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
.
This
preview
has intentionally blurred sections.
Sign up to view the full version.

This is the end of the preview.
Sign up
to
access the rest of the document.
- Fall '16
- Staff
- Music, Mariah Ulfah, qur’anic recitation, Samia Mahbub Ahmad
-
Click to edit the document details