Orientalism and Musical Mission

The book explores music in religious and development missions sent from Europe to Arabs in Palestine and Israel from 1840 to 2010. It will be crucial reading for researchers in Orientalism and cultural imperialism, as well as music and ethnomusicology students interested in the sociology of western classical music and the Middle East.

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Orientalism and Musical Mission presents a new way of understanding music's connections with imperialism, drawing on new archive sources and interviews and using the lens of 'mission'. Rachel Beckles Willson demonstrates how institutions such as churches, schools, radio stations and governments, influenced by missions from Europe and North America since the mid-nineteenth century, have consistently claimed that music provides a way of understanding and reforming Arab civilians in Palestine. Beckles Willson discusses the phenomenon not only in religious and developmental aid circles where it has had strong currency, but also in broader political contexts. Plotting a historical trajectory from the late Ottoman and British Mandate eras to the present time, the book sheds new light on relations between Europe, the USA and the Palestinians, and creates space for a neglected Palestinian music history.