World Music on Campus Essay - Tyler Chartash MUSC 220 World Music on Campus Over the course of two weeks at the University of Maryland there were three

Tyler Chartash 11/21/16 MUSC 220 World Music on Campus Over the course of two weeks at the University of Maryland there were three performances by musicians of different cultures . The three musical traditions come from Indonesia , India and Hawaii . Mariah Ulfah performed first for our class . She was introduced by Anne Rasmussen , a professor in ethnomusicology from William and Mary , who also translated for Mariah . Anne emphasized the time and dedication it took Mariah to memorize the recitations from the Qur’an . She also emphasized the work that Mariah does to train children for competitions and the respect that Mariah has earned within her culture . The musical tradition that they introduced was Qur’anic recitation . It is described as embellishment of the Qur’an with your voice . Mariah performs and teaches this musical tradition in Indonesia , which holds the world’s largest Muslim population . During the performance , Mariah implemented five different styles of Qur’anic recitation , but did not encourage audience participation . This is due to a language barrier as well as the audiences’ assumed ignorance of memorized Qur’an passages . While Mariah performed , Anne had the audience follow along using slides that explained some of the concepts of Qur’anic recitation . The slides were used to teach the audience some of the basic concepts of the musical tradition , while allowing Mariah to focus on her performance . The purpose of this performance was to familiarize students with this foreign musical tradition . I learned that music in the United States lacks a similar religious context and meaning compared to Indonesia . Qur’anic recitation is focused on religion and the stylish repetition of passages from the Islamic holy book , the Qur’an . The second performance was by Samia Mahbub Ahmad and Krishna Ramdas . While being introduced , both of the musicians’ gurus were introduced as well .