For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an "identity" which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social - in this case pseudo-racial - identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and "racial" categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture.

Offering a unique window into the lives, thoughts, and hearts of modern Muslim women, Many Voices, One Faith is an anthology of poetry, short-fiction, non-fiction and works for children written by Muslim women living in the west. At times poignant, at times humorous, sad, angry, joyful, or grieving, the pieces in Many Voices, One Faith give a glimpse into the complex and mulitfaceted lives of today's Muslimah.

"In this comparative analysis of the significance of keeping and revealing secrets in early Islamic culture, Ruqayya Yasmine Khan draws from a broad range of Arabo-Islamic texts to map interconnections between concepts of secrecy and identity. In early Islamic discourse, Khan maintains, individual identity is integrally linked to a psychology of secrecy and revelation - a connection of even greater importance than what is being concealed or displayed. Khan further maintains that secrecy and identity demarcate boundaries for interpersonal relations when governed by the cultural norms of discretion espoused in these texts."--BOOK JACKET.

Applying recent psychological and neuropsychological studies of emotions, Erika Wilson explores the role of emotions in major Eastern, Western, and primal religions, as well as in some contemporary spiritual movements. The book tries to answer the following questions: What kinds of emotions and spiritual experiences arise in individuals and groups during prayer, conversions, rituals, meditations, and other spiritual practices? Which positive emotions are valued most in a particular religion or spiritual movement? How do these attitudes relate to their respective historical context? And finally, how does each religious or spiritual teaching recommend handling negative emotions?

For many Muslims, there is an inseparable connection between sound and meaning, particularly when it comes to Islamic verse and scripture. This provides fertile ground for a comparative study across traditions and forms. Timur Yuskaev offers a meditation on the Qur’an and human sensibilities, heard together, in American Muslim sermons. Foregrounding sound, poetry and music, it is a cultural anthropology of the Qur’an, carried out in conversation with colleagues in multiple disciplines, including Religions in America, Qur’anic, Islamic, Memory, Communication, and Sound Studies. The author draws upon the works of Mikhail Bakhtin, Charles Long, Mary Douglas and many others to hear mysticism in a homiletic symphony by Warith Deen Mohammed, to sense the experience of the covenant in a three-minute, ribbon-cutting speech by Aras Konjhodzic, and to appreciate the Qur’anic musicality of a down-to-earth interfaith address by Sarah Sayeed. A creative guide to an organic engagement with texts, this book will be of particular interest to those studying scriptures and the Qur’an.

As a dutiful Victorian daughter, the author was thirty before being freed (by her parents' deaths) to do as she chose. She went to West Africa in 1893 and again in 1895, to investigate the beliefs and customs of the inland tribes and also to collect zoological specimens. She was appalled by the 'thin veneer of rubbishy white culture' imposed by British officials and was not afraid to say so.