Since the turn of the twentieth century the dramatic rise of mass media has profoundly transformed music practices in the Arab world. Music has adapted to successive forms of media disseminationDLfrom phonograph cylinders to MP3sDLeach subjected to the political and economic forces of its particular era and region. Carried by mass media, the broader culture of Arab music has been thoroughly transformed as well. Simultaneously, mass mediated music has become a powerful social force. While parallel processes have unfolded worldwide, their implications in the Arabic-speaking world have thus far received little scholarly attention. This provocative volume features sixteen new essays examining these issues, especially televised music and the controversial new genre of the music video. Perceptive voicesDLboth emerging and establishedDLrepresent a wide variety of academic disciplines. Incisive essays by Egyptian critics display the textures of public Arabic discourse to an English readership. Authors address the key issues of contemporary Arab societyDLgender and sexuality, Islam, class, economy, power, and nationDLas refracted through the culture of mediated music. Interconnected by a web of recurrent concepts, this collection transcends music to become an important resource for the study of contemporary Arab society and culture. Contributors: Wael Abdel Fattah, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Moataz Abdel Aziz, Tamim Al-Barghouti, Mounir Al Wassimi, Walter Armbrust, Elisabeth Cestor, Hani Darwish, Walid El Khachab, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, James Grippo, Patricia Kubala, Katherine Meizel, Zein Nassar, Ibrahim Saleh, Laith Ulaby.

Since the turn of the twentieth century the dramatic rise of mass media has profoundly transformed music practices in the Arab world. Music has adapted to successive forms of media disseminationfrom phonograph cylinders to MP3seach subjected to the political and economic forces of its particular era and region. Carried by mass media, the broader culture of Arab music has been thoroughly transformed as well. Simultaneously, mass mediated music has become a powerful social force. While parallel processes have unfolded worldwide, their implications in the Arabic-speaking world have thus far received little scholarly attention. This provocative volume features sixteen new essays examining these issues, especially televised music and the controversial new genre of the music video. Perceptive voicesboth emerging and establishedrepresent a wide variety of academic disciplines. Incisive essays by Egyptian critics display the textures of public Arabic discourse to an English readership. Authors address the key issues of contemporary Arab societygender and sexuality, Islam, class, economy, power, and nationas refracted through the culture of mediated music. Interconnected by a web of recurrent concepts, this collection transcends music to become an important resource for the study of contemporary Arab society and culture. Contributors: Wael Abdel Fattah, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Moataz Abdel Aziz, Tamim Al-Barghouti, Mounir Al Wassimi, Walter Armbrust, Elisabeth Cestor, Hani Darwish, Walid El Khachab, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, James Grippo, Patricia Kubala, Katherine Meizel, Zein Nassar, Ibrahim Saleh, Laith Ulaby.

News Media in the Arab World: A Study of 10 Arab and Muslim Countries is based on ongoing research at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Leicester, and has investigated the rapidly changing nature of the news media in Arab countries. They have investigated the role of newspapers and television in news provision and the impact of new media developments, most especially the emergence of the internet as a platform for news distribution and of international satellite television channels such as Al Jazeera. Examining the constantly developing nature of news, the collection contains separately authored chapters produced by the researchers responsible for each original analysis, covering Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Based on original primary and secondary research, this will be the first empirical-based collection to blend perspectives from both the Western and Arab nations.

Who analyses children's screen content and media use in Arab countries, and with what results? Children, defined internationally as under-18s, account for some 40 per cent of Arab populations and the proportion of under-fives is correspondingly large. Yet studies of children's media and child audiences in the region are as scarce as truly popular locally produced media content aimed at children. At the very time when conflict and uncertainty in key Arab countries have made local development and diversification of children's media more remote, it has become more urgent to gain a better understanding of how the next generation's identities and worldviews are formed. This interdisciplinary book is the first in English to probe both the state of Arab screen media for children and the practices of Arabic-speaking children in producing, as well as consuming, screen content. It responds to the gap in research by bringing together a holistic investigation of institutions and leading players, children's media experiences and some iconic media texts.With children's media increasingly linked to merchandising, which favours US-based global players and globalizing forces, this volume provides a timely insight into tensions between differing concepts of childhood and desirable media messages.

To enable readers to grasp the cumulative complexity of contemporary celebrity culture, this book explores dynamics of the celebrity experience in recent centuries and up to the present day.

A.J. Racy, a scholar of ethnomusicology, provides an intimate portrayal of the Arab musical experience in this pioneering book. Racy focuses on tarab, a multifaceted concept that has no exact equivalent in English and refers to the indigenous music and the ecstasy associated with it. His book examines aspects of musical craft, including basic skills, musician's inspiration, love lyrics as tools of ecstasy, and the relationship between performers and listeners.

Since 2011, the art of the Arab uprisings has been the subject of much scholarly and popular attention. Yet the role of artists, writers and filmmakers themselves as social actors working under extraordinary conditions has been relatively neglected. Drawing on critical readings of Bourdieu's Field Theory, this book explores the production of culture in Arab social spaces in 'crisis'. In ten case studies, contributors examine a wide range of countries and conflicts, from Algeria to the Arab countries of the Gulf. They discuss among other things the impact of Western public diplomacy organisations on the arts scene in post-revolutionary Cairo and the consequences of dwindling state support for literary production in Yemen. Providing a valuable source of empirical data for researchers, the book breaks new ground in adapting Bourdieu's theory to the particularities of cultural production in the Middle East and North Africa.