Event — IIAS Lunch Lecture

Music, Religion, and Politics – Doing Fieldwork in Xinjiang

Mu Qian (SOAS, University of London) did fieldwork in Northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for his PhD research on music and meaning in Uyghur Sufism. Sufism has played an important role in the history of Islamisation of Xinjiang, and is today an important part of the identities of some Uyghur people. Sounded practices derived from Sufi traditions still take place among the pious locals, against governmental ban. Mu will talk about his research and show some rare footages from his fieldwork.

A lecture by Mu Qian, PhD candidate at SOAS, University of London.

Lunch is provided. registration is required.

From July 2015 to August 2016, Mu Qian did fieldwork in Northwestern China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region for his PhD research on music and meaning in Uyghur Sufism. Sufism has played an important role in the history of Islamisation of Xinjiang, and is today an important part of the identities of some Uyghur people. Sounded practices such as the "hälqä-sohbät", a ritual that derived from Sufi traditions of samāʿ and dhikr, still take place among the pious locals against governmental ban. Music, religion, and politics thus constitute Mu Qian’s field research and become key words of his dissertation. In this presentation, he is going to talk about his research from these aspects, and show some rare footages from his fieldwork. 

MU Qian is an ethnomusicologist, performing arts curator and writer. He is currently a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London.

Mu is working on his PhD dissertation titled Experiencing God in Sounds: Music and Meaning in Uyghur Sufism, after a year’s fieldwork among the Uyghur Sufis in Xinjiang, Northwestern China. His research is part of Sounding Islam in China, a multi-sited ethnographic study project of SOAS supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

Mu has presented papers at Islamic Soundscapes of China Conference (2013, London), World Conference of International Council for Traditional Music (2013 Shanghai, 2015 Astana), International Conference on Islamic Arts in Intercultural Perspective (2016, Hong Kong), Annual Meeting of Society for Ethnomusicology (2016, Washington D.C.), and Ethnography of Islam in China conference (2017, London). He has been a guest lecturer at UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Maryland, and Royal Holloway, University of London.

As a producer, Mu has produced concerts of world music in Asia, Europe and North America. Supported by the Asian Cultural Council, Mu conducted research on world music in the US for seven months in 2014, during which he served as a presenter at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. and worked on several projects of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York. He is a member of jury of the Transglobal World Music Chart.

Mu has written over 1,000 articles on culture and art for various publications, especially China Daily and the Chinese website of the Financial Times. He is also the Chinese translator of Alan P. Merriam’s book Anthropology of Music (People’s Music Publishing House, Beijing, 2010). 

Registration (required)

Please register by sending an email to h.m.van.der.minne@iias.nl if you would like to attend this lecture.

About IIAS Lunch Lectures

Every month, one of IIAS' affilated fellows will give an informal presentation about his/her work-in-progress for colleagues and other interested parties. IIAS organises these lunch lectures to give the research community an opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and exchange thoughts and ideas. In addition, lunch lectures are given by visiting scholars.