Why does mid-century commercial Egyptian musical cinema share striking
sonic similarities with its Iranian and Indian counterparts,
especially in the way it positions its female singing stars? In this
talk I investigate the parallel and often intersecting emergence of
music and film industries in the Middle East and South Asia. From the
introduction of the gramophone in the early 20th century to fierce
competition among musical film producing industries in Cairo, Tehran,
and Bombay in the 1950s, I demonstrate how film industries in this
region - to which I refer heuristically as al-Hind - were partly born
out of their connections to one another. Moreover, I posit that a
female stardom centered in sound was integral to these industries’
overlaps. By Interrogating the national cinema frameworks often used
to study Egyptian, Iranian, and Indian cinemas, I propose a framework
for understanding historical to more contemporary instances media
exchange in the al-Hind soundscape. Sponsored by: the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Middle Eastern Studies
music
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31/01/2020 Last update