Thanks to our amazing supporters of our recent crowdfund, Ajam will now be producing and releasing podcasts. We expect a wide variety of formats, but we wanted to use our first episode as a chance to update our listeners and introduce our new series. Remember to visit us at ajammc.com to learn more or contact us! Check out the article from Nir Shafir that we discussed: https://aeon.co/essays/why-fake-miniatures-depicting-islamic-science-are-everywhere ...
In this episode Lindsey interviews Ameem Lutfi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore. The legacy of the Baloch in Indian Ocean historiography has been confined to their role as soldiers or “mercenaries” of various rulers. Dr. Lutfi’s work is interested in interrogating what it meant for the Baloch to conquer on behalf of rulers without ever ruling those territories themselves. He grapples with the tension between the power that they have as conquerors - precluding them from being categorized as subaltern - and the fact that their history has been primarily passed down through folklore rather than texts. Dr. Lutfi reminds us that in the past, states frequently relied on “mercenary” outsiders to staff their armies, and professional citizen soldiers only became the norm in the last century. He explains that although the Baloch have been perceived by many as a diaspora group, they see themselves as critical parts in the formation of the nation itself. In this vein, their work as soldiers and more recently policemen, has created deep, highly mobile Baloch networks between the shores for centuries. ...
In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk to Stefan Williamson Fa, co-founder of [Mountains of Tongues](https://www.facebook.com/mountainsoftongues/), a project documenting and promoting musical dialects in the South Caucasus. Mountains of Tongues showcases traditions that defy normal categorizations of "national" or "folk" music through the use of non-conventional instruments, multiple languages, and a blending of different musical genres. Stefan shares three songs from the Mountains of Tongues archive and from his most recent fieldwork in Georgia: a Georgian-Azeri bilingual Kamancha song by Sergo Kamalov, Aşıq Nargile's rendition of the Aşıq Qərib story, and a Azeri electric guitar solo from a wedding in Qaçağan, Georgia. Stefan Williamson Fa recently received his PhD in Anthropology at University College London. His research focuses on performance and lamentation rituals in Turkish-speaking Shi'i communities in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. ...
