Asmahan's Secrets : Woman, War, and Song (Middle East Monograph Series, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin)

Asmahan's Secrets : Woman, War, and Song (Middle East Monograph Series, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin)
Sherifa Zuhur (Author)
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Syria

The great Arab singer Asmahan was the toast of Cairo song and cinema in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as World War II approached. She remained a figure of glamour and intrigue throughout her life and lives on today in legend as one of the shaping forces in the development of Egyptian popular culture. In this biography, author Sherifa Zuhur does a thorough study of the music and film of Asmahan and her historical setting.

A Druze princess actually named Amal al-Atrash, Asmahan came from an important clan in the mountains of Syria but broke free from her traditional family background, left her husband, and became a public performer, a role frowned upon for women of the time.

This unique biography of the controversial Asmahan focuses on her public as well as her private life. She was a much sought-after guest in the homes of Egypt's rich and famous, but she was also rumored to be an agent for the Allied forces during World War II.

Through the story of Asmahan, the reader glimpses not only aspects of the cultural and political history of Egypt and Syria between the two world wars, but also the change in attitude in the Arab world toward women as public performers on stage. Life in wartime Cairo comes alive in this illustrated account of one of the great singers of the Arab world, a woman who played an important role in history.

• Rank: #544724 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.27" h x 5.24" w x .71" l, .85 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (Music Culture)

Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (Music Culture)
Jonathan Holt Shannon (Author)
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Syria

How does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in Syria's musical culture, which is particularly known for embracing and preserving the Arab musical tradition, and which has seldom been researched in depth by Western scholars. Music plays a key role in the process of self-imaging by virtue of its ability to convey feeling and emotion, and Shannon explores a variety of performance genres, Sufi rituals, song lyrics, melodic modes, and aesthetic criteria. Shannon shows that although the music may evoke the old, the traditional, and the local, these are re-envisioned as signifiers of the modern national profile. A valuable contribution to the study of music and identity and to the ethnomusicology of the modern Middle East, Among the Jasmine Trees details this music and its reception for the first time, offering an original theoretical framework for understanding contemporary Arab culture, music, and society.

• Rank: #472025 in Books
• Published on: 2009-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 9.02" h x .83" w x 5.98" l, .95 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Description #1 by Barnes & Noble - Book Culture Inc.:

Categories: Music->Arab countries->Philosophy and aesthetics. Contributors: Jonathan Holt Shannon - Author. Format: Hardcover

Description #2 by LangtonInfo.com:

New Paperback.

Description #3 by Alibris: