Abstract
The Islamic World, the regions where Muslim communities form the majority, stretches from Southeast Asia to North Africa, encompassing a large number of nations and cultures which have been shaped variously by the one faith they share. This is particularly evident in their music: on the one hand, there is a significant controversy surrounding the permissibility of music in Islam, leading some communities to ban music and musical instruments; yet, at the same time, there are many practices in Islam, such as the call to prayer and the recitation of the Qur’an, that have an undeniably musical quality even though they are not nominally called ‘music’; furthermore, we know that most Muslim communities have their own hugely popular musical traditions that animate different public and private occasions, some of which have even attracted a global following for the spirituality that many perceive in them.
In this lecture, we shall explore the idea of ‘Music in the Islamic World’ through understanding the status of music in Islam, surveying music traditions & instruments in different parts of the Islamic world, and exploring their connections and specificities in terms of both the musical contents as well as the social context where music is made. Audio-visual examples will be supplanted by live performance of musical instruments from the Middle East and Central Asia.
Speaker: Eugene Leung
Eugene Leung read music at the University of Cambridge in the UK, and subsequently earned a Masters of Music in Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths’, University of London. He now specialises in the promotion, performance and education of music from Central and West Asia and neighbouring regions, with a focus on the two-stringed lute dutar from Uzbekistan, having studied with internationally renowned masters from Uzbekistan such as Guzal Muminova and Alisher Alimatov.
Recent projects include:
- Music Director, “cartographic counterpoint #1 - From Persia, the sounds of Central Asia/West Asia/the Western Regions”, Musical Event (supported by the Arts Development Council)
- Curator, “Beyond Europe and Asia: Traditional Music and Costumes from Central Asia, Caucasus and the Middle East”, Exhibition, HKUST Arts Festival 2021
- Author, “Classical Music of Central Asia”, Roving exhibition, LCSD Music Office
Eugene is also a co-founder of the Nur Collective, a Hong Kong-based ensemble presenting traditional music from Central and West Asia on authentic instruments from the region, with performances at the West Kowloon Jazz Festival, the Hong Kong Maritime Museum and at various local universities.
