CONTESTED SPACES, SOUND, AND RESONANCE: A SONIC ETHNOGRAPHY ON SUFI INSH D DINI IN EGYPT

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The ritual of Sufi inshad constitutes the expression of the mystical feeling of love towards God. It consists in religious hymns, chanted by a munshid and accompanied by musical instruments. It is usually performed during the ara, group meetings that can take place within the Sufi confraternities or during the mawalid, religious festivals celebrated in honor of saints. Inshad dini has witnessed a continuous change since new technologies entered the Arab world in the 1970s.New audio and video technologies introduced the inshad to new environments: concert halls, private houses, and international music festivals, producing a shift in the inshad's social status and musical structure. Since the 1990s, state actors and reformist Sufi groups attempted to control the spaces where the mawlid - the main context in which the inshad is performed - takes place. Criticized as unmoral and chaotic, the mawlid and inshad were subjected to spatial reorganization, according to the narrative of a "modern" and "civilized" image of the public sphere. Nevertheless, the inshad still preserves its spiritual rootedness, remaining a phenomenon with a specific role, vocal style, and poeticmessage. What explains this endurance? The aim of this project is to find new insights on the inshad and its resonance, especially in the light of the shifting approach of the post-2011 government towards the mawlid. She will focus on the ritual of the inshad through a sonic ethnography of two different mawalid.