IMS vol. 14

Dieter Christensen & Salwa E-Shawan Castelo-Branco:
Traditional Arts in Southern Arabia: Music and Society in Sohar, Sultanate of Oman.
Berlin: VWB—Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 2009. (INTERCULTURAL MUSIC STUDIES vol. 14, ed. by Max Peter Baumann, A Series of the Department of Ethnomusicology, Institute for Music Research, Julius-Maximilian University of Würzburg). – ISBN 978-86135-644-8.

Abstract
The Arabian Peninsula, and in particular, the coastal areas of the Arab Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Arab Sea, boast since times immemorial a wealth of cultural forms to which the people of the desert and those of the sea and from across  the  seas  have  amply  contributed.  The  arts—music,  dance,  poetry  in performance—not  only  testify  to  a  deep  history  and  express  diverse  ethnic identities; as an integral part of daily life they are also instrumental in balancing multicultural  society  and  adapting  local  communities  to  the  effects  of national and global modernization.
The authors have  studied, during  several residences between 1985 and 2006, the  state and evolution of performance practices and  the  social roles of performed  arts  in  Sohar,  an  ancient  and  still  important  coastal  town  of  the Sultanate of Oman. The book situates and describes the arts  (al-funûn) and their practitioners in the province and town of Sohar, studies the underlying concepts and the social networks through which the arts exist, and analyses the forces of change that have affected the arts as part of society in Sohar.
118 full color photos, numerous graphics incl. musical transcriptions, 2 compact disks, 1 DVD.