Why Sámi Sing is an anthropological inquiry into a singing practice found among the Indigenous Sámi people, living in the northernmost part of Europe. It inquires how the performance of melodies, with or without lyrics, may be a way of altering perception, relating to human and non-human presences, or engaging with the past. According to its practitioners, the Sámi "yoik" is more than a musical repertoire made up by humans: it is a vocal power received from the environment, one that reveals its possibilities with parsimony through practice and experience. Following the propensity of Sámi singers to take melodies seriously and experiment with them, this book establishes a conversation between Indigenous and Western epistemologies and introduces the "yoik" as a way of knowing in its own right, with both convergences and divergences vis-à-vis academic ways of knowing. It will be of particular interest to scholars of anthropology, ethnomusicology, and Indigenous studies.

The Sámi are Europe’s only recognized indigenous people living across regions of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Russian Kola peninsula. The subjects of a history of Christianization, land dispossession, and cultural assimilation, the Sámi have through their self-organization since World War II worked towards Sámi political self-determination across the Nordic states and helped forge a global indigenous community. Accompanying this process was the emergence of a Sámi music scene, in which the revival of the distinct and formerly suppressed unaccompanied vocal tradition of joik was central. Through joiking with instrumental accompaniment, incorporating joik into forms of popular music, performing on stage and releasing recordings, Sámi musicians have played a key role in articulating a Sámi identity, strengthening Sámi languages, and reviving a nature-based cosmology. Thomas Hilder offers the first book-length study of this diverse and dynamic music scene and its intersection with the politics of indigeneity. Based on extensive ethnographic research, Hilder provides portraits of numerous Sámi musicians, studies the significance of Sámi festivals, analyzes the emergence of a Sámi recording industry, and examines musical projects and cultural institutions that have sought to strengthen the transmission of Sámi music. Through his engaging narrative, Hilder discusses a wide range of issues—revival, sovereignty, time, environment, repatriation and cosmopolitanism—to highlight the myriad ways in which Sámi musical performance helps shape notions of national belonging, transnational activism, and processes of democracy in the Nordic peninsula. Sámi Musical Performance and the Politics of Indigeneity in Northern Europe will not only appeal to enthusiasts of Nordic music, but, by drawing on current interdisciplinary debates, will also speak to a wider audience interested in the interplay of music and politics. Unearthing the challenges, contradictions and potentials presented by international indigenous politics, Hilder demonstrates the significance of this unique musical scene for the wider cultural and political transformations in twenty-first-century Europe and global modernity.

What makes hundreds of listeners cheer ecstatically at the same instant during a live concert by Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum? What is the unspoken language behind a taqsim (traditional instrumental improvisation) that performers and listeners implicitly know? How can Arabic music be so rich and diverse without resorting to harmony? Why is it so challenging to transcribe Arabic music from a recording? Inside Arabic Music answers these and many other questions from the perspective of two "insiders" to the practice of Arabic music, by documenting a performance culture and a know-how that is largely passed on orally. Arabic music has spread across the globe, influencing music from Greece all the way to India in the mid-20th century through radio and musical cinema, and global popular culture through Raqs Sharqi, known as "Bellydance" in the West. Yet despite its popularity and influence, Arabic music, and the maqam scale system at its heart, remain widely misunderstood. Inside Arabic Music de-mystifies maqam with an approach that draws theory directly from practice, and presents theoretical insights that will be useful to practitioners, from the beginner to the expert - as well as those interested in the related Persian, Central Asian, and Turkish makam traditions. Inside Arabic Music's discussion of maqam and improvisation widens general understanding of music as well, by bringing in ideas from Saussurean linguistics, network theory, and Lakoff and Johnson's theory of cognition as metaphor, with an approach parallel to Gjerdingen's analysis of Galant-period music - offering a lens into the deeper relationships among music, culture, and human community.

