Exchange: Conduits, Objects, and Earwitnesses

Artigrama

Desde la aparición en 1996 del nº 12 de Artigrama, se ha producido una considerableexpansión de estudios históricos sobre la movilidad de los músicos durante el siglo XVIII. Estosestudios han establecido estrechas vinculaciones entre la historia de la música y la microhistoriade los fenómenos migratorios y las diásporas, la historia de las redes sociales y la historia de lamediación cultural. Todas estas actualizaciones analíticas y documentales han sido alimentadaspor un creciente diálogo entre la historia social de la interpretación y otras áreas de investigación,especialmente las relacionadas con la historia conectada y global, la historia de las mujeres yde género, así como la historia de la ciencia y la tecnología. En este marco historiográfico, losconceptos operativos de ‘migrantes privilegiados’, ‘agencia’ e ‘innovación’ enriquecen nuestroentendimiento de las distintas escalas temporales y de los horizontes geográficos propios de lasdiferentes carreras de los intérpretes, de ...

During the 17th and 18th century musicians' mobilities and migrations are essential for the European music history and the cultural exchange of music. Adopting viewpoints that reflect different methodological approaches and diversified research cultures, the book presents studies on central scopes, strategies and artistic outcomes of mobile and migratory musicians as well as on the transfer of music. By looking at elite and non-elite musicians and their everyday mobilities to major and minor centers of music production and practice, new biographical patterns and new stylistic paradigms in the European East, West and South emerge.

In recent years, the cultural history of music has been challenging cultural notions of style and political representation by studying migrating musicians as actors in early modern court, urban and musical life. Following the aesthetic concept of authenticity, this article examines the construction and use of cultural characterisations of mobility and migration in Glückstadt, a "city of exiles" founded by Christian IV in 1616, and in the biography of Johann Jakob Froberger, who throughout his life travelled in the service of the Viennese court. While first manifestations of a concept of authenticity can be studied very effectively by looking at the example of mobile musicians and their music, their cases also reveal immobilities, the aspiration to rise in social status and the desire to settle securely. Since these elements affected the concept of musical works at the time, they may be fruitfully connected to hybrid music editions.

Popular Communication, 2016

Discourses of discovery have been important in a wide range of musical contexts, from early modern ideas about musical composition through to current forms of popular music production and consumption. Across these various contexts there are often inherent connections between discovery and colonialism; connections that become most apparent in non-Western socio-cultural and musical settings. In this paper, I situate discourses of discovery within the "coloniality of power," noting how colonial discovery can be more critically described as invention. From here, I turn to the genre of World Music as an example of how musical discovery is underpinned by inherently colonial perspectives, articulations of power, and relationships of dominance and subordination between Western and non-Western cultures. In contrast, I present the concept of interculturalism as a way of thinking about the possibilities of cultural in-between-ness beyond discovery, drawing on the practices of musicians who articulate intercorporeal and intercultural communication through performance.

The introductory chapter maps out current perspectives on ‘music tourism’ and ‘music migration’ with due historical and interdisciplinary contextualizations within ethnomusicology. It shows how narratives construct tourist destinations in particular ways; how tourism displays transformative abilities to empower destinations; how places are branded and ‘imagineered’ through music tourism; and how spiritual and virtual journeys are undertaken in the new experience economy, or in the escapist spaces of temporary music traveler communities. The chapter also explores the new geometries of flows, hybridization, music innovation, and liquidity, and shows how music migration leads to a new diasporic reflexivity resulting from memory and identity negotiations. It illustrates how music is used by people in transit to renegotiate experiences of diasporization, which also sees music being reterritorialized and rehomed.

For her 2012 video installation Citizens Band, Angelica Mesiti documented four immigrants, with two located in Australia, and two located in France. What is remarkable about these figures that are shown in their common, day-to-day surroundings, is that they are all musicians. Two sing, one whistles, and another uses a public swimming pool as a medium for drumming. Far from home, each person humbly performs a piece of music rooted in the land of his or her birth. In spite of the contextual shifts, the songs transcend the surroundings and conditions of each performer, bringing dignity and attention to themselves and their respective cultures. Only one of the performers in the video uses a portable instrument that is also an object with a distinct lineage, the horse head fiddle, originating from his native Mongolia. Playing on an isolated Sydney street corner at night, his aptitude with the fiddle is remarkable, as is its placement within the seemingly mundane setting. For my paper, I would like to consider similar portable musical instruments and reflect on how their original purpose has been maintained or transformed over time, distance and through cultural exchange. I would also like to explore how the objects have preserved musical traditions, or inspired new or contemporary forms. Rather than try to establish relative cultural practices amongst various peoples, regions or historical periods, I would hope to maintain the particular identity of each instrument in order to pay respect to those that make it their own through each performance.

Mainzer Historische Kulturwissenschaften, 2016

During the 17th and 18th century musicians' mobilities and migrations are essential for the European music history and the cultural exchange of music. Adopting viewpoints that reflect different methodological approaches and diversified research cultures, the book presents studies on central scopes, strategies and artistic outcomes of mobile and migratory musicians as well as on the transfer of music. By looking at elite and non-elite musicians and their everyday mobilities to major and minor centers of music production and practice, new biographical patterns and new stylistic paradigms in the European East, West and South emerge.

2016

The intention of the collection of essays was to address the fundamental question concerning the significance of the encounters between the East, the West and the South of Europe for musical culture, both broadly defined and local in the places where the encounters occurred. Music migrations have considerably contributed to the dynamics and synergy of the European cultural scene at large, stimulating innovations, changes of styles and patterns of musical and social behaviour, and contributing to the cohesive forces in the common European cultural identity. The book devoted to the subject show the great diversity of materials and problems, which will give, as we hope, new stimulus to further research into the fascinating matter of music migrations.

Notes, 2022

Ethnomusicology Review [non-peer-reviewed article], 2016