Pub Date : 2022-10-07DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2127116
Iain A. Fraser
musicology, even in the most prestigious institutions, cannot any longer assume knowledge of the standard repertory among their students. If such repertory is to be taught, this must necessarily be done somewhat along the lines of the ‘middlebrow’ pedagogy of half a century ago and more. The question is: Why bother? At this point Guthrie falters, in a manner slightly surprising for someone employed in a university. ‘Appreciation’, she writes, ‘described a process of acquiring specialist theoretical, historical, and biographical knowledge that would supposedly lead to enhanced musical understanding’ (p. 3). Why ‘supposedly’? Surely it is only Bourdieu’s bourgeois aesthete who would express such scepticism. One can explain to undergraduates in the greatest detail the ideological sleights of hand performed by devotees of aesthetic autonomy; at the same time, a claim to aesthetic autonomy remains an inescapable ideological component of ‘the standard repertory’, as we continue to call it. If cultural hierarchies still exist in Western societies, as Guthrie suggests (pp. 215–16), then educators have a duty not just to explain how these hierarchies find their social support, but also how to negotiate them.
{"title":"Auld Lang Syne: a song and its culture","authors":"Iain A. Fraser","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2127116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2127116","url":null,"abstract":"musicology, even in the most prestigious institutions, cannot any longer assume knowledge of the standard repertory among their students. If such repertory is to be taught, this must necessarily be done somewhat along the lines of the ‘middlebrow’ pedagogy of half a century ago and more. The question is: Why bother? At this point Guthrie falters, in a manner slightly surprising for someone employed in a university. ‘Appreciation’, she writes, ‘described a process of acquiring specialist theoretical, historical, and biographical knowledge that would supposedly lead to enhanced musical understanding’ (p. 3). Why ‘supposedly’? Surely it is only Bourdieu’s bourgeois aesthete who would express such scepticism. One can explain to undergraduates in the greatest detail the ideological sleights of hand performed by devotees of aesthetic autonomy; at the same time, a claim to aesthetic autonomy remains an inescapable ideological component of ‘the standard repertory’, as we continue to call it. If cultural hierarchies still exist in Western societies, as Guthrie suggests (pp. 215–16), then educators have a duty not just to explain how these hierarchies find their social support, but also how to negotiate them.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49653861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Studies on a global history of music: a Balzan musicology project","authors":"Diau-long Shen, Rachel Adelstein, Pei-ling Huang, Min-erh Wang, Hui-ping Lee, Ming Cheng","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2127117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2127117","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46793126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2152249
Iva Nenić
ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the jembe (djembé) as a symbol of Africanness in contemporary Serbian culture. Players’ narratives often underline the universality and spirituality of distant, romanticised Africa linking these supposed features to ‘archaic’ aspects of Serbian and Balkan traditional music. The trope of universally adaptable rhythm has united different players, from pioneers of cross-cultural sound during late Yugoslav socialism to the proponents of present-day multiculturalism in Serbia. This paper is informed by ethnographic research with the group Đembija, a recent Belgrade-based music project, and by the use and discourse surrounding the jembe and other African instruments by other contemporary Serbian musicians. The jembe's use in world music bands serves as the basis for a diversity of ideological, poetic and musical practices. Simultaneously, the aural learning, small scale and ‘slow pace’ of musicianship, in contrast to the hectic everyday experience of contemporary capitalist society, acquires nostalgic resonances within Serbia’s budding cross-cultural jembe playing practices.
