Many congratulations to City Music PhD students Gabrielle Messeder and Soosan Lolavar who have been awarded grants to undertake fieldwork related to their research in Beirut and Tehran.

The British Forum for Ethnomusicology Fieldwork Awards Grant Scheme is very competitive and we are delighted that 2 out of the 4  grants this year have been awarded to City students. Gabby and Soosan introduce their projects below.

Gabbrielle Messeder

I’m researching contemporary practices of Brazilian music and dance in Lebanon. Focussing primarily on the genres of samba, bossa nova and música popular brasileira (MPB), I aim to trace their development from the bossa-influenced sound of recordings by Fairouz and Ziad Rahbani in the 1970s to the bands and blocos that perform in Lebanon today. I’ll explore the unique, ambivalent and sometimes contested space that the performance of Brazilian music by both Brazilian and non-Brazilian performers occupies in the cosmopolitan Lebanese musical milieu, and discuss how issues of cultural conservatism, exoticism and stereotyping shape the production, performance and reception of Brazilian music and dance in Lebanon today.

Soosan Lolavar

My research brings together the methodologies of composition and ethnomusicology to explore a new movement in music in Iran in which musicians and composers combine aspects of Iranian classical music with ideas more commonly associated with Western music. My work will present both a written ethnography and portfolio of compositions considering the creative, social and political effects of drawing from these two forms, particularly against the backdrop of a post-revolutionary Iran in which objects of Western culture are often associated with the imperialism and colonialism.