Performing al-Andalus Music and Nostalgia across the Mediterranean [Paperback]

Performing al-Andalus explores three musical cultures that claim a connection to the music of medieval Iberia, the Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus, known for its complex mix of Arab, North African, Christian, and Jewish influences. Jonathan Holt Shannon shows that the idea of a shared Andalusian heritage animates performers and aficionados in modern-day Syria, Morocco, and Spain, but with varying and sometimes contradictory meanings in different social and political contexts. As he traces the movements of musicians, songs, histories, and memories circulating around the Mediterranean, he argues that attention to such flows offers new insights into the complexities of culture and the nuances of selfhood.

[A] major intervention into the emergent field of Andalusian music studies: it is amongst the first full-blown anthropological studies of these traditions, and the first to attempt a cross-cultural comparative perspective. . . . [A] thought-provoking and illuminating study of the role played by the image and memory of al-Andalus in the modern Mediterranean world.

Jonathan Holt Shannon is Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College, CUNY. He is author of Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria and A Wintry Day in Damascus: Syrian Stories.

Ma'luf: Reflections on the Arab Andalusian Music of Tunisia by Ruth F. Davis (Scarecrow Press, 2005). ISBN 9780810851382.

A sizeable body of literature has emerged in recent years that explores the musical legacies of al-Andalus from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. Jonathan Shannons book is a crucial addition to this scholarship.

Prelude
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration

Overture Performance, Nostalgia, and the Rhetoric of al-Andalus: Mediterranean Soundings
1. In the Shadows of Ziryab: Narratives of al-Andalus and Andalusian Music
2. The Rhetoric of al-Andalus in Modern Syria, or, There and Back Again
3. The Rhetoric of al-Andalus in Morocco: lst