{"title":"‘Imagined Balkans’ meets ‘imagined Africa’: the contemporary practice of jembe drumming in Serbia","authors":"Iva Nenić","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2152249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2152249","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the jembe (djembé) as a symbol of Africanness in contemporary Serbian culture. Players’ narratives often underline the universality and spirituality of distant, romanticised Africa linking these supposed features to ‘archaic’ aspects of Serbian and Balkan traditional music. The trope of universally adaptable rhythm has united different players, from pioneers of cross-cultural sound during late Yugoslav socialism to the proponents of present-day multiculturalism in Serbia. This paper is informed by ethnographic research with the group Đembija, a recent Belgrade-based music project, and by the use and discourse surrounding the jembe and other African instruments by other contemporary Serbian musicians. The jembe's use in world music bands serves as the basis for a diversity of ideological, poetic and musical practices. Simultaneously, the aural learning, small scale and ‘slow pace’ of musicianship, in contrast to the hectic everyday experience of contemporary capitalist society, acquires nostalgic resonances within Serbia’s budding cross-cultural jembe playing practices.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48926846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2151027
Linda Cimardi
ABSTRACT The ubiquity of the jembe in western and northern Europe, as well as in North America, was instigated during the 1970s by influential West African jembe players, later developing within world music, where this drum came to represent the essence of ‘African music’. In Croatia the popularity of the jembe did not arise until the late 1990s, motivated by local Croatian musicians who shaped an African music scene in Zagreb. More than a decade later, the first performers from West Africa—specifically from Senegal—settled in Croatia and claimed a space in the limited scene that had mainly crystallised around the jembe. Albeit within a climate of open collaboration, frictions emerged between these two groups of jembe performers surrounding issues of authenticity and labour. This article focuses on the initial phases and issues at stake in this encounter between Croatian and Senegalese jembe practitioners. Although these tensions resonate with exoticising discourses and notions of appropriation that have often characterised the world music industry, it is argued that generalising interpretations as well as the actors’ subjective readings must be deconstructed in order to grasp the complexities of this encounter and the processes shaping the African music scene in Zagreb.
{"title":"Whose jembe? A drum as a countercultural icon and a symbol of African authenticity in Zagreb","authors":"Linda Cimardi","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2151027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2151027","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ubiquity of the jembe in western and northern Europe, as well as in North America, was instigated during the 1970s by influential West African jembe players, later developing within world music, where this drum came to represent the essence of ‘African music’. In Croatia the popularity of the jembe did not arise until the late 1990s, motivated by local Croatian musicians who shaped an African music scene in Zagreb. More than a decade later, the first performers from West Africa—specifically from Senegal—settled in Croatia and claimed a space in the limited scene that had mainly crystallised around the jembe. Albeit within a climate of open collaboration, frictions emerged between these two groups of jembe performers surrounding issues of authenticity and labour. This article focuses on the initial phases and issues at stake in this encounter between Croatian and Senegalese jembe practitioners. Although these tensions resonate with exoticising discourses and notions of appropriation that have often characterised the world music industry, it is argued that generalising interpretations as well as the actors’ subjective readings must be deconstructed in order to grasp the complexities of this encounter and the processes shaping the African music scene in Zagreb.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41535839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2145705
Linda Cimardi
For centuries, close and multifaceted connections between Europe and Africa have been articulated through imperialism and colonisation, economic and cultural exchanges, decolonisation processes and postcolonial heritage, and have been determined by the conditions of the diverse regions involved, resulting in the complex entanglements of the present global era. These connections have been marked by unbalanced power relations and economic asymmetries, as well as by ambiguous relationships of fascination and the construction and negotiation of Otherness based on race, ethnicity, religion, cultural traits, and social norms. Over the past decades, a rich literature in the field of postcolonial studies has tackled various aspects of the relations between Europe and Africa (and the former colonised world at large) and reflected critically on the long-lasting and everexpanding impact of colonialism. Such scholarship has revealed the inhumanity, violence, and racism of this oppression, and how its consequences have permeated almost every aspect of social, cultural, and artistic life, but has also brought to light forms of agency, strategies of resilience, spaces for negotiation, and acts of rebellion (Baaz 2001; Bhabha 1994; Gilroy 1993; Loomba 2005; Mamdani 1996; Mudimbe 1988; Said 1978). Music and other performing arts have played a significant role in intercultural relations by participating in imaginaries about those conceptualised as Others and have usually corroborated stereotypes of Otherness. This seems to be especially true for African musics and dances, whose repertoires, practices, instruments, and aesthetics have been imagined and perceived by the European