The Ma Luf In Contemporary Libya

The musical tradition of Ma'luf is believed to have come to North Africa with Muslim and Jewish refugees escaping the Christian reconquista of Spain between the tenth and seventeenth centuries. Although this Arab Andalusian music tradition has been studied in other parts of the region, until now, the Libyan version has not received Western scholarly attention. This book investigates the place of this orally-transmitted music tradition in contemporary Libyan life and culture. It investigates the people that make it and the institutions that nurture it as much as the tradition itself. Patronage, music making, discourse both about life and music, history, and ideology all unite in a music tradition which looks innocent from the outside but appears quite intriguing and intricate the more one explores it.

The musical tradition of Ma'luf is believed to have come to North Africa with Muslim and Jewish refugees escaping the Christian reconquista of Spain between the tenth and seventeenth centuries. Although this Arab Andalusian music tradition has been studied in other parts of the region, until now, the Libyan version has not received Western scholarly attention. This book investigates the place of this orally-transmitted music tradition in contemporary Libyan life and culture. It investigates the people that make it and the institutions that nurture it as much as the tradition itself. Patronage, music making, discourse both about life and music, history, and ideology all unite in a music tradition which looks innocent from the outside but appears quite intriguing and intricate the more one explores it.

This comprehensive Routledge Handbook on the Modern Maghrib introduces and analyses the region in its full complexity, focusing on the countries of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya, as well as the northern and western Sahara. In addition to country studies that provide historical and geopolitical background, a series of thematic explorations engage with a range of social, linguistic, cultural and economic aspects, providing a rich mosaic of current scholarship on the region. Addressing important debates such as the volatile international relations among constituent states, the role of women in society, and the environmental impact of climate change, the book considers natural resources, music, media and language, and revisits the history of borders and social tribal structures. What emerges is not only a variegated picture of the Maghrib as a complex and rapidly changing region, but one marked by stark contrasts and divergences among its constituent states based on their Ottoman and colonial experiences, their relationships with their Saharan and Mediterranean neighbours, and their own political trajectories. This Handbook fills an important gap in knowledge on a region increasingly significant in European and American affairs, and will appeal to anyone interested in the history, economies and societies of North Africa.

Historical Dictionary of Libya, Sixth Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities as well as aspects of the country’s politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture.

Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism covers a specific period of time (1988-2013) that has taken on a significantly different socio-political configuration to that of the first 25 years of post-independence Algeria (1962-1987). Since 1988, Algeria has seen democratic contestation,civil conflict between state and Islamist parties and, over the past 10 years, an uneasy peace. It was in the same period that the country endured economic decline and a painful transition to a more liberal economy. Less than twenty years ago Algeria was seen as a 'failed state' yet it is nowperceived as having a role in the 'stabilization' of North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring. Central to this transformation has been a turn in Algeria's economic fortunes. The Algerian army and political elite have, over the past 10 years, hugely benefitted from revenues derived from itshydrocarbon exports and use such revenues to manage a society in which a majority depend on state subsidies and public sector employment.Contemporary Algeria, argues Hugh Roberts (2003), is marked by an emerging post-nationalism and a sense that the elite has lost the political bearings that shaped the nation after 1962. There is an on-going tension generated by official positions that remain vigorously centripetal and a moreinformal, local yet transnational, dynamics that is often centrifugal in effect. The result is a society characterised by a range of oppositions that bear upon the evolution of the state and the lives of ordinary Algerians. Algeria has been dramatically marked by competing forces: state nationalismand grassroots nationalist disenchantment; Islamism and a version of Islam that accommodates greater plurality; a national economy - and this includes cultural production - that is responding to globalization; the conflict of the 1990s and its contemporary legacy. The contributions to this bookfocus on the impact of such forces across a range of interests in contemporary Algeria.

This book examines the diverse facets of popular music in Malta, paying special attention to għana (Malta’s folk song), the wind band tradition, and modern popular music. Ciantar provides intriguing discussions and examples of how popular music on this small Mediterranean island country interacts with other aspects of the island’s life and culture such as language, religion, history, customs, and politics. Through a series of ethnographic vignettes, the book explores the music as it takes place in bars, at festivals, and during village celebrations, and considers how it is talked about in the local press, at group gatherings, and on social media. The ethnography adopted here is that of a native musician and ethnomusicologist and therefore marries the author’s memories with ongoing observations and their evaluation.

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.