Muslim World Music Day

By Bob George, ARChive for Contemporary Music - New York, USA
Monday, April 12, 2010

Muslim World Music Day is April 12, 2011

New York—The ARChive for Contemporary Music announced the launch of Muslim World Music Day, an innovative new project to catalogue and celebrate the diversity of Muslim music.

In collaboration with Columbia University Libraries and the Arts Initiative at Columbia University, and with the support of founding partners Gracenote, the Internet Archive and ARC will lead a live online effort to identify and catalogue tens of thousands of recordings from around the world in a single day: April 12, 2011. One Year From TODAY!

The diverse musical forms inspired by Islam are sacred and secular, traditional and contemporary, locally rooted and globally mobile. Muslim World Music Day will embrace and share a broad understanding of “Muslim music,” acknowledging the debates about the issue within Muslim communities while exploring the musical connections between Islam and other cultural traditions.

From the ecstatic Sufi traditions of qawwali and gnawa to the raucous sounds of taqwacore punk and the flourishing Muslim hip-hop scene, this heritage transcends borders and bias.

The goal of Muslim World Music Day is to develop an open archive of this music through real-time global grassroots participation. ARC is developing the database along with Gracenote (they supply the metadata for iTunes) and the Internet Archive (they save the Internet) will host the interactive website.

Libraries, archives, universities, and cultural organizations around the world will upload metadata on their musical holdings, which the project team will use to create a comprehensive discography.

Collectors, fans, scholars, artists, and record labels will contribute tracks, images, video clips, essays, lectures, bibliographies, and reviews. Partner organizations in several countries will host concerts, seminars, and exhibitions. By the end of those 24 hours, Muslim World Music Day will have created something unprecedented—a permanent, crowd-sourced online catalogue of more than 50,000 recordings supplemented by artistic and educational resources.

The Muslim World Music Day team invites organizations and individuals interested in supporting and participating in the project to contact the ARChive for Contemporary Music.

This exploration of the diverse musical traditions of Muslim communities will lay the groundwork for future efforts to catalogue music from other global traditions, as every year we will create a “Day” to honor a different style, genre or national music.

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About the ARC: Now in our 25 year, the ARChive of Contemporary Music is the largest collection of popular music in the world, with over two million recordings. It is supported by a Board of Advisors comprised of leading musicians, songwriters and directors, including David Bowie, Jellybean Benitez, Jonathan Demme, Michael Feinstein, Jerry Leiber, Youssou N'Dour, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Nile Rodgers, Todd Rundgren, Fred Schneider, Martin Scorsese, Paul Simon and Mike Stoller.

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Partners + Contributors to Muslim World Music Day

The following is a list of partners and contributors who have agreed to offer concerts, seminars, symposiums, lectures, and contribute funding, data and materials to the ARChive’s Muslim World Music Day.

Funding and Project Partners:

Gracenote (provides metadata for iTunes) / The Arts Initiative @ Columbia University / The Internet Library (they save the internet) and The Libraries @ Columbia University

Contributors:

