Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads

Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices explores the musical practices that circulate the Mediterranean Sea. Collectively, the authors relate this musical flow to broader transnational flows of people and power that generate complex encounters, bringing the diverse cultures of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East into new and challenging forms of contact. Individually, the chapters offer detailed ethnographic and historiographic studies of music's multifaceted roles in such interactions. From collaborations between Moroccan migrant and Spanish Muslim convert musicians in Granada, to the incorporation of West African sonorities and Hasidic melodies in the musical liturgy of Abu Ghosh Abbey, Jerusalem, these communities sing, play, dance, listen, and record their diverse experiences of encounter at the Mediterranean crossroads.

Ruth F. Davis is a Life Fellow and former Director of Studies in Music at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, where she is Emeritus Reader in Ethnomusicology. She also chairs the International Council for Traditional Music Study Group on Mediterranean Music Studies. Brian Oberlander holds a PhD in Musicology from Northwestern University.

Introduction. A Sea of Voices (Ruth F. Davis and Brian Oberlander) / Chapter 1. Voicing New Belongings: Composing Multilingual Songs in Italy's Refugee Reception Centers (Fulvia Caruso) / Chapter 2. Morisco Prayer: Musical Hybridity and Historical Memory among Muslim Converts in Granada (Brian Oberlander) / Chapter 3. Tan Cerca, Tan Lejos ("So Close, So Far Away"): Competence and Collaboration in Jalal Chekara's Flamenco Andalusí (Ian Goldstein) / Chapter 4. Brazilian Encounters: Beirut's "Golden Age," Ziad Rahbani, and Lebanese Bossa Nova (Gabrielle Messeder) / Chapter 5. Bollywood Trajectories and Audibilities of Race in Greek Popular Song (Dafni Tragaki) / Chapter 6. Beyond the Borrowing Paradigm: Lessons from the Muslim-Jewish Maghrib (Jonathan Glasser) / Chapter 7. Teaching Andalousian Music at Rabat's Conservatoire de musique marocaine: Franco-Moroccan Collaborations under Colonialism (Jann Pasler) / Chapter 8. Southern Subjectivities: Contemporary Art Music from the South of the Mediterranean (Anis Fariji) / Chapter 9. Dynamics of Musical Diversity: Morocco and the Southern Shore of the Mediterranean (Miriam Rovsing Olsen) / Chapter 10. Ensounding Exile: Yehuda Halevi and Israeli Musical Mediterraneanism (Michael A. Figueroa) / Chapter 11. Between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa: The Musical Repertoire of the French Benedictine Community of Abu Ghosh, Jerusalem (Olivier Tourny) / Chapter 12. Cycles of Encountering: Revisiting Robert Lachmann's Oriental Music Project in Mandatory Palestine (Ruth F. Davis)