Dear All,
You are invited to join us at our conference:
MUSICAL FREESPACE: Towards a Radical Politics
of Musical Spaces and Musical Citizenship
S.a.L.E. Docks, Dorsoduro 265, 30123 Venezia [*** Details below]
Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 September 2018
PROSPECTUS:
We invite musicologists, architects, urbanists and migration activists to
join us in Venice for a "fringe" conference running alongside the 2018
Venice Architecture Biennale. This year the Biennale has the concept of
"Freespace" as its principal theme.
Our intention is to add to that "Freespace" agenda important questions of
musical citizenship, and a radical politics of musical spaces, in relation
to music, song and dance. We feel that the matter is pressing at a time
when, all across the world, music, song and dance are increasingly
constrained by the interests of power and commerce.
The conference will include the presentation of outlines for a "Manifesto
for Musical Freespace".
The original Call for Papers is appended at the end of this document.
SCHEDULE OF SPEAKERS
[in alphabetical order of proposers, with Abstracts posted at the end of this document]
__________________________
1. Dispatches from Sicily: music, movement and the mobile phone.
Rachel Beckles Willson [Royal Holloway, University of London
2. Sio toumolaa meeta (Patience is hard): Giving voice to migrants
Fulvia Caruso [Università degli Studi di Pavia]
3. "Belonging": LimerickSoundscapes and the "Freespace" agenda
Tony Langlois [Mary Immaculate College]
4. Theory and practice of the Music Room :: Towards a manifesto for musical
freespace
Ed Emery [SOAS, University of London]
5. Collaborative Songwriting and Temporary Autonomous Zones
Lucy Cathcart Froden [University of Glasgow]
6. Toward academia as musical freespace
Catherine Grant [Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia]
7. Impact of austerity in the music scenes of Cergy-Pontoise and musical
citizenship: 'It is your responsibility to make music life happen!'
Solène Heinzl [Royal Holloway University of London]
8. Luigi Nono's transformation, creation, and discovery of musical space
Hyun Höchsmann
9. Walking sonic commons in Venice: A case study in auditory access
Meri Kytö [University of Tampere, Finland]
10. "Stregoni": Building temporary spaces in Europe for migrants and
refugees' intercultural integration with the practice of improvised music
Nico Mangifesta [University of Rome "Tor Vergata"]
11. The dialogic dynamics of musical space: Understanding musical
subjectivities and musical speech in travelscapes with the Banda
Internationale
Carolin Mueller [Ohio State University]
12. Grassroots Music Venues in Slovenia - Condemned to oblivion or spaces of
trans-generational resistance?
Rajko Mursic [University of Ljubljana]
13. Free Space Music Room
Sean Prieske [Humboldt-University of Berlin]
14. Neighborliness, reciprocity, and the alternative infrastructures of DIY
performance in authoritarian Egypt
Darci Sprengel [Beloit College / University of Oxford]
15. Uneventful spaces
Danae Stefanou [Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece]
16. On the concept of 'freespace' in music
Martin Stokes [King's College, London]
17. Music breaks the boundaries of the Sikh temple: the Nagar Kirtan
procession
Thea Tiramani [Università degli Studi di Pavia]
18. Performative dissensus in Greek public sphere
Dafni Tragaki [University of Thessaly, Greece]
19. People Music: Experimental liberal aurality in the classroom, 1965-1980
Patrick Valiquet [University of Edinburgh]
__________________________________________________________
Conference organisers:
Fulvia Caruso [University of Pavia];
Ed Emery [SOAS, London];
Martin Stokes [King's College, London]
_____________________
REGISTRATION:
In order to register, and for all enquiries, write to
[log in to unmask]
The conference is open to members of the public and all interested parties.
We suggest a 10-euro contribution per person, in order to cover the hire
costs of the building.
If you wish to receive pre-conference mailings, please register in advance.
Otherwise you can register on the day.
The official language of the conference will be English.
____________________________________________________
ABSTRACTS [in alphabetical order]
____________________________________________________
1. Dispatches from Sicily: music, movement and the mobile phone
Rachel Beckles Willson [Royal Holloway, University of London
ABSTRACT: Arguments about immigration developed in Europe since 2015 have
frequently engaged with the mobile phone. But while this small object's
capacity to facilitate people's movement through space is now clear, much
less discussed is its role in musical processes, particularly in the same
communities of people on the move. My interest is in thinking about the
phone in both fields: movement and musical practice.