hegemonic episteme in terms of sonic alterity and visual difference, representing the exotic, and embodying the ancestral, traditional, and untamed (Agawu 2003; Carl 2011; Castaldi 2006; Gilroy 1993). For the European gaze, the Otherness of African musics is often strictly tied to Blackness as both a visual and auditory feature, although, unlike for example North America, the racial element normally remains unstated by audiences, scholars, and performers (Radano and Bohlman 2000; Rastas and Seye 2016). From pre-colonial visual depictions and verbal descriptions in travellers’ accounts to colonial field recordings, from postcolonial commodification of African repertoires and genres in the world music global market to their massification as an exotic accompaniment, thick imaginings of Otherness have tinged African performative practices. Inequalities in power have meant that Africa and Europe are differently able to express their ideas, shape representations, and influence imaginaries of Otherness and sameness. European-derived representations of African performative practices and aesthetics
{"title":"African musics in Europe","authors":"Linda Cimardi","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2145705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2145705","url":null,"abstract":"For centuries, close and multifaceted connections between Europe and Africa have been articulated through imperialism and colonisation, economic and cultural exchanges, decolonisation processes and postcolonial heritage, and have been determined by the conditions of the diverse regions involved, resulting in the complex entanglements of the present global era. These connections have been marked by unbalanced power relations and economic asymmetries, as well as by ambiguous relationships of fascination and the construction and negotiation of Otherness based on race, ethnicity, religion, cultural traits, and social norms. Over the past decades, a rich literature in the field of postcolonial studies has tackled various aspects of the relations between Europe and Africa (and the former colonised world at large) and reflected critically on the long-lasting and everexpanding impact of colonialism. Such scholarship has revealed the inhumanity, violence, and racism of this oppression, and how its consequences have permeated almost every aspect of social, cultural, and artistic life, but has also brought to light forms of agency, strategies of resilience, spaces for negotiation, and acts of rebellion (Baaz 2001; Bhabha 1994; Gilroy 1993; Loomba 2005; Mamdani 1996; Mudimbe 1988; Said 1978). Music and other performing arts have played a significant role in intercultural relations by participating in imaginaries about those conceptualised as Others and have usually corroborated stereotypes of Otherness. This seems to be especially true for African musics and dances, whose repertoires, practices, instruments, and aesthetics have been imagined and perceived by the European hegemonic episteme in terms of sonic alterity and visual difference, representing the exotic, and embodying the ancestral, traditional, and untamed (Agawu 2003; Carl 2011; Castaldi 2006; Gilroy 1993). For the European gaze, the Otherness of African musics is often strictly tied to Blackness as both a visual and auditory feature, although, unlike for example North America, the racial element normally remains unstated by audiences, scholars, and performers (Radano and Bohlman 2000; Rastas and Seye 2016). From pre-colonial visual depictions and verbal descriptions in travellers’ accounts to colonial field recordings, from postcolonial commodification of African repertoires and genres in the world music global market to their massification as an exotic accompaniment, thick imaginings of Otherness have tinged African performative practices. Inequalities in power have meant that Africa and Europe are differently able to express their ideas, shape representations, and influence imaginaries of Otherness and sameness. European-derived representations of African performative practices and aesthetics","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44132566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2151028
Gabriel A. Zuckerberg
{"title":"Inside the Yiddish Folksong","authors":"Gabriel A. Zuckerberg","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2151028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2151028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44705021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2117227
Ben Earle
{"title":"The art of appreciation: music and middlebrow culture in modern Britain","authors":"Ben Earle","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2117227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2117227","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59951533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2144402
Fulvia Caruso
ABSTRACT This article examines music’s contribution to the wellbeing, identity affirmation, and cultural integration of African asylum seekers in Italy, in a context where the Italian majority is often hostile to migrants and denies multiculturalism. As part of a broader long-term action-based project dedicated to improving intercultural understandings, this case study focuses on the life story and initiatives of a single musician: Bawa Salifu. It follows Salifu from his status as an irregular migrant, who travelled to Italy from Ghana, to his role as a cultural mediator for asylum seekers in Italy and as the founder in 2015 of the musical project Oghene Damba: Cremona Boys Musical Theater. The sensitivities surrounding getting to know Salifu well enough to discuss his personal experiences are highlighted; this was only possible after documenting Oghene Damba performances for four years. Other ethnographic interaction strategies are also discussed, including jointly watching and commenting on Oghene Damba recordings and YouTube videos. Despite the limitations imposed on asylum seekers, Salifu’s various musical initiatives and collaborations reveal the potential of music to give meaning to their disorientated lives and to make steps towards acceptance into Italian society.
