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SUFISM MUSIC AND SOCIETY IN TURKEY AND THE MIDDLE EAST pdf download

SUFISM MUSIC AND SOCIETY IN TURKEY AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Book Title Sufism Music And Society In Turkey And The Middle East
Book AuthorElisabeth Ozdalga
Total Pages165
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LanguageEnglish
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Sufism Music and society in Turkey and the Middle East

SUFISM MUSIC AND SOCIETY IN TURKEY AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Mevlana ceremonies of whirling dervishes are attracting increasing interest as forms of religious music, both informal and popular genres, after decades of prohibition.

 This movement coincides with a growing concern for cultural, ethnic, and religious identities, with religious revivalism setting the tone.

One of the most powerful memories from my first visit to Istanbul in the legendary student movement year of 1968 is the sound of the ezan, the call to prayer.

Especially the ezan of early dawn, called out before the noise of the swarming streets deadens the distinctness of any single sound, has ever since then been coupled with undefined, but excited expectations on my part of a different, at that time undiscovered world—life itself, as a matter of fact.

One summer night a few years after my first visit, I was sitting in a coffee-house in Eskisehir, a middle-sized town in Anatolia, when the muezzin called out the evening prayer.

Wishing to share my appreciative feelings for the ezan, I said in halting Turkish: “How beautiful he sings!”

Since people at the table smiled, almost with a kind of embarrassment, I understood that I had said something wrong. The ezan is not sung, but read! The proper expression would have been: “Ne giizel ezan okuyor!” (lit. How beautifully he reads the ezan!) Having corrected the sentence, however, I had second thoughts.

 What if, by insisting in evaluating the ezan from an aesthetic point of view, I had made another, yet more subtle mistake. Perhaps my first expression had been wrong in a double sense, not only grammatically, but also ethically.

This question touches on the complex and sometimes controversial issue concerning the role of music in different religious rituals.

As for Islam, the opinions widely diverge on this question. The traditionally most common and most orthodox view is that liturgy (especially the reading of the Koran) admittedly may be supported by different forms of chanting, but the musical element in a religious ceremony should be kept under strict control, and not entice the listener or performer to neglect sacred meaning for musical enjoyment.

 This puritanism is not all-embracing, however. Within Sufism, the tradition of Islamic mysticism, music has developed more freely.

The Sufi order (tarikat) which is especially connected with the development of sophisticated forms of ritual music, vocal and instrumental, has been the Mevlevi order, inspired by Mevlana Jalal ad-Din Rumi (d. 1273).

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