Glaucia Peres da Silva, Konstantin Hondros (eds.) Music Practices Across Borders

Music and Sound Culture | Volume 35

**Glaucia Peres da Silva** (Dr.) works as assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research focuses on global markets and music.

**Konstantin Hondros** works as a research associate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His research focuses on evaluation, music, and copyright.

Glaucia Peres da Silva, Konstantin Hondros (eds.)

# Music Practices Across Borders

(E)Valuating Space, Diversity and Exchange

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First published in 2019 by transcript Verlag, Bielefeld © Glaucia Peres da Silva, Konstantin Hondros (eds.), chapters by respective authors

Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld Proofread by Michael R. Kinville Typeset by Mark-Sebastian Schneider, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4667-2 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4667-6 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839446676



# **Introduction—Music practices across borders** (E)valuating space, diversity and exchange

*Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros*

Music practices, understood as activities connected to humanly organized sound, extend beyond enclosed spaces both physically and metaphorically, crossing borders of all kinds. When they cross the borders of national states and create stable networks among musicians, fans, people involved in the music business, etc., they can be considered transnational. Central to this concept is the idea that members of this network are embedded in more than one national state at the same time, combining elements of all of them to create and experience music. Analyses of transnational music practices (see, for example, Guilbault 1996; Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011) point to the importance of the social space created through transnational music practices, where different forms of exchange take place and result in a diversity of sounds, performances, ways of listening, involved actors, etc. Interestingly, transnational music practices enjoy different meanings and statuses according to the context in which they happen (see, for example, Gaudette 2013). Although the literature describes cases where it applies, we still know little about the ways in which music practices are valued and evaluated in transnational contexts. For this reason, we consider it important to gain insight from new developments in the Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation (SVE) (Lamont 2012) in order to better understand how space, diversity and exchange are entangled with the valuation and evaluation of transnational music practices.

Literature on valuation has indicated that the concept of value has several meanings and that different perspectives can be distinguished. Central to our understanding is John Dewey's seminal differentiation between the perspectives of value as a verb and thus as a process and value as a noun. As a noun, values appear to be fixed entities; it is the perspective of valuing as

a process or verb that allows for several meanings of valuation to emerge. Dewey makes us aware that valuing might come in the form of prizing, in the sense of regarding something as precious. In music, this prizing could be connected to the intrinsic value of the music based on aesthetics or the listener's emotions. Valuing can also be used to appraise, which indicates an assigning of value, whereby value is used instrumentally. In music, we can find these kinds of valuations in the form of criticism or rankings. Thus, evaluation is connected to the existence of multiple criteria and categories that are used to judge and classify objects in comparison to each other. With Lamont, we understand valuation as practices which give worth or value and evaluation as practices that assess "how an entity attains a certain type of worth." (2012: 205) In our approach, we opted to use both concepts in the form of (e)valuation. Putting the "e" in parentheses—creating "(e)valuation"—indicates the f luid boundaries of and challenges associated with separating value and evaluation in practice.

Inspired by these ideas, we organized a conference at the University of Duisburg-Essen in June 2018, entitled *(E)valuating Transnational Music Practices: Space, Diversity, and Exchange*, in which 23 scholars from different parts of the world participated. This book presents a selection of the papers discussed at the conference, offering a colorful overview of the current research on the (e)valuation of transnational music practices. The result is deliberately interdisciplinary, comprising contributions from sociology, history, musicology, anthropology and ethnomusicology. The papers presented in this volume discuss a myriad of coordination modes mobilized by actors involved in transnational music practices when faced with evaluative processes in different parts of the world and during different historical periods. Together, these papers broaden the perspectives of each discipline and contribute to a better understanding of their main topics in connection to transnationalism, (e)valuation and music practices.

In order to offer a guideline for exploring the papers that follow, this introduction delineates a theoretical framework to shed light on the intersection of both migration studies and the sociology of valuation and evaluation in the analysis of music practices. We start by defining our object—music practices—and point to its connection to both transnational aspects and (e) valuation processes. Then, we present some considerations on the study of music practices in the literature on migration and globalization before moving on to discuss the theory of valuation and the value of music. In the final

part, we present a short case study on the (e)valuation of transnational music practices emerging from the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC).

#### **Music and music practices**

Discussions on the definition of music as a scientific concept have produced a series of approaches that are difficult to reconcile. Most basically, music can be understood as "sound organized into socially accepted patterns." (Blacking 1969: 36) For Blume and Finscher (1994: 1195), "music" originally refers to a group of key words—Musiké, musica, Musik—whose history, definitions, classifications and meanings interweave in complex ways and are interpreted differently in each subject area. For this reason, they state that every attempt to grasp music conceptually stresses only those aspects of the phenomenon that are considered meaningful and noteworthy in this area. For example, musicologists differentiate between theoretical, practical and poetic music, situating the phenomenon somewhere between science and art (Cadenbach et al. 1994: 1792). In popular music studies, this definition is considered a mystification, since it suggests that its denotative content (musical material) exclusively determines its discursive function. As in popular music, there is a strong divergence between denotative and discursive functions, with researchers in this field preferring to define music as a concrete set of social, cultural and aesthetic practices that are communicated through sound (Wicke 2004: 166). Ethnomusicologists attempt to avoid the Eurocentrism inherent in musicology's concept of music, speaking of musics in plural in order to grasp the various meanings of music in different regions of the world (Christensen et al. 1994: 1280). For Keller (2011), this debate reveals that every culture sets the limits of what their representatives call music in their practices differently, since all concepts refer to sound design and the use of sound. So, he suggests that music has to be defined in context. Aware of these difficulties surrounding the concept of music, we do not intend to refine definitions of music, but rather we suggest focusing on music practices, thereby shifting the focus to actors' doings and sayings (Schatzki 1996) through which tacit (e)valuations become feasible.

We understand practices as "embodied, materially mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding." (Schatzki 2001: 11) This concept allows us to grasp the different concepts

of music in various contexts and, at the same time, stress its performative character as "an actual phenomenon generated by instruments, machines, hands and actions." (Hennion 2001: 2) As practices constitute social relationships (cf. Swidler 2005: 95), music practices have to be understood as emerging within interactions. Music is created, can be played, heard, danced to, recorded and discarded, thereby attaching or detaching people and creating social realities. In this sense, music practices have intrinsic cognitive and emotional dimensions (cf. Acord/Denora 2008: 230) which cannot be confined to audibility. They synesthetically intertwine with visual, haptic and olfactory aspects: music is "seen" when the YouTube video is clicked, "felt" when a subwoofer vibrates through every muscle and "smelled" when the sweating festival crowd rocks.

Moreover, notions of origin or ancestry, ideas of the sacred, certain places, political claims, aesthetic norms or economic exchange create compound contexts for defining music and its connected practices. From this perspective, contexts are not fixed and may change as actors move and technology evolves. It follows that music practices may interconnect people in new ways, create new relations between physical and virtual spaces, or even create new kinds of spaces themselves. In this process, boundaries between genres and categories are spanned, raising questions about belonging and distinction, as Haworth (2016) demonstrates in the analysis of the category Computer Music at the Prix Ars Electronica festival. Concerns about the local or global status of music practices also emerge, expounding on the problem of borders, as the case of Korean American musicians on YouTube demonstrates (Jung 2014). While occupying a marginal position in the American music market, they have managed to become popular musicians in South Korea through their use of YouTube. This constant movement of people, ideas, objects and capital across borders in physical and virtual spaces leads to the emergence of transnational spaces, formed by the interlocking of these movements and shaped by national states which, in turn, cannot contain them (cf. Glick Schiller 2010; Pries 2013). Music practices that cross borders are thus embedded in multiple contexts simultaneously, being differently defined in each one of them.

Thévenot stresses that practices in general also have a moral element, in the sense of "actors' preoccupation with the good." (2005: 67) This individual or collective worry with the good "shapes the evaluative process governing any pragmatic engagement." (Ibid: 65) This means that actors mobilize con-

ceptions of good in order to rank people and things in their practices when engaging with their material environment. In turn, this environment responds and leads actors to adjust to it using a specific mode of coordination that keeps life going. Applying this approach to the case of music, according to actors' preoccupation with "good music", music practices gain meaning, are rehearsed and brought to perfection, may be forgotten or move across borders. The evaluation processes involved in music practices are also different according to the contexts in which they occur and the environments with which actors engage. In the case of music practices that are embedded in multiple contexts, we find many evaluations taking place simultaneously, fostering actors to engage in diverse adjustments in each environment with which they engage. The quandary for actors involved in transnational music practices is related to how their engagement with "good music" can be adjusted to the concepts of "good music" in the multiple contexts in which they act and which modes of coordination should be used to mobilize their practices. After focusing on music practices that cross borders and the different standards and contexts they interact with, we turn now to discuss the relationship between migration studies, globalization and music.

