Performing al-Andalus, remembering al-Andalus: Mediterranean soundings from Mashriq to Maghrib

This article examines how the concepts of "al-Andalus" and "Andalusian music" serve as touchstones for cultural identity in contemporary Syria and Morocco. I investigate how the performance of Andalusian music promotes ideologies of communal, national, and transnational identity in these diverse contexts. Attention to the trans-Mediterranean links among performers and consumers of Andalusian music reveals the often contradictory ways that expressive culture orients complex flows of ideologies and peoples across the boundaries of the contemporary Mediterranean.