In the paper I will discuss several months of work in eastern Sicily, where
I have co-run musical activities for male minors recently arrived,
unaccompanied, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and parts of Africa. Our workshops
had the aim of joining, on some level, pockets of support promoting free
movement (see for example No Borders and the Italian Per cambiare l'ordine
delle cose). Unexpectedly, the phone was a central medium for our
collaborations. We and/or the boys used it, for instance, to provide tracks
in workshops, for sending songs and videos that were often recorded directly
as Whatsapp messages, for sharing remixes, and developing Italian song
texts. The phone was a crucial part of our activities and, I suggest,
through music, intimated a respatialisation of the world that was as
politically-charged as it was entertaining.
CV: Rachel Beckles Willson is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway,
University of London. Her research has centered on 19th to 21st-century
Hungary, Palestine and, most recently, has explored international networks
generated by the oud. She has published three monographs as well as
specialist articles in the sub-disciplines of analysis, historical
musicology and ethnomusicology. She is also an active musician - pianist,
oud player, saxophonist and composer. Since 2015 Rachel has expanded her
research in music and migration, and is currently working in Eastern Sicily
with recently-arrived under-age African asylum-seekers, engaging
participatory methods by running music workshops on song-writing, recording
and performance.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
__________________________
2. Sio toumolaa meeta (Patience is hard*): Giving voice to migrants
Fulvia Caruso [Università degli Studi di Pavia]
ABSTRACT: In Italy we face a paradox: while the media sound off about invasions of
migrants from Libya, in our daily lives we barely encounter them. Except in
big cities such as Rome, Milan or Bologna, or particular economic centres
such as Prato, migrants are invisible in our cities. Especially economic
migrants: they have been here for years but you don't see them and you don't
hear, them except for special occasions.
This is the situation in Cremona, despite the fact that 12% of its
population is from overseas. Even if they are always struggling to find
their own spaces to celebrate their transcultural belonging, their voice is
sometime silenced; and sometimes they themselves prefer to be silent or
unheard.
Asylum seekers have had no time to learn this "etiquette". They want to be
heard, they try to be heard, but mostly they are not. They are traumatised;
they have not chosen to be in the Extraordinary Acceptance Centres; they do
not want to stay in Italy. Most of all, in the words of our Senegalese
friends, they are tired of having to be patient.
In our work in Cremona we are trying to help all migrants to find their
sonic space, a kind of musical citizenship.
*Mandingo phrase
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
__________________________
3. LimerickSoundscapes and the "Freespace" agenda
Tony Langlois [Mary Immaculate College]
ABSTRACT: [Pending]
CV: Tony Langlois lectures in media and Communication at Mary Immaculate
College, Univerity of Limerick. Co-founder of the LimerickSoundscapes
research cluster which has generated a number of publications and an
international symposium .
E-mails: [log in to unmask]
___________________
4. Theory and practice of the Music Room :: Towards a manifesto for musical
freespace
Ed Emery [SOAS, University of London]
ABSTRACT: Consideration of practical and theoretical framings of the Music
Room. Reading those framings in a context of insurgent musical citizenship.
Creating structural points towards a 'Manifesto for Musical Freespace'.
CV: Ed Emery is a research associate at the School of Oriental and African
Studies [SOAS], founder member of the Free University [Universitas
adversitatis], and organiser of various musical ensembles..
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
___________________
5. Collaborative Songwriting and Temporary Autonomous Zones
Lucy Cathcart Froden [PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow]
ABSTRACT: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, a concept coined in 1990 by
anarchist author and poet Hakim Bey, describes a community - in time, space
or imagination - beyond the reach of formal structures of control or
commodification. Bey himself remains a divisive figure, but the concept of
the TAZ may have some light to shed on the discussion of the politics of
musical spaces.
Drawing on experience of collaborative music-making in carceral spaces and
with migrant communities in Glasgow, this session will share some initial
findings from a practice-based, interdisciplinary PhD project. The concept
of the TAZ has some resonance in relation to this project, where communities
come together for a short, intensive period to engage in collaborative
songwriting and to probe key concerns around communication of identity,
acceptance and belonging in re/integration processes. The songwriting
process here is informed by theories of translation and intercultural
communication, seeking to shed light not only on linguistic and cultural
barriers but also, crucially, on what might be 'found in translation'.
The session will weave together threads from dialogue theory, popular
musicology, narrative therapy, criminology, applied linguistic and
communication studies, and migration studies, drawing on voices including
Sappho, Bakhtin, McLuhan and Cavarero.
