Silk Roads, UNSW Seminar Series 2021
Date: Tuesday 13 July 2021
Time: 5:30–6:30pm
Location: Online
This talk is based on an ongoing British Academy Sustainable Development project, which partners with academics and community organisations in Kazakhstan. The project explores how Uyghurs in Kazakhstan engage with discourses and practices of preservation and revitalisation in their responses to China’s policies of cultural erasure in the Uyghur homeland (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).
The project focuses on meshrep, a type of all-male gathering involving music, dancing and joking, which plays a prominent role in modern imaginings of Uyghur national identity, and in local processes of community-making. Since 2009, Uyghurs in Kazakhstan have engaged in new forms of “heritaging” meshrep, attempting to revive their role as a medium for strengthening communities, and sustaining language and culture. I argue that the unruly, affective and performative aspects of meshrep in Kazakhstan are key to the success of these social goals, highlighting the role of these musical gatherings as a space for the negotiation of tensions between religion, nation, and what I term ‘hot male sociality.’
About the Speaker
Professor Rachel Harris is an ethnomusicologist and she teaches at the School of Arts at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on Uyghur religious and expressive culture, and the politics of heritage in China and Central Asia. Her latest book ‘Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam‘ is published by Indiana University Press. She currently serves as principal investigator on a sustainable development project to revitalise Uyghur cultural heritage in Kazakhstan.