Music, Media, and the Middle East

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

For Western audiences, music from the Middle East is often packaged and consumed as something inherently timeless—far removed from the reach of contemporary problems and reminiscent of faraway lands that are never quite mappable onto actual places and histories. As various postcolonial scholars have shown, however, timelessness is all too often just another synonym for backwardness, as if the lands we call the “Middle East” were somehow untouched by the global development of technology and neo-capitalism. Despite these Orientalist tropes, media technologies have played a central role in shaping the contemporary Middle East for more than a century, even as these technologies have in turn spurred changes in local and transnational forms of music-making. This course provides an overview of these important histories, highlighting the role of music and media in relation to landmark historical events in the region, including the drawing of new national boundaries following the end of World War I, the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and the Israeli nation-state in 1948, the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979, and the Arab Spring and creation of ISIS in the 2010s. Throughout the course, students are introduced to basic regional concepts of music-making, as well as the role of music and media in shaping mass popular markets both in the region and across the globe.