CV:
Employment
2003-present Playing in various bands, writing, performing, touring,
recording and releasing music.
2009-2017 Home-Start Glasgow North
Family Support Coordinator / Development Officer
2005-present Freelance translator
2002-2005 Communications Officer, Progressio, London (international
development agency)
Education
2017-present PhD candidate at University of Glasgow, pursuing an
interdisciplinary, practice-based PhD exploring the role of collaborative
music-making in the re/integration of migrants and people with convictions.
2004-2006 Various short courses e.g. Conflict Resolution (LSE) and Swedish
(Stockholm University)
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
_____________________
6. Toward academia as musical freespace
Catherine Grant [Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia]
ABSTRACT: Physical spaces for music - municipal parks, universities,
churches, pubs, and the like - are necessary but insufficient for the
flourishing of 'musical freespaces'. In addition to such spaces, the
attitudes, values, and behaviours of individuals and institutions are
fundamentally and profoundly implicated in rendering musical spaces open or
closed to certain groups of people, in ways that support or inhibit a
flourishing of musical cultures, musical diversity, and musical futures. In
this presentation, I reflect on certain attitudes, values, and behaviours
that are enabled, encouraged and sometimes demanded by the academic system,
which may inhibit both academic and non-academic musical freespaces.
Though academic institutions in many countries have recently progressed in
developing greater critical reflexivity about their social responsibilities,
some processes and systems of academia serve to entrench and perpetuate
global power imbalances and inequities. One result is the marginalisation or
exclusion of certain groups of people from academic discourse, including
people from developing countries, asylum-seekers, and refugees. This
presentation considers how, and by whom, the space of academia might be
'opened up, maintained, defended, and rendered sustainable', and includes
practical suggestions for personal commitments, small-scale interventions,
and acts of individual witnessing that could move academia further toward a
musical freespace.
CV: Catherine Grant is author of Music Endangerment (OUP, 2014), co-editor
of Sustainable Futures for Music Cultures (OUP, 2016), and current Chair of
the Australia-New Zealand Regional Committee of the International Council
for Traditional Music. Former recipient of an Endeavour Australia Cheung
Kong Research Fellowship on the relationship of poverty to the viability of
traditional music in Cambodia, she was awarded the 2015 Australian Future
Justice medal for her research, advocacy and activism on cultural
sustainability. Catherine's research on music endangerment, musical
citizenship, and social justice education has featured in print media and on
radio in Australia, the USA, and Cambodia.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
_____________________
7. Impact of austerity in the music scenes of Cergy-Pontoise and musical
citizenship: 'It is your responsibility to make music life happen!'
Solène Heinzl [Royal Holloway University of London]
ABSTRACT: This paper takes an urban ethnomusicological view on
Cergy-Pontoise, a new town in the North-West suburb of Paris. Cergy-Pontoise
has a lively and well supported music scene. This allows residents to
socialise at music events of various genres and musicians to develop within
a supportive environment.
Music as part of the city life is crucial for new towns and urban
development areas as it allows residents to appropriate their new urban
space (De Saint-Pierre 2002) and create a collective memory (Raibaud 2006;
Finnegan 2007). In the context of austerity characterised by cuts in state
funding, a lot of music initiatives that depend on volunteering and public
funding are stopped or threaten to be so.
How do the remaining music initiatives survive? Is the development of sense
of place and identity via music (Cohen 1995; Reyes 2012) in the urban
environment threatened ? How are shared economy and other strategies used by
musicians to cope with the lack of support? How are spaces being
appropriated and disputed between musicians, politics and residents due to
the lack of funding?
This paper will tackle these questions from on-going fieldwork in
Cergy-Pontoise including interviews with musicians, volunteers, local
authorities and participant-observations at music events.
CV: Solène Heinzl is an ethnomusicology PhD student at Royal Holloway. Her
thesis is on the impact of cultural policy on the development of new towns.
Her approach is urban ethnomusicology and her case study is the French new
town of Cergy-Pontoise from the 1960s until present day. This paper draws on
her on-going fieldwork in Cergy-Pontoise.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
8. Luigi Nono's Transformation, Creation, and Discovery of Musical Space
Hyun Höchsmann
ABSTRACT: It is the inaudible, the unheard that does not filled the space
but discovers the space, uncovers the space as if we too have become part of
sound and we were sounding ourselves (Luigi Nono).