#### **Migration studies, globalization and music**

The concept of migration describes a process of an enduring change of residence which may take place at different levels (cf. Pries 2009: 475). Rural-urban migration and the movement from city to hinterland are considered local phenomena, whereas domestic migration concerns the national level. When peoples' movements cross the borders of national states and connect geographically distant regions, migration gains a transnational scope. In order to grasp immigration in its complexity, researchers focus on its forms, causes and effects. In this section, we will discuss how understanding migration has informed the interpretation of music practices. The first approaches to international migration considered it as a unidirectional and nonrecurring movement from residence-country A to residence-country B, which could include in some cases a second movement back to the original society (return migration). From this perspective, analyses concentrated on the sending regions, where the population shrank, or in the receiving region, where the population diversified. Among the main causes of migration were geographical and economic factors as well as prestige (cf. Hoffmann-Nowotny 1970). Its effects were grasped through concepts of assimilation, integration and incorporation (cf. Park 1928; Taft 1953). Assuming that migrant musicians are physically displaced from a culture which is familiar to them and embedded in another culture in which they tend to be in the minority, comparative musicology concentrated on "the diffusion of artefacts such as musical instruments from one culture to another" (Baily/Collyer 2006: 168) that followed migrants' movements. Later, as ethnomusicology was in its formative phase, research focused on "issues of acculturation, cultural change and cultural innovation" (Ibid: 169) involving music practices.

In the last decades, however, developments in communication technology, transport facilities and modern capitalist production relations as a result of globalization processes have brought about new possibilities for connecting distant regions that affect migration. On the one hand, people could be connected to each other through communication technologies without traveling. On the other hand, more people were able to travel. These facts affected migrants' lives in a particular way: they could be simultaneously incorporated into more than one nation-state. These changes led to an increase in empirical research on immigration, and a new paradigm for these studies emerged: transnationalism (Glick Schiller 2010: 448). As a consequence, researchers observed that immigrants also moved according to their network contacts, which are not confined to one territory and may include many transit areas. In this sense, they may move forth and back again repeatedly, giving up their statuses as immigrants temporarily, or commute between countries. Besides, the motivation to emigrate may vary within migrants from the same region, since the pioneers may stimulate new waves of migration to the same receiving country as a consequence of their settlement. Thus, migration may be based in social capital and have a cumulative causation (cf. Massey et al. 1998).

From this perspective, it is possible to identify the formation of transnational social spaces (cf. Pries 1996) through the analysis of multiple interlocking egocentric networks (cf. Glick Schiller 2010: 455) which cross the borders of national states. Often referred to as "de-localized" or "de-territorialized", transnational social spaces clearly reconfigure nation-states and their relationships (cf. Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002: 301). In these spaces, there is a compression of relatively stable social relations and networks (cf. Pries 2013: 885), monetary f lows (cf. Mazzucato et al. 2006), political inf luence

(cf. Fitzgerald 2000; Østergaard-Nielsen 2003), and cultural exchange (cf. Kennedy/Roudometof 2002) which connect distant places. People moving in this transnational social space are called transmigrants, since their actions, decisions, subjectivities and identities refer simultaneously to two or more nation-states (cf. Basch et al. 2005: 7).

To be sure, transnational social spaces are to be distinguished from other notions connected to the "-national". International refers to the relationship between nation-states taken as single entities, considering that their borders are kept stable. Supranational builds on the same idea of stable borders but refers to structures that are constructed above the nation-states. Postnational stresses the opening of the border of nation-states under the pressures of globalization (Habermas 2001: 58f). They all ref lect a dispute over how to grasp the borders nation-states create as a consequence of globalization processes. From a transnational perspective, the borders of nation-states do not disappear, but are crossed and reconfigured by actors and their practices. Still, borders are perceived in "legal regimes, policies and institutional structures of power." (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 23)

Transmigrant music practices are considered "a product of social relations that link multiple localities and people of various cultural backgrounds within and across borders." (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 34) Interestingly, these localities may not continue to exist as they did when migrants left them, but they can be re-enacted by migrants in their private spheres by repeating music practices that reinforce and respond to feelings of nostalgia (cf. Baily/Collyer 2006: 171). In this sense, a transnational social space may include spaces in memory.

A transnational view on the music practices of migrants sheds new light on discussions about authenticity and identity, as Gilroy shows in his analysis of the black Atlantic world (cf. Gilroy 1993: 72). Making references to jazz, soul, reggae and hip-hop, he points to the entanglements of identities in the case of being black and British at the same time, for example, raising questions about double consciousness and "ideas about the integrity and purity of cultures [… which concern] the relationship between nationality and ethnicity." (Ibid: 7) In his accounts of the historic development of black music, Gilroy reveals how racism and resentments against migrants and their descendants in different host countries contribute to the configuration of transmigrant music practices. This is the case for Apache Indian, a British musician of Indian descent who referenced Punjabi music, sound system

culture and the reggae of the Caribbean as well as soul and hip-hop from the United States to make his music.

Looking at the black Atlantic perspective from the Brazilian coast, this transnational social space also includes a "reinvented Africa" (Pinho 2004) based on the ethno-political organization of the continent dating back to the slave trade. Music practices such as samba reggae recall and revive cultural identities that are, at the same time, black (African) and "baiano" (from Bahia, a Brazilian state), discarding a national identity in favor of a transnational way of belonging (cf. Glick Schiller 2010: 458). These music practices are thus not directly connected to transmigrants but are rather built upon a history of forced migration.

Taking the perspective of Caribbean artists, Guilbault (1996) points out that there is a particular migrant tradition in the transnational space of the black Atlantic that forces people to leave their home countries in response to marginal positioning but also to reinforce ties to home in their host countries through the politics of multiculturalism. It follows that soca and calypso superstars lead a transnational life regardless of the country where they have their permanent homes, sharing the same f luid experiences despite their migrant status. For this reason, Guilbault (1996) argues that a transnational perspective avoids "the conf lation of geographic space and social identity"1 , blurring the differences between migrants and non-migrants.

Adopting a different view, now focusing on the experience of Africans in Kenya, Mukasa Situma Wafula (Chapter 2) shows that there are transnational social spaces which may not be connected to migrants at all, as in the case of the Kenya Music Festival. If we keep the identification between nation and ethnicity but consider that the limits of this identification do not coincide with the geographic borders of a state, Kenya can be reframed as a country with several sub-nations. In the space of the festival, these sub-nations present music practices that both adhere to and defy the Western concept of music, being at the same time faithful to their ethnic culture and suitable to academic music standards. The borrowings of references and practices among performing groups which meet yearly at this huge event effectively constructed a transnational social space in which migrant status does not play any role.

<sup>1</sup> Beyond the »World Music« Label", February 26, 2019 (https://www2.hu-berlin.de/fpm/textpool/texte/guilbault\_beyond-the-world-wusic-label.htm).

For these reasons, Glick Schiller and Meinhoff argue that researchers should "step out of the migrant/native divide [… in order] to study and theorize creative processes that bring together the intertwining of cultural inf luences." (2011: 22) Assuming a global power perspective, the authors plead for the consideration of local differences within the nation-states as well as the participation of both migrants and natives in transnational networks. They suggest focusing on the connection between actors within transnational networks of relationships and on the forms of exchange that occur in this space (and also in specific places) which mutually construct the global, the national and the local (Ibid: 25). Following this argument, a transnational social space becomes a space of exchange across borders which may be a country (El Kahla, Chapter 6), a city (González, Chapter 7), a festival (Lell, Chapter 3) or a trade fair (Le Coz, Chapter 4).

It follows that the focus on transnational spaces of exchange brings the creative process involved in music practices to the foreground, not its results—whether it is conceptualized as hybrid, pure or authentic (cf. Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 22). In doing so, a transnational approach sidesteps the problem of how to imagine the ambivalent cultural consequences of globalization—as an irresistible force that tends to homogenize all aspects of our lives, destroying the diversity of cultures and life forms (cf. Barber 1996; Hauck 2008; Ritzer 1996), or as new hybrid forms (cf. Appadurai 1990; Bhabha 2004; Nederveen Pieterse 1995). Building upon Robertson's suggestion to focus on "the production of cultural pluralism" (Robertson 1995: 31), research on musicians' transnational networks suggests that ethnic connections may be both "a creative necessity *and* a limitation, a nostalgic identification *and*  a strategic tool for surviving as a professional musician in a hugely competitive commercialized scene [… becoming] discursive registers within the artists' transnational repertoire." (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 30) In this sense, ethnicity is only one aspect of the musicians' links.

As Bystron and Santana (Chapter 8) show, music practices like samba, which emerged in transnational social spaces, may keep connecting new actors, spanning its borders to include "batucada" groups in Germany that might not share any ethnic link with other samba musicians in Brazil. Their connection results from the contact with Brazilian migrants, the diffusion of scores or videos on the Internet, a shared taste for the music or a desire to belong to the same transnational network. Apart from seeing this process as harmful for the samba tradition, the authors reveal the diversity of music

practices found under the category samba. A similar account of the diversity of creative processes in transnational spaces of exchange is presented by Riva (Chapter 5). His analysis of fusion projects between classical music and a notion of African music (with or without the participation of African composers and musicians) highlights the idea that this transnational space of exchange accommodates different creative settings and reaches diverse results.

