Events

Film Screening: Her Bijì Granì (G. Mürer, 2019)
Date: Wednesday, November 8, 2023, 3:30pm to 5:00pm
 
Location: Music Library 2406
 
Shot over a fifteen-year period from 2004 to 2019, HER BIJÌ GRANÌ ("Viva Gran'") is a close look at the convergence of folkloric tradition, overdriven sound aesthetics, political consciousness, and youth subculture in the landscape of Kurdish wedding circuits in Southeastern and South Turkey. The film combines charged music and dance events captured in a rockumentary style with musicians' accounts of the evolution of the genre alternately known as granî or agir delilo, which emerged in the first years of the twenty-first century, emanating from Diyarbakir province to industrial centers of Kurdish migration along Turkey's eastern Mediterranean seaboard and more recently to Europe, encapsulating the mood of Kurdish communities and the need for a social outlet and space of belonging for working class Kurdish youth.
George Mürer is a researcher (currently adjuncting at Columbia University) who specializes in intersections between music and culture in Kurdistan, Khorasan, and the Gulf and Indian Ocean regions. His doctoral dissertation (and now monograph in the making) concerned the patronage networks and fluid cross-cultural intersections that mark the musical, literary, and ritual life of Bloch communities in the cosmopolitan urban centers of the Eastern Arabian Peninsula, from Muscat to Muharrag to Kuwait. His multimodal scholarship actively incorporates documentary filmmaking, working with musicians to reach broader audiences for their cultural advocacy, and ethnographic attention to digital domains of culture production and exchange.
 
Co-sponsored by the Ethnomusicology Forum and the UCSB Music Department.
  1. November 8, 2023 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
TALK: Musical Networks and Community Building in Indonesia and Beyond, Wok the Rock (Yes No Wave, Ruang Mes 56)
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
 
Location: Music Library 2406
 
Underground music in Indonesia has developed a distinctive DIY method, influenced by open traditions of sharing and communal culture in a tropical environment, as well as limited infrastructure and financial support from the government. People in Indonesia work together, depsite limited facilities. This creative cooperation has led to networking between communities that built an independent movement, in spite of the ongoing effects of feudal and colonial hierarchical social modes. This event is a cross- cultural sharing space to create a critical, open and sustainable dialogue around music, art and trans- local networks.
Born in Madiun in 1975, Woto Wibowo (aka Wok The Rock) lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A graduate in Visual Communication Design at the Indonesian Institute of Art, he is a cross-disciplinary artist and co-founder of Ruang MES 56, a contemporary photography collective. He is also active in the underground music scene in Yogyakarta, producing music with local artists, as well as in the free culture movement in Indonesia, as director of running the influential net label Yes No Wave Music and project manager of the Jogja Sonic Index project.
 
Organized by the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Music with support from the East Asia Center, and the Ethnomusicology Forum in the Music Department.
  1. November 1, 2023 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm