When Michael Frishkopf set out for Egypt in 1992, he had a one-year Fulbright fellowship in hand and a rather loosely formed idea of what his PhD research would look like.

As a doctoral student in ethnomusicology at UCLA, Michael cast a wide net into the pool of departmental resources. In class, he studied Arabic music and aesthetics, and conducted a psychological experiment examining some of the perceptual factors in musical experience. Outside of class, he played Indian, Arabic, Japanese, and African music, Javanese and Balinese gamelan (an ensemble of bronze gongs), and experimental music with an improvisational group.

As the time for fieldwork drew nearer, he found himself more and more attracted to Egypt, especially music of the Sufis, mystics of Islam. At the same time, he became curious about the relationship between the aesthetic experience, the mystical experience, and the creative act. Michael surmised that "the aesthetic experience somehow focuses the mind in a way similar to what mystics are supposed to do." Of course, a pure mystical experience would at some point leave the sensory behind, but nevertheless, he saw a connection. "What was interesting to me was the role of emotion in religious practice, and the role of music in creating that emotion," Michael says.

With this conceptual framework, and using Sufism as an ethnographic case, Michael began a rather serpentine progress toward his dissertation under the guidance of his graduate adviser, Dr. Jihad Racy. Recently, he returned to UCLA with the dissertation in hand, a study that compares three Egyptian Sufi groups by examining the differences in the language performance which is central to each group's religious ceremony: chanting, prayer, and performances of inshad (religious hymns).

Besides describing each order's ritual in some detail - how participants use words and sounds, how they organize themselves in space, who is controlling and leading, and who is listening and following - Michael also examined each order's relative success in modern Egyptian society.

"Sufism has declined dramatically in the 20th century," Michael says, but some new orders have been able to draw substantial numbers in urban areas, where traditional Sufi orders are often on the wane. These newer orders control ritual resources - such as inshad - in part as a means of assuring social cohesion and religious respectability.

But if Michael's work in Egypt were the proverbial iceberg, his dissertation would represent only its tip. When he arrived in Cairo, Michael found that despite years of course work, "my Arabic was not nearly good enough to do what I wanted to do." While he was working hard with a tutor to learn the language, he took some classes at the Music Conservatory and began attending Sufi rituals. He was drawn to the zikr, a mystical ceremony in which participants chant the names of God, with or without musical accompaniment, and he began "hanging out with musicians and singers."

About the time his Fulbright ran out, Michael attended a mawlid or saint festival at the shrine of the 13th century Sufi poet, Ibn al-Farid. At the ceremony, Shaykh Yasin al-Tuhami, the most famous of the Sufi singers (munshideen), performed. "I couldn't understand what he was saying," Michael recalls, "but I felt it very intensely. I felt that I had to study this."

Besides performing at mawlids, the professional munshideen-unlike those who are attached to a specific Sufi order-also sing at social events, such as weddings. With his growing circle of musical friends, Michael was able to see Shaykh Yasin and other Sufi singers perform on a regular basis. He even spent some time with Shaykh Yasin in the singer's home.

With his PhD in hand, Michael is now returning to the material he gathered about Shaykh Yasin and the other professional munshideen, putting together projects to occupy his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. For example, he is following the career of Shaykh Yasin, who has recently begun to perform abroad, to see what happens to the music as it reaches a wider audience. A colleague in Edmonton has studied qawwali of South Asia, offering Michael an opportunity to make comparisons between two different Sufi contexts and traditions.

Michael returned from Egypt with his former Arabic instructor. Now his wife, Iman Mersal is a well-known poet in the Arab world.

The chair of his department, Dr. Tim Rice, is more than pleased with the outcome of Michael's work. As Dr. Rice points out, the research takes on added interest "against the background of growing Islamic fundamentalism in the Near East." And in the course of his fieldwork, Michael "became rather well-known and respected within the world of Arabic poetry and music," Dr. Rice says.

Although Michael is planning an academic career in ethnomusicology, it will probably be interwoven with other interests from childhood that have made repeated appearances. One is his love of music, and in particular, music composition and improvisation. Learning piano at an early age, he always preferred to create his own music rather than "to read the notes." It was this interest that originally led him to the music of other cultures. "The Western classical music tradition doesn't provide much creative freedom for the performer," Michael says.

During high school and college, he studied with Ran Blake of the New England Conservatory of Music, who was interested in an improvisational synthesis of Western music with other traditions, what he calls "the Third Stream."

Years later, after graduating with a degree in pure mathematics from Yale University and working for several years as a computer scientist, Michael began playing with an African drumming group. The leader of this group, a professor of ethnomusicology at Tufts University, persuaded him to take a master's degree there.

After he finished the MA, he was ready for more. "UCLA had always been in the back of my mind," Michael says, because of its decades-old leadership in the field, "and I really had my heart set on going there."

He continues to be grateful for the rich musical experience and contact with interesting teachers that were part of his years on campus. "I only wish there could have been more time to explore more things."

Published in Winter 1999, Graduate Quarterly