However, transnational social spaces are also marked by inequalities (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 31). Not all members of these interlocking networks have the same access to resources and places. One factor affecting musicians' position and mobility within these spaces is the evaluation of their music practices, which may vary according to the different environments with which musicians engage. There are hierarchies in transnational social spaces that are induced by the distinct modes of coordination mobilized in music practices. In order to better understand how music practices are valuated in transnational social spaces, we turn now to the discussion of the theory of valuation and the value of music.

#### **The valuation and evaluation of transnational music practices**

In transnational spaces, where actors with diverse national backgrounds come together through different modes of coordination, we find an especially dense field to observe how actors distinguish value and evaluate music practices according to their concepts of "good music". This evaluation starts with simple comparisons of music practices but can evolve into strict hierarchies of music's worth. As Michelle Lamont (2012) points out from a more general societal level, strict modes of valuation can lead to a thriving of inequality, which the literature has described as a "winner-take-all society." (Frank/Cook 2010) Thus, there is a major concern underlying what she calls the sociology of valuation and evaluation (SVE) in opposing unidimensional conceptions of worth and focusing on how value can be perceived in a multitude of ways. In this way, the SVE aims for heterarchies or plurarchies of worth. For Lamont, the key question is how to understand better the processes sustaining heterarchies, ensuring that "a larger proportion of the members of our society can be defined as valuable." (2012: 202)

Thinking of the millions and millions of songs never heard on Spotify some of them eventually become visible and differently valued on "forgotify"2 —appears instructive for sociological work about the valuation, evaluation and worth of music practices. From our perspective, transnational social spaces are where we can find a heterarchical diversity of exchange forms and results that shows the multidimensionality of value attached to music practices. Following Lamont, we also differentiate two key processes of (e)valuation in the discussions of our anthology: categorization and legitimation. While categorization is a requirement for determining singular entities and making them comparable, legitimation refers to recognition, which is often connected theoretically to the accumulation of symbolic capital as proposed by Bourdieu (1993).

A valuable background for the discussion about heterarchies, modes of coordination, or, as Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) call it, orders of worth, is their seminal work *On justification*. In their study opposing a neo-classical model of economics and economic rationalization, they show how several different and distinguishable modes of attaching value exist. While their model was initially comprised of six orders of worth (market, industrial, civic, domestic, inspired, and fame) (Boltanski/Thévenot 1999), it is based on actors' practices and is neither qualitatively, quantitatively, nor temporarily fixed. Diverting orders of worth usually become apparent in situations of conf lict, called critical moments, where justifications for a value judgment are uncertain. This makes values contingent. Yet, one of Boltanski and Thévenot's main arguments is that coordination between actors is still possible, and they show how diverting orders of worth can converge and allow for compromises.

In entrepreneurial and organizational studies interested in heterarchies, we find that it is exactly this struggle between opposing values and evaluations that allows for creativity and, thus, for entrepreneurial success (Stark 2011). However, despite the contingency and diversity of values, the literature also points out that valuing through pricing—the typical economic mode of ascribing value—has become a dominant practice, ubiquitous in realms of reality formerly separated from this numeric form of value, as well. Viviane Zelizer (2017) demonstrates how this market logic guided by pricing was applied to life to assert its value in the form of life insurance. In another

<sup>2 &</sup>quot;Forget me not", January 17, 2019 (http://forgotify.com/).

study about the pricing of children, Zelizer shows how valuations may have changed over time from economic assets in the 19th century to economically worthless but emotionally priceless in the first decades of the 20th century. She thereby traces the emerging markets of child insurance, compensation for wrongful deaths of children and the adoption and sale of children, all of which are connected to a pricing of children. Thus, in her historical analyses, she discusses how market and moral values interact, revealing that economic values are also contingent and diverse. In music, we find similar dynamics between commercial and aesthetic valuations, where economic evaluations may oppose artistic evaluations of "good music".

Considering the multidimensional values of music practices with their contingencies and diversities, it is important to highlight that value attachment has much to do with particular features of "music". Music practices in the sense of songs, concerts, events and so on can be considered as containing singularities. Following Lucien Karpik (2010), singularities are unique and, thus, incommensurable. Determining the value of a singular good entails a high degree of quality uncertainty. In order to gain some certainty about a singularity's value and to legitimize it, we apply instruments or, as Karpik says, judgement devices. These can be personal networks (peer groups), cicerones (critics, guidebooks), rankings, appellations (labels, certifications, brands, titles) or conf luences (company techniques to channel buyers). Yet these devices not only assess value and evaluate, but they also give value, as was shown with rock music and the value creation surrounding it (Regev 1994).

In the case of music practices, one device employed to attach value is the charts, which position songs in hierarchical orders, often depicting a simplistic picture of current evaluations purely based on consumer behavior. Examples of judgement devices in music marketplaces are expensive special editions of albums, used often to increase their value with more or less interesting gimmicks, the possibility of cheap downloads of single pieces of the album, or also subscriptions to streaming services where the value of a single song becomes more and more difficult to determine. In this context, playlists, tags, numbers of plays and the like become valuable judgement devices.

Devices for judging cultural value, also seen as a performing of rites (Frith 1998), are connected to tastes and are often related to habitual explanations and justifications of different social groups (Bourdieu 1987). For example, critics evaluate by referring to and combining subjective taste and expert knowledge in order to justify their judgment on the aesthetic value of a particular piece of music, album or live performance. Similarly, discussions about music among peers, distinguishing "good" from "bad music" through arguing (Frith 2013), are means to value and evaluate music that are based on taste and knowledge. In this sense, taste is "redefined during the action, with a result that is partly uncertain" (Hennion 2001: 1) and cannot be explained only by reference to the social origins or aesthetic properties of the works.

Categorization and legitimation are central as judgment devices, since these processes allow for a certain comparability of singular objects. The usage of categorizing and legitimizing can thereby be very visible, as in the case of competition at a festival (Wafula, Chapter 2), tacitly interwoven in the process of artistic creation (Fryberger, Chapter 1), or connected to a transnational network of actors (Le Coz, Chapter 4). John Blacking (1969) considers music value as inseparable from its creation and performance and, thus, from human experience itself. However, this individualistic point of view is connected to a social embeddedness of value, since music value emerges from performative situations in the form of communication through what he calls "humanly organized sound." (Blacking 1969: 71) A key feature for Blacking is that the composer brings together distant social elements of her or his society like bourgeois conventions and peasant melodies, revealing music's ability to fuse. In a similar vein, observers who think of the value of the music experience as "being alone together" simultaneously stress diverse possible forms of participation in this communication (Bowman 2002). In this sense, the notion of singularities implies that isolated items, like songs, are not ordered vertically in value hierarchies from the start, but are rather ordered horizontally, reinforcing the possibility of heterarchies. Each piece of music initially has the "same" value. This process is connected to the value and evaluation of diversity that is regularly encountered in transnational music practices.

Diversity has been a constant companion especially in world music, hip hop and electronic music, but recently also in classical music. Diversity is almost considered to be a value in itself, supported in international cultural policy (as in the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions) and fostered by musicians from different world regions. However, especially historically, we see how the evaluation of diversity has been an issue due to unequal power relations in transnational spaces, causing discrimination (Gonzalez, Chapter 7) and passiveness towards preservation (El Kahla, Chapter 6). In this line of thinking, diversity of music practice might hardly be more than a consumer-friendly multiculturalism (Feld 2000), envisioning a democratic image of music by f looding the market with diversified musical products. Thus, the (e)valuation of diversity can blur distinctions between rules in some fields of music practice (Bystron/ Santana, Chapter 8), and its forms can vary so strongly that it can lead to new forms of homogenization under new categories.

Focusing on the (e)valuation of exchanges that underlie the diversity of music practices in transnational spaces, we consider them twofold. On the one hand, (e)valuation of exchange focuses on the economic relationship between sellers and buyers, raising questions about product availability, range of market coverage and shifts in musics' value and pricing in both physical and digital music practices (Chu/Lu 2007; Buxmann, Strube/Pohl 2007). On the other hand, (e)valuation of exchange refers to relationships between musicians that cross the borders of their musical tradition (see Riva, Chapter 5) and also between musicians and their fans (see Lell, Chapter 3). Transnational exchange can thereby be evaluated as happening on different levels, showing especially how collaborations between diverse music actors gain from transnational backgrounds and how the appropriation of symbols, creation of styles and formation of communities are part of this process.

In this sense, (e)valuation of diversity and exchange point to identity and identity building. As the example of identity-building for Christian youth through Christian heavy metal music (Moberg 2007) shows, communication among peers as a judgement device based on taste may lead to the formation of an identity connected to transnational music practices. This process may unfold with a focus on local identity construction, as in the case of Singapore (Kong 1997), or on the construction of transnational identity, as in the case of a Vietnamese identity emerging between nostalgia and political resistance (Valverde 2003). In these examples, the national borders are crossed to create a transnational space for music practices. However, there is also a backlash against it in projects of nation branding (Gienow-Hecht 2016), which aim to reposition the nation in transnational spaces using music as a national symbol. This is part of a strategy of sound diplomacy that is mobilized by national states and cities, which encourages festival visitors to take part in cultural tourism and attaches values to sites, cities or communities, reframing spaces through music, and since it happens in very localized and

culturally embedded settings, fostering attention to their liveness (Lange/ Bürkner 2012).

