Ideas for Contributors

What we can’t imagine, others will.

Here is a speculative list of the kinds of contributions that we hope and imagine will come together to make Muslim World Music Day.

• Wayne State University in Detroit, home to one of the largest Muslim communities in the United States, sends 35 videos of older men singing songs they remember from childhood.

• The British Library scans and uploads a collection of Fairuz publicity images.

• MTV Arabia posts their top 100 videos.

• A small library in Jamaica that received a donation of LPs from a Lebanese merchant sends scans of the covers for the Arabic titles to be translated.

• A leading scholar of Egyptian music offers a short essay on Umm Kultum’s legacy.

• Yusuf Islam performs live from London.

• Endo in Japan is inspired to continue his groundbreaking work on African discographies and compiles the definitive list of Fuji (Nigerian Muslim Hausa music) recordings.

• Acrassicauda, an Iraqi metal band, sends their lyrics to be translated into French, Spanish and English.

• Unsigned artists and bands from eighty countries send self-produced MP3s of original music.

• Scholars at the Aga Khan Music Initiative offers an essay on the relationship between natural sound and the development of vocal technique in Central Asian music.

• Anouar Brahem provides a history, with accompaniment, of how l’oud became lute.

• The Gulf State Folklore Center in Qutar shares interviews of Bedouin musicians.

• Naeem Mohaiemen re-evaluates his treatise on the relationship between hip-hop and Islam.

• WKCR, Columbia University’s radio station, runs a 24-hr Muslim Music Marathon.

• The Internet Archive provides scans of historical music books.

• Cité de la Musique in Paris, sends soundfiles and photos of their Islamic instruments.

• UC Santa Barbara shares the digital audio of their Arabic wax cylinders, making this out-of-copyright material available for all to hear.

• A former banker in the Gulf begins cataloging his collection of more than 3000 oud LPs,

• Never-before-seen clips of Sufi performances at the Sacred Music Festival in Fez, Morocco, are posted to YouTube.

• Artists, fans, and critics from all over the world contribute playlists.

• Fourty ten-inch 78s sayang-sayang discs are discovered in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

• ARC creates a list of all the record labels worldwide that have published related music.

• The web team creates an interactive realtime map showing who’s sending what, and from where.

What do you imagine? Write us and share your ideas.

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