摘要本文探讨了音乐对意大利非洲寻求庇护者的福祉、身份认同和文化融合的贡献，在这种背景下，意大利多数人往往对移民怀有敌意，否认多元文化。作为一个致力于提高跨文化理解的更广泛的长期行动项目的一部分，本案例研究聚焦于一位音乐家巴瓦·萨利夫的生活故事和倡议。该片讲述了萨利夫从加纳前往意大利的非正常移民身份，到他在意大利担任寻求庇护者的文化调解员，以及2015年音乐项目Oghene Damba：Cremona Boys musical Theater的创始人。强调了对萨利夫足够了解以讨论他的个人经历的敏感性；这是在记录了四年Oghene Damba的表演之后才有可能实现的。还讨论了其他民族志互动策略，包括共同观看和评论Oghene Damba的录音和YouTube视频。尽管对寻求庇护者施加了限制，但Salifu的各种音乐倡议和合作揭示了音乐的潜力，让他们迷失方向的生活有意义，并朝着被意大利社会接受的方向迈出步伐。
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Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17411912.2022.2147669
Elina Djebbari
ABSTRACT As a former French colony, Mali's musical landscape contributed in important ways to the formation of the world music scene in France, where many of its most famous musicians have recorded, performed, and sometimes settled, especially from the 1980s onwards. Drawing on this context, the essay offers an overview of the African world music scene in France through some of its main vectors of development, including labels, festivals, and cultural institutions. This is approached through the analysis of programmes from important French world music festivals showcasing Malian musicians, such as Africolor or Musiques Métisses, and by exploring examples of musical collaborations—referred to in France as ‘transcultural musical creations’—which were often implemented within cultural institutions and featured in festivals. Elaborating on how an elitist art culture was created, by stressing certain features of Malian music to the detriment of others, it is argued that these musical productions perform a play with otherness, which, in turn, has enabled western canons to take the guise of praising Malian music genres and instruments. Ultimately, these creative processes—and the discourses that foreground them—shed light on how France articulates and negotiates the postcolonial relationships it sustains with some of its former colonies.
{"title":"Malian music ‘made in France’: postcolonial relationships through world music festivals and ‘transcultural creations’","authors":"Elina Djebbari","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2147669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2147669","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As a former French colony, Mali's musical landscape contributed in important ways to the formation of the world music scene in France, where many of its most famous musicians have recorded, performed, and sometimes settled, especially from the 1980s onwards. Drawing on this context, the essay offers an overview of the African world music scene in France through some of its main vectors of development, including labels, festivals, and cultural institutions. This is approached through the analysis of programmes from important French world music festivals showcasing Malian musicians, such as Africolor or Musiques Métisses, and by exploring examples of musical collaborations—referred to in France as ‘transcultural musical creations’—which were often implemented within cultural institutions and featured in festivals. Elaborating on how an elitist art culture was created, by stressing certain features of Malian music to the detriment of others, it is argued that these musical productions perform a play with otherness, which, in turn, has enabled western canons to take the guise of praising Malian music genres and instruments. Ultimately, these creative processes—and the discourses that foreground them—shed light on how France articulates and negotiates the postcolonial relationships it sustains with some of its former colonies.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44230719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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