Emphasising the necessity for contemporary music to 'intervene in the sonic
reality of our time', Nono strove to expand the conception of musical space
in three directions: the transformation of non-musical space with the
performance of his music in factories and prisons, the creation of a new
musical space for the opera, Prometeo, and the discovery of the inner
musical space of sound and silence, 'the inaudible, the unheard', in which
we 'become part of sound' and we are 'sounding ourselves'. Nono aimed at
'the composition of music that wants to restore infinite possibilities in
listening today, by use of non-geometrical space'. With the conception of
opera as 'azione scenica' (stage activity) and a 'theatre of consciousness',
Nono's 'musical space' for the performance of Prometeo was realised within a
colossal wooden structure (by Renzo Piano) combining the stage, the set, and
the orchestra pit into a single element. With the conviction that it is the
composer's and the listener's responsibility to recognise how every sound is
politically charged by its historical associations, Nono affirmed the
simultaneity of musical invention and moral commitment and political action
for justice and freedom.
CV: Hyun Höchsmann studied philosophy, art history, and literature at Ludwig
Maximilian University, the Sorbonne, and at the University of London. Her
publications include, 'Essence and Context - Process of becoming and
dialectical temporality in Adorno and Nono', 'Bridging the Gulf between
Nature and Freedom in Kant and Zhuangzi', and 'Walter Benjamin on Hölderlin's
"Poetic Cosmos"'. Her research interests include Philosophy of Music,
Eastern Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Comparative Philosophy. Höchsmann
is affiliated with East China Normal University in Shanghai as a visiting
professor. She has taught at the Julliard School of Music and at the
American University in Cairo.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
9. Walking sonic commons in Venice: A case study in auditory access
Meri Kytö [University of Tampere, Finland]
ABSTRACT: In her classic text Soundwalking (1974), Hildegard Westercamp
notes that if you can't hear your footsteps while walking the soundscape is
out of balance and the environment might not be scaled on human proportions.
Venice struggles with the influx of tourists, diminishing number of local
inhabitants and commodification of its public space the same time its narrow
streets, stone pavements, wooden bridges and street musicians offer a
labyrinth for the listening pedestrian. This paper proposes auditory access
as a mode of agency and a possibility of sonic commons in the urban
environment, using documents made in June 2017. Walking Sonic Commons in
Venice was a workshop of listening walks, discussions and documentation of
sonic environments (https://soundcloud.com/akueko/sets/walking-sonic-commons-in) organized by
the Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology collaborating with the Research
Pavillion.
CV: Meri Kytö is a post-doctoral researcher in music studies at the
University of Tampere, Finland. Her dissertation (2013) investigated
articulations of private and common acoustic spaces in urban environments.
Currently she's writing about sensory agency of technology and
digitalization of the sonic environment. Her previous work has been on
cultural intimacy in sound design of Yesilçam films, sonic resistance during
the Gezi Park protests, and acoustic communities of Besiktas football fans,
ecocritism in soundscape composition, and apartment home acoustemology. She
is the chair of the Finnish Society for Acoustic Ecology and has edited five
books on soundscape research.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
10. "Stregoni": Building temporary spaces in Europe for migrants and
refugees' intercultural integration with the practice of improvised music
Nico Mangifesta [University of Rome "Tor Vergata"]
ABSTRACT: Since 2006, the Italian musicians Gianluca Taraborelli and Marco
Bernacchia, under the name "Stregoni", have been organizing workshops and
concerts involving more than 2,300 economic migrants, asylum seekers and
refugees (from Africa, Syria, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent) who
are hosted in European reception centres and camps.
During their workshops, the two musicians begin to develop original
compositions by sampling the music that refugee and asylum seekers usually
listen to on their smartphones, creating soundscapes with them on which they
will improvise together during their shows. These meetings are an attempt to
understand, through musical encounters, what is happening within and outside
the borders of the European Union, and to try to reshape the political
crisis and mass-media alarm into opportunities for communal spaces and
experiences for intercultural integration.
This non-institutional series of artistic acts raises two interesting points
for reflection: first, the distance between locals' expectations of musical
exoticism and migrants' real musical influences, which are mainly related to
hip-hop and "macromusics"; and second, the complicated mutual integration
process involved in performances by groups whose diverse composition defies
the bureaucratic social model of non-EU citizens as a homogenous entity.
