Conference Agenda

The theoretical and analytical engagement with Persian classical (dastgāhi) music has significantly grown since the early twentieth century. Among the scholars who have attempted to articulate the principles of Persian music, the theory proposed by Dariush Talai claims to systematically survey the internal logic of the radif—the canonical repertoire of the musical genre—, modal nuclei, and structural relationships among musical elements. This paper argues, however, that Talai’s exclusively internalist analytical approach, when detached from historical and regional continuities, risks representing Persian music as an insular and self-contained system, isolated from its broader cultural ecology. Emphasizing the historical and structural sustained interaction of Persian dastgāh music with neighboring modal traditions, particularly those of the Arab and Turkish worlds, I suggest that ignoring this continuum introduces a form of historical discontinuity into analysis and obscures the transregional dynamics that have shaped Persian modal systems.

To examine this claim, the paper focuses on the dastgāh of Segāh as a case study. Due to its distinctive modal logic, Segāh resists full explanation within theories that define modal structure primarily through the examination of constructive tetrachords, including Talai’s framework. Such tetrachord-based approaches struggle to account for Segāh’s modal fluidity, ambiguity of the modal center, and characteristic melodic motion. By contrast, maqām-based theories in Arab and Turkish traditions conceptualize Segāh (Segâh/Sikah) around a central trichord, as the generative core of modal behavior. This perspective aligns more closely with observed performance practice.

Drawing on the sociologist Andreas Wimmer’s critiques of methodological nationalism, the paper concludes that while Talai’s theory remains highly effective for analyzing the internal logic of the radif and improvisatory practice, its explanatory scope is limited without a regional comparative framework. Integrating internal structural analysis with a transregional and historical perspective offers a more comprehensive understanding of Persian dastgāh music and its place within Middle Eastern modal networks.

This paper examines the way dominant tripartite classification of musical genres reproduces and reinforces the hierarchical orders of ethnic and national identities in Iran. During the last two decades, as ethno/musicological studies have expanded through scholarly journals, university courses, and programs in Iran, the classification of musics into folk, classical, and popular categories has dominated many Persian musicological studies. This classification has also been associated with the prevailing ethno-national identities, such that folk and classical music are usually deemed to represent ethno-linguistic groups and overarching Iranian nationality, respectively. Focusing on the folk and classical categories in this model, I ask what ideologies and politics of identity have been involved with this classification, and how they reinforce unequal dynamics of ethnic-national categories.

Drawing on Matthew Gelbart’s discussion on the socially constructed-ness of folk and art music, and Kofi Agawu’s critique of the pitch-centered valuation of musical systems, I show how this discourse selectively focuses on the modal systems to claim the musical complexity for classical (dastgāhi) music and simplicity for folk—also known as regional—musics. Through analyzing the articles and interviews published in the last two decades within three Persian scholarly journals—Honarhā-ye Zībā, Nāme-ye Honar, and Mahoor Music Quarterly—I illustrate that the mainstream classification of musics in the Iranian (ethno)musicology sphere unquestioningly categorizes non-dastgāhi Iranian musical systems into the folk type, ascribes specific characteristics, such as lack of theorization, to it, and reserve the scientific, theorized, classical niche solely for the dastgāhi system.

Finally, I argue that despite the insistence on the objectivity of the dominant tripartite classification of musics as a scholarly tool for musical studies in some Persian ethno/musicological publications, this taxonomy subjectively reproduces an evolutionary model in which ethnic, rural, and non-Persian identities are positioned at less-evolved stages and function as a constitutive Other for the complex, superior, urban, national identity. By situating Iranian musicological discourse within broader debates on classification and power, this study illuminates how musical analysis functions as a mechanism through which national identity and social hierarchy are naturalized.

In the discourse of contemporary Iranian classical music, the dastgāh system is presented as a repository of melodic, modal, and aesthetic complexities. Behind this discourse of complexity lies a set of social dynamics. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of “symbolic capital” and Michel Foucault’s power/knowledge nexus, I argue that modality, specifically the performance and pedagogical framing of the modes Navā and Rāst-Panjgāh, functions as a mechanism of social stratification and cultural hegemony through which authority is produced, circulated, and policed. While musicological scholarship often focuses on the structural intricacies of these modes, this study shifts the lens to their sociopolitical performativity, investigating how the claim to modal mastery serves to reinforce internal hierarchies and elitist exclusion.

Methodologically, this research employs critical discourse analysis to scrutinize pedagogical apparatuses, including radif commentaries and conservatory syllabi. These analyses are triangulated with ethnographic oral histories from a diverse cohort of performers and educators.

The core of my argument centers on the discursive construction of Navā and Rāst-Panjgāh as complex or intellectual modes. Within the dastgāh tradition, these two modes are frequently shrouded in a rhetoric of unapproachability, framed as domains reserved only for the most learned masters. This paper posits that this mystification of complexity is not merely an observation of technical demands but a socially constructed tool of power. By elevating the mastery of specific melodies and modulation paths to a litmus test for "artistic legitimacy," the musical elite creates a divide between the cultivated initiate and the mass practitioner.

Furthermore, this study explores how this modal hierarchy facilitates internal colonial dynamics. When certain modes are weaponized as markers of intellectual superiority, they effectively marginalize regional and heterodox musical expressions, labeling them as ontologically inferior. The paper concludes by advocating for ‘aesthetic disruption’ as a strategy to dismantle the institutional sanctification of the modal system, suggesting that challenging the hegemony of modal complexity is essential for a more inclusive and democratic musical landscape. By repositioning Navā and Rāst-Panjgāh as accessible creative spaces rather than tools for social exclusion, entrenched elitist structures that have long dominated the tradition can be contested.