Islam & Music of the Turkic Speaking World

A contribution to the study of Islam and music associated themes, including interdisciplinary Islamic study, Sufism and performance in its modern forms.

DR RAZIA SULTANOVA (Uzbekistan/UK) is a musicologist and a cultural anthropologist. She studied and consequently taught at both the Tashkent and Moscow State Conservatories. She worked at the Union of the Soviet Composers and the Russian Institute of Arts Studies in Moscow, and having moved to the UK in 1994 she has been working at the University of London and at the University of Cambridge since 2008. Razia Sultanova is the author of four books and five edited volumes (in Russian, French and English) on Central Asian and Middle Eastern music and gender, and music and Islam. She is the recipient of twenty two international grants from various foundations like Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the l’Institute français d’études sur l’Asie Central (IFEAC), the British Academy, AHRC, the British Council, the Horniman Museum, etc. Razia Sultanova has been a Visiting Professor at the Moscow State Conservatory, Khoja Ahmet Yassawi Kazakh-Turkish University (Turkistan, Kazakhstan) and at the Kazakh National University of Arts (Nur-Sultan). She is the Chair of the ICTM Study Group on “Global History of Music”.

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this project is to contribute to the study of Islam and music associated themes, including interdisciplinary Islamic study, Sufism and performance in its modern forms. Dr Sultanova’s research project is entitled “Islam and Music of the Turkic speaking world“, with articles by 50 authors contributing to the First Volume of the major undertaking called “Encyclopaedia of Music of the Turkic speaking world”, where she was appointed Editor-in Chief. Their large three-volume project (2019-2025) partly sponsored by “Turksoy” (the international organisation of Turkish culture based in Ankara), bringing together Turkish, Russian, and British authors, has concentrated on the First volume on the study of Islam and music.

THE FIRST VOLUME OF ENCYCLOPEDIA

Islam and Music of the Turkic-speaking world

The first volume of the International Encyclopaedia  “Music of the Turkic peoples” will aim to deliver a comprehensive overview of the Islamic religious music of the Turkic people. The planned thematic scheme for the book will span various aspects of the Islam and music phenomenon, featuring (amongst others):

  1. Religious aspects of the music culture of the Turkic-speaking world.
  2. Religious music terminology: the specific use of terms and their spread and migration across the Turkic speaking world; the differences in interpretation of their meaning in religious and secular sources, including their modern-day modifications.
  3. Islamic religious rituals, their performers’ lived experiences and their sphere of activity that contributes to the development of Islamic religious musical traditions.
  4. Attitudes towards music in Islamic theological sources and religious communities, and the specifics of vocal and instrumental forms, used in religious rituals.
  5. The educational aspect of the study of Islamic religious music. Performance; notations; recordings; and relevant academic understandings.

THREE VOLUME ENCYCLOPEDIA

“Music of the Turkic peoples” (2020-2026)

The Turkic speaking area is both geographically huge and culturally diverse (twenty eight countries, republics and districts extending from Siberia, throughout Central Asia, the Caucasus to Eastern Europe). Although the Turkic peoples of the world can trace their linguistic and genetic ancestries to common sources, their extensive geographical dispersion and widely varying historical and political experiences have generated a range of different expressive music forms. In addition, the breakup of the Soviet Union and increasing globalisation have resulted in the emergence of new viewpoints on Turkic versions of religious, classical and folk traditions. In line with the opening up of many Turkic regions in the post-Soviet era, awareness of scholarship from these regions has also increased.

Today the Turkic peoples are a group of ethnicities that live in Central, Eastern, Northern, and Western Asia as well as part of Eastern Europe. They speak languages belonging to the Turkic language family. They share, to varying degrees, certain cultural traits and historical backgrounds. Today the term “Turkic” represents a broad ethnolinguistic group of peoples, including existing societies such as Altai, Azerbaijanis, Balkars, Bashkirs, Chuvashes, Crimean Karaites, Gagauz, Karachays, Karakalpaks, Kazakhs, Khakas, Krymchaks, Kyrgyz people, Nogais, Qashqai, Tatars, Turkmens, Turks, Tuvans, Uyghurs, Uzbeks, and Yakuts, as well as ancient and medieval states such as Dingling, Bulgars, Chuban, Göktürks, Khazars, Khiljis, Kipchaks, Kumans,Ottoman Turks, Seljuk Turks, Tiele, Timurids, Turgeshes, and possibly Huns, Tuoba, Wusun, and the Xiongnu.

Consisting of numerous contributions to reflect the breadth of the geographical area under study, the Encyclopaedia will address Islamic religious songs; ethnography and analysis of classical court music traditions, the historical development of Turkic musical instruments; cross-cultural influences throughout the Turkic world, music and mass media; and popular music in traditional contexts. The result is going to be the first comprehensive three-volume Encyclopaedia providing summaries of knowledge on the music of the Turkic-speaking world, representing religious, classical, folk, and popular traditions equally, as well as discussing how these traditions have changed in response to growing modernity and cosmopolitanism in Europe and Central Asia.

Razia Sultanova: Selected Publications in English

Monograph

From Shamanism to Sufism: Women, Islam and Culture in Central Asia, IB Tauris, London -New York, January 2011. ISBN-10: 1848853092; ISBN-13: 978-1848853096

Edited Books

“Sacred Knowledge: Schools or revelation? Master-Apprentice System of Oral Transmission in the music of the Turkic Speaking world”, 2009, LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, Cologne, Germany, ISBN-10: 3838315588, ISBN-13: 978-3838315584

TURKIC SOUNDSCAPES: From Shamanic Voices to Hip-Hop, Routledge, London, January 2018, Editors (with Megan Rancier), ISBN-10: 1138062405, ISBN-13: 978-1138062405, Paperback – December 2019

Forthcoming-authored book

Popular culture in n Afghanistan: Performance, Islam and Gender in Central Asia, Pen and Sword Publishing House, London-New York, 304 pp. (in print, coming out 30.12.2021)

“Encyclopaedia of the Music of the Turkic speaking world” 2020-2026, three volumes publication, Principal Editor – Razia Sultanova.

Chapters in books

“The Kyrgyz Manas: recorded, performed and studied”, in “Singing the Kyrgyz Manas”, Keith Howard (Ed), Brill, 2011, 91-115.

“Sofia Gubaidulina’s Orientalism in chamber music”, in Orientality: Cultural Orientalism and Mentality, Volume 1, Orientalist Museum, Doha, Qatar, 2015, 133-142

“Female Musicians in Uzbekistan: Otin-oy, Dutarchi, and Maqomchi”, Chapter 25 in the textbook “The Music of Central Asia “, Eds Ted Levin & Elmira Kochumkulova, Indiana University Press, 2016, 421-435

“Female Folk Sufism in Central Asian space-time continuum”, in “Islamic Alternatives: Non-Mainstream Religion in Persianate Society”, Shahrokh Raei (Ed), Gottinger Orientforschungen IRANICA, Neue Folge 16, Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2017,183-203.

“Let me take your pain away”: Female Shamanism in Central Asian soundscapes” In: The Shamaness in Asia: Gender, Religions and the State. Davide Torri and Sophie Roche (Eds). In series “Vitality of indigenous religions”. Routledge, 2020 Chapter 8, Pp. 155-167

“The non-Russian Sound of post-Soviet Moscow” in Transcultural Music History: Global Participation and Regional Diversity. Section 4. Media and Transcultural Music History, Chapter 18. Reinhard Strohm and Susannah Salle (Eds). Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin, 2021, pp 341-353.