post-orientalism and the evental possibility of emancipation from ethnic self segregation in the east

Title Post-Orientalism No. IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 7 – Radif of Iranian Music for Qanun By Nilufar Habibian About the Album post-orientalism and the evental possibility of emancipation from ethnic self segregation in the east Liner notes by Ehsan Saboohi 1 The qanun and oud have played a fundamental role in the formation and transmission of musical knowledge across the Middle East and Central Asia. These instruments carry modal and rhythmic systems while simultaneously laying the groundwork for music theory. Works such as al-musiqi al-kabir by Al-Farabi, sharh al-adwar by Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, and maqasid al-alhan by Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi demonstrate that these scholars’ ideas influenced regions including Iran, the Ottoman Empire, the Levant, Egypt, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. 2 In the musical traditions of the East, various modal systems—maqam in Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Syria; dastgah in Iran; and Arabic maqamat in Egypt and the Persian Gulf—each embody a specific relationship between sound, time, and cultural expression. Although these systems differ in name and interval structure, they share an ontology of sound and time distinct from the linear and formalist aesthetics of modern Western music. post-orientalism music, while respecting these traditions, seeks an independent approach. It neither aims to reconstruct the past nor imitate prevailing Western models, but to establish a new aesthetic and theoretical system that enables sound recreation within a novel conceptual framework. In this context, the geography of post-orientalism is not limited to the East but reflects a global imperative to question positionality. 3 Accordingly, at first encounter, post-orientalist works may appear to lack direct references to Eastern musical traditions or contemporary Western methodologies. This very uncanny dissonance is part of the issue: creating a musical language beyond the binaries of tradition and modernity, East and West. To clarify this approach theoretically, the following sections analyze the concept of orientalism in Edward Said’s reading and the power/knowledge nexus in Michel Foucault—concepts that provide the necessary foundation for understanding post-orientalism within artistic discourse. 4 In Orientalism, Edward Said argues that the “Orient” is more a discursive structure born of Western relations of knowledge and power than an independent reality. He writes: “The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes.” This artificial representation of the Orient is not a reflection of Eastern cultural authenticity, but a discursive manifestation that defines the Orient as the “other” to be imagined, possessed, and consumed. As Michel Foucault states in The Archaeology of Knowledge: “Discourses are practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.” Knowledge about the Orient is therefore not a mirror of reality but a product of the intertwining of power and knowledge; a framework that transforms the representation of the Orient into a source of legitimacy for Western hegemony. 5 Although Said’s and Foucault’s critiques target Western power structures, this writing focuses on their internal reflection within Eastern societies—a phenomenon we term ethno-fundamentalist self-segregation. This involves the reproduction of colonial identity-formation mechanisms by Eastern societies themselves through elimination of neighboring others, extreme emphasis on ethnic distinctions, and the application of power/knowledge logic in indigenized narratives. 6 In music, this discursive separation is more apparent. While Western music history, despite its diversity, has produced a shared discourse, in Eastern traditions the qanun—common to Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Armenia—has become a tool of identity appropriation rather than a foundation for cultural understanding. Each culture, relying on power/knowledge relations, defines this instrument as its own and limits the possibility of a collective horizon of understanding. 7 This section examines two mutually reinforcing discourses: myth-making in Western discourse and ethnic fundamentalism in intra-Eastern discourse. Both reproduce Foucault’s power/knowledge nexus and obstruct space for synergistic dialogue among Eastern cultures. Western myth-making, focusing on the “mystery” of the East, transforms this culture into a commodity for emotional consumption. Could Alan Lomax’s interpretations of Iranian folk music, which primarily focus on recording and publishing select dastgah from the radif without examining the broader historical context, represent such reductive approaches? Eastern ethnic fundamentalism reacts to Western narratives by treating myth-making as an identity threat and, instead of critical reconstruction, insisting on purification and exclusive emphasis on ethnic authenticity. Foucault writes in The History of Sexuality, volume I: “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” Similarly, does Bruno Nettl’s focus on the Iranian radif as the primary system, while marginalizing Azerbaijani maqams and Egyptian oud traditions, demonstrate how scholarly approaches can inadvertently create exclusionary discourses? 8 The radif of Iranian dastgah music is a pre-classical model with a linear structure, considered the most distinctive traditional auditory heritage of Iran. In the radif for qanun project, the radif is not merely a historical text but an open framework for combining and redefining fundamental concepts. Three key concepts are redefined: Radif or “musical system”: an organized collection of melodic, rhythmic, harmonic, and sonic elements each composer selects and arranges based on post-orientalist logic. Dastgah or “set”: an ordered collection of musical objects—including melodic, rhythmic, harmonic patterns, pure sounds, noise, or electronic sounds—whose subsets and interrelationships are defined within the framework of the dastgah. Gusheh or “unit”: the smallest element within a dastgah, each representing an independent melodic pattern. 9 The radif for qanun album, through exclusive recording of the Iranian dastgah radif on the qanun instrument (WAV, 24-bit/48 kHz, unprocessed), provides raw sonic material to composers. This foundation enables critical rereading, digital or analog processing, and the breaking away from or recreation of dastgah and radif according to each composer’s personal system. Any creative intervention—whether within the framework of the dastgah or toward breaking away from it—is considered valid and authentic. 10. Within the domain of thought and aesthetic foundations of Post-Orientalism, any creative intervention by the radif-dan — who, in this theoretical and practical discourse, refers to the composer rather than the performer — whether in the formation of variable relationalities with the structures of radif and dastgah, or in the path of absolute rupture from their archaic-centered morphology, is regarded as an authentic and legitimate act. In this discourse, insistence on adherence and absolute obligation to established iconographies is not a sign of authenticity, but rather a suspension of truth and a reproduction of the historical memory of ethnocentric self-alienation. The methodology and style of Post-Orientalism, by emphasizing the will and the right to rupture and critically re-read the intangible global heritage, declares the artist’s act of intervention not as an exception, but as a necessary rule of the aesthetic will of dissonant pluralities and self-founded subjectivity. Pre-order, listen, or donate to the project: Post-Orientalism No. IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 7 – Radif of Iranian Music for Qanun https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-7-radif-of-iranian-music-for-qanun Also published in this series (Vol. 1–6): Post-Orientalism IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 1 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-1 Post-Orientalism IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 2 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-2 Post-Orientalism IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 3 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-3 Post-Orientalism No. IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 4 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-no-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-4 Post-Orientalism No. IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 5 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-no-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-5-2 Post-Orientalism No. IV: The Cultural Sound Blocks of Humanity Vol. 6 https://postorientalism.bandcamp.com/album/post-orientalism-no-iv-the-cultural-sound-blocks-of-humanity-vol-6