CV: Nico Mangifesta has a cum laude Master's Degree in Musicology and
Musical Heritage from the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". His thesis in
Ethnomusicology is about Balinese gamelan. Between 2013 and 2015 he
conducted field research on the island of Bali in Indonesia and was enrolled
at ISI (Istitut Seni Indonesia) - Denpasar through the Darmasiswa
Scholarship program during academic year 2013/14.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
11. The dialogic dynamics of musical space: Understanding musical
subjectivities and musical speech in travelscapes with the Banda
Internationale
Carolin Mueller [Ph.D. Candidate, The Ohio State University]
ABSTRACT: In opposition to rising anti-immigrant sentiment and racism in
Dresden, Germany, local activists initiated collaborations with refugees.
Among them, the local musician collective Banda Comunale, who invited
refugee musicians to become part of their musical community, leading to the
band's transformation into the Banda Internationale. Playing over sixty
concerts annually, the newly-formed group spends much time on the road,
making the space of tour buses into discursive freespaces where the
relationship between bodies, music and physical space is negotiated.
This presentation reports on my experiences as a researcher traveling down
the road with Banda members May-August 2017. I argue that paying attention
to their travelscapes, which are rendered by the place and register of
voices, the proximity of speakers, and the power of volume to fill up and
empty aural spaces in the bus, gives insight into how musical subjectivities
and musical speech develops. The dialogic dynamics of the musical space of
the tour bus reveals how different voices in the band interact, how they
speak, and why that matters. My analysis sheds light on how their collective
consuming and performing music together in the mobile spaces of tour buses
functions as a way to understand, develop and ascertain individual roles in
the band.
CV: Carolin Müller is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Germanic
Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University. She is interested in
arts-based pro-immigration activism, community projects, music, and
literature to understand how arts-based strategies define specific political
spaces in which claims to religion, ethnicity, democracy, and cultural
diversity are negotiated. Her current research analyses the organization,
communication and interaction between receivers and new-comers in Dresden,
Germany, specifically the projects and developments surrounding the
Dresden-based brass band project "Banda Comunale/Banda Internationale."
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
12. Grassroots Music Venues in Slovenia - Condemned to oblivion or spaces of
trans-generational resistance?
Rajko Mursic [University of Ljubljana]
ABSTRACT: In his presentation, the author will present his long-term studies
of grassroots music venues and youth clubs in Slovenia, starting with
ethnographic and historical study of the nationally important music venue in
the village of Trate Mladinski klub Trate (Youth Club Trate; 1979-1994). He
will then present overview of the grassroots venues and initiatives across
Slovenia in the 2010s, compiled in the collaborative monograph To the Firm
Ground (2012) by the Foundation Pohorski bataljon.
It comprises activities of various clubs, associations, informal initiatives
and squats, as well as formally established cultural centres that provide
space for various cultural events, but their priority is music. Activities
in such venues, especially in squats, are under constant pressure by the
authorities and capital. This will be the main topic of the presentation:
what is the future of "free territories" under the pressure of neoliberal
state and capital? The author will present various answers to this question:
historical overviews and selected examples from the present. His view is
that these places are essentially commons of the present.
CV: Prof. Rajko Mursic published eight monographs (all in Slovene), among
them monographs on punk rock group CZD, rock club in Trate and underground
music and youth centres in Slovenia. He co-edited ten edited volumes (six in
English).
His professional interests and teaching comprise anthropology of popular
music; theories of culture; epistemology, urban anthropology, methodology of
anthropological research, etc. He did fieldwork in Slovenia, Poland,
Macedonia and Japan.
Selected publications:
Mursic, Rajko, 2017, Music Glossary for the Youth. Maribor: Aristej.
Mursic, Rajko, 2012, On the solid ground: analysis of grassroots venues and
youth non-governmental field in Slovenia. Tolmin: Ustanova nevladnih
mladinskega polja Pohorski bataljon.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
13. Free Space Music Room
Sean Prieske [PhD candidate, Humboldt-University of Berlin]
ABSTRACT: Being a musicologist and an activist in the field of music and
forced migration, I founded the project Freiraum Musikraum (Free Space Music
Room) in the spring of 2017. The main goal was to establish a room for
rehearsal, performance and creativity in a refugee accommodation in Berlin
run by the German Red Cross.
While searching for self-placement and identity after having arrived in
Germany, refugees still face bureaucracy and ever-changing laws. In Freiraum
Musikraum, we tried to experience stability through music in the people's
lives that are so much determined by uncertainty. Being a city with some of
the fastest rising rents in Europe, Berlin provides less and less affordable
space for free culture. This is especially true for refugee musicians, who
very often neither live in their own flat nor have their own instruments.
