Assalamu alaikum, blessings and greetings! This is @YazmeenDessertRose from RateYourMusic. (For my actual blog posts, press "Blog" above.)
I'll mostly discuss here field recordings and other sound art, as well as traditional (and newly-fused) music from around the world, nasheed and Sufi music, the jazz and electronic music and other stuff I grew up with (such as trip-hop or shoegaze), the practices of music criticism and whatever else I might find relevant...
Hope you don't mind me recycling the bio from there:
I'm an autistic trans woman (pronouns she/her), a left-leaning, progressive Muslim, an artist at heart, a fairly precarious cosmopolitan dweller, and a long-time RYM user. (Kind of like an hipster, except more like a hipness supplier... just kidding! Or am I?!) I have been writing poetry, essays, criticism on literature, visual arts, and last but not least: music.
Since before I've even heard of the word "autism", I had special interests. Since childhood, I have been reading about anything from astronomy and gastronomy, architecture and interior design, PC hardware and software, even women's magazines - as I was brought up fairly liberally. In my hometown, I've been in churches, mosques and synagogues alike. Despite secular education, as I tend to have external locus of control and low self-esteem, I haven't lost religiosity altogether. However, much of my writing hardly ever deals explicitly with mysticism (which I don't want to tackle in an inadequate manner), and more with my literal fascination with the craft and with the edges of what can be considered artistic (around which I had built a 'neo-avantgarde' persona).
Regardless of the artistic medium, my preferences tend to go towards almost anything I might find interesting, quirky, engaging with my senses as well as intellect and, ideally, feelings too. Expression through textures, experimenting with the medium of choice, expressing awareness of its conditions, drawing attention to its limits... these are some of my concerns. I can oscillate between "tropical" exuberance and "Scandinavian" coolness...
Last but not least, I can not thank enough RYM's staff and community for enabling such thorough knowledge of music as other sites dedicated to other media don't enable as much (book websites, I'm looking at you). Aside using ambient drone music to put myself to sleep better, I don't consider music as an addiction, days can pass without me wanting to listen to something or anything in particular, however music is one of the things that enrich my passing through this world.
All shall pass, so enjoy the ride sensibly.
As a further addition, I'd like to mention the lasting influence of "Music in the World of Islam: handasah al sawt", a fairly old article by john v. maurer iv, a Hawaiian composer and researcher from Standford University, who pointed out the affinities between iconoclastic, abstract Islamic conceptions and certain strands of Western art (although, as much as I like Charlie Parker, it's a bit of a stretch to call his music "impersonal and anonymous"). Hence why I sometimes half-jokingly mention "John Cage is halal" - in fact, if not for having been championed by mostly (but not exclusively!) non-Muslim composers, experimental sound art and field recordings could pass as very halal, with no distracting beats, no foul lyrics, no earworms that might disrupt even prayer...
This is not to say I don't abstain always from forms of dance or pop music, but that is not my focus, and you won't usually see me promoting something like gangsta rap or drill. A lifetime is barely enough to really explore to the fullest the richness of both traditional sorts of music and contemporary music that aspires to become tradition, even if not perceived as such (with the avant-gardes being paradoxically traditions of the anti-tradition...). After years of being all "avant-teen", at the start of the war in Ukraine nearby, I've said to myself that I don't want to leave this world without having at least tried to seek the beauty in most of these music traditions...
Now I'm considering making music as an even more direct process of seeking divine inspiration... Or you can just see it as stimming, whatever. At the end of the day(s), it's what we do that counts. So I'll keep this thing for when I'm not addressing more urgent matters.
My thoughts on music have been scattered over the years in various discussions on the RYM boards (https://rym.fm/) and on Discord, but only recently I've decided to dedicate a blog to it - an actual blog, rather than just posting on the fediverse (by the way, you can also find me at @yazmeendessertrose@mastodon.social or @yazmeendessertr0se.bsky.social, I just don't have much incentive yet to post there... I'm also on NeoDB, but haven't bothered migrating my RYM data yet).
For whatever reason, RYM has forced people to use lists as a replacement for having an actual blog. So here am I...
I don't use AI, this is all me.
P.S. I don't have access right now to https://yazmeendessertrose.bearblog.dev/ for embarrassing technical reasons, so for now I'm mirroring the old content from there and adding new stuff...