Brown Bag Lecture Series: Sonic Stardom: National Cinemas and the al-Hind Soundscape

Why does mid-century commercial Egyptian musical cinema share striking sonic similarities with its Iranian and Indian counterparts, especially in the way it positions its female singing stars? In this talk I investigate the parallel and often intersecting emergence of music and film industries in the Middle East and South Asia. From the introduction of the gramophone in the early 20th century to fierce competition among musical film producing industries in Cairo, Tehran, and Bombay in the 1950s, I demonstrate how film industries in this region - to which I refer heuristically as al-Hind - were partly born out of their connections to one another. Moreover, I posit that a female stardom centered in sound was integral to these industries’ overlaps. By Interrogating the national cinema frameworks often used to study Egyptian, Iranian, and Indian cinemas, I propose a framework for understanding historical to more contemporary instances media exchange in the al-Hind soundscape.
Sponsored by: the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Department of Middle Eastern Studies