MEDITERRANEAN MUSIC STUDIES BLOG

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call for papers

The Mediterranean as Sonic Tourbillon:
Interventions of Connection and Disconnection
16th symposium of the ictmd mediterranean music study group
state conservatory of turkish music - ege university | 1-5 June, 2026

PROCEEDINGS

Music, Bridges, Passages: Towards a Mediterranean paradigm?
Selected Papers From the 14th Symposium
of the ICTMD Study Group Mediterranean Music Studies
Marseille, June 26-30, 2023

edited by olivier tourny
March, 2025

Due to the large number of participants and the variety of topics presented on the broad theme of musical bridges and crossings in the Mediterranean, it proved impossible to publish the proceedings of the symposium in their entirety. So, in agreement with Séverine Gabry-Thienpont, I proposed to the Board to post on the collective blog of our Study Group a selection of papers that would give an optimal overview of our meeting in Marseille.
We wanted to leave a trace. The first three posts here will be followed by others over time.

Olivier Tourny

The Mediterranean Music Study Group (ICTMD), along with ISMEO - The International Association for Mediterranean and Oriental Studies, are pleased to announce the upcoming international symposium The Body in Action: Performance, Work, Ritual and Dance on September 23-26, 2024. The 15th symposium of the MMS Study Group is hosted by the Antonio Pasqualino International Puppet Museum in Palermo, Italy, and it is also open to all, including the business meeting session.

In preparation for the ICTMD Mediterranean Music Study Group 30th Commemoration, we have uploaded an English translation of a section from the preface of Antropologia della musica nelle culture mediterranee. Interpretazione, performance, identità: alla memoria di Tullia Magrini. Philip V. Bohlman, Marcello Sorce Keller and Loris Azzaroni (eds.), Bologna, Edizioni Clueb – Cooperativa Libraria Universitaria Editrice, 2009, which explains the significance of Tullia Magrini’s contribution and the importance of the Study Group.

Rebetiko Proastia
photo ESSAY by alexandre fournier biville
6 Janurary 2025

This portfolio is a photographic study of rebetiko music, the atmosphere of the places where this music is played and the dances associated with it.

Alexandre Fournier Biville is an author and photographer focusing on the power of attraction and reflection that an image can provide. His project "Rebetiko Proastia" plans a second phase in Turkey, where this musical genre has deep ancestral roots.

This video is part of a larger film project about the Tunisian ʻūd ʻarbī in Tunisia and abroad. The ʻūd (often spelt oud, sometimes named also kouitra, kwitra, quwaytara), a plucked instrument, is the most prominent musical instrument of the Arab-Islamic world.

Salvatore Morra, through research at the Bellasfar family workshop in Tunis (2015), in this video highlights the diverse ways in which the instrument is constructed, transmitted and performed.

Based on Amina Mesgguid’s doctoral research, this essay engages
with the contemporary transmission of Sufism in the fringes of brotherhoods, especially in festivals, spiritual retreats and online coaching, in Morocco. The aim is to analyse the evolution of contemporary beliefs, outside religious institutions, in a Muslim country. Based on this research, she presents some results linked to spiritual music in culture spaces of Sufism in Morocco and its sociological and anthropological transformations, thanks to her participant observations from 2018 to 2022. Amina Mesgguid is a 4th year PhD student at the Center for Global Studies and former lecturer in methodology and the anthropology of religion at the International University of Rabat.

From the uppermost tip of Morocco, overlooking the strait of Gibraltar in the Kasbah of Tangier, to the south-eastern region of the Tafilalet and the Saharan dunes in Merzouga which border Algeria, this suite of images, each with a unique sonic and sociologic significance taps through snippets of sounded life as seen by this researcher.

Vanessa Paloma Elbaz brings forward open-ended questions aiming to draw out whimsy and inspiration.

Għana (pron. āna) is an umbrella term for a genre of Maltese folk singing encompassing subgenres such as the spirtu pront (extemporised għana), tal-fatt (narrative għana) and la Bormliza (a highly-melismatic type of għana). All għana employs the accompaniment of two or more (usually three) guitars.

In this video, Evrim Hikmet Öğüt presents interviews with Syrian musicians living and working in Istanbul. Taken from the larger ‘Sounds Beyond the Border’ project, the video seeks to understand experiences of migration through music. The interviews open perspectives on the permanence and transience of life in displacement, the complexities of belonging and relationships between communities, the problems of everyday performance and the dreams of futurity and a common cultural world.

YOUR CART