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Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam
China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is experiencing a crisis of securitization and mass incarceration. In Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam , author Rachel Harris examines the religious practice of a group of Uyghur women in a small village now engulfed in this chaos. Despite their remote location, these village women are mobile and connected, and their religious soundscapes flow out across transnational networks. Harris explores the spiritual and political geographies they inhabit, moving outward from the village to trace connections with Mecca, Istanbul, Bishkek, and Beijing. Sound, embodiment, and territoriality illuminate both the patterns of religious change among Uyghurs and the policies of cultural erasure used by the Chinese state to reassert its control over the land the Uyghurs occupy. By drawing on contemporary approaches to the circulation of popular music, Harris considers how various forms of Islam that arrive via travel and the internet come into dialogue with local embodied practices. Synthesized together, these practicies create new forms that facilitate powerful, affective experiences of faith.
266 pages, Paperback
First published November 3, 2020
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About the author
Rachel Harris
8 books5 followersRachel Harris is a Professor in Ethnomusicology and Director of Research at SOAS.
Her research is centred on China and Central Asia, and especially on the Uyghurs. She has conducted fieldwork in Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for over a period of twenty years.
She has fifteen years’ experience of teaching and doctoral supervision in the discipline of ethnomusicology, and has published two monographs and co-edited three volumes on music (Gender in Chinese Music, 2013, the ethnomusicology textbook, Pieces of the Musical World, 2015, and Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World, 2018). She co-edited the journal Ethnomusicology Forum between 2004 and 2007. She currently co-convenes the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, and is series editor for the Routledge SOAS Studies in Music Series.
Her current research interests focus on intangible cultural heritage, music and identity formation, soundscapes and state projects of territorialization. She works in applied ways with performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording projects, and has worked as consultant for the Aga Khan Music Initiative (2006-16).
Her research is centred on China and Central Asia, and especially on the Uyghurs. She has conducted fieldwork in Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan for over a period of twenty years.
She has fifteen years’ experience of teaching and doctoral supervision in the discipline of ethnomusicology, and has published two monographs and co-edited three volumes on music (Gender in Chinese Music, 2013, the ethnomusicology textbook, Pieces of the Musical World, 2015, and Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World, 2018). She co-edited the journal Ethnomusicology Forum between 2004 and 2007. She currently co-convenes the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, and is series editor for the Routledge SOAS Studies in Music Series.
Her current research interests focus on intangible cultural heritage, music and identity formation, soundscapes and state projects of territorialization. She works in applied ways with performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording projects, and has worked as consultant for the Aga Khan Music Initiative (2006-16).
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