Music de-mystifies maqam with an approach that draws theory directly from practice, and presents theoretical insights that will be useful to practitioners, from the beginner to the expert - as well as those interested in the related Persian, Central Asian, and Turkish makam traditions. Inside Arabic Music's discussion of maqam and improvisation widens general understanding of music as well, by bringing in ideas from Saussurean linguistics, network theory, and Lakoff and Johnson's theory of cognition as metaphor, with an approach parallel to Gjerdingen's analysis of Galant-period music - offering a lens into the deeper relationships among music, culture, and human community.

Asmahan's Secrets

by Sherifa Zuhur
Asmahan's Secrets
Author: Sherifa Zuhur
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2000
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780292798076
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The great Arab singer Asmahan was the toast of Cairo song and cinema in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as World War II approached. She remained a figure of glamour and intrigue throughout her life and lives on today in legend as one of the shaping forces in the development of Egyptian popular culture. In this biography, author Sherifa Zuhur does a thorough study of the music and film of Asmahan and her historical setting. A Druze princess actually named Amal al-Atrash, Asmahan came from an important clan in the mountains of Syria but broke free from her traditional family background, left her husband, and became a public performer, a role frowned upon for women of the time. This unique biography of the controversial Asmahan focuses on her public as well as her private life. She was a much sought-after guest in the homes of Egypt's rich and famous, but she was also rumored to be an agent for the Allied forces during World War II. Through the story of Asmahan, the reader glimpses not only aspects of the cultural and political history of Egypt and Syria between the two world wars, but also the change in attitude in the Arab world toward women as public performers on stage. Life in wartime Cairo comes alive in this illustrated account of one of the great singers of the Arab world, a woman who played an important role in history. Sherifa Zuhur is Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Secret Languages of Afghanistan and Their Speakers

by Jadwiga Pstrusińska
Secret Languages of Afghanistan and Their Speakers
Author: Jadwiga Pstrusińska
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2014-07-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1443864412
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This is a study of an almost inaccessible area of the intricate linguistic fabric of Afghanistan – namely, its secret codes of communication. The text draws on a profound knowledge of Afghanistan and neighbouring regions, as well as the cultural and sociolinguistic processes at work across Eurasia. The author situates these sociolinguistic matters within the appropriate diachronic and comparative background, and traces the numerous threads which connect them to areas both close to and distant from Afghanistan. The book will be of great interest to scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including, but extending beyond, the realms of linguistics, cultural history, and sociology. It will also be of practical value in many areas, notably with regards to military and political issues, as well as humanitarian aid.

Making Music in the Arab World

by A. J. Racy
Making Music in the Arab World
Author: A. J. Racy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2004-05-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521316859
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A.J. Racy, a scholar of ethnomusicology, provides an intimate portrayal of the Arab musical experience in this pioneering book. Racy focuses on tarab, a multifaceted concept that has no exact equivalent in English and refers to the indigenous music and the ecstasy associated with it. His book examines aspects of musical craft, including basic skills, musician's inspiration, love lyrics as tools of ecstasy, and the relationship between performers and listeners.

The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics

by Jonathan Owens
The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics
Author: Jonathan Owens
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 619
Release: 2013-08-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199344094
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Arabic is one of the world's largest languages, spoken natively by nearly 300 million people. By strength of numbers alone Arabic is one of our most important languages, studied by scholars across many different academic fields and cultural settings. It is, however, a complex language rooted in its own tradition of scholarship, constituted of varieties each imbued with unique cultural values and characteristic linguistic properties. Understanding its linguistics holistically is therefore a challenge. The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics is a comprehensive, one-volume guide that deals with all major research domains which have been developed within Arabic linguistics. Chapters are written by leading experts in the field, who both present state-of-the-art overviews and develop their own critical perspectives. The Handbook begins with Arabic in its Semitic setting and ends with the modern dialects; it ranges across the traditional--the classical Arabic grammatical and lexicographical traditions--to the contemporary--Arabic sociolinguistics, Creole varieties and codeswitching, psycholinguistics, and Arabic as a second language - while situating Arabic within current phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexicological theory. An essential reference work for anyone working within Arabic linguistics, the book brings together different approaches and scholarly traditions, and provides analysis of current trends and directions for future research.

