Michael Frishkopf
Biographic Data
| ID | 222641 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Frishkopf |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Frishkopf |
| SIGNATURE | FRISHKOPF M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8630-0623 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Cultures of Sound Network: The Genesis of an International Alliance
The Cultures of Sound Network is an international alliance of cultural institutions that develops public engagement projects around music and sound. Since its inception in 2018, the network has used collaborative inquiry to mobilize music and sound knowledge across North America and beyond, serve diverse communities, including Indigenous ones, and bridge divides between museums, universities, cultural organizations, and publics. This article disc…
Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees
Poet-Composer Collaborations in Modern Egyptian Song: A Social Network Analysis Approach to Music History
In this paper I formulate and apply a social network analysis methodology for understanding the history of song on Egyptian radio. Music is a massively relational cultural form, involving interactions among composers, poets, arrangers, conductors, and performers, among others. The reality of music history thus emerges as a complex network of relationships, unfolding and changing over time. Song production, in particular, centers on poet-composer-…
Localized Timbres and Tonalities of Qur'ānic Recitation: From Africa to Indonesia
Throughout most of its history, Islam localized to globalize, spreading a universal message of belief in the oneness of God ( tawḥīd ), which flexibily adapted to global cultures. This process was facilitated in part through oral traditions of performance and transmission. Such functional adaptation supported globalization by catalyzing engagement with local populations, enhancing the impact of Islam's theological message. This article examines t…
Textual Dimensions of the Public Ḥaḍra in Egyptian Sufism
The article explores the crucial role of text in Sufism, especially in the central corporate ritual, ḥaḍra. Using Egypt as a case study, and thoroughly analyzing one particular ḥaḍra performance, the article uses concepts of intertext and interauthor to demonstrate how text supports socio-spiritual relationships
The sonic performance of Islamic congregational prayer: Ṣalāh in mainstream Egyptian practice1
Studies of Islamic ritual have focused on the marginal, mystical, sectarian or syncretic. Studies of Islamic ‘music’ have focused on Qurʾanic recitation, the call to prayer and Sufi music. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to sonic aspects of Islam’s basic daily prayer rite, congregational ṣalāh. While ṣalāh’s textual aspects are constrained by discursive specifications, its sound – including timbre, pitch, modality and melody – is rela…
Re-envisioning Resilience from African Immigrants’ Perspectives
Investigations into immigrant resilience are now being called for in scholarly reviews of literature, policy, and practice related to immigrants, following decades in which the challenges they face in or pose to Western host societies took centre stage. Focusing on resilience not only recognizes immigrants’ strengths and contributions to their new homelands, but also creates a fertile landscape to explore possible pathways to optimize migration o…
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Preview this article: Launching the journal, opening the forum, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pi/8/1-2/pi_00002_7-1.gif
Call and Response: SEM President’s Roundtable 2016, “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees
The privilege of organizing the SEM President’s Roundtable in 2016 and 2017 provided an opportunity to call attention to a topic that has concerned my teaching and research since graduate school. For the first iteration of “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees” I convened a panel of people whose perspectives I admire. I wanted to learn from them, and I did. As someone who has been involved with Middle…
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Curating Ethnomusicology in Cyberworlds for Ethnomusicological Research: World Music in Wonderland
We describe a musical cyberworld as a virtual space for curating ethnomusicology, as well as for conducting research: the ethnomusicology of controlled musical cyberspaces. Our cyberworld differs from most online music curation in enabling immersive, social experience. Considering such cyber-exhibition of ethnomusicological research as itself a form of social and musical practice also calls for an ethnomusicology of such exhibits. Research in eth…
Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia
Michael Frishkopf, Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia, Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 54, No. 1-2, Music and Global Health (January/August 2017), pp. 41-86
Against ethnomusicology: Language performance and the social impact of ritual performance in Islam
This article argues that ‘music’ is unsatisfactory to reference sounds of ritual performance in Islam, not only because the term has been controversial for Muslims, but especially due to its unremovable pre-existing semantic load centred on non-referential aesthetic sound, resulting in drawing of arbitrary boundaries, incompatibility with local ontologies and under-emphasis on the referential language lying at the core of nearly all Islamic ritua…
Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music (review)
Reviewed by: Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music Michael Frishkopf (bio) Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music. Various artists. London: World Music Network, 2001. One CD-ROM (72 minutes, 20 seconds). 12-page booklet. Sampling from 11 different source albums, this compilation CD album offers a wonderful collection of stellar performers and powerful performances. Whether the package as a whole—including audio, text, and images—serves to …
Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater: Artistic Developments in the Muslim World
Real-politics: Televised Talent Competitions and Democracy Promotion in the Middle East
Music And Media In The Arab World
Nationalism, Nationalization, and the Egyptian Music Industry: Muhammad Fawzy, Misrphon, and Sawt al-Qahira (SonoCairo)
