Tala Jarjour is a scholar of music, religion and anthropology in the Middle East. She is interested in why people make music and how, especially in relation to emotion, value, cognition, and senses of identity and belonging. Geographically her work focuses on the wider Middle East, especially its Arabic-speaking cultures in the region and around the globe. Her book Sense and Sadness, Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press 2018) captures the story of an oral tradition of Christian chant that was passed down the generations since late antiquity, surviving centuries of instability and continually threatening conflicts. Dr Jarjour’s work on Syriac chant upends centuries of musical theoretical scholarship on religious music in the Middle East and proposes a new framework for understanding non-western musics through emotion and aesthetics. Her current research delves into cognitive neuroscience and how it helps us understand our musical selves. Tala’s focus on meaning and human connection finds expression in the programming she designs and implements though the nonprofit organization Magenta Mind, of which she is the founding director. Dr Jarjour held Assistant Professor positions in music at NYU Abu Dhabi, in music and anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, and was Visiting Assistant Professor at Yale University. She earned her PhD in Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. Numerous research awards include the Chevening scholarship, the American Musicological Society Publication Subvention and the AAUW American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship. She was an Excellence Initiative fellow at Tübingen University, and a Senior Fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Music
• Religion
• Emotion and Cognition
• The Middle East
• Public Health

Dr Jarjour’s interdisciplinary research draws on music studies (musicology, ethnomusicology, music history, music theory, performance and sound studies), social and cultural anthropology, religious studies and cognition. Topics of interest include religious musics of the MENA and SWANA regions (especially Islam and Christianity), interreligious relations, contemporary Syria, the anthropology of religion in the Middle East, the anthropology of emotion, music cognition and neuroaesthetics, cultural heritage, displacement, migration and refugee studies, identity and belonging, power and survival, mental wellness in the community, and most recently music and the arts in local and global humanitarian work.

Teaching

Tala’s teaching activities cover a range of topics on music, religion, culture and sound, predominantly in relation to the Middle East. Courses taught include topics such as popular culture, national sentiment, protest and popular movements in the Arab world, theology in cultural context, history of European music, as well as theory and method in musicology, ethnomusicology, Arab music and social theory.

Expertise and public engagement

Dr Jarjour’s public speaking engagements span the UK, the United States, Europe and various countries in the Middle East and North Africa. She is particularly sought after on topics relating to music, religion and culture in the Middle East, especially Syria, Middle Eastern Christianity, interreligious relations in the modern Arab world, migrant and refugee studies, as well as music and resilience in contexts of conflict and displacement. Tala consults for local and global organizations on related issues, on intangible cultural heritage, and on the role of music in promoting resilience. She is a member of the editorial board of the Yale Journal for Music and Religion, and she reviews regularly for academic journals, books, PhDs and international grants. She has written extensively in the general media, especially op-eds and opinion pieces in major cultural outlets in and about the Middle East and in multiple languages. Tala is the founding director of Magenta Mind, which promotes and provides culturally sensitive, quality training in mental health for underserved contexts, focusing at present on Arabic-speaking communities regardless of geographic location.

Selected publications

• Sense and Sadness, Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Described as ‘astute’, ‘path-breaking’ and ‘at once singular and universal… a story of rare power, told with compelling force.’

• “Chant as the Articulation of Christian Aramaean Spirithood.” In The Oxford Handbook of Music and World Christianities, edited by S. Reily & J. Dueck, 178-207. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Texting Musicality, Writing Sound (Cambridge Literary Review)
• A tree lights the square of death in Damascus (Arab News)