In The Pleasure of the Text, Sami Alwani weaves together themes of art induced dissociation, queer intergenerational polyamory, racial capitalism and esoteric mystical experiences into twenty slice-of-life comic stories that are equal parts comedy and tragedy. These stories question society and individual identity. A talking baby philosophizes away his own emotions. A half-man, half-dog cartoonist's spirit burns too bright when he alienates the entire alternative comics industry, drunk on his own power. A friendly ghost survives COVID quarantine with the help of CBD pot cookies and essential oil diffusers. There's something for everyone in this cheerful volume collecting all of award-winning Alwani's work-to-date with plenty of never-before-seen material.

Good Muslim Boy tells the story of Osamah Sami’s journey from Iran during the Iraq war to the suburbs of Australia and his quest to fit into his new life whilst trying to stay a good Muslim boy. In turns comic and tragic, Osamah’s story explores the universal truths of growing up, falling in love, marriage, family and following one's dream; whilst also telling the immigrant’s story of straddling two cultures and the difficult expectations of family and faith versus fitting in. Osamah begins by recounting his youth under Islamic rule in Iran: the mischievous antics that he and his friends would get up to, and the lengths they would go to for a little contact with girls – resulting in hilarious reprimands from the ‘Piety Police’. But the inescapable impacts of war are never far away and Osmah details the trauma his family suffered from the violence in Iran and their desperation to reach safer shores in Australia. Cut to Australia years later where Osamah is pretending to attend university after lying to his family about his final high school results, afraid of the shame it will it cause to learn that their son didn’t make it into medical school. While embroiled in his lie, Osamah meets the girl of his dreams – but as neither of their parents would approve of their relationship, they must carry out their affair in secret... What ensues must be read to be believed, an arranged marriage is escaped; true love is embraced; and an acting career evolves, as Osamah goes on the road staging a show entitled ‘Saddam The Musical’. With a distinct authorial voice, Osamah Sami’s A Good Muslim Boy unfolds and enchants us; both funny and entertaining, we are enlightened, shocked, saddened, made to laugh, and ultimately uplifted in a tale that couldn’t come at a more prescient time.

A fiercely imaginative debut story collection by “a startling talent who can seemingly do anything” (Anthony Marra) explores the lives of ordinary people in Turkey to reveal how even individual acts of resistance have extraordinary repercussions. “No recent collection has captivated me as much as I Am My Country. You must read it!”—Andrew Sean Greer Spanning decades and landscapes, from the forests along the Black Sea to the streets of Istanbul, Kenan Orhan’s ​playful stories ​conjure dreamlike worlds—of talking animals, flying houses, and omniscient prayer-callers—to ​examine humanity’s unfaltering pursuit of hope in even the darkest circumstances. A determined florist trains a neighborhood stray dog to blow up a corrupt president. A garbage collector finds banned instruments—and later, musicians—in the trash and takes them home to form a clandestine orchestra in her attic. A smuggler risks his life to bring a young woman claiming to be pregnant via immaculate conception across the border with Syria. A poor cage-maker tries to use his ability to talk to birds to woo his childhood love just before the 1955 Istanbul pogrom. These characters are united by a desperate yearning to break free from the volatile realities they face: rising authoritarianism, cultural and political turmoil, and staggering violence. Ranging from the absurd to the tenderhearted, the stories in I Am My Country illuminate the constant force amid one country’s history of rampant oppression and revolutionary progress: the impulse to survive.

Available for the first time in an American edition, this debut cookbook, from bestselling authors Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi of Plenty and Jerusalem, features 140 recipes culled from the popular Ottolenghi restaurants and inspired by the diverse culinary traditions of the Mediterranean. Yotam Ottolenghi’s four eponymous restaurants—each a patisserie, deli, restaurant, and bakery rolled into one—are among London’s most popular culinary destinations. Now available for the first time in an American edition and updated with US measurements throughout, this debut cookbook from the celebrated, bestselling authors of Jerusalem and Plenty features 140 recipes culled from the popular Ottolenghi restaurants and inspired by the diverse culinary traditions of the Mediterranean. The recipes reflect the authors’ upbringings in Jerusalem yet also incorporate culinary traditions from California, Italy, and North Africa, among others. Featuring abundant produce and numerous fish and meat dishes, as well as Ottolenghi’s famed cakes and breads, Ottolenghi invites you into a world of inventive flavors and fresh, vibrant cooking.