An example of this complex and intertwined process of (e)valuation of space, diversity and exchange in transnational music practices will be discussed below in a short case study on the Eurovision Song Contest.

#### **The Eurovision Song Contest—A transnational music practice**

In the following, we discuss the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) as one example of the role played by space, diversity and exchange in yielding both value and categories to evaluate transnational music practices. As a music contest between nation-states and based on a supranational European connection with representatives coming together for a "sing-off", the ESC constitutes a great case for what we understand as a transnational music practice as well as a very good match for a music practice going beyond the usual assumption of music as a mainly audible sensation. Far more than that, it is an interwoven web of practices that together unfold at the ESC. Through the omnipresent nature of the contest, the event is also of high interest from the perspective of evaluation. As a short case study, this example aims to introduce the depicted conceptual framework in situ and thereby provide a first glimpse at the opportunities for analysis it opens up. We thus shed light on a couple of interesting aspects.

In general, we want to discuss the ESC as an event construing transnationality by shifting between forms and engagement with "nation(s)". In a nutshell, the ESC could be seen as an international contest between (allegedly) national actors that forms a transnational media event with worldwide recognition. Our perspective on the ESC as one interrelated music practice is connected to recent developments in practice theory that go beyond a micro-foundation of practice. These theoretical contributions argue for a f lat ontology that does not differentiate in a conventional manner between micro and macro (Schatzki 2016; Nicolini 2016). Here, even a large-scale phenomenon like the ESC can be viewed as a practice itself. However, that does not mean that there are plentiful further practices as noted above in connection to the ESC, together establishing a web of practice (Schatzki 2005b). In this way, we will take a look at evaluation practices that are part of the

contest and betting practices that have been a valuable asset in the contest for decades.

The ESC is a famous and successful annual music contest in Europe. The literature depicts this contest as a large-scale media event (Dayan/Katz 1994), comparing it to contemporary sports events or, historically, to the World Trade Fair (Bolin 2006). Though highly successful, its evaluation approach is very controversial. Hardcore fans celebrate ESC-parties, but many critics deny the aesthetic and artistic quality of the participating songs in general. In any event, someone who grew up in Europe is very likely to be at least partially informed about the event, since it is an important topic of media coverage. A lot of historical narratives are connected to it, fostered by media formats like Eurovision's Greatest Hits, which values particular performances.

In 1956, the European Broadcasting Union introduced this event. The exact format has changed slightly over time, yet the main threads remain: each participating nation-state sends a song to the competition, with a voting system determining a winner at the end. Starting with seven nations in 1956, the competition has significantly increased in scope, with 43 nations participating in 2018. Chronologically, music takes the central position at the ESC in its recurrent and schematic composition, yet there are several practices accompanying the contest that are interwoven with the singular pieces of music and inf luence the whole event. Entertainment practices are central. Different sorts of films contribute a lot of non-musical visual material. The evaluation practices at the end of the show take hours and last as long as the musical part, building a climax towards the end that is hardly connected to any of the music. Interestingly, betting practices are strongly connected to the event, with media coverage very casually speaking about favorites for the bookkeepers. Also, practices of fan culture and tourism need to be added, depicting a colorful picture of linked practices that together can be called the ESC.

Obviously, basic elements of the contest are connotated nationally. Contestants are nominated on a national basis with one representative per nation. The representative, however, need not be a citizen of the nation she or she represents, yet this is most often the case anyways. Her or his migrant status does not play any role. This leads to a nation's representative eventually being chosen as a winner. Also, national symbols are omnipresent in this event. Recent broadcasts of the contest seldom show images without the symbol of a nation somewhere—despite the performances themselves, where national symbols are tacitly interwoven (Miazhevich 2010; Mitrović 2010). Still, research has shown how ambiguous the ESC's relation to the "nation" is. While some ref lect mainly on national aspects (Wolther 2006), others stress an interrelation between the national and international (Mitrovic 2010). These ref lections on the ESC often take a critical stance towards the affirmative "Eurovision" promise of the contest that in many respects does not stand for what actually takes place. Depicted as the "gay Olympics" (Baker 2017), the ESC has an inf luence on the visibility and integration of queerdom in the public and is evaluated as playing an important role in building belonging for this group in relation to the transnational concept of Europe.

From a structural perspective, introduction, performance and evaluation make up the ESC's music practice. The table below illustrates the temporal distribution of broadcasting time in minutes in the main parts of the event looking at three events from three decades<sup>3</sup> :


#### *Table 1: ESC structure*

Source: data gathered by authors based on videos on YouTube


<sup>3</sup> We determined the broadcasting length by the length of a YouTube-Video of the whole event. The duration of each part was measured by hand. All time specifications have been transcribed to minutes. As introduction we understood the time from the beginning of the video until the first performance. Performance is the time from the start of the first to the end of the last contest performance. Evaluation is the period from the end of the last performance until the end of the video.

Describing this table, we learn that the distribution of broadcasting time and the broadcasting time of the event have changed dramatically throughout the last decades. However, the underlying structure of the event has proven its usefulness. The introduction is between 7 and 16 minutes long, and the amount of time invested in the introduction has surely increased. Since the early days of the competition, the most time has been distributed to the performance part, where one country after another performs its song. However, the evaluation part has become of nearly equal temporal importance and has extended significantly over the last decades. Combined, the "non-musical" parts of the show today are roughly the same length as the musical performance part. This was very different in the earlier days of the contest. In 2018, we even observe that the evaluation and introduction together used up more broadcasting time than the musical performances. Looking at the numbers provided here lends the impression that "non-music" parts are gaining importance at the expense of the performance part. Obviously, the event extends temporally, which has to do with the increasing number of participants as well as the general configuration of the evaluation part. The ESC has more than doubled its length between 1974 and 2018. The event lasted nearly four hours in 2018, underlining the notion that is has become a large-scale media event.

Going into more detail about the single parts of the show and its diverse practices, the introduction is usually accompanied by filmed sequences depicting the host country. Following this, the competitors enter the arena, typically a big multi-purpose hall in the host nation's capital. Their entrance resembles the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. Then, the competition starts with the first songs being performed. A short film introducing the performer and her or his country, the so-called "postcard", is shown before the performance itself. After all songs are performed, the evaluation phase starts with the opening of the telephone lines used to vote for one's favorite song. During this phase, gaps are filled with fast and short replays of all participants, entertaining talks by the hosts and further "interval acts". After the telephone lines are closed, points are allocated from two perspectives of each country: first, the vote of a professional jury with the infamous "Twelve points go to"; and then the popular vote. Thus, the interesting, complicated, and usually hours-long evaluation process is divided into expert judgments and public opinion (Haan et al. 2005). Although this separation has obtained for quite a while, it is only since 2016 that the jury and the public each award

up to twelve points, thereby doubling the pool of available points. Before that, there was one combined evaluation.

The terms of evaluation have generally been a topic for recurrent critique and have been changed several times<sup>9</sup> . Between 2008 and 2018, a total of eight changes were applied. The critique was often directed towards the promotion of countries belonging to a common cultural space, and the changes in evaluation were aimed at broadening the transnational diversity of the competition's results. Yair and Maman (1996), for instance, show how different national "blocs" and their structural relationships are a fitting explanation for what they call a persistent hegemony within the contest. With Simmel's concept of the tertius gaudens, they show how a "Western Bloc" profits in the final evaluation stages from a "Northern Bloc" and a "Mediterranean Bloc" ignoring each other more or less when it comes to distributing points. However, for instance an "Eastern Bloc" which could be of importance in their structural analysis is missing since these countries first entered the competition in the 1990s or sometimes only in the 2000s. The possibility of buying jury votes has also led to a diversification of the terms of evaluation, with the goal being to balance the judgment device.

During the preliminary stages of the contest, evaluations are of similar importance and show an interesting connection to Wafula's depiction of the Kenya Music Festival in this book. In many participating nation-states, events took place that, at least in the case of Germany, arose suspicions that participants were recruited based on federal state heritage. From 2005 to 2015, the Bundesvision Song Contest used a smaller level of "national" to determine, through a similar evaluation process to the ESC, the final representative. Before the main event, "semi-finals" are held to reduce the number of participants to a number that fits the broadcasting schedule—however, the main sponsors of the European Broadcasting Union, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Spain as well as the host nation, have a fixed place in the final. Still, all these big nations have to broadcast the semifinals10, even if they do not take part, underlining the idea that the Broadcasting Union understands the contest transnationally. In the final event, every country enters with two evaluations: one from a professional jury and one from the

<sup>9 &</sup>quot;Biggest change to Eurovision Song Contest voting since 1975", February, 7, 2019 (https:// eurovision.tv/story/biggest-change-to-eurovision-song-contest-voting-since-1975).

<sup>10 &</sup>quot;Rules", February 7, 2019 (https://eurovision.tv/about/rules).

participating public through calls to a hotline. Even countries that do not make the cut in the semifinals are allowed to vote in the finals. It is not the sole privilege of participating nations to take part in the evaluation and finally decide a winner. The evaluation itself seems to be at the transnational center of the whole event.