Nationalism, Nationalization, and the Egyptian Music Industry:Muhammad Fawzy, Misrphon, and Sawt al-Qahira (SonoCairo)1 Michael Frishkopf (bio) Introduction The first large record companies, established in the late 19th century, were based in America, Britain, France, and Germany. By the early 20th century they had already established highly profitable global empires of production and distribution (including copious quantities of music recorded f…
Islamic Music in Africa' as a Tool for African Studies
Suitably interpreted, “Islamic music in Africa” provides African Studies with a useful analytical tool for probing the relation between affective individual experience and the social structures, values, and cultural concepts which music both reflects and supports in Muslim areas. Nondiscursive Islamic musical diversity has facilitated Islamic expansion by enabling affectively powerful adaptations to local socio-cultural conditions. The sonic prac…
Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan (review)
Reviewed by: Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan Michael Frishkopf Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan. Recordings, text, and photographs by Anderson Bakewell. From the International Music Collection of the British Library National Sound Archive. Topic World Series, Topic Records Ltd. TSCD916. 2000. One audio CD, fourteen pages of notes, photos, map. This elegantly styled, musically rich, informat…
Authorship in Sufi Poetry
This article explores authorship in the Sufi poetry of Egypt. How do we explain apparent paradoxes: attribution of new poetry to an old saint, to more than one person, or to a performer? The Sufi’s world includes a close-knit spiritual-social network, spanning entities (both living and dead), across which text and inspiration flow. Poetic production (primarily the recombination of pre-fabricated units), occurs as much in social performance as in …
Soufis d'algerie: Mostaganem [Algeria: The Sufis of Mostaganem]
Inshad Dini and Aghani Diniyya in Twentieth Century Egypt: A Review of Styles, Genres, and Available Recordings
It is often assumed that as ‘orthodox’ Islam rejects music, Qur’anic recitation ( tilawa ) and the Call to Prayer ( adhan ) are its only acceptable melodic practices. By the same logic, the special music of Sufism is bracketed under the labels ‘heterodox,’ or else ‘popular,’ Islam. Both ‘orthodox’ and ‘Sufi’ practices are then categorically distinguished from the ‘secular’ world and its music. This erroneous ‘tripolar’ view of music and religion …
Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia
Michael Frishkopf, Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia, Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 54, No. 1-2, Music and Global Health (January/August 2017), pp. 41-86
Call and Response: SEM President’s Roundtable 2016, “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees
The privilege of organizing the SEM President’s Roundtable in 2016 and 2017 provided an opportunity to call attention to a topic that has concerned my teaching and research since graduate school. For the first iteration of “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees” I convened a panel of people whose perspectives I admire. I wanted to learn from them, and I did. As someone who has been involved with Middle…
Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music (review)
Reviewed by: Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music Michael Frishkopf (bio) Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music. Various artists. London: World Music Network, 2001. One CD-ROM (72 minutes, 20 seconds). 12-page booklet. Sampling from 11 different source albums, this compilation CD album offers a wonderful collection of stellar performers and powerful performances. Whether the package as a whole—including audio, text, and images—serves to …
La voix du poète: Tarab et poésie dans le chant mystique soufi
II n'y a pas véritablement de traduction du concept esthétique de tarab. Au sens strict, cela renvoie à une émotion musicale et aux ressources traditionnelles de la poésie musicale permettant de la susciter. Il s'agit, en particulier, du chant expressif en solo d'une poésie évocatrice dans un style improvisé utilisant le système traditionnel du maqâm (mode mélodique). Poésie affective, intonation et énonciation précises, juste élaboration du maqâ…
Inshad Dini and Aghani Diniyya in Twentieth Century Egypt: A Review of Styles, Genres, and Available Recordings
It is often assumed that as ‘orthodox’ Islam rejects music, Qur’anic recitation ( tilawa ) and the Call to Prayer ( adhan ) are its only acceptable melodic practices. By the same logic, the special music of Sufism is bracketed under the labels ‘heterodox,’ or else ‘popular,’ Islam. Both ‘orthodox’ and ‘Sufi’ practices are then categorically distinguished from the ‘secular’ world and its music. This erroneous ‘tripolar’ view of music and religion …
Authorship in Sufi Poetry
This article explores authorship in the Sufi poetry of Egypt. How do we explain apparent paradoxes: attribution of new poetry to an old saint, to more than one person, or to a performer? The Sufi’s world includes a close-knit spiritual-social network, spanning entities (both living and dead), across which text and inspiration flow. Poetic production (primarily the recombination of pre-fabricated units), occurs as much in social performance as in …
Soufis d'algerie: Mostaganem [Algeria: The Sufis of Mostaganem]
Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan (review)
Reviewed by: Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan Michael Frishkopf Music of Makran: Traditional Fusion from Coastal Balochistan. Recordings, text, and photographs by Anderson Bakewell. From the International Music Collection of the British Library National Sound Archive. Topic World Series, Topic Records Ltd. TSCD916. 2000. One audio CD, fourteen pages of notes, photos, map. This elegantly styled, musically rich, informat…
Nationalism, Nationalization, and the Egyptian Music Industry: Muhammad Fawzy, Misrphon, and Sawt al-Qahira (SonoCairo)
Nationalism, Nationalization, and the Egyptian Music Industry:Muhammad Fawzy, Misrphon, and Sawt al-Qahira (SonoCairo)1 Michael Frishkopf (bio) Introduction The first large record companies, established in the late 19th century, were based in America, Britain, France, and Germany. By the early 20th century they had already established highly profitable global empires of production and distribution (including copious quantities of music recorded f…
