CHHU Public Lecture: "Intertextuality and Imagining the Past through Classical Maqam Music in Caucasus and Central Asia

Drawing on frameworks from hermeneutic phenomenology, this lecture explores how classical modal music serves as a medium for imagining the past and constructing new subjectivities. Focusing on classical ghazal poetry performed within modal maqam traditions, the lecturer examines how interpretation of these texts involves a dynamic interplay of literary, historical, and contemporary sources - an intertextual process that Shahab Ahmed (2015) terms “hermeneutic engagement.” This immersive interpretative practice reveals how the search for ontological Truth becomes a socio-political act, shaped by emerging forms of creativity within the classical maqam sphere. The core of the lecturer’s analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Azerbaijan, where the speaker investigates the notion of “mugham philosophy” as articulated by local musicians. The speaker further contextualises these insights by drawing comparisons with other maqam traditions across Central Asia, illustrating how the interpretation of ghazal texts not only reimagines the past but also generates new possibilities for contemporary subject formation.

About Speaker:

Dr Polina Dessiatnitchenko is an assistant professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and a co-investigator in a UKRI/ERC-funded project called "Maqam Beyond Nation." Her research focuses on mugham, a branch of traditional Azerbaijani music, and she explores how musical creativity is a decolonizing practice suffused with affect. Before joining Waseda University, Polina was working on her first monograph while holding a Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Department of Music. Her articles have been published in Ethnomusicology Forum (2018), Ethnomusicology (2022), Asian Music (2022), Ethnomusicology Translations (2023) Yale Journal of Music and Religion (2024), and IASPM Journal (2024). Polina is also a performer on the Azerbaijani tar.

Moderator: Dr Chorshanbe Goibnazarov, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies, School of Arts and Sciences; Research Fellow, Cultural Heritage and Humanities Unit
Date and time: 26 May 2025, 15:00 Tajikistan time
Format: Online
Language: English

Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/97443819081?pwd=Wi8nYhGwqRrXPMx2hvMFEc6L2b5Lm8.1
Passcode:358086