Very interesting transnational exchanges take place, especially during the evaluation phase. Typically, one spokesperson per country is connected live to the main event. Thus, the hosts "phone" each country and ask them if their evaluation is ready. However, to facilitate the entertaining aspects of this rather boring and standardized practice, or to extend the broadcasting time, the involved actors try to find space to exchange beyond the trivial numbers and to build a climax towards the awaited "twelve points". This space is often filled with attempts to exchange in a funny, sophisticated, or alternatively interesting way in English, which is usually neither the spokespersons' nor the host nation's native language. Thereby, the actors involve diverse national patina, for instance by saying some words in the host nation's language or in the language of the evaluating country. They may also refer to national clichés. We would argue that doing so leads to the emergence of short transnational dialogues, especially when these speech acts are broadcasted throughout more than 40 countries.

From a transnational perspective, the contest's ability to expand and thereby incorporate further geographical spaces that have just recently become what is understood to be "European" is noteworthy. The contest might even be looked at as a means for European integration, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The song contest seemingly incorporates a geographic space similar to that of the European Union. However, the ESC did not stop at what is considered Europe geographically, but incorporated further cultural spaces especially through the recurrent entries of Israel. In 1980, even Morocco was allowed to enter the competition one time. In this way, the ESC resembles UEFA, the European Football Association, with its practice of incorporating non-European members like Israel or even Georgia or Kazakhstan. Still, the ESC has not stopped here, but recently allowed Australia to take part in the competition, justifying this extension by noting that Australia has broadcast the ESC since 1974. The ESC has thereby developed a very unique and transnational construction of a European competition.

To further stress the transnational dimension of the contest, Catherine Baker (2008) argues that the transnational audience of this event combined with its contest nature is pressuring the participants into representing a national background through simplified images. The use of clichés is justified in that reading by the need to convey messages connected to a nation with little time and a lot of "nation-branding". The perspective of nation-branding (Dinnie 2015) is a recurring topic in studies about the ESC (Miazhevich 2010; Jordan 2014; Pajala 2012; Vuletic 2018) and is even depicted as a diplomatic tool (Boric/Kapor 2017). Paul Jordan (2014), for instance, describes the contest in Estonia as "a modern fairytale", looking at the role of the ESC in European identity politics and the connection between nation-branding and nation building, which the Song Contest has promoted particularly in the cases of post-Soviet countries.

Some important transnational aspects of the music practices can be understood as rather "intangible". Language is a major issue in this respect. The ESC has struggled to find a way of dealing with the hegemony of the English language; however, this seems to be the "transnational" thing to do. While the organization of the ESC wanted to foster—even with force—the use of the official national language of the participant, songwriters obviously have a more transnational stance towards writing songs. At the moment, participants are allowed to sing in whatever language they want to sing. In 2016, for instance, this led to 33 out of 36 participants singing in English, with the exceptions of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which sang in their respective native languages, and Austria, which sang in French. With respect to transnational exchange, using only one main language might be evaluated as a perfect match, with an obvious loss in diversity.

A tacit visual effect that accompanies the event might also be noteworthy. Usually, all long shots from the multi-purpose hall show a confusing image of chaotically waving f lags of nation-states. There are so many f lags that from a distance they become indifferentiable, leaving a colorful blanket without direct connotation. Through the comparison with a football event, this point becomes clearer: while in a football game there are usually two kinds of f lags and the fans of the teams are usually separated from each other leaving them easy to distinguish, the ESC viewed from the distance offers a far more colorful and more importantly indistinguishable scene, thus lending the event a transnational impression. There is an "ocean of f lags" that seems very intentional. It is a confusing visual impression of transnational diversity. One could argue further, referring to our dimensions, that within and especially through the crowd of national supporters, a transnational space emerges.

Furthermore, we would like to understand the astonishingly relevant betting practices from a transnational perspective. On the homepages of the bookkeepers offering bets on the contest, we find the participating nations listed in order according to their wagering odds. In these environments, the nation-states completely lose their national identity, are stripped of any national particularity and become mere calculated variables in a game of probabilities. Naturally, that does not mean that individuals bet on a certain nation with a national identification as the main reason (betting on the country with the worst odds, just because one comes from there, does not a sound wager make). Yet the environment itself creates a market based on calculations (Callon/Muniesa 2005).

While all these short glances at the music practice of the ESC require deeper consideration, we believe that they already point to how our conceptual and theoretical frameworks relate to the often plentiful and sometimes confusing dimensions belonging to the (e)valuation of transnational music practices like the ESC.

#### **The structure of the book**

Our anthology presents a collection of eight articles that discuss the (e)valuation of transnational music practices from the perspective of different disciplines and in relation to various contexts. The question of valuation of music practices in contemporary art music is the central concern of Annelies Fryberger's article *Valuation in a reversed economy: The case of contemporary art music in France and the United States.* Calling attention to the fact that transnationalism in this context is construed by keeping national borders very clear, Fryberger concentrates her analysis on the praxis of French and American composers, mainly in the way they show disinterestedness to economic values. Her analysis is based on Bourdieu's concept of reversed economy, which characterizes economic action in pure artistic fields, and is complemented by the discussion of production volume and position taking in this field, which are both seen as fundamental valuation forms. Interesting in her analysis is the fact that, although contemporary art music is considered to be one of the purest artistic fields, aesthetic values are not the only ones considered while judging artistic work. Other forms of non-aesthetic valuation are equally important and vital to asserting the value of contemporary

art music compositions. Thus, the transnational practices of contemporary art music also include the discourses and talks on a composer's productivity, basic motivation and knowledge about the history of the field.

Another way of discussing valuation of music practices is presented by Mukasa Situma Wafula. Departing from a conception of ethnic community as a nation, Wafula analyses the Kenya Music Festival (KMF) as a space in which the interactions and musical exchanges between ethnic nations can be considered as a form of transnationalism. The article *Culture, Creativity and Practice: (E)valuating the Kenya Music Festival as a transnational music space*  focuses on the history of the festival—conceived as a transnational space including its content, community and its integrated discourse. In the context of the KMF, transnational music practices appear both in the creative use of different cultural elements brought about by the British tradition, the interactions among members of Kenya's 43 ethnic communities and the festival's organization. The huge number of categories created to accommodate all possible groups, from children visiting nursery schools to university students, and performance modalities, including vocal solos, choirs of different sizes, elocution, performances of instruments, among others, reveals the desire of the festival organizers to foster unity in diversity. They avoid the idea that the winner takes all and reveal how heterarchies in values and evaluation can be experienced.

If Wafula focuses on the organization of a festival, Peter Lell inverts the perspective to incorporate audience experience in the transnational spaces of world music festivals in his chapter *"Come and expose yourself to the fantastic music from around the world": Experiencing World Music Festivals.* Basing his ethnographic work on two well established world music festivals, WOM-AD-The World of Music, Arts and Dance at Charlton Park, United Kingdom and Africa Festival in Würzburg, Germany, Lell points to five signifiers that are central to evaluating audience experience in these contexts: music exoticism, exceptionalism in visual appearance, visible happiness, the idea of music as a universal language and the political side of music. This analysis reveals that these evaluative aspects emerge in connection to music practices that are beyond audibility, embedded in the exchange among participants, and between them and the musicians on the stage. The signifiers also show the standardization of diversity in these transnational spaces which were paradoxically created to celebrate diversity itself.

Entering the global connections of the world music market, Sandrine Le Coz discusses in her chapter *From desire for recognition to desire for independence: World music filtered in the market economy* how transnational networks of actors and their decision-making across borders form the basis of valuation processes in music practices. She stresses the relevance of transnational spaces like markets, exhibitions or fairs for valuation processes and follows these spaces around the globe as an insider. Of special interest to her are intermediaries, their practices of objectifying and thus legitimizing valuations of certain music, and how their methods of interpersonal linking lead to a mixture of collaborative and competitive practices that inf luence exchange in the transnational world music market. However, going beyond this personalized market, she further discusses which changes in valuation occur when the world music market goes digital and becomes more and more dependent on transnational platforms' evaluations.

The evaluation of exchanges happens not only on these platforms but also among musicians. Nepomuk Riva's contribution *The invention of African art music: Analyzing European-African classical cross-over projects* deals with transnational exchange in classical cross-over projects that involve musicians and composers from Europe and Africa. Comparing "Pieces of Africa" by the Kronos Quartet, "Lambarena" by Hughes de Courson and Pierre Akendengué, "Mozart the Egyptian" by Hughes de Courson and Ahmed El Maghraby, and "Zulu music meets Mozart" by MoZuluArt, the author depicts in detail the creation process of four important classical crossover productions from the last 30 years. From an ethnomusicologist's perspective, he is interested in the inf luence the involved musicians and composers from diverse cultural backgrounds had on these transnational production environments and how these inf luences might become perceptible in the music finally developed. Furthermore, he looks at the impact of these productions on the respective musicians' careers. Riva points out how many of these productions struggle to meet on what the author calls "eye-level" between Western and African artists and music traditions, but also how an opposing example might provide ways for a genuine transnational exchange, leading to a successful fusion of African and Western classical music as well as to that creation of sustainable careers.