Islamic Music in Africa' as a Tool for African Studies
Suitably interpreted, “Islamic music in Africa” provides African Studies with a useful analytical tool for probing the relation between affective individual experience and the social structures, values, and cultural concepts which music both reflects and supports in Muslim areas. Nondiscursive Islamic musical diversity has facilitated Islamic expansion by enabling affectively powerful adaptations to local socio-cultural conditions. The sonic prac…
Real-politics: Televised Talent Competitions and Democracy Promotion in the Middle East
Music And Media In The Arab World
Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater: Artistic Developments in the Muslim World
Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music (review)
Reviewed by: Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music Michael Frishkopf (bio) Sufi Music: The Rough Guide to Sufi Music. Various artists. London: World Music Network, 2001. One CD-ROM (72 minutes, 20 seconds). 12-page booklet. Sampling from 11 different source albums, this compilation CD album offers a wonderful collection of stellar performers and powerful performances. Whether the package as a whole—including audio, text, and images—serves to …
Against ethnomusicology: Language performance and the social impact of ritual performance in Islam
This article argues that ‘music’ is unsatisfactory to reference sounds of ritual performance in Islam, not only because the term has been controversial for Muslims, but especially due to its unremovable pre-existing semantic load centred on non-referential aesthetic sound, resulting in drawing of arbitrary boundaries, incompatibility with local ontologies and under-emphasis on the referential language lying at the core of nearly all Islamic ritua…
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Curating Ethnomusicology in Cyberworlds for Ethnomusicological Research: World Music in Wonderland
We describe a musical cyberworld as a virtual space for curating ethnomusicology, as well as for conducting research: the ethnomusicology of controlled musical cyberspaces. Our cyberworld differs from most online music curation in enabling immersive, social experience. Considering such cyber-exhibition of ethnomusicological research as itself a form of social and musical practice also calls for an ethnomusicology of such exhibits. Research in eth…
Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia
Michael Frishkopf, Popular Music as Public Health Technology: Music for Global Human Development and “Giving Voice to Health” in Liberia, Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 54, No. 1-2, Music and Global Health (January/August 2017), pp. 41-86
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Launching the journal, opening the forum
Preview this article: Launching the journal, opening the forum, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pi/8/1-2/pi_00002_7-1.gif
Call and Response: SEM President’s Roundtable 2016, “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees
The privilege of organizing the SEM President’s Roundtable in 2016 and 2017 provided an opportunity to call attention to a topic that has concerned my teaching and research since graduate school. For the first iteration of “Ethnomusicological Responses to the Contemporary Dynamics of Migrants and Refugees” I convened a panel of people whose perspectives I admire. I wanted to learn from them, and I did. As someone who has been involved with Middle…
Re-envisioning Resilience from African Immigrants’ Perspectives
Investigations into immigrant resilience are now being called for in scholarly reviews of literature, policy, and practice related to immigrants, following decades in which the challenges they face in or pose to Western host societies took centre stage. Focusing on resilience not only recognizes immigrants’ strengths and contributions to their new homelands, but also creates a fertile landscape to explore possible pathways to optimize migration o…
The sonic performance of Islamic congregational prayer: Ṣalāh in mainstream Egyptian practice1
Studies of Islamic ritual have focused on the marginal, mystical, sectarian or syncretic. Studies of Islamic ‘music’ have focused on Qurʾanic recitation, the call to prayer and Sufi music. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to sonic aspects of Islam’s basic daily prayer rite, congregational ṣalāh. While ṣalāh’s textual aspects are constrained by discursive specifications, its sound – including timbre, pitch, modality and melody – is rela…
Textual Dimensions of the Public Ḥaḍra in Egyptian Sufism
The article explores the crucial role of text in Sufism, especially in the central corporate ritual, ḥaḍra. Using Egypt as a case study, and thoroughly analyzing one particular ḥaḍra performance, the article uses concepts of intertext and interauthor to demonstrate how text supports socio-spiritual relationships
Localized Timbres and Tonalities of Qur'ānic Recitation: From Africa to Indonesia
Throughout most of its history, Islam localized to globalize, spreading a universal message of belief in the oneness of God ( tawḥīd ), which flexibily adapted to global cultures. This process was facilitated in part through oral traditions of performance and transmission. Such functional adaptation supported globalization by catalyzing engagement with local populations, enhancing the impact of Islam's theological message. This article examines t…
Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees
Poet-Composer Collaborations in Modern Egyptian Song: A Social Network Analysis Approach to Music History
In this paper I formulate and apply a social network analysis methodology for understanding the history of song on Egyptian radio. Music is a massively relational cultural form, involving interactions among composers, poets, arrangers, conductors, and performers, among others. The reality of music history thus emerges as a complex network of relationships, unfolding and changing over time. Song production, in particular, centers on poet-composer-…
Art (16 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Literature (10 works) · Musical (9 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Visual arts (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Islamic Studies and History (6 works)