How does Islam Musically Inspire? (Introduction to my new CD)

While preparing for the recording Trisutji Kamal's "Islamic Inspirations" piano pieces which will be released in 10 days (hey! That's someone's birthday! Hehe, yeah, but this date is picked due to the fact that the Ramadhan Holy Fasting Month is arriving on the 16th of June, so this CD is to celebrate THAT and also the Idul Fitri celebration that closes the Ramadhan month), that question popped up in my head, and we are so lucky that today we could just search the answer in the internet. We know that there are Psalms, Gregorian chants even Christmas Carols that were born inside the Churches, but we don't really know about the Islamic music so well. There are even some "religious" beliefs that music is prohibited in Islam. Questions as to the admissibility of music apparently are not unique to the Islamic tradition: one can also find heated religious debate concerning the role of music in Western history as well. In the Middle Ages, so-called Gregorian chant was formulated under strict rules of musical structure called "counterpoint" that had foundations in Catholic religious beliefs, restricting the use of certain musical intervals, like the tritone for example, for their supposed evocation of the devil. In ancient times, also, Plato had mapped out certain musical modes and scales in his Republic that were considered illegal for evoking certain undesirable and dangerous kinds of emotions. St. Augustine, furthermore, a Christian ascetic, had spent much focus trying to define the point at which music distracts the listener from reflection of God, at which point music thus becomes sinful. ............................................................................................................................................. So how about Islam? And how did Trisutji compose music that sounds "Islamic" ? ............................................................................................................................................. First, it is first important to distinguish that Muslims do not use the term "music" in the same manner employed in the English language and in other Western languages. The Arabic term for "music," musiqa, does not apply to all types of artistic vocal and instrumental arrangements of sounds or tones and rhythms; rather, the Muslims term this general case "handasah al sawt" or "the art of sound." Musiqa, or "music," applies rather "only to particular genres of sound art, and for the most part it has been designated for only those that have a "somewhat questionable or even disreputable status in Islamic culture" (al Faruqi, Isma'il R. and Lois Lamya al Faruqi (1986), The Cultural Atlas of Islam). "Handasah al sawt" is a recently coined term used by Muslims to separate their Islamic conception of "music" from that held in the Western and non-Islamic world, which, as we will see, often contrasts in very fundamental ways. ............................................................................................................................................. Muslims seem to create intricacy with extremely melismatic melodic lines and ornamental rhythmic figures, extensive use of trills and slides from one pitch to another, durational ornaments such as constant shifts of accent and tempo changes, and also in dividing the octave into more than twelve tones so as to include several microtones in between them. The extreme nature of this intricacy is used to steal focus from any single line of development and thus to strengthen the abstract and nondevelopmental form of the music. The lack of single themes and their elaboration and the lack of fixed meter "explains why foreign listeners unfamiliar with this music sometimes regard [Islamic music] as formless improvisation" (Touma, Habib Hassan (1996), The Music of the Arabs). Even Free Jazz has met with similar criticism. ............................................................................................................................................. Other techniques that Muslims use to realize abstraction and thus tajwid are extensive use of repetition and the creation of infinite patterns. From single notes, to motives, to whole sections of music, outstanding usage of repetition is characteristic to Islamic music. This repetition is used to evoke a sense of the eternal and thus the divine: "Extensive use of repetitions is not the result of a poverty of musical ideas... instead it is a structural feature necessary for the creation of infinite patterns. Repetition denies individualization, but also contributes to the never-ending quality that the aesthetic expression of tajwid should manifest" (al Faruqi). Examples of extensive use of repetition are also abundant in modern Western art music, especially in a movement known as "minimalism" that employs "minimal" use of musical materials in repetitive ways that change very little (note: limited dynamism, as in Islamic music) and try to thereby recapture the essence and meaning of musical materials in Western music: composer like Louis Andriessen, Steve Reich or Philip Glass to name a few. 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen, furthermore, was especially intrigued with the creation of "infinite patterns," as in his piece entitled The Crystal Liturgy, in which mechanisms of repetitions would take nearly two hours to get back to its starting state. Messiaen had a "concern with time beyond time—with the presence of the eternal in the transitory", which is derived from his strong Catholic beliefs and focus on God, much in the way the Islamic ideal of tajwid influences Islamic music. ............................................................................................................................................. But a composer writes his/her own music. (S)he doesn't write Islamic, or Catholic or Hindu music. All these religious elements are just influences from outside that would help to shape the music which has already a strong identity in itself. The Spanish composers David del Puerto wrote a "Nusantara Symphony", Jesus Rueda wrote a "Kecak" Piano Sonata but it sounds as their other works that have no Indonesian elements. Now that very few young people in Western Europe seriously study European Classical music these days, Asians thus adopt the highest cultural achievements of European civilization at a time when many people of European descent themselves appear to be on the verge of forgetting them. And Trisutji Kamal is one of the very few (few? To be honest I couldn't mention another name) composers in the world who derives her inspiration from Islamic elements. And as you can hear in the other CDs of Kamal's piano works that I have recorded, these "Islamic Inspirations" sound just like Trisutji Kamal's other works. The listener might not know the programmatic backgrounds behind the music, or even the title, but for me, it doesn't matter. The music speaks in its abstraction, mystery ... and powerful expressivity.