The question of transnational music exchange is also an important step in rethinking some historical moments. In his contribution *Contemplating musical life in Tunisia under the French protectorate: The society and challenges,* 

the ethnomusicologist Alla El Kahla develops an historical perspective on music practices in Tunisia by analyzing developments from the early 18th to the early 20th century. He focuses on the political inf luence during the period of the French protectorate and discusses how this changed music practices. In his chapter, El Kahla gives hints for future research to come and argues that an explicit ethnomusicologist perspective can aid our understanding about music practices in Tunisia, in particular, but also from a more general perspective suggests how diverse music practices in transcultural environments affect each other. By reviewing research done mainly from a historical perspective with only marginal references to music practices, El Kahla depicts a colorful picture of musical diversity and exchange between various music cultures that opens up a promising research field for ethnomusicologists interested in a historical perspective on transnational music practices.

A similar account of how historic analyses connect with a transnational perspective on music practices is presented by Daniela Anabel González in the chapter *The consctruction of an Italian diasporic identity in the city of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 19th century.* Directly approaching the question of immigrants and their identity formation in the receiving country, she focuses on the experience of Italians in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in adapting different strategies of appropriation and resistance to build their identity in the symbolic arena of popular art and music expressions at the turn of the 19th century. Particularly interesting is that neither of them, Argentinians nor Italians, are presented as representatives of essentialized cultures, but as members of very diverse groups which are constantly negotiating their identities. If Buenos Aires indeed was a transnational space with a high number of foreign newcomers, with Italians constituting the largest group, the exchanges between its inhabitants resulted in a variety of music practices which differentially evaluated the presence of Italians. While the local elite equated the Italian contribution with Argentine civilizing efforts, members of the Italian elite tried to distinguish themselves through the creation of art magazines that celebrated their intellectual tradition. Among the popular classes, in turn, there were more hybridization processes in which a new language came into being, namely the cocoliche (a mixture of Italian and Spanish). Creole people and Italians disputed its use as means to deride the other and to affirm their identity. In this sense, the article offers an interesting case about the adjustments that music practices go through when engaging with different environments.

Closing the book, Janco Boy Bystron and Chico Santana, in their contribution *Brazilian grooves and cultured clichés,* introduce a methodological discussion that departs from nationally framed clichés in and about music practices. Looking at the case of samba and the differences between Brazilian and German percussion groups, they take a look at a transnational music practice that generates diverse performance forms through diffusion across cultural and national borders. To access these tacit aspects of music practices, they aim for a method that elaborates the musical macro- and microstructures subsumed under the term samba and investigate how these structures differ in Germany and Brazil. By analyzing the microstructure of samba rhythms, they inquire whether an interactionistic concept of identity is connected to the repertory of a samba group. Examining the macrostructure in the creation processes of samba, they distinguish between samba rhythms that are recreated from traditional styles, those developed innovatively and those that are newly invented but played on samba instruments. Developing a methodology for the analysis of transcultural processes in musical practices based on three main dimensions (visualization of samba rhythms, auditive perception, and corporal conversion), the authors suggest a multidimensional set to approach transnational music practices analytically.

All these contributions offer pieces to the puzzle faced by actors involved in transnational music practices in deciding which modes of coordination to mobilize in their practices and how values, valuation and evaluation are parts of this process. In this way, this book contributes to an interdisciplinary dialog on the (e)valuation of transnational music practices in their entanglements with space, diversity and exchange, offering insights into further research in this field.

### **Bibliography**


ternational migration at the end of the millenium, Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Schatzki, Theodore R. (2005): "Peripheral vision: The sites of organizations." In: Organization Studies 26/3, pp. 465-484. doi: 10.1177/0170840605050876.


### **Websites**


"Forget me not", January 17, 2019 (http://forgotify.com/).

"Rules", February 7, 2019 (https://eurovision.tv/about/rules).

# **Valuation in a reversed economy** The case of contemporary art music in France and the United States

*Annelies Fryberger*

### **Introduction**

Valuation is a social process, and it is an important part of the activities of art worlds (Becker 1982: 39). Value is "radically contingent" (Smith 1983: 11) and evaluation is a "complex set of social and cultural activities." (Ibid: 6) These activities and negotiations do not aim to create universal values that are constant in time, and indeed they could not do so—valuation in artistic fields is rather a constant process, with some going so far as to say that art *is* valuation (Citton and Querrien 2014: 12). In this chapter, we will look closely at valuation processes in the world of contemporary art music, which is part of what Pierre Bourdieu (1992) calls the "pure" side of artistic production. This purity comes from a reversal in how success is defined, in that "the artist can only triumph on the symbolic plane when she loses on the economic plane (at least in the short run)." (Ibid: 141, author's translation) This creates a situation, which Bourdieu also qualifies as "paradoxical" (Ibid), in which artists are seen to eschew financial gain for their work, while nonetheless earning a living (at least for those who are successful in the field) from their work. Our purpose here is to understand the micro-sociological effects of the reversed economic world described by Bourdieu and to see how valuation takes place when economic concerns must be sublimated. We will see that the traits that define a reversed economy in the Bourdieuian sense are actually used as evaluative criteria themselves.

The present chapter will look at valuation in informal settings. I will use data from interviews with actors (primarily composers and funders) from the contemporary art music world in France and the United States, conducted in the context of a broader study of peer review in this field (Fryberger 2016). These interviewees all identified themselves as being part of a non-commercial artistic sector, and thus as being part of the pure pole of artistic production as described by Bourdieu. These interviews focused on valuation processes taking place in the interaction between a composer and a commissioner or in peer review panels comprised of composers. This study also included observation of informal valuation processes, notably in social media. To make it easier to navigate, I include here a table (Table 1) of the individuals who will be directly cited in the present text<sup>1</sup> .

This text is organized as follows: I will begin with a short overview of how the world of contemporary art music functions, followed by an overview of Bourdieu's perspective on the pure pole of artistic production. This will lead us to a discussion of valuation processes within the pure pole, with our focus being on contemporary art music. This discussion will center around three issues, following from Bourdieu's analysis of this reversed economy: disinterestedness, production volume, and position taking. The chapter will close with conclusions regarding how valuation processes work in the pure pole of artistic production.



<sup>1</sup> A full list of the 67 individuals interviewed for this study is provided in Fryberger (2016).

<sup>2</sup> The country of birth for some individuals is not indicated, as this would risk revealing their identity.

#### **The contemporary art music world**

A first, important point: what is contemporary art music? This is a thorny, unresolved question, constantly up for debate, but the following definition gives us the context necessary to understand what is at issue in the present text:

[…] pieces that [are] composed or preplanned reflectively, fixed in some sort of notation for a performer or creator to interpret or execute, and intended to be listened to by an attentive, informed, and critical audience. We might add that it is a style of music that traces its primary lineage back to the courts and churches of pre-Renaissance Europe, and although those courts and churches are today mostly long defunct or culturally marginal, contemporary art music maintains an important relationship with their modern-day descendants and the structures of production and listening that they represent (Rutherford-Johnson 2017: 3).

In terms of funding, government structures have primarily taken over the role once played by courts and churches, and the world of contemporary art music, both in France and the United States, is indeed highly subsidized. It is made up of a majority of actors who do not make a living from their artistic practice, as most composers and performers working in this domain have a "day job", so to speak, often as teachers. In France, funding both for the creation and performance of new works is centrally organized, with funds being distributed through competitive, peer review-based processes organized by the Ministry for Culture or its local entities (DRACs—regional public arts funding bodies). In the US, funding for this type of music is not centralized, and various non-profits and university structures provide support for the creation and performance of this music.

New works are often commissioned by performance ensembles, and this process typically involves three actors: the performer(s), the composer, and a public (or in the case of the US, sometimes private) funding body. Typically, the composer and performer join forces to apply for funding for composing and performing a new piece. What is important to understand for our purposes here is that pieces are rarely, if ever, composed without a specific performance situation being already arranged. The composer is not in this sense a supplier who brings his wares to a market, hoping to find a buyer;

the performer and composer work together, and funding comes from a third party, long before an audience is involved in evaluating the piece in question. Audiences for this type of music are very limited, and composed of a significant portion of individuals who are implicated in this world in various ways, with a limited portion of people who could be seen as external to this world. If we take the neo-classical definition of a market, with actors entering and leaving an exchange like strangers, and where the opposition between buyers and sellers is resolved through a contract or price, we would have to say that this is not, in that sense, a market. There are negotiations between composers and performers, or between performers and festivals, etc., which do result in a compromise regarding a price or contract, but this agreement is heavily determined by the funds made available by a third party. Bourdieu (1992:139) claims that it is the lack of commercial value of works in the pure pole of artistic production that effectively keeps them out of market structures. The fact that the wares touted by composers are not brought to a broader market means that valuation takes place amongst actors who are often intimately familiar with each other's work, and the negotiations typically involve binary decisions—will the piece be performed/funded or not—rather than efforts to agree on a price.

