Listening, muhabbet, and the practice of masculinity

Abstract

This article extends debates interrogating the sonic and affective intricacies of how muhabbet—intimate social practices in which individuals gather to make music, converse, and share stories—structures gender difference. Extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul reveals how a particular community of Turkish classical musicians and Islamic artisans recognize their muhabbet as forming an alternative masculinity that resists dominant, normative gender norms. These men astutely understand that more than musical participation or voicing, listening and silentness are the most constitutive elements of making muhabbet and becoming better men.