Since many accommodations are being closed, music initiatives already face
new challenges. The presentation focuses on strategies of musical agency in
refugee housings and discusses future perspectives for refugee music
projects and cultural free spaces.
CV: Sean Prieske studied music, media and German linguistics in Berlin and
Newcastle. He received his Master in musicology at Humboldt University of
Berlin in 2016. His research interests include cultural exchange processes
in music, the social in music, and musical experience. In 2017, he started a
PhD project on music and self-placement in the Berlin refugee relief at
Humboldt University.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
14. Neighborliness, reciprocity, and the alternative infrastructures of DIY
performance in authoritarian Egypt
Darci Sprengel [Beloit College (current affiliation) / University of Oxford
(starting fall 2018)]
ABSTRACT: Egyptian DIY (do-it-yourself) music is made primarily by urban
Egyptian youth who mix Arab music aesthetics with globally-circulating
genres such as rock, hip hop, electronic, and jazz. DIY music in Alexandria,
Egypt's second largest city, has largely existed outside the demands of
capital. Unlike Cairo, which enjoys a few independent performance spaces,
Alexandria lacks a commercial artistic infrastructure. Additionally, since a
return to military rule in 2013, the Egyptian state has severely limited
artistic performance outside its purview. This paper examines the community
relationships that sustain a DIY music scene despite these precarious
conditions. It suggests that through affective bonds of neighborliness,
Alexandrian DIY musicians enact an alternative infrastructure of music
performance sustained not by capital but by relations of
kinship, reciprocity, and informality. It is through affective bonds that
Alexandrian DIY music persists despite the increasing commercialization of
Cairo-based Egyptian DIY music and expanding authoritarian repression
following the 2011 revolution. Maintaining a music scene through community,
however, is likewise to enact certain exclusions.
Drawing from approximately 30 months of ethnographic research conducted in
Alexandria, Egypt between 2010 and 2017, this paper demonstrates how a music
scene can thrive outside the demands of both neoliberal capital and
authoritarian repression while teasing out the politics it likewise invokes.
CV:
2018 (Fall) Junior Research Fellow in Music, St John's College, Oxford
2018-present Visiting Assistant Professor, Dept of Music, Beloit College,
Wisconsin
2017 Adjunct Faculty, Dept of the Arts, The American University in Cairo,
EDUCATION
2017 Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, Ethnomusicology with a
Concentration in Gender Studies
Dissertation: "'Postponed Endings': Youth Music and Affective Politics in
Post-Uprisings Egypt." Co-chairs: A.J. Racy and Timothy D. Taylor.
PUBLICATIONS
Under review "'More Powerful than Politics': Affective Magic in the Youth
Music of Egypt's Failed 2011 Revolution." Popular Music 37 (1).
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
15. Uneventful spaces
Danae Stefanou [Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece]
ABSTRACT: Over the past decade, an impressive number of DIY music venues
opened up in Athens, Greece. These quickly became spaces where first-time
and seasoned improvisers of different ages and backgrounds would gather,
play and listen to each other on an almost daily basis. By 2013-14, the
majority of these venues had closed down, struck by multiple, and unusually
harsh legal and economic measures. At the same time, sponsored creativity
hubs and large-scale cultural foundations were established, with powerful
stakes in the promotion and support of improvised music-making as a one-off,
event-based activity of considerable symbolic (but little actual) capital.
Looking at the microhistories that make up this globally resonant paradigm
shift, I discuss cases of fragile resistance, irreducible to events or
products, which revisit music as a shared or communal space.
CV: I am an Assistant Professor at the School of Music Studies, Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, and previously Research Associate / Visiting
Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. My research examines
experimental & improvised music histories and aesthetics from a variety of
ethnographic, archival and analytical perspectives, and has been published
in peer-reviewed journals (JRMA, JIMS, Musicae Scientiae) and edited
volumes, including the Cambridge Companion to Film Music (CUP, 2016) and
Made in Greece: Studies in Greek Popular Music (Routledge, 2018). I play in
the Athens-based duo acte vide and other improvising groups since 2006.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
16. On the concept of 'freespace' in music
Martin Stokes [King's College, London]
ABSTRACT: The challenge of the concept of "freespace" in music is, on the
one hand, one of rescue from libertarian narratives of one kind or another,
and on the other managerial narratives of cultural heritage, intangible
cultural assets and so forth. In both, I will argue, a habit of thinking of
music spatially might actually compound some of these challenges. Emerging
thinking about citizenship and an ethic of care in relation to musical
practice seem to articulate a route forward. Recurrent refugee crises in
Western Europe and mounting anxiety about urban space makes this thinking
pressing. But it too needs critical reflection if it is to be sustainable,
and sharable in practice. My contribution, based on my ongoing work on
musical citizenship, will attempt to sketch some of these critical
dimensions.
