Matters of the Heart, Expressions of the Body: Music, Trancing, and Embodied Pedagogy at Sufi Music-Listening Rituals in South Asia Restricted; Files Only
Mirza, Isaac (Summer 2023)
Published
Abstract
This dissertation is concerned with how trance traditions are sustained over time. Trance is a near-universal human experience during which individuals lose conscious control of their bodies. However, members of specific communities know what to expect of someone experiencing trance, and how to distinguish culturally legitimate trance from culturally illegitimate trance. The predictability of trance behaviors in communities suggest it is a learned skill; within a particular community, trance occurs in specific contexts and includes specific behaviors and anything that falls outside the community’s norms is either inappropriate trance or mere fakery, not recognized as trance at all.
How, then, do people learn a skill that is outside their conscious control? To answer this question, I use qawwālī, a form of Sufi music from South Asia, as a case study. Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork at a Sufi shrine in Lucknow, India, I make three interrelated arguments. First, I argue the sustaining a trance tradition requires a community of people who can observe that the supernatural world not only interacts with, but also animates and manipulates, the physical world. That same community of people must also be susceptible to influence from the supernatural world. Second, I argue that the process of learning the inclinations required to experience trance is at once social, material, and affective. Finally, I argue that qawwālī performance does not merely elicit trance. It also creates a shared context in which the social, the material, and the affective are concentrated and elevated as participants do the work of developing and sustaining their trance community through practices of what I call other-cultivation.
Other-cultivation is the middle-ground between two understandings of habitus: Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus developed unconsciously through social structures, and Saba Mahmood’s Aristotelian notion of habitus developed intentionally through practices of self-cultivation. I argue that between those two conceptions of habitus, there is a space in which the individual learns habitus unconsciously, but in which there is still intentionality. There is the “active” intentionality of experts who impart knowledge in novices, and the “receptive” intentionality of novices who themselves to be guided by experts.
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1
Lucknow ........................................................................................................................................5
Trance and Possession in Scholarship in the European and North American Academy 7 Indigenous Terms in Trancing and Possession....................................................................19
Other-Cultivation ........................................................................................................................25
Fieldwork .....................................................................................................................................29
Drawing/Comics as Ethnographic Method.............................................................................37
Chapter Summaries ...................................................................................................................40
I: Makān—Shah Mina as Place-Event.............................................................................43
Shah Mina the Place ..................................................................................................................48
Scaffolding ..................................................................................................................................51
‘Abd al-Haqq’s Account ............................................................................................................58
Irtida‘ ‘Ali Khan’s Account ........................................................................................................59
Shaykh Rais al-Hasan Siddiqi’s Account ...............................................................................62
Visual Hagiography....................................................................................................................63
Oral Hagiographies and Embodied Echoes...........................................................................70
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................75
II: Zamān—Musical and Ritual Time...............................................................................77
Form and Flexibility in Ġhazal Poetry.....................................................................................79
Qawwālī........................................................................................................................................94
Performance Contexts.............................................................................................................105
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................118
III: Iḳhwān—Instrumental Agencies and the Ethics of Other-Cultivation...............119
My Unintentional Exorcism.....................................................................................................120
What is a Żarī‘ah?.....................................................................................................................127
Żarī’ah as Pedagogy ................................................................................................................133
The Ethics of Other-Cultivation .............................................................................................136
Trancing and Żarī‘ahs..............................................................................................................138
IV: Daurān—The Flow of Money During Maḥfil-e Samā‘...........................................144
Cash-Giving as Ritual Practice ..............................................................................................148
Cash-Giving as Affective Practice.........................................................................................156
The Boy in the Black Cap........................................................................................................159
Cash-Giving and Aesthetic Connoisseurship .....................................................................162
Cash-giving and Gender .........................................................................................................165
Cash-Giving at a Children’s Maḥfil........................................................................................167
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................172
V: Qirān—Music, Poetry, and Intersensorial Experience..........................................173
Ġhazal Form..............................................................................................................................177
Scent Imagery...........................................................................................................................178
Courtly Imagery ........................................................................................................................ 191
Madness Imagery .....................................................................................................................197
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................199
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................201
List of Figures
Figure 1: Portrait of Fariha that I gifted her when I left Lucknow...................................37
Figure 2: Map of the neighborhood surrounding Shah Mina. The red pins indicate (from lower left to right) the locations of Shah Mina’s parents, Shah Mina, and Hajji Harmein. Some roads have been omitted for the sake of visual clarity. ....................................... 50
Figure 3: Map of scaffolding during construction at Shah Mina....................................54
Figure 4: Man giving money to musicians under and over scaffolding. ........................56
Figure 5: Print of Shah Mina (right) and Shah Madar (left), sold at dargah of Shah Mina. ....................................................................................................................................... 66
Figure 6: Print of Shah Mina (right) and Shah Madar (left).............................................68
Figure 7: Scale used for the melody of “What speaks inside me, it’s not me.”...........100
Figure 8: Antarā and astā’ī of “What speaks inside me, it’s not me.”..........................101
Figure 9: Reconstructed diagram of a twelfth-century Hindu royal court....................111
Figure 10: Diagram of Mughal Hall of Ordinary Audience............................................112
Figure 11: Qureshi’s diagram of maḥfil-e samā‘ in Delhi. ............................................ 113
Figure 12: Diagram of ‘urs performance seating at Shah Mina. .................................. 114
Figure 13: Diagram of the “children’s” maḥfil at Bibi Sahiba’s mazār. ........................116
Figure 14: Diagram of Thursday evening maḥfil at Shah Mina. ................................... 117
Figure 15: Letter from my “sister” Roshni, asking me to do a better job learning the music Papa gave me....................................................................................................128
Figure 16: Munne Miyan flinging money into the air....................................................163
Figure 17: Young man experiencing haziri while his companion ensures he does not harm himself.................................................................................................................181
Figure 18: Print featuring the word “Allah” written in jasmine blossoms.....................186
Figure 19: Image of the chandelier above Shah Mina’s resting place and the mirrored tiles adorning the walls of his mazār. From the Instagram account @hazrat_makhdoom_shahmeena_shah....................................................................... 190
Figure 20: Minister of State Mohsin Raza wearing a cādar he received upon visiting Shah Mina’s ‘urs in 2018..............................................................................................196
Figure 21: Rashid ‘Ali Minai (middle) and some companions (right foreground and background) wearing cādar during the children’s maḥfil.............................................197
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