{"title":"Music in migrant camps as a medium creating non-narrative human relationships","authors":"J. Labia","doi":"10.1386/cjmc_00036_1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A migrant camp is a ‘non-place’ where personal identity is put at risk. Music is a means of personal adaptation in camps, even if it means allowing little place for the real reasons for displacement of the very people shaping these new hybridizations of music. The present power of music in such a place is to create strong relationships, ‘shortcutting’ both narration and the longer time needed in order to create relationships. The kind of personal advantage it is for someone to be a musician is a topic surprisingly forgotten, obscured by theoretical habits of seeing music essentially as an expressive activity directed to an audience, or as being a communicative activity. Music has a performative power different from language, as a non-verbal art having a strong and direct relationship to the body. Musical interactions on the field give migrants the ability to balance their problematic situation of refugees, shaping a real present.","PeriodicalId":38038,"journal":{"name":"Crossings","volume":"51 ","pages":"347-360"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Crossings","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1386/cjmc_00036_1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
A migrant camp is a ‘non-place’ where personal identity is put at risk. Music is a means of personal adaptation in camps, even if it means allowing little place for the real reasons for displacement of the very people shaping these new hybridizations of music. The present power of music in such a place is to create strong relationships, ‘shortcutting’ both narration and the longer time needed in order to create relationships. The kind of personal advantage it is for someone to be a musician is a topic surprisingly forgotten, obscured by theoretical habits of seeing music essentially as an expressive activity directed to an audience, or as being a communicative activity. Music has a performative power different from language, as a non-verbal art having a strong and direct relationship to the body. Musical interactions on the field give migrants the ability to balance their problematic situation of refugees, shaping a real present.
期刊介绍:
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture situates itself at the interface of Migration Studies and Cultural Studies. The terminology and key concepts in use in discourses on migration have yet to be sufficiently theorized or understood from theoretical perspectives linked to cultural studies, although migration is intrinsically linked to questions of culture. The course of cultures at both local and global levels is crucially affected by migratory movements. In turn, culture itself is turned migrant. This journal''s scope will be global, with a predominant focus on migration and culture from the latter half of the twentieth century to the present-day. Apart from the inclusion of refereed articles, Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture will include a section of reviews of films, music, photography, exhibitions or books on migration-related topics, interviews with cultural practitioners who focus on migration-related topics, and oral histories of migrant cultural experiences.