THE INDIAN LISTENER

by All India Radio (AIR),New Delhi
THE INDIAN LISTENER
Author: All India Radio (AIR),New Delhi
Publisher: All India Radio (AIR),New Delhi
Total Pages: 47
Release: 1951-07-08
Genre: Antiques & Collectibles
ISBN:
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The Indian Listener (fortnightly programme journal of AIR in English) published by The Indian State Broadcasting Service,Bombay ,started on 22 December, 1935 and was the successor to the Indian Radio Times in english, which was published beginning in July 16 of 1927. From 22 August ,1937 onwards, it was published by All India Radio,New Delhi.From July 3 ,1949,it was turned into a weekly journal. Later,The Indian listener became "Akashvani" in January 5, 1958. It was made a fortnightly again on July 1,1983. It used to serve the listener as a bradshaw of broadcasting ,and give listener the useful information in an interesting manner about programmes,who writes them,take part in them and produce them along with photographs of performing artists. It also contains the information of major changes in the policy and service of the organisation. NAME OF THE JOURNAL: The Indian Listener LANGUAGE OF THE JOURNAL: English DATE,MONTH & YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 08-07-1951 PERIODICITY OF THE JOURNAL: Weekly NUMBER OF PAGES: 47 VOLUME NUMBER: Vol. XVI. No. 28. BROADCAST PROGRAMME SCHEDULE PUBLISHED(PAGE NOS): 16-43 ARTICLE: 1. Conversation 2. The Pessimist 3. Traffic Problems and Safety Measures 4. The Joy of Discovery 5. Fifty Years of Medicine and Public Health AUTHOR: 1. Dr. R. K. Sinha 2. K. K. Mehrotra 3. S. C. Nayak 4. Dr. Charles Fabri 5. Dr. P. Kumaran Nair KEYWORDS: 1. Goethe, Charles II, Pangloss 2. Buddha, pessimistic, brooding imagination 3. traffic control devices, accidents, highway engineering 4. Greek sculpture, modern art, museums 5. preventive medicine, typhoid vaccine, immunology Document ID: INL-1951 (J-D) Vol-II (02)

Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film

by Peter Cherry
Muslim Masculinities in Literature and Film
Author: Peter Cherry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2021-09-23
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0755601734
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A climate of Islamophobia allows anxieties about Muslim men living in and migrating to Britain to endure. British Muslims men are often profiled in highly negative terms or regarded with suspicion owing to their perceived religious and cultural heritage. But novels and films by British migrant and diaspora writers and filmmakers powerfully contest these stereotypes, and explore the rich diversity of Muslim masculinities in Britain. This book is the first critical study to engage with British Muslim masculinities in this literary and cinematic output from the perspective of masculinity studies. Through close analysis of work by Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Guy Gunaratne, Sally El Hosaini, Hanif Kureishi, Suhayl Saadi, Kamila Shamsie, Zadie Smith, Zia Haider Rahman and Salman Rushdie, Peter Cherry examines how migrant and diaspora protagonists negotiate their masculinity in a climate of Islamophobic and anti-migrant rhetoric. Cherry proposes a transcultural reading of these novels and films that exposes how conceptions of 'Britishness', 'Muslimness' and those of masculinity are unstable and contingent constructs shaped by migration, interaction with other cultures, and global and local politics.

The Song of Songs

by Roland Edmund Murphy
The Song of Songs
Author: Roland Edmund Murphy
Publisher: Hermeneia: A Critical & Histor
Total Pages: 272
Release: 1990
Genre: Religion
ISBN:
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Murphy offers a representative sounding in the major periods of the Song's exegetical history. Attention is given to the hermeneutical principles operative in the development of Jewish and Christian exposition. Murphy examines the literary character and structure of the Song, aspects of its composition and style, and its meaning and theological significance.