Anne K. Rasmussen
The College of William and Mary
Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center Research Fellow 2010-2011

“Performing Arts and the Worlds of Islam: Synergy and Disconnect in the Indian Ocean Trade Winds”

Abstract: For this presentation I reposition Indonesia’s prominence during the last half millennium in the development of pious art productions by looking at the rich world of Indonesian Islamic music that is produced by women and men in the circum-Indian Ocean Islamic world. Key to Indonesian Islamic arts and stemming from the recitation of the Qur’an are the aesthetics of Arabic language and music, which, I argue constitute a global aesthetic system that Indonesian artists both reference and resist depending on their cultural background and political orientation. Yet on the distant shores of the Arabian Gulf, little of this kind of culture seems to exist or is even acknowledged. I will consider the assiduous development of performing arts cultures in two very different Islamic contexts based on extensive fieldwork and research on Islamic musical arts in Indonesia and with preliminary impressions from new fieldwork on musical patronage and development in the Southern Arabian Gulf nation of Oman.

Bio: Anne K. Rasmussen is associate professor of music and ethnomusicology at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia where she also directs the William and Mary Middle Eastern Music Ensemble and has served as chair of the Middle East Studies Faculty and co-director of the Asian Studies Initiative. Her research interests and publications concern American musical multiculturalism, particularly Arab American music and community, music and culture in the Middle East, and Islamic musical arts in Indonesia. Rasmussen’s new book is titled Women's Voices, the Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Musical Arts in Indonesia (University of California Press, 2010). She is co-editor with Kip Lornell of Musics of Multicultural America (Shirmer, 1997) and of a new collection, Music and Islam in Indonesia with David Harnish due out in 2011. She is a former Fulbright senior scholar, has served as the First Vice President of the Society for Ethnomusicology, and is the recipient of the Jaap Kunst prize for the best article published in the field of ethnomusicology in 2001 and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award. In September 2008, she was appointed University Professor for Teaching Excellence, a competitive term chair of three years. This year she has a research fellowship from the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center to undertake an ethnographic study of musical patronage and culture in this Arabian Gulf nation of Oman.

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Named after Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy, the founding chair of the Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology, this colloquium series provides an opportunity for students, faculty, and visiting lecturers to share information about their research and discuss other issues important in the field. Please check the department website for details on lecturers.