Jarigan, Muslim Epic Songs of Bangladesh

1998 Yearbook of Traditional Music. Review by Charles Capwell, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Illinois, Urbana.
The real accomplishment of Dunham's study is to have examined jarigan in the kind of detail - using historical and literary sources as well as her own and others' field recordings and transcriptions - that makes the reader aware of just how important an item of Bengali Muslim culture it has been. With so little in English on traditional Bengali music - an enormously rich field - this book is especially welcome.

Regula B. Qureshi, Professor of Music, University of Alberta, Edmonton
A ground breaking study of a major genre of Bangladeshi folk song... valuable to scholars in the field of South Asian as well as in Islamic studies.

Peter J. Chelkowski, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University, New York
In this study we see the remarkable absorption of literature from the Middle East into the Bengali folk songs. Stories from Muharram passion plays, Biblical-Koranic parables, and Arabian Nights romances are all there.

Israel J. Katz, Ethnomusicologist-Associate Researcher, University of California at Davis
"...Dunham's novel prosodic and musical analyses of jari songs and underlying compositional techniques, for which she also provides a penetrating historical, social, and spiritual background, are essential toward understanding this vital genre of Bengali folk music..."

Book Description
This book is the only work in English devoted to jarigan, a major genre of Islamic bardic song in South Asia. The themes of the songs originally concerned heroic episodes from a seventh-century battle between Muslims, a battle which is commemorated annually by Shia Muslims in their Muharram Festival. The compositional form of jarigan songs now serves for a wide range of themes, including Arabian Nights style of romances and songs about topical issues. The book provides a history of the repertory, descriptions of the soloist-cum-chorus performances, and explanations of the poetic and musical structures of the songs. As well as Chapter Notes, the book contains a Glossary, Bibliography, Index, photoprints in color and in black-and-white, maps, transcriptions of song texts in Bengali, translations in English, musical notations, and a list of jarigan recordings. The book comes with an audio cassette.

Language Notes
Text: English, Bengali

About the Author
Mary Frances Dunham studied music composition in New York and Paris. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Teaching Classical Languages from Harvard University and one in Indic Studies from Columbia University. She has written articles and co-edited works specializing in the music of South Asia, including Ravi Shankar's Ravi Shankar: Learning Indian Music, A Systematic Approach (1979). During the 1960s, Dunham was introduced to jarigan songs when Jasimuddin, an eminent Bangladeshi poet and collector of folk song texts, asked her to make musical notations of songs he was gathering for his book, Jarigan (1968). She received a grant from the Ford Foundation for further field work and research in order to prepare material for the present book on jarigan. The book represents her latest effort to acquaint a wide audience with the exceptional qualities of Bangladeshi folk songs.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices