Maqam Beyond Nation

MAQAM addresses what happens when canonised forms of "national culture" break free from nation,
through creative experimentation, new cross-border cultural movements, or when they are violently
expelled as musicians flee from war or repressive regimes. Recent scholarship in (ethno-)musicology
has emphasised musical circulation and cosmopolitanism, human mobilities and transnational cultural
flows. However, these theoretical approaches have found little traction in scholarship beyond the
Western academy, and even less in safeguarding initiatives, where the national culture model still
dominates, marginalising indigenous and minority peoples and migrants, and deepening fault lines
across shared cultures. MAQAM responds to a pressing need to harness engaged cultural work to recent
theoretical advances, by fostering transnational networks, supporting cross-border research, and
engaging with local scholars and creative practitioners working beyond the sphere of national culture.
MAQAM takes as its case study musical traditions of maqam across Western and Central Asia.
It brings together a diverse team of early career researchers in a pioneering approach to collaborative
musical research and practice across national, linguistic and disciplinary borders. The team will apply
a combined methodology of multi-sited archival, analytical, ethnographic and practice research in
selected contact zones: on the Iran-Azerbaijan border, across the former Soviet-Chinese divide, with
Iranian musicians inspired by Arab rhythms, and contemporary Turkish musicians who reimagine the
diversity of the Ottoman repertoire. MAQAM aims to be more than an intervention in the sphere of
Western academic research. It is an active move, combining research with an international series of
concerts, workshops, conferences and films, to stimulate creative and scholarly exchange across borders,
driving a fundamental shift in established models of international music research and action