FINAL RESEARCH PAPER
1. GUIDELINES
In a tightly written, academic style, write a research paper (1400 words min, 1600 words max;
preferable formatting: double-spaced, font size 12, times new roman) on a specific topic of your
choice and interest related to the Music of the Middle East. The choice of topic is open as long as
it is relevant to a world music culture of the Greater Middle East. You may choose, for instance, to
write about an instrument or instrumental type, a genre of music, a music group/band, an
individual musician, a singer, a cultural topic such as gender and music, religion and music,
identity and music. You may NOT write about a topic covered at length in the textbook or
readings (so, for instance, you can not write about Hakim or Azan, but you can write about an
other shabi/shababi/popular artist or about a type of religious music not discussed in class). If you
choose to write about an artist or a band, avoid writing a text that reads as a simple biography –
focus instead more on style, impact, reception, etc.
The paper should include the historical, geographical and cultural context of your topic and a half
page analysis of a musical example that represents the topic you are writing about. The analysis
will be part of your paper, not a separate text. The analysis should include a discussion of
instrumentation, structure (describe the order of musical events, if it has an intro, a refrain,
repetitions, etc), meter, texture, lyrics (if you have access to them), etc. You cannot use a piece
from our textbook but you can make use of the internet, online audio archives through the OU
libraries, or the CD collection of the media resource center (fine arts library). See the related
powerpoint on topics/sources.
You should find at least THREE outside sources (all 3 should be scholarly, peer-reviewed
sources) from which to gather data and theoretical perspectives. Feel free to use additional sources
(these can be non-scholarly; for instance, feel free to use blogs, mainstream journals, newspaper
articles, interviews, radio broadcasts, etc). You should reference these in the body of the paper ( or
bottom of page where cited, depending on the citation system you will use) and properly cite them
in the bibliography (at the end of the paper). There is zero tolerance for plagiarism. If you have
any questions about how to cite a source properly, please see me or email me a paragraph from
your paper.
A hard copy of the research paper will be due in class on Thursday, May 1.
You will also need to upload an electronic copy on D2L.
An one paragraph topic proposal (description of your topic) along with two or three relevant
scholarly sources (properly cited) is due on Tuesday, April 6. You will get feedback soon after.
.
2. TIPS ON CHOOSING A TOPIC (see the powerpoint presentation “sources” in D2L)
The genres and musical pieces studied in class account for a small sample of the diverse musical
traditions that exist throughout the Middle East. You may utilize reference sources such as The
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music and the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians to
get ideas about musical styles of a particular country that interests you (see the relevant
powerpoint on sources in D2L). You may not use wikipedia as a reference source for your
paper. Wikipedia is not a legitimate academic source as its articles are not peer-reviewed and thus
should not be used as a research tool.
Go to http://guides.ou.edu/worldmusic to search for scholarly sources. Use this page as your
starting point while researching on this paper.
Go to http://learningobjects.wesleyan.edu/vim for ideas and sources if you want to study an
instrument.
See also the list of web resources in pp. 194-195 of Marcus’s Music in Egypt.
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