Itineraries of Enlightenment: Whirling Dervish Shows, Ethnographic Reflexivity, and Tourism in Egypt and Turkey

Year 2019, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 37 - 57, 30.06.2019

Victor Vıcente

https://doi.org/10.33906/musicologist.557795

Cited By: 2

Abstract

By the year 2010, both Turkey and Egypt had achieved
tremendous success in growing their tourism markets, in part by turning to Sufi
spiritual and musical practices, which had by then been internally
rehabilitated after being historically met with suspicion or outright
suppression even as they gained a global following in the New Spiritualties and
World Music arenas. Taking the case of the so-called ‘whirling dervish show,’
this article traces how its characteristic ‘dance’ was strategically used to
promote tourism and how rituals featuring it were adapted for presentation to
ever-bigger audiences coming from abroad. Based on ethnographic research
conducted in Cairo and throughout Turkey, the article demonstrates how binary
distinctions between tourist and pilgrim, sacred and profane, and local and
foreign, become quickly blurred or contested
at these shows and in other sacred settings involving travel. Further embedding
the musical ethnographer within these vagaries, the article seeks two main
ends: to call for an ethnomusicological method that better accounts for
tourists and their subjective experiences and, thereby, to also encourage more
open reflexive framework in which the fieldworker working in tourist and
tourist-like settings can better take stock of their own positionality while in
situ and when engaging in the writing of ethnography.

Keywords

Ethnography, Reflexivity, Sufi music, Tourism, Turkey, Egypt

References

• Abu Lughod, Lila. (1999). Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (2nd ed). Los Angeles: University of California Press. [Original work published 1986]
• Andrews, Hazel; Jimura, Takamitsu; Dixon, Laura, eds. (2018). Tourism Ethnographies: Ethics, Methods, Application, and Reflexivity. Oxon; New York: Routledge.
• AP [Associated Press] Archive. (2015, 06.15.2019). Cairo Visitors Enjoy Al Tanoura Dance. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_lzay-rRss.
• Barz, Gregory; Cooley, Timothy J. (Eds.) (2008). Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology (2nd ed). Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. [Original work published 1997]
• Brown, Jonathan. (2011). Salafis and Sufis in Egypt. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• Cassell, Joan. (1980). “Ethical Principles for Conducting Fieldwork” American Anthropologist. 82(1): 28-41.
• Clifford, James; Marcus, George. (Eds.) (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Cooley, Timothy J. (2005). Making Music in the Polish Tatras: Tourists, Ethnographers, and Mountain Musicians. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
• De la Broquière, Bertrandon. (1989). “Le Voyage d’Outremer” (The Overseas Journey) (Martin, Robert, Trans.) Turkish Music Quarterly. 2(2-3): 5. [Original work published 1433]
• Dziadosz, Alexander. (2009, October 21). “Egypt Tourism Numbers to Fall Less than Feared.” Reuters. Retrieved from https://af.reuters.com.
• Erikson, Erik H. (1958). “The Nature of Clinical Evidence” Daedalus. 87(4): 65-87.
• Feld, Steven. (1990). Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (2nd ed). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Original work published 1982]
• Gibson, Chris; Connell, John. (2005). Music and Tourism: On the Road Again. Buffalo: Channel View Publications.
• Geertz, Clifford. (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
• Goodman, Felicitas D. (1972). Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Grippo, Jim. (2009, 06.15.2019). Tannoura “Sufi” Dance, Cairo 2005. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqm-Fo3E89Y&feature=related.
• Hutnyk, John. (2000). Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics, and the Culture Industry. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.
• Kakemura Yusuke. (2013, 06.15.2019). “Tannoura Sufi Dancer” Said. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pI86P8r0LQ.
• Kisliuk, Michelle. (1998). Seize the Dance! BaAka Musical Life and the Ethnography of Performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Manuel, Peter. (2008). “North Indian Sufi Popular Music in the Age of Hindu and Muslim Fundamentalism” Ethnomusicology. 52(3): 378-400.
• Mead, Margaret. (1928). Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Morrow.
• Pacholczyk, Józef. (2002). Seminar for MUET661: Field and Laboratory Methods in Ethnomusicology 2. College Park, MD: Department of Music
• Rabinow, Paul. (1978). Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Robertson, Carol E. (1979). “‘Pulling the Ancestors’: Performance Practice and Praxis in Mapuche Ordering” Ethnomusicology. 23(3): 395-416.
• Rouget, Gilbert. (1985). Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. (Biebuyck, Brunhilde, Trans.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Salzman, Philip Carl. (2002). “On Subjectivity” American Anthropologist. 104(3): 805-813.
• Scholte, Bob. (1972). “Toward a Reflective and Critical Anthropology” Reinventing Anthropology, Ed. Dell Hymes: 430-457. New York: Pantheon.
• Shannon, Jonathan H. (2003). “Sultans of Spin: Syrian Sacred Music on the World Stage” American Anthropologist. 105(2): 266-277.
• Sirriyeh, Elizabeth. (1999). Sufis and Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking, and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World. Richmond, Surry: Curzon.
• Sky Blue. (2012, 06.15.2019). Al Tannoura Dance Troupe Drummers Play Around. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjDrENpGiYM
• Smith, Matt. (2014, September 11). “Egypt Tourist Numbers to Rise 5-10 pct in 2014 -Minister.” Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com.
• Soileu, Mark. (2012). “Spreading the Sofra: Sharing and Partaking in the Bektashi Ritual Meal” History of Religions. 52(1): 1-30.
• Stokes, Martin. “Music, Travel, and Tourism: An Afterward” The World of Music. 41(3): 141-155.
• Urry, John. (1990). The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
• Usmani, Basim. (2010, August 4). “This Musical Event Cheapens Sufism” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com.
• Vicente, Victor A. [interviewer] (2004a). Interview with Mira Burke, Konya, Turkey. [Written Field Notes]. December 14, 2004. Hong Kong: Private Collection.
• Vicente, Victor A. [interviewer] (2004b). Pre-Performance Informal Interview with “Judy” from England, UK at El Tannoura “Daravish Show,” Citadel (al-Qala‘a Salah al-Din), Cairo, Egypt. [Written Field Notes]. February 23, 2004. Hong Kong: Private Collection.
• Vicente, Victor A. (2013). Dancing for Rumi: The Cultural, Spiritual, and Kinetic Dimensions of the Global Sufi Music Phenomenon. Saarbrücken, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing.
• Westerland, David (Ed.) (2004). Sufism in Europe and North America. New York: Routledge,
• World Tourism Organization. (08.2000). UNWTO Tourism Highlights 2000. 2nd ed. Retrieved from https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/9789284403745.
• World Tourism Organization. (06.2011). UNWTO Tourism Highlights, 2011 Edition. Retrieved from http://mkt.unwto.org/sites/all/files/docpdf/unwtohighlights11enhr.pdf.
• World Tourism Organization. (2018). UNWTO Tourism Highlights, 2018 Edition. Madrid, DOI: https://doi.org/10.18111/9789284419876.
• Yale, Pat; Campbell, Verity; and Plunkett; Richard. (2003). Lonely Planet: Turkey (8th ed). Victoria: Lonely Planet Publications.
• Zi Dan. (2017, 06.15.2019). The Amazing [sic.] of Sufi Dance Al Tannoura at Nile Cruise Egypt. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2UFZxCC5ZI.