From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
oud and maqam
This article addresses oud and maqam as recurring motifs in Beach Surgery. For regional adaptation practices, see Oud and maqam traditions in adaptation.
Oud and maqam are Eastern Mediterranean musical forms that recur across Beach Surgery adaptations as both literal sonic textures and metaphorical engines of narrative structure. The oud—an ancient stringed instrument indigenous to the region—produces a warm, slightly lamenting timbre suited to sustained tones and microtonal sliding. The maqam is a modal melodic system built on microtonal intervals and improvisational repetition, fundamentally cyclical: a melody circles through variations and returns, never quite achieving closure or escape.
Resonance with canonical motifs: Both forms encode recurrence without resolution, aligning them with the cycle and eternal recurrence / breaking the cycle. Katita's desire to "break the cycle"—to reverse the world's spin—mirrors the maqam's structural impasse: how to exit the circle from within. Similarly, the oud's sustained tones resonate with the frequencies discussed in the novel's radio igloo sequence, where the sound of the earth rubbing against space (the Kármán line drone at the boundary of silence) is counterpointed against the spine's high-pitched resonance.
Adaptations and interpretation: Several Middle Eastern and North African adaptations incorporate oud and maqam directly—radio serials, instrumental suites, and operatic works that stage the glitch as a harmonic impossibility: two melodies refusing to resolve together. The oud's ability to bend notes (microtonal slides) makes it apt for representing the fractured, doubled vision Leif experiences in Chapter 4.