战争与和平时期的音乐
音乐是西方观察中东文化的一面镜子。
“It is an excellent way to investigate important aspects of culture—from history to colonialism and from contemporary politics to social constructs, like gender,” says Anne Rasmussen.
Music can also provide a means of passing down important information about cultural traditions, events and contemporary news—information eventually recorded by historians.
To serve both ends, Rasmussen, professor of music and ethnomusicology at William and Mary, not only teaches classes such as Worlds of Music, but also directs the College’s Middle Eastern Music Ensemble, a scholarly labor of love that she began in 1994.
这个合奏团既是一个文化佳博体育，也是一个表演合作。 Membership has waxed and waned over the group’s 28-semester life and usually mixes students from the Middle East (or who have parents or grandparents from the Middle East) with other students from a variety of different backgrounds, who are interested in the idiom for any number of reasons.
教一些西方音乐经典之外的东西是什么意思？ 尤其是来自一个我们知之甚少的文化和地方的东西？
“When we hear music from other cultures, we have not been drilled with the history of that area. 我们没有在广告歌曲和电影配乐中听到这种音乐； we have no method by which to place it, no context for understanding it,” place it,” Rasmussen said. 相比之下，我们沉浸在西方文化及其音乐的背景下。 “For example, you might have a flute student studying works of a Western European classical composer. 这个学生可以走出教室去听音乐会，听到同一个作曲家的音乐。 或者他们会看一部电影，在电影的原声中听到笛声。 Then our same student goes to a history class and learns about nationalism or the Romantic or Classical periods, which enables them to put their flute piece into a historical context.”
因此，音乐传统成为文化标志，证明某人或某物属于一个社会或种族群体。 每种文化都有与自己独特的历史交织在一起的音乐体系，因为长笛作品不仅是一首音乐作品，而且是历史和文化的背景作品，比如1750年的维也纳。
如果18世纪的维也纳看起来很古老，拉斯穆森指出，中东文化包含了可以追溯到8世纪和9世纪的文学音乐理论传统，在这个时期，人们已经开始写作，并从希腊人那里学习音乐的作用。
“Early scholars believed that music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy—the Quadrivium—represented paths of knowledge which were fundamentally interconnected,” says Rasmussen.
“They wrote about the role of various instruments, how harmonics work, the morphology of instruments and the way strings vibrate, but they also studied the way that music affects the human body and the cosmos.”
融入音乐
Drawing on such a rich cultural background, the participants in William & Mary’s Middle Eastern Music Ensemble learn the intricacies of rhythm and the arcana of instrumentation—but the heart of the enterprise is making the music. Rasmussen says the ensemble provides a forum for students to do the “real stuff” beyond reading articles, writing papers and watching films.
“Some of these kids often come to the group with excellent musicianship, but no prior experience with the Arab, Turkish, Persian, Armenian and Greek traditions that comprise the music of the Middle East,” Rasmussen said. “They might be alternative musicians who play the mandolin, or singer-songwriters or just really creative musicians. Or they might be ‘heritage learners’—students of global studies and international studies whose parents or grandparents are from Bangladesh or Saudi, for instance. We are a very diverse group.”
乐团的每个化身都给拉斯穆森带来了不同版本的务实挑战，即确定谁应该演奏什么。 大多数乐团成员都是经验丰富的音乐家，这给了她一个起点。 For instance, she generally encourages players of wind instruments to try the nay, or flute, while she steers mandolin players and guitarists toward the ’ud , the round-backed lute. “They already have the fingering and picking motions down,” she says.
小提琴手继续拉小提琴，但使用中东调音。 很少或没有音乐背景的成员从打击乐开始； Rasmussen says she likes to have at least one “real” percussionist to anchor the section.
“The only way to do an ensemble like this with limited resources of teaching and time is to attract capable musicians who already play music. If they don’t play any instruments and don’t sing, it is difficult to just wave a wand and work miracles,” she said. “If they are interested and have a decent ear and a great attitude they can learn. Sometimes a weaker musician will have a fantastic energy and that is worth all the fancy playing in the world.”
为了教授这些材料，拉斯穆森准备了一张曲调的CD，定期进行排练，有时还在部分演出中与表演者会面。 Musicians start off with simple ditties such as “Ah Ya Zayn,” the “Twinkle, Twinkle” of Arab music, but soon move on to more sophisticated material.
邀请特邀艺术家
Often, Rasmussen will invite guest artists—scholars or composers or both—to lecture or perform or assist in a class. In spring 2007, the ensemble’s work focused on the traditional music of Iraq. 拉斯穆森安排乐队与伊拉克裔美国人阿米尔·埃尔萨法合作，他致力于在极端动荡时期拯救伊拉克音乐。 埃尔萨法两次拜访威廉和玛丽，并在一场伊拉克音乐会上作为客座艺术家演出。
无论是否有客座艺术家，合奏表演通常都是座无虚席。
“The quest for global knowledge in general is huge on this campus,” says Rasmussen. “For one thing, global awareness is a new prerequisite for employment, whether it’s in the government, military or public sector. 另一个激励因素可能是，在世界历史的这个特殊时刻，学生们希望能够普遍熟悉各种文化背景。 考虑到9/11事件发生时，我们的许多学生才11岁。 These kids have come of age in an era when you can’t take a tube of toothpaste on a plane because of the nation’s overarching concern for national security! I think they want to move beyond that mindset.”
