Munira Al-Mahdiyya
Yara is a recipient of the Ertegun Scholarship and is working under the supervision of Professors Marilyn Booth and Walter Armbrust at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. She was recently awarded the British Forum of Ethnomusicology Fieldwork Prize (2020).
Current Research
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a vibrant cultural and intellectual movement developed across the Arab world known as the Nahda, often translated as the renaissance. My project examines the musical Nahda that transformed the soundscape of Egypt from the 1860s to the 1920s, and its connections with the period’s intense socio-political transformations. I investigate the affective and political impact of various musical forms on modern subjectivities of the time, as well as on wider discourses around the role of culture. Crucial to this soundscape was the social and musical phenomenon of tarab, which is often described as musical ecstasy but notoriously evades clear definition. I hope to clarify the aesthetic system and societal role of tarab during this period in particular. I am especially interested in the cultural semiotics that formed its practice, and how these were encoded and decoded through the sung taqtuqa and compound form of wasla.
Conferences/Talks
November 2021 - Munira al-Mahdiyya: Contested Biographies of the Queen of Tarab, Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference
October 2021 - Munira al-Mahdiyya: An Audible Biography of One Woman’s Music-making in Early Twentieth Century Egypt, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference
November 2020 - Cultural Politics of Tarab: Urban Egyptian music at the turn of the 20th century, Ertegun Seminar series, Oxford University
April 2019 - Research Seminar 'Oxford Maqam Project', Music Department, Australian National University
October 2017 - ‘The Oxford Maqam Project’, Postcolonial Seminar Series, English Department, University of Kent, UK
March 2017 - 'Egypt’s Living Heritage: Community Engagement in Recreating the Past’, Makan Egyptian Centre for Culture and Arts, Cairo, Egypt
November 2016 - ‘Recording with a Phonograph,’ Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, City University, London
February 2016 - ‘Recording with a Phonograph’, Uludağ Üniversitesi Devlet Konservatuvarı, Bursa, Turkey
Current Research
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a vibrant cultural and intellectual movement developed across the Arab world known as the Nahda, often translated as the renaissance. My project examines the musical Nahda that transformed the soundscape of Egypt from the 1860s to the 1920s, and its connections with the period’s intense socio-political transformations. I investigate the affective and political impact of various musical forms on modern subjectivities of the time, as well as on wider discourses around the role of culture. Crucial to this soundscape was the social and musical phenomenon of tarab, which is often described as musical ecstasy but notoriously evades clear definition. I hope to clarify the aesthetic system and societal role of tarab during this period in particular. I am especially interested in the cultural semiotics that formed its practice, and how these were encoded and decoded through the sung taqtuqa and compound form of wasla.
Conferences/Talks
November 2021 - Munira al-Mahdiyya: Contested Biographies of the Queen of Tarab, Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference
October 2021 - Munira al-Mahdiyya: An Audible Biography of One Woman’s Music-making in Early Twentieth Century Egypt, Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference
November 2020 - Cultural Politics of Tarab: Urban Egyptian music at the turn of the 20th century, Ertegun Seminar series, Oxford University
April 2019 - Research Seminar 'Oxford Maqam Project', Music Department, Australian National University
October 2017 - ‘The Oxford Maqam Project’, Postcolonial Seminar Series, English Department, University of Kent, UK
March 2017 - 'Egypt’s Living Heritage: Community Engagement in Recreating the Past’, Makan Egyptian Centre for Culture and Arts, Cairo, Egypt
November 2016 - ‘Recording with a Phonograph,’ Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, City University, London
February 2016 - ‘Recording with a Phonograph’, Uludağ Üniversitesi Devlet Konservatuvarı, Bursa, Turkey
