Fraught Balance: The Embodied Politics of Dabke Dance Music in Syria (Music / Culture)

Synopsis

Dabke, one of Syria's most beloved dance music traditions, is at the center of the country's war and the social tensions that preceded conflict. Drawing on almost two decades of ethnographic, archival, and digital research, Shayna M. Silverstein shows how dabke dance music embodies the fraught dynamics of gender, class, ethnicity, and nationhood in an authoritarian state. The book situates dabke politically, economically, and historically in a broader account of expressive culture in Syria's recent (and ongoing) turmoil. Silverstein shows how people imagine the Syrian nation through dabke, how the state has coopted it, how performances of masculinity reveal—and play with—the tensions and complexities of the broader social imaginary, how forces opposed to the state have used it resistively, and how migrants and refugees have reimagined it in their new homes in Europe and the United States. She offers deeply thoughtful reflections on the ethnographer's ethical and political dilemmas on fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Silverstein's study ultimately questions the limits of authoritarian power, considering the pleasure and play intrinsic to dabke circles as evidence for how performance cultures sustain social life and solidify group bonds while reproducing the societal divides endemic to Syrian authoritarianism.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

320 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780819501042

Related ISBNs:

9780819501028

Publisher:

Wesleyan University Press

Date of Addition:

05/06/24

Copyrighted By:

Shayna M. Silverstein

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Entertainment, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Music

Grade Levels:

Graduate Student

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.