It bears mentioning, in the context of the present volume, that the world of contemporary art music has transnational characteristics, in that actors circulate widely between different (primarily Western) countries, as can be seen even in the short list of interviewees cited in this text (Table 1). This study has shown, however, that transnational careers are only available to a sub-set of composers working in this field. Indeed, I found that there is a small portion of composers who circulate in the international modernist festival, residency, and ensemble circuit, while a large portion of composers actually write almost exclusively for national outlets. The present article focuses on the former. Thus, there is a portion of this world—including audience members, performers, works, curators, and composers—that travels widely, which can be seen in opposition to composers or ensembles who cultivate a national or local audience. These two groups rarely meet in practice. It is also important to note, as I have shown elsewhere (Fryberger and Velasco-Puf leau 2019), that national origin plays an important role in aesthetic decisions and how works and composers are evaluated. I would therefore call the world of contemporary art music a faux-transnational one, or one

that strives for a transnational identity, with national borders nonetheless being highly meaningful.

#### **Bourdieu's reversed economy**

The pure pole of artistic production, as theorized by Pierre Bourdieu, is a place where artists cannot and will not produce their art for financial gain. They are forced to find sustenance elsewhere, either from inherited wealth (Bourdieu 1992: 141) or from another source of employment. Immediate financial gain is regarded with suspicion, although the possibility of deferred profit is seen as legitimate (ibid: 140). This means that there is a strict separation between symbolic value and market value (Ibid: 234). The works produced must carry within themselves the norms for perceiving and understanding them (Ibid: 140), meaning that the criteria for their evaluation come from the works themselves. The art field, as conceived by Bourdieu, comprises a "space of positions and positions taken, both realized and potential." (Ibid: 380) An artist can take a position by producing a work of art, a manifest, or taking a political stance, for example (Ibid: 381). Bourdieu posits that the field is defined by constant struggle, and that this struggle is what generates the field itself (Ibid). This struggle for position has implications both for artists working in the present and for the way their predecessors are seen (Ibid: 382), because this struggle is fundamentally about imposing "legitimate categories for perception and appreciation" (Ibid: 261)—in sum, determining how valuation processes should be carried out.

We can derive a certain number of evaluative criteria from this perspective on artistic production, disinterestedness first among them. It would follow that artists working in the pure pole would use the economic structure described by Bourdieu to evaluate their peers, in order to understand if their artistic production fits into the artistic field in question or not. In order to be part of the pure pole, artists would need to display an attitude of disinterestedness, seek financial gain elsewhere than from their artistic work, create works that imply their own criteria for evaluation, and participate in the struggle inherent in the field by taking a position. In what follows, we will look closely at how these factors are activated (or not) in valuation processes in the field of contemporary art music.

#### **Valuation in the pure pole**

In the first part of the 1980s, we were rather scandalized by a […] speculative trend […] in contemporary art. We would go to a gallery, and they would say: "you need to hurry, there's a waiting list". What's that all about? "This is going to get expensive, because such and such an artist is going to be in X gallery in New York". And we thought, what is this? And so we thought, isn't there a place where market logics aren't present, where the issue isn't money gaining value? Because when we buy [art], it's not because it could become more valuable. If that happens, fine, but that's not the point. We want to support artists, tell them that we like what they do by buying their work. To get to know them, spend time with them—our wish is to spend our evenings with them, meet them. […] And so we thought, in music, could we not do the same thing? […] Find someplace where people don't talk about money, where money's not the issue (private patron 1, France<sup>3</sup> ).

This quote is from a French private arts patron, who began as a collector of contemporary art before he started commissioning composers. This citation clearly illustrates the complex relationship to money present in the reversed economy (Bourdieu 1992) of autonomous artistic worlds. This patron clearly sees that he has access to the artistic worlds he is interested in via his financial input, but he wants this financial contribution to be seen as a gift and not as an investment. His disinterested attitude must be matched by the same from the actors of the art world in question: for this economic exchange to take place, it must be sublimated on both sides. The exchange of cultural and emotional capital is stressed—in other words, being able to talk about art and make friendships. When a piece of music is commissioned by a private patron, the transaction is transformed into reciprocal gifts: the money from the patron goes through an intermediary body (a performer, a non-profit organization, or a governmental body), meaning the link between the patron and the composer is not openly financial (and the sum is tax deductible), and the composer "gives" the piece to the patron, often by dedicating the piece to him. The economic exchange remains hidden, whereas the gift (dedication written on the score) is valorized and visible. Economic exchanges being

<sup>3</sup> All interviews cited were conducted by the author, and those with French composers or patrons were conducted in French—translations are mine.

repurposed into gift relations is a typical feature of the pure pole of artistic production (Drott 2010; Craig 2007). It therefore follows that this patron uses disinterestedness as a means to evaluate the composers he wishes to support. A composer who does not display this attitude would be rejected regardless of how his music might sound—because this patron is explicitly seeking composers who "don't talk about money". This means, of course, that in the most autonomous artistic worlds—some of which are highly subsidized—an attitude of disinterestedness can actually increase the economic and symbolic value of an artist (Bourdieu 1977; 1992).

An attitude of disinterestedness toward money is tied to the perceived sacred quality of this music, as money is considered to be impure. A composer who openly seeks to maximize his earnings creates doubts about the authenticity of his creative work. To illustrate this, we could look at the case of composer Arnold Schönberg<sup>4</sup> , who was called a "Geschäftsmann" (businessman) by his most virulent critics: "in Vienna, in 1908, this word summed up the accusation of having neglected art for its opposite, money." (Buch 2005: 116) In order to accommodate this perception of money being dirty when it comes too close to art, composers have different strategies for displaying an attitude of disinterestedness. Compartmentalization is a common strategy. A French composer describes this:

### *And the pieces that you wrote for television, which pieces are those?* Those are very old pieces, ancient pieces. That happened by chance, it's a long story.

#### *[…] So those pieces are not in your catalog?*

Yes, that's right. The problem is, those are pieces from my youth, I don't deny them as such, but they are aesthetically and technically quite distant, which means that I wouldn't put them on an of ficial list of my works. I draw a dividing line (Composer 1, France).

This composer's website includes a "cabinet of curiosities" where, among other things, one can find "a few pieces (more or less antediluvian): sins of youth, if you will". He does not deem the pieces in this category fit to be included in

<sup>4</sup> Arnold Schönberg (born in Austria in 1874, died in the United States in 1951), was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He first pushed music into atonal territory and then developed 12-tone technique in the 1920s.

his list of "principal works" or "series" (etudes, symphonies, caprices…), and thereby creates a strict separation between his autonomous, artistic, serious work, and his work that has other, not entirely "artistic" ends. His compositions that can be heard on television are not included at all on his website, although they are the background that makes the rest possible, in the sense that they provide the means for his existence. This composer draws a very clear dividing line between his artistic production and the production which could be seen as profit-seeking, and he was visibly uncomfortable discussing this work during our interview. By drawing this line, he is able to operate on both ends of the artistic spectrum—the pure and the impure—and it is his "impure" work which gives him the possibility of keeping his other work free from pecuniary considerations. He took pains in the interview to describe a piece he had written on commission, which he completed before he knew how much, or if he would be paid for it. Émile Durkheim (1995: 38) made clear that a long initiation is necessary to place the sacred and profane properly in relation to each other according to the conventions of a given field, and it is precisely this that is learned over the course of an artistic career. It is the act of creating these relationships that sets one group of people apart from others (Fields 1995: xvi). Thus, a contemporary art music composer must learn how to properly relate the sacred (art) to the profane (money) in the way that is acceptable to this community in order to be part of it.

The pluri-activity of artists is a constant of contemporary art worlds. A survey of new music composers (with a very broad definition, including composers who compose film music) in the United States concluded that less than 10 per cent of them were able to live from their creative work (Jeffri 2008). This is seen as an advantage for many of the composers I interviewed: the fact of earning one's living through activity other than composition is valued, because in this way they are not explicitly motivated by money to compose and do not feel they have to compromise their artistic ambitions. For example:

I can do this [compose as I wish] because now I have a teaching job. At one point, I didn't teach, and I lived from commissions. That meant I had to compose a lot more, with more regularity, and also go looking for commissions more. That changes the attitude one has toward institutions—that was a situation I really didn't feel good about (Composer 4, France).

Composers who have a paid job on the side feel free to compose as they wish, and tend to see other composers who compose "for money" as compromised and motivated by pecuniary considerations. Rather than being seen as a hindrance, some composers see this strict compartmentalization of their activity between "paid" and "artistic" work as an advantage. This compartmentalization gives them precisely the artistic freedom necessary to position themselves fully in the pure pole of artistic creation.

