KARACHI:
A brand new audio collection about South Asian music and Islamic sound arts is aiming to alter the best way we take into consideration our inventive heritage.
‘Sounding Board’ options readings of essays by influential students, musicologists, poets and critics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring themes of identification, inheritance and creativeness.
These essays, which cowl a large spectrum of mental, political and cultural debates, are a part of a near-forgotten canon of each Urdu and English writings.
Written largely within the ‘Inshiyah’ type, these works current arguments and narratives as springboards, aiming to develop a vital appreciation of points and considerations in Indo-Islamic aesthetics, and invite commentary and critique.
The collection is narrated and produced by Ali Raj, an award-winning journalist and scholar primarily based in New York. Raj is a PhD candidate in communications at Columbia College, the place his analysis focuses on the mental historical past of sound and aesthetics within the Indo-Islamic custom.
“The aim is to deliver to life concepts about music and sound that can assist restore reference to our sonic and literary heritage,” he stated.
Created primarily for podcast streaming platforms, episodes of ‘Sounding Board’ may be accessed additionally on YouTube. Up to now, one season has been launched, whereas a second season is close to completion. The episodes cowl matters corresponding to Pakistan’s first patriotic music from 1946 to the custom of ‘Naat’ and ‘Tarannum’ recitation. Every episode incorporates a full studying of the unique textual content, alongside quite a few snippets of related archival songs and recitations.
The episodes are additionally accompanied by detailed writeups on the writers and the background of every essay.
‘Sounding Board’ is supported by Columbia College Society of Fellows and Humanities New York, the New York State affiliate of the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities.

