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Music and Gender

Perspectives from the Mediterranean

Although scholars have long been aware of the crucial roles that gender plays in music, and vice versa, the contributors to this volume are among the first to systematically examine the interactions between the two. This book is also the first to explore the diverse, yet often strikingly similar, musics of the areas bordering the Mediterranean from comparative anthropological perspectives.

From Spanish flamenco to Algerian raï, Greek rebetika to Turkish pop music, Sephardi and Berber songs to Egyptian belly dancers, the contributors cover an exceedingly wide range of geographic and musical territories. Individual essays examine musical behavior as representation, assertion, and sometimes transgression of gender identities; compare men’s and women’s roles in specific musical practices and their historical evolution; and explore how music and gender relate to such issues as ethnicity, nationality, and religion. Anyone studying the musics or cultures of the Mediterranean, or more generally the relations between gender and the arts, will welcome this book.

Contributors:
Caroline Bithell, Joaquina Labajo, Jane C. Sugarman, Carol Silverman, Goffredo Plastino, Gail Holst-Warhaft, Edwin Seroussi, Marie Virolle, Terry Brint Joseph, Deborah Kapchan, Karin van Nieuwkerk, Svanibor Pettan, Martin Stokes, Philip V. Bohlman

392 pages | 18 halftones, 2 line drawings, 1 musical example | 6 x 9 | © 2003

Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Culture Studies

Gender and Sexuality

Music: Ethnomusicology

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Studying Gender in Mediterranean Musical Cultures
Tullia Magrini
1. A Man’s Game? Engendered Song and the Changing Dynamics of Musical Activity in Corsica
Caroline Bithell
2. Body and Voice: The Construction of Gender in Flamenco
Jaquina Labajo
3. Those "Other Women": Dance and Femininity among Prespa Albanians
Jane C. Sugarman
4. The Gender of the Profession: Music, Dance, and Reputation among Balkan Muslim Rom Women
Carol Silverman
5. Come into Play: Dance, Music, and Gender in Three Calabrian Festivals
Goffredo Plastino
6. The Female Dervish and Other Shady Ladies of Rebetika
Gail Holst-Warhaft
7. Archivists of Memory: Written Folksong Collections of Twentieth-Century Sephardi Women
Edwin Seroussi
8. Representations and Female Roles in the Raï Song
Marie Virolle
9. Poetry as a Strategy of Power: The Case of Riffian Berber Women
Terri Brint Joseph
10. Nashat: The Gender of Musical Celebration in Morocco
Deborah Kapchan
11. On Religion, Gender, and Performing: Female Performers and Repentance in Egypt
Karin van Nieuwkerk
12. Male, Female, and Beyond the Culture and Music of Roma in Kosovo
Svanibor Pettan
13. The Tearful Public Sphere: Turkey’s "Sun of Art," Zeki Müren
Martin Stokes
14. "And She Sang a New Song": Gender and Music on the Sacred Landscapes of the Mediterranean
Philip V. Bohlman
List of Contributors
Index

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