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The Urdu Marsiyah:
Text and Performance
presented by
the
Society
of Fellows in the Humanities and the
Southern
Asian Institute at
Columbia
University, and
by the
American
Institute of Pakistan Studies, and by the
South
Asia Center at the
University of
Pennsylvania
Saturday,
February 28, Heyman
Center for the Humanities, 2nd floor
PART ONE:
Literary Workshop
10:00-12:30 =
Discussion of marsiyah
texts
12:30-1:30 =
Lunch
1:30-3:30 =
Marsiyah in literary
and cultural history
PART TWO:
Marsiyah Recitation
Saqlain Naqvi,
marsiyah
reciter
Yavar Abbas,
marsiyah reciter
4:00, at 301 Philosophy
Hall
We regret to
announce that due
to difficulties with the visa application
process, Professor Sibt-e Ja'far
Zaidi will be unable to perform. We are sorry to
miss the opportunity to
hear his recitations after our months of
preparation, but are pleased to
announce that reciter Yawar Abbas of London has
graciously agreed to join
us and recite taht-ul-lafz marsiyah. The program
will continue as scheduled,
with both soz and marsiyah by Syed
Ghulam-us-Saqlain Naqvi and Yawar Abbas.
We look forward to seeing you there.
This whole
Saturday workshop is
free and open to the public, but please register
for Part One in advance:
email Manju Sadarangani
<ms2660@columbia.edu> and include a mailing
address for the packet of study materials.
*A related
performance at the University
of Pennsylvania, featuring Yavar Abbas*
*A related performance
at Harvard*
*Some background
on the performers*
*Some background
on the marsiyah*
*Some background
on Shi'a Islam*
A
related performance at the University of
Pennsylvania ~~
Marsiyah
reciter Yavar
Abbas will be featured in a performance at
the University of Pennsylvania
on the evening of Friday, February 27th. "The Art
of the Urdu Marsiya:
An Evening with Yavar Abbas" will take place in
the Hamilton
House Rooftop Lounge, from 6:00-9:00 pm.
A
related performance at Harvard ~~
Marsiyah
reciter Saqlain Naqvi will
also perform at the International Council for
Traditional Music colloquium/Radcliffe
Advanced Seminar entitled "Local Theory/Local
Practice: Musical culture
in south Asia and beyond." This event will be held
at the Harvard University
Music Department, Paine Hall, Feb. 27, 2004. The
goal of this seminar is
to broaden the discourse among scholars of South
Asian music and to forge
new connections with allied disciplines and areas.
Participants include:
Richard K. Wolf, Michael Herzfeld, Regula Qureshi,
Stephen Blum, Amanda
Weidman, Rustom Bharucha, Martin Clayton, Susan
Reed, Adam Nayyar, Gregory
Booth, Shubha Chaudhuri, Gert-Matthias Wegner,
Ashok Ranade, Rolf Groesbeck
and Anthony Seeger. A day of paper presentations
and discussion will be
followed by a concert of South Asian folk and
religious music. The colloquium
and concert on Feb. 27 is free and open to the
public. Full details: on
the Harvard website.
Some
background on the performers~~
Saqlain
(Shanne) Naqvi
is an excellent amateur reciter of soz and
marsiyah with a vast repertoire
of classical poetry, which he performs in
declamatory or melodic modes.
Naqvi hails from a prominent Shi'a clan whose
mourning assemblies in the
rural township of Mustafabad, Uttar Pradesh,
India, are still remarkable
for their intensity and high literary quality.
Shanne's mother, Begam Atiya
Naqvi of Lucknow, and his aunt, Aliya Imam of
Karachi, are also aficionados
of the marsiyah and talented reciters. Naqvi grew
up in Mustafabad and
Lucknow, was educated in Delhi, and now lives in
Lucknow. More information:
on
the Harvard website.
Sibt-e Jafar
Zaidi is
a published author, a trained vocalist, and a
professor from Karachi, Pakistan.
Zaidi is much in demand for his beautiful, clear
renderings of majlis texts.
He has visited some sixteen countries, and he and
his vocal accompanists
have performed throughout Pakistan and
internationally. In his book, Sauti
'ulum o funun-e islam, Professor Zaidi
claims a high-art status for
the recitation of soz and marsiyah, explaining the
genres' classical Hindustani
musical settings and regional variations.
Yavar Abbas
is a writer, broadcaster, journalist, and
film-maker from Lucknow. Educated
at Allahabad University, he derives his taht
ul-lafz recitation style both
from family tradition, and from a special love for
the poetry of Mir Anis.
He has translated many English writers into Urdu,
and has produced for
the BBC World Service a number of
widely-distributed films on South Asian
and English literary topics, some of which have
won awards. Yavar Abbas
is currently based in London, where he lives with
his wife Hamida. He has
recited the poetry of Anis in Britain, America,
the Gulf countries, and
India. More information about Yavar Abbas: on the
U.
Penn website.
Some
background on the marsiyah~~
*Study materials about Anis's
most famous marsiyah*
*Karbala
and the Imam Husayn in Persian and Indo-Muslim
literature*, a fine
general overview by the well-known scholar
Annemarie Schimmel.
If you'd like
to hear some nauhah
and marsiyah singers, try *azadari.com*.
There
are even some *videos
of majalis sessions* available online.
Some
background on Shi'a Islam ~~
*A
world map* of Shi'a-Sunni population
distribution.
*Shi'ism
in perspective*, from Alan Godlas's
excellent site
*Isfahan*,
with an architectural and cultural tour.
*Shi'a.org*
a general site with a Shi'ite perspective
*al-Islam.org*,
a
Shi'ite site with some *explanatory
articles*
*The
Origins and Early Development of Shi`a Islam*,
a book by S. H. M. Jafri.
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