This talk is based on an ongoing British Academy Sustainable Development project, which partners with a film-maker, local academics and community organisations to explore how Uyghurs in Kazakhstan engage with discourses and practices of preservation and revitalisation in their responses to China's policies of cultural erasure in the Uyghur homeland (Xinjiang).

The project focuses on Mäshräp, a type of gathering involving music, dancing and joking, which play a prominent role in modern imaginings of Uyghur national identity, and in local processes of community-making. Since 2009, Uyghurs in Kazakhstan have engaged in new forms of “heritaging” mäshräp, attempting to revive their role as a medium for strengthening communities, and sustaining language and culture.

I argue that the unruly, affective and performative aspects of mäshräp in Kazakhstan are key to the success of these social goals, highlighting the role of these musical gatherings as a space for the negotiation of tensions between religion, nation, and hot sociality.

Biography

Rachel Harris’ research is centred on China and Central Asia, and especially on the Uyghurs. She has conducted fieldwork in Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over a period of twenty years. She has co-edited three volumes on music (Gender in Chinese Music, 2013, the ethnomusicology textbook, Pieces of the Musical World, 2015, and Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World, 2018), and co-edited the journal Ethnomusicology Forum between 2004 and 2007. She currently co-convenes the Middle East and Central Asia Music Forum, and is series editor for the Routledge SOAS Studies in Music series.

Her current research interests focus on intangible cultural heritage, music and identity formation, soundscapes and state projects of territorialization, working in applied ways with performance and transmission projects, including concerts, workshops, and recording projects. She also worked as consultant for the Aga Khan Music Initiative (2006-2016).