CV: Martin Stokes is King Edward Professor of Music at King's College
London. He has also taught at the Queen's University of Belfast, and the
universities of Chicago and Oxford. Recent publications include Islam and
Popular Culture (co-edited with Karin van Nieuwkerk and Mark LeVine) and
Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World (co-edited with Rachel
Harris). Last year he gave the IMR Distinguished Lecture series in London,
entitled 'The Musical Citizen'.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
________________________
17. Music breaks the boundaries of the Sikh temple: the Nagar Kirtan
procession
Thea Tiramani [Università degli Studi di Pavia]
ABSTRACT: Music is fundamental in the Sikh's religious rite, which is
celebrated in each gurdwara (temple) all over the world. In a migratory
context, temples are often built in isolated places, thus the music produced
in the temples remains itself isolated.
But there are some occasions where music breaks the boundaries of the temple
and crowds the urban context. These occasions are particularly appealing in
the migrating context, where Sikh show all their "being Sikh" to the hosting
community, aiming at making themselves known, also in a musical way.
In this paper, I write about a religious procession, called nagar kirtan,
for the Vaisakhi celebration, which occurs every year on 14 April. The
procession is followed by lot of people and characterized by a "scattering
of sounds", which strongly modifies cities soundscape. The musical heart is
a cart where the Holy Book is transported, accompanied by musicians. But
religious music is not the only kind of music you can listen to: Punjabi pop
music, for example, is spread at high volume in the opening and at the end
of the procession, to involve in the event all those present , in an
interesting musical exchange.
CV: I'm a PhD Candidate in Musicology at the Dipartimento di Musicologia e
Beni Culturali, University of Pavia. My research project is about Sikh music
in a migratory context. I have been working on Sikh music since some years,
starting from the master thesis, which I discussed in 2015 at the University
of Pavia. Now I'm also involved in a research about music and migration in
Cremona surroundings.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
18. Performative dissensus in Greek public sphere
Dafni Tragaki [University of Thessaly, Greece]
ABSTRACT: The paper discusses the cultural production of massive protest
concerts in contemporary Greece organized in public spaces which are
contested, (re)produced and rematerialized in the regime of musical
performance. Concerts organized in support of various social movements, such
as the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement, temporarily radicalize the
public space questioning and suspending its normalities through the
mobilization of musical counterpublics of dissensus in Jacques Ranciére's
terms. It explores the sort of musical scenes and musicians commonly
involved in (or excluded from) popular activist concerts, while focusing on
the ways sensibilities of resistance and certain forms of civility and are
affectively materialized in song and in the context of what is often
described as, the crisis of democracy. Musical performance is thus explored
as a transformative medium that produces public spheres as sites for the
performative re-distribution of social knowledge and as agonistic regimes
for reclaiming urban space. Thinking of the ways music tentatively occupies
and radicalizes ordinary spaces challenges the re-visiting of the concept of
"political song" away from bounded and commonplaced notions of what
constitutes the political in music.
CV: Dafni Tragaki is assistant professor in Music Anthropology at the
department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, Univ. of
Thessaly (Volos, Greece). She is the author of Rebetiko Worlds:
Ethnomusicology and Ethnography in the City (Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2007) and the editor of Empire of Song. Europe and Nation in the Eurovision
Song Contest (Scarecrow Press, 2013) and Made in Greece. Studies in Popular
Music (Routledge, 2018).
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
______________________
19. People Music: Experimental liberal aurality in the classroom, 1965-1980
Patrick Valiquet [University of Edinburgh]
ABSTRACT: There is an expansive literature tracing the emergence of musical
experimentalism as a genre, but relatively little attention is paid to its
entanglement with policy-making and research. Experimental musicians played
a key role, however, in existing formulations of 'musical rights' such as
those set forward by the International Music Council of UNESCO, as well as
in efforts to democratise and decolonise music curricula during post-WWII
university expansions. Education, in fact, became one of the main targets of
experimentalist intervention. By reaching children and youth before their
'cultural prejudices' had formed, experimentalists hoped to raise a
generation of 'open' and 'active' listeners, primed for participation in a
global, mass-mediated musical marketplace.
