MENA Ensemble

Fluid Pulse

Abstract

This article examines pedagogical approaches for teaching music from the South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region to musicians with diverse musical backgrounds in a higher music education context. The study focuses on the MENA Ensemble, established in 2022 at the Sibelius Academy (Global Music Department), and explores how the ensemble contributed to diversity and inclusivity within the institution’s curriculum. The study is designed as an instrumental case study and draws on the author’s reflective teaching journal, lesson plans, and four semi-structured interviews with ensemble participants. The empirical material was analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings suggest that a combination of oral transmission, collaborative learning, and selective use of notation supported learning in the ensemble, particularly when addressing unfamiliar rhythmic structures and modal systems. At the same time, challenges emerged regarding time limitations, microtonality on Western instruments, and the balance between inclusivity and musical depth. The paper contributes to discussions on world music pedagogy, inclusivity in higher music education, and decolonizing the music curriculum through practice-based reflection.

Abstract

This artistic research project develops Fluid Pulse, a theoretical and practice-based framework reconceptualizing rhythmic elasticity in Iranian music as a collectively maintained temporal structure shaped by gesture, breath, movement, and mutual anticipation, rather than deviation from an isochronous beat. Focusing on urban Reng practices in Tehran and groove-based traditions of southern and southwestern Iran (Bushehr and Hormozgan), the project addresses a key gap: the lack of systematic study of how performers internally structure, coordinate, and transmit elastic timing through embodied practice.

Grounded in long-term professional experience as a percussionist and educator, the project employs an Embodied Laboratory: ten rehearsal-based research sessions in Iran and Europe for guided performance, reconstitution, and experimentation, supported by audio-visual documentation and selective micro-timing observation. Core research questions investigate how elastic timing is structured and shared in performance, what internal cues enable it, how it supports social and pedagogical interaction, and how it can be translated into transferable teaching methods.

Outcomes include an artistic portfolio of public performances and a recorded album, a pedagogical toolkit for embodied rhythm training, and a written dissertation articulating Fluid Pulse as a transferable lens on embodied musical time.