• AfroPop Worldwide, Syndicated National Public Radio program. Radio show.
• Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Concerts, metadata and recordings by Central Asian Artists.
• Ozan Aksoy, PhD candidate, Ethnomusicology, CUNY Graduate Center, director CUNY Middle Eastern Music Ensemble. Kurdish musician from Turkey who will contribute a performances and organizing events or concerts.
• Al Andalus Ensemble – Charlie Bisharat, Tarik Banzi and Julia Banzi, a trio that bridges world, traditional contemporary and classical genres. Concert.
• The American Musicological Society, Robert Judd, Executive Director. Historically related articles on Muslim music.
• Elizabeth Angell, Graduate Fellow, Anthropology, Columbia. Turkish/Middle Eastern popular culture essays.
• Ali Asani, Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures, Harvard. Focus on Shia and Sufi devotional traditions. Lecture and conference participant.
• Asia Society, New York City. Concert.
• Dr. Michael Buehler, Postdoctoral Fellow, Modern Southeast Asian Studies, Weatherhead Institute, Columbia.
• Center for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Columbia.
• Center for Traditional Music and Dance, NYC. Concert and documentation on NYC’s Muslim immigrant communities.
• Columbia University Middle Eastern Research Center (CUMERC), Jordan. Symposium.
• Gene DeAnna, Head, Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress. Cataloging data on 1244 Arabic music tapes in their Voice of America Collection.
• Hirad Dinavari, Reference Librarian for the Iranian World Collections, Library of Congress, African and Middle Eastern Division. Metadata, genre definitions and possible conference.
• Dr Janet Topp Fargion, Curator, World and Traditional Music, British Library Sound Archive. Data on holdings at the British Library for the MWMD database.
• Dr. Michael Frishkopf, Associate Professor, Department of Music, University of Alberta and Associate Director, Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology. Specialist in the aural rituals of Islam (especially Sufi music) in Egypt, West Africa and Canada, as both a scholar and performer.
• Dr. Alan Godlas, Associate Professor, Department of Religion, University of Georgia, administers the Islamic Studies Resources/UGA Virtual Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the Islamic World (VCISIW). Symposium, links and essay.
• Dr. Janice Gross, Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages Grinnell, Iowa. Essay on gender and national identity on Muslim immigrant communities and music in France.
• Dr. Abdel-Hamid Hamam, Dean, Art & Design, University of Jordan, Amman. Concerts.
• Karl Gert zur Heide, Bremen, Germany. Essay: American 'rag' from Arabic 'raqs'.
• Sussan Deyhim (composer, vocalist), Richard Horowitz, composer, multi instrumentalist. Performance and/or lecture.
• Jon Kertzer, The Best Ambiance Radio, KEXP, Seattle, WA. Show on Muslim Music.
• Michael Muhammad Knight, author, the novel The Taqwacores.
• Bassekou Kouyate, Mali’s leading virtuoso on the ngoni, a traditions griot lute. Concert.
• Susan Lewandowski, Assistant Curator, Musical Instruments Collections, Department of World Cultures, National Museums Scotland. Sound samples and instrument index.
• Limewire, world's most popular legal peer-to-peer file-sharing site. Dedicated Islamic storefront and blog.
• Prof Jostine Loubser, Faculty of Arts, Media and Social Sciences, School of Media Music & Performance, University of Salford, Manchester, UK. Mini music festival and lecture.
• Omar Majeed, director, documentary, Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam.
• Groupe Mazagan, Morocco, Concert.
• Meedan, San Francisco. Will blog MWMD live in both English and Arabic.
• Youssou N'dour. Concert – hopefully @ the United Nations.
• National Music Conservatory of King Hussein Foundation, Jordan. Concerts.
• Fred Patterson, ARC. Essay and discography on The Jazz Messengers, American-Muslim big band.
• Robert Reeder, photographer. Recent images from the Middle East.
• Braden Ruddy, journalist. Essay with focus on Arab-American and Arab-Canadian hiphop.
• Ruwwad Center, Amman, Jordan. Youth orchestra concert.
• Dr. Ilaria Sartori, Sapienza University, Rome. Musicologist, Ethnomusicologist, Expert in Ethiopian Cultural Heritage. Lecture and/or article on the music(s) of Ethiopian Muslims.
• Robert Singerman, Music with Subtitles. Universal translator for lyrics in any language.
• Ted Swedenburg, Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas, Middle East Report editorial committee member and KXUA d.j. Radio show, blog and organize a day of teaching or a seminar.
• Dr. Ayman Tayseer, University of Jordan, Faculty of Arts & Design. Essays.
• Dr. Victor A. Vicente, Assistant Professor of Music, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China. Specialist in the musical cultures of Turkey and the Middle East.
• WKCR Radio, NYC. Marathon of Middle Eastern music.
• Eyad Zahra, director, The Taqwacores, film on Muslim punks.

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