Across twentieth century Soviet and Chinese Central Asia, maqam traditions were transformed into fixed national canons through processes of transcribing, reworking, and recording. Previously fluid and shared repertoires were streamlined into mono-linguistic repertoires, transmitted, and performed within state institutions (During 2005; Levin 2002). In the post-Soviet era these national repertoires retain considerable symbolic capital, but musical revivalists in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have done much to renew and refresh their traditions, often working across national borders. One border, however, remains stubbornly impermeable: the former Sino-Soviet border that separates Tajik-Uzbek traditions from the closely related maqam traditions of the Uyghurs (Harris 2009), a repertoire which draws extensively on cross-border Sufi traditions of sama’ and hikmat. This paper reflects on a current research project which aims to connect shared histories of exchange with contemporary approaches to maqam across the former Sino-Soviet border. The project explores questions of musical style and meaning through close attention to micro-details of performance practice. What is the relationship between ‘national’ style and modal practice? How do musicians inhabit the rhythmic ‘groove’ of neighboring traditions? What are the possibilities and limits of feeling musically ‘at home’ (Collins & Gooley 2016)? This research aims to shed light on problems of musical colonization and the internalization of dominant ways of listening, the challenges of musical border-crossing initiatives and the analytical potential of decolonial projects of ‘border listening.’

This paper focuses on the musical life of Neyzen (ney artist) Niyazi Sayin, an Istanbul-born ney (reed flute) master and virtuoso, and one of the most acclaimed musicians of Ottoman-Turkish makam music. Building upon the work of Martin Stokes on musical citizenship and cultural intimacy, the paper examines how Sayin’s life and work relates to both official and alternative ideas of the nation. It argues that, over the course of his long career, Sayin’s music opened up alternative possibilities and visions of living in the world, creating a different complex of art, cultural intimacy, and politics than those articulated by official constructions of citizenship. This is reflected in the honorific titles bestowed upon Sayin, who has been called insan-i kamil (a perfect human), kutb-i nayi (the musical spiritual axis of his age) and hezarfen (master of a thousand arts), all of which constitute meanings about what it means to be an ‘ideal’ musician far beyond the nation-centred vision of official ideologies (i.e. Kemalism and Islamism) that have shaped the cultural field in Turkey. To elucidate these points, the paper discusses how Sayin’s musical life has provided an ethical example of dwelling in Istanbul, and of fashioning one’s self as a Muslim. These observations are grounded in more than a decade-long field research among ney artists in Istanbul, interviews with Sayin’s students, and my own exposure to the transformative efficacy of the ney pedagogy by becoming its student.

The Aegean Sea, nestled between Greece and Turkey, divides two historically hostile nation-states. Often considered a marker of the boundary between Christian Europe and the Muslim world, the partition also serves to signify the border between the West and the (Middle) East. The political histories of these two countries are deeply entangled, and the contemporary narratives about nation, belonging, and identity formation within these two contexts differ substantially. However, this geography is also a nexus that connects affects and sensory experiences—smells, sights, sounds, tastes, tactility—that are the products of a shared history, as is made audible in the musical traditions on both sides of the sea. In this paper, I examine the life of an Ottoman musical tradition, makam, across the Aegean Sea and a sense of belonging that musicians cultivate which goes beyond official histories of the nation-state. The pioneering works on the makam tradition usually center the Turkish side of this post-Ottoman musical phenomenon (Feldman 1996; Signell 1977; Kutluğ 2015) and/or focus on the music theoretical discussions (Andrikos 2020; Ederer 2015). In the present study, I focus on the mobility of the makam scene through a multi-sited ethnography in Greek and Turkish metropolises and share a sensory ethnography of musical performance along with surrounding activities such as socializing, dancing, eating, and drinking. I discuss the music’s potential to carry an affective resonance (Stewart 2017) that engenders an alternative ‘feeling of history’ (Hirschkind 2020).

Singer and poet Hajibaba Huseynov (1919-1993), revered by some as the “voice of Azerbaijan,” has left an unparalleled legacy for mugham performers and fans today. Both his repertoire and performance style established a distinct school that dominates among aspiring and professional mugham singers. In this paper, I examine how Huseynov’s lineage highlights the connections between Azerbaijani and Iranian classical modal music. Although he was born in the capital Baku, Huseynov spent most of his time in the suburban towns of the Absheron region, known for their strong ties to Iran, Persian culture, and Shia Islam. The cultural and musical kinship between populations in Azerbaijan and northern Iran (which many call “southern Azerbaijan”) has been a thorny issue in politics, having undermined the nationalist agendas both in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. Exploring particular elements of Huseynov’s style, I discuss the potential of musical imagination to move across space and time, connecting an Azerbaijani populace astride the Aras River and building a transnational community. Engaging with recent cross-disciplinary interest in the topic of imagination (Crapanzano 2004, Kazubowski-Houston 2017, Nuttall 2018), I question how performing with musicians can provide further insight into the experience of sung poetic meters. Specifically, I show how imaginative interpretation of lyrics, part of Huseynov’s school, becomes transcendence of geographical borders as it invokes the settings of Absheron towns and Iran along with their authority in the realm of the Persian classical poetic tradition writ large.