A year ago, the ensemble presented a major concert in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Embassy of Spain,with the theme “Andalusia: Cultural Crossroads.” 音乐会的特色曲目包括基督徒、犹太人和穆斯林共有的曲目，以及几首由特邀歌手康姆·塔萨特（Ramon Tasat）演唱的西班牙传统曲目。
“One thing we do in this kind of music is work through oral tradition,” says Rasmussen. “That is, through listening to an idiom and deciding where do you put the trills, where do you slide between notes, how can you take this melody and play with it and make it your own?”
Middle Eastern music is structured around a system of melodic modes called maqam, many of which feature quarter tones, and around rhythmic patterns called iqa‘. maqam比西方音阶更复杂，它的音符落在钢琴的音符之间。 Rasmussen explained that the rhythmic patterns may be performed in very basic ways or may exhibit extreme complexity as well—a number of them would be considered “uneven” in Western terms.
“Stretching all the way across North Africa because of various migrations, it’s a huge kind of template for organizing melody and rhythm,” says Rasmussen. “Within each separate area, there are different names for the melodic and rhythmic modes as well as for musical instruments.”
Rasmussen’s primary area of teaching, Middle Eastern music and culture, stems from her dissertation work and some 10 years of field work among Arab American communities and Middle Eastern American communities. 除了她在阿拉伯世界和中东的音乐工作，她目前正在写一本书。 To be titled Women’s Voices, the Recited Qur’ân, and Islamic Musical Arts in Indonesia, it is based on several years of ethnographic research she conducted in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.
真实的，真实的世界
A scholar of not only Islamic musical arts in Indonesia, but also of female reciters of the Qur’ân, Rasmussen asks culturally important questions: “What do the women do? 它们长什么样子？ What does their music sound like?” What is their motivation for becoming religious specialists and professional reciters of the Qur’ân?” Her experiences and studies allow her to add flavor and diversity to her work with students and ensemble members—to debunk myths and give students examples that are not only “real-life,” but also “real-world” which, Rasmussen says, “might not always be what we get from the popular press.”
“You can visit the most populous Muslim country,” says Rasmussen, “and you will find that these women are beautiful, articulate, very educated and quite public. You will see them on television performing a wide variety of different kinds of music or reciting the Qur’ân, an artistic and religious phenomenon central to national and cultural identity in Indonesia, as it is in the Middle East and Muslim world.
“Because it is meant to be recited aloud rather than read silently, the Qur’ân is enjoyed as a kind of musical oratory. While the meaning of the Qur’ân is central to Islam, the divine origin and power of the sound of the Qur’ân is something experienced on a purely aesthetic level, particularly in a society where few understand the Arabic language.”
音乐的力量
Rasmussen explains that some Islamic cultures have developed a reputation for being ‘anti-music.’ She said skepticism regarding musical performance and performers stems from the belief that music is extremely powerful and has a direct affect on human emotions and behavior.
“In Sufism, a mystical tradition of Islam, music is used as a catalyst for spiritual experience because it is so powerful and can lead you into altered states of consciousness,” says Rasmussen. “If music is used with the wrong ‘vision of the heart,’ then it can lead to crazy behaviors—like drinking, dancing and sexual promiscuity.”
伊斯兰文化和中东的音乐种类繁多，就像制作这些音乐的人一样，尽管它们分享着从中国西部一路传到中亚、伊朗和印度北部的旋律和节奏传统。 拉斯穆森补充说，由于十字军东征期间的文化交流以及西班牙宗教裁判所之前在伊比利亚半岛建立的大熔炉，西方音乐的乐器很大程度上得益于中东和穆斯林世界的乐器。
“When you look at musical instruments themselves,” says Rasmussen, “much depends on the cultural geography. 在中东，因为是沙漠文化，所以乐器很小，便于运输。 In Southeast Asia you have huge gong-type instruments, which you can’t just throw on your camel. They stay in a special place in a court or palace and musicians come to those instruments.”
绩效科学
十多年前，拉斯穆森来到威廉玛丽学院时，她是学院第一位民族音乐学教授。 如今，她教授各种音乐和民族音乐学课程，即通过音乐对文化进行人类学研究。
“In the field of ethnomusicology, in addition to learning languages and library research, we usually engage ethnomusicological field work as a kind of participant observation method. For instance, if you want to learn about somebody’s music you could brandish a microphone and say ‘tell me about your music!’ Well they might not even have a vocabulary,” she said. “But when you sit down and play, then there is all of this other kind of exchange that happens. So for us, musical performance and participation is really part of our methodology.”