ABSTRACT
What is “Islamic music in Africa”? What range of social-sonic phenomena does this analytical concept cover? Of what use is it to African Studies? Before addressing these questions, one must begin with a critique, for the phrase is decidedly problematic. The concept of “music” can never be wholly liberated from its long history within the dominant European discursive tradition. In that tradition, “music” centers on a cultivated art of sonic beauty, in which the purity of the aesthetic experience is valued over its socio-cultural embeddedness and individual embodiment. Such “music” is sharply distinguished from linguistic, visual, and body-kinetic arts. Musical performance takes place in particular (mostly secular) social contexts, featuring the “concert” in which “performers” and “audience” are distinctly separated, and where the practice of disembodied “contemplative” listening and its associated ideal of aesthetic pleasure are primary. All this is supported by parallel traditions of writing music, and writing about music, historically and theoretically. As a result of this history, the concept of “music” has accumulated a cluster of associated qualities frequently inducing erroneous distinctions when applied elsewhere.