Drawing upon archival research in England, France and Quebec, I argue that
the experimentalist listening exercises and performance practices endemic to
the 1970s classroom, while certainly radical in their time, articulated a
technoscientific liberalism which has since become dominant. Although
patriarchal convention has helped write these educators out of history, and
their 'relativist' experiments were quickly withdrawn from curricula, their
ideas about musical rights and values have left significant traces in
musical knowledge, practice and media. Analysing the contradictions of past
liberalisms can help activists respond to new challenges.
CV: Patrick Valiquet is a writer and researcher interested in the historical
framing of musical experimentation as an object of science, education, and
cultural policy. Patrick completed his doctoral studies at the University of
Oxford in 2014, and also holds a Master's degree from the Institute of
Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, and a Bachelor's degree in
Performance from McGill University. Prior to commencing a British Academy
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh in 2017, he held
fellowships from the Institute of Musical Research, University of London,
and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture.
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
_______________________________________________________________
[Here follows the original Call for Papers]
MUSICAL FREESPACE: Towards a radical politics of musical spaces
and musical citizenship
PROSPECTUS:
The 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale has the concept of "Freespace" as its
principal theme.
We invite musicologists, architects, urbanists and migration activists to
join us in Venice for a "fringe" conference running alongside the Biennale.
Our intention is to add to the "Freespace" agenda important questions of
musical citizenship, and a radical politics of musical spaces, in relation
to music, song and dance. We feel that the matter is pressing at a time
when, all across the world, music, song and dance are increasingly
constrained by the interests of power and commerce.
The organisers of this conference have been engaged in ongoing work in the
conjoined fields of musical citizenship and activism - in particular as
regards music in the lives of refugees and migrants. We see this as a
particular and pressing issue. Music, song and dance are important areas of
empowerment of refugees and migrants, and a fundamental bedrock of
personhood. We would argue for music, song and dance to be recognised
officially as a basic human right. And therefore that there should be
provision of planned and serviced spaces for music, song and dance for
migrants and refugees in all situations in which they find themselves,
however temporary.
As regards the broader picture: in villages, towns and cities, as the years
pass, more and more spaces are lost for non-commercial music, song and
dance. Municipal spaces face budget cuts, university spaces are monetised,
churches close, and taverns give way to coffee culture. By way of shorthand,
you can't sing in a Starbucks. All music practitioners recognise this as a
crisis, and the time has come to reverse the tide, with new and imaginative
initiatives.
All of this raises many questions. How, and by whom, are such spaces to be
opened up, maintained, defended, rendered sustainable? How and by whom are
they to be heard? Integrated within, or interruptive of, neighbourhoods,
local soundscapes, educational systems? Archived, networked, circulated
beyond? Through what agencies, technologies, mediations? And how to deal
with issues of rights, royalties and remunerations arising in the context of
performance?
We welcome papers that address these issues, from both a practical and a
theoretical point of view. We also welcome reflection on existing activism.
Interventions in this area are often non-institutional acts of individual
witnessing and personal commitment. Such acts - as well as the more visible,
institutionalised, and better-documented work of NGOs - have histories from
which we can learn and on which we can build.
A longer-term aim of our conference will be to consider the production of a
manifesto for musical freespace, prompted in part by the crisis of urban
music making, and in part by the migration and refugee crises of our time.
Please note that, as part of the conference's follow-on programme, we shall
spend a day visiting the Architecture Biennale.
The conference dinner will be held on the evening of Wednesday 12th at the Nono Risorto restaurant.
All are welcome to join us.
On Friday 14th we shall spend the day at the Architecture Biennale.
Evening music at the conference will be provided by members of the SOAS
Ceilidh Band.
** Location of the venue: Near Punta della Dogana, in Dorsoduro.
How to get there:
Actv line 1 (stop: Salute)
Actv lines 2, 5.1, 5,2, 6.1, 6.2, (stop: Zattere)
Actv lines 5.1, 5,2 (stop: Spirito Santo).
_______________
All enquiries to: [log in to unmask]
Last updated: 7.viii.2018
.
########################################################################
To unsubscribe from the MUSICOLOGY-ALL list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MUSICOLOGY-ALL&A=1
|
