Project description
How amplification influenced contemporary oud practices
The oud, or Arab lute, is emblematic of Arab music but also a symbol of avant-garde experimentation. While the expansion of the strings section in orchestras resulted in its decline in popularity in Arab orchestras, the oud is now making a comeback. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the OA project explores the impact of amplification, electrification, and sound reinforcement technology on the oud’s return, and compares this to other instruments such as the electric guitar and synthesizers. Using anthropology, ethnography, history, and musicology, it involves fieldwork in North Africa, the Middle East, and the diaspora, producing articles, a book, a podcast series, and a digital manual.
Objective
The oud, or Arab lute, is an instrument whose practices are full of paradoxes. It is both the emblematic instrument of ‘Arab music’ and its avant-garde. It disappeared from Arab orchestras in the mid-20th century, the instrument no longer being audible in the face of the growing number of strings. Yet, many of the most adventurous musicians in the Arab world are oud players, who have succeeded in bringing this instrument back to the forefront of local and international stages.
The objectives of my research project are 1) to describe contemporary practices involving the oud in relation to its amplification, its use in sound reinforced performances and its electrification process, and to link these practices, which are increasingly visible in the Arab world, to the history of amplification in Western countries (mainly the electric guitar, but also the synthesizer); 2) to study the impact of these technologies on oud playing techniques, its sound/musical aesthetic and its organological evolution (lutherie); 3) to fill the gap in anthropological studies on the impact of amplification on the musical soundscape of the Arab world.
The methodology applied will be that of the social sciences (anthropology, ethnography) combined with history (archives) and musicology (musical analysis). The multi-sited fieldwork will cover three areas (North Africa, the Middle East and the Arab diaspora in the West), which will complement the work already done on the European network of Arab oud players (PhD thesis). The results will take the form of four peer-reviewed articles that will be compiled into a book, but also a non-academic dissemination : an online audio podcast series (in English/Arabic) and a digital manual (summarizing the amplification processes discovered during this research which are of interest to countless oud players, in the Arab world and beyond).
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- humanities arts musicology
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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HD1 3DH HUDDERSFIELD
United Kingdom
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