In this reversed economy, artists are expected to be conscious of their obligation to be motivated by profits that are not strictly financial. This means, however, that a composer who conforms to this obligation can still produce works that use this complex relationship to money as raw artistic material. A piece like *Fremdarbeit* (literally meaning "foreign work", but typically translated as "outsourcing"<sup>5</sup> ) by Johannes Kreidler<sup>6</sup> would fall into this category. In this work, Kreidler outsourced the compositional work, or at least pretends to have done so. It is possible that this is indeed a fiction which is part of the piece, which would make the whole work closer to a performance piece than to a traditional piece of music.<sup>7</sup> The premise is that he outsourced the work to a Chinese composer and an Indian programmer for a commission he received from the Klangwerkstatt Berlin for a new piece for the Ensemble Mosaik. In the program note<sup>8</sup> , he speaks explicitly of the economic exchanges that supposedly determined the existence of this piece. This piece thus operates on several levels: it is a commentary on globalization and exploitation, and also breaks with the convention of not discussing the financial aspects of a commission. By highlighting the low cost of the outsourced composition, he adopts a posture of explicitly seeking financial gain, but does so in order to critique this posture and expose it elsewhere. Thus, he is able to keep his status as a disinterested artist and keeps his autonomy, both for himself and the work—the work thereby remains within the bounds of contemporary art music. A more direct commentary on the disinterested nature of work

<sup>5</sup> This term has a complex history and is today negatively connoted. For a complete discussion of this term, see Iddon (2015: 39, note 7).

<sup>6</sup> Johannes Kreidler (b. 1980) is a German composer, one of the founders of the so-called 'New Conceptualist' school of composition.

<sup>7</sup> See a full discussion of this likely fiction and its implications in an article by Martin Iddon (2015).

<sup>8</sup> October 12, 2018 (http://www.kreidler-net.de/fremdarbeit.html).

within this artistic sphere can be found in the work of Alexander Schubert<sup>9</sup> , who sells advertising spots in his multimedia works, as for example in his piece *Star Me Kitten*10. The humor this provokes comes from it being seen as a transgression. These two examples show how disinterestedness can become material for musical works themselves, all the while maintaining the disinterestedness of the composer himself.

Disinterestedness and production volume go hand in hand. Harrison White (2002) posits that the fundamental element for evaluating quality is production volume: indeed, without sufficiently visible production volume, evaluation cannot take place. In a world such as that of contemporary art music, a composer cannot know the value of her production before it circulates (Menger 2009), and thus a certain volume is necessary for this work to be visible. The present study reveals that production volume also has meaning and is used for quality assessments in the world of contemporary art music, despite price, and thus an incentive for scarcity, not being publicly available information for evaluating this work. Composers freely admit to measuring their own production with a stopwatch, using this measure to evaluate their own production and that of others. There are numerous passages on this subject in composer Gérard Pesson's<sup>11</sup> diary, e.g.: "I have never been able to cure myself of this other calculation variant which consists of timing every fragment of music I sketch." (Pesson 2004: 21, author's translation) Composer 3 (France) declared that he had decided at one point to limit his production to 45 minutes per year, which was low compared to his previous production levels. This decision was made so that he could maintain his sense of artistic freedom and so that he would not accept projects "just for money"—possible thanks to a teaching job. If we look at historical avant-garde composers known for their limited production, such as Edgard Varèse, who only wrote 2.5 hours of music in his lifetime, Anton Webern with 7.57 hours, or Pierre Boulez with 13.7 hours<sup>12</sup>, it would seem that 45 minutes per year is actually

<sup>9</sup> German composer, Alexander Schubert (b. 1979) explores cross-disciplinary and crossgenre musical creation, with a performative focus.

<sup>10</sup> October 2, 2018 (http://alexanderschubert.net/ads.php).

<sup>11</sup> Gérard Pesson (b. 1958) is a French composer of contemporary art music.

<sup>12</sup> These numbers were generated using the following sources: Edgard Varèse, *The Complete Works,* http://www.allmusic.com/album/edgard-var%C3%A8se--the-complete-worksmw0001049342 (consulted 2 October 2018); Anton Webern, *Complete Webern,* http://www. deutschegrammophon.com/de/cat/4576372 (consulted 2 October 2018); Pierre Boulez,

quite a lot—but it is the meaning given to these numbers that matters, more than the numbers themselves in any absolute sense. What we can conclude is that composers are trying to communicate something with their production volume, and limiting production is intended to communicate an attitude of disinterestedness and a guarantee of artistic freedom.

Production volume therefore sends signals which are interpreted by other actors in this world. Composers use their peers' production volume to justify their judgments. For example:

I know many people who work like that. People who have a lot of commissions and write a lot of music, whether it's for money or just the need to be the focus of attention, for me these are symptoms of the same problem. These motivations are very similar for me.

*Sure, but if you are really motivated by profit, you don't go into contemporary music.*  Of course, but there are people who have this attitude in contemporary music—they could easily slide into film music. What keeps them here is simply that they have enough of whatever they need to stay here (Composer 4, France).

Production volume, when judged to be excessive, is thus used to create doubt about the artistic drive of the composers cited. In this composer's analysis, some of his peers' need to compose does not come from a profound, intimate desire to create this kind of music, but rather from a need for attention. We can hypothesize that there is an acceptable production volume for a composer of contemporary art music, somewhere between the minimal level necessary to be visible<sup>13</sup> and an overproduction judged to be attention-seeking by her or his peers.

Since production volume is indeed a signal used to justify quality assessments, it follows that it is commonplace to signal one's productivity in this milieu. A propitious place to observe this is in the activity of contemporary art music composers in social media fora, such as Facebook. What one observes there is that photographs of double bars (which indicate the end of a

Œuvres complètes, http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/fr/cat/4806828 (consulted 2 October 2018).

<sup>13</sup> Perhaps three pieces played by recognized ensembles: this is the requirement for many funding applications, and this may represent a minimal level of visibility that allows one to access the next level.

piece) are frequently posted: this is a clear way to show one's productivity to peers. Here are two examples of texts accompanying such photographs, the first from a composer in the PhD program at Harvard University (Boston, USA), the second from a composer about his opera composed at the IRCAM14:

DOUBLE-BAR on [X] for [X] ensemble [link to ensemble provided]. I'm really, really proud of this 23-minute long work for violin and percussion, with piccolo/bass flute, clarinet, and e-guitar. It'll get its premiere on May 25, which is basically as long as it will take me to do a pile of edits and make parts. / PRETTY PLEASED OVER HERE (Composer 36, USA, Facebook, 2014).

I think I just wrote the LAST BAR of opera [X]… (there is still electronics part to be realised, and will check every notes, harmony, etc., still lots of work, but I have the ENDING!) (Composer 37, Facebook, 2014).

Harrison White (2002) posits that production volume is the most common signal to be found on production markets, and we can see here that this signal is also significant for the world of contemporary art music, even though this is the "pure" pole of the music field, and not ostensibly a market. Note that composer 36 cited here goes so far as to include the precise length of the piece in his status update. This observation complicates the assessment of this field as not being subject to market forces (e.g. Bourdieu 1992; Menger 1983). It shows that a reversed economy indeed does use evaluative mechanisms present in market settings—market logics, if you will—but that these judgment factors are reinterpreted by these actors. Signaling production, in this case, is also a way of signaling reputation (writing for certain ensembles, premieres at certain festivals, etc.), and specifically signaling production *volume* indicates the labor intensity of the works produced, and thereby the commitment of the composer. For Bourdieu, the amount of time spent on creating a work of art is an essential feature for its evaluation:

a rather indisputable criterion for determining the value of any artistic production [is] investment of ef fort, sacrifices of all kinds, and, definitively, [investment] of time, which goes hand in hand […] with independence from

<sup>14</sup> The IRCAM (*Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique)* is a center for electronic music research in Paris, founded by composer and conductor Pierre Boulez in 1977.

forces and constraints from outside the field, or worse, from inside […] (1992: 145).

Disinterestedness is thus signaled with production volume, which is tied up both with the necessary effort and time spent on artistic work, and with the capacity of the art world in question.

By attaching quality judgments to production volume, actors in the contemporary art music world also work to respect the production capacity of this art world. They thereby seek to maintain this delicate ecosystem, where resources are far from abundant. Indeed, every art world has a limited capacity for high-quality works (Becker 1982: 141). This capacity is linked to the economic and institutional resources of the world in question and to practical questions or conventions related, for example, to space (e.g. in a museum setting) or time (e.g. the standard duration of a concert) (ibid). Evaluative criteria change as a function of this capacity:

Insofar as aesthetic systems change their criteria to produce the number of certified works an art world's distributive mechanisms can accommodate, even the most absolute of them, those which most resolutely draw a strict line between art and nonart, in fact practice a relativism which defeats that aim (Becker 1982: 143).

This point helps clarify the issue of scarcity in art worlds. Scarcity is a necessary component, but not the sole component of artistic value (cf. Moulin 1978), and because of this, actors in art worlds must take a stance on this issue, either by explicitly limiting their production or by making the transgression of this convention part of their artistic practice (Ibid). In this context, we could bring up the case of Johannes Kreidler again. His biography<sup>15</sup> mentions studies with Mathias Spahlinger (major composer in the contemporary art music world), university positions he has occupied, and premieres at legitimate and legitimizing festivals (Darmstadt, Donaueschingen, Huddersfield, etc.). He is best known for works that take the form of activist performance art, such as his protest against the merger of the Baden-Baden and Freiburg orchestras during the Donaueschingen festival in 2012, wherein he destroyed a cello onstage (this was a commission from the Gesellschaft für

<sup>15</sup> October 2, 2018 (http://www.kreidler-net.de/english/CV.htm).

Neue Musik). This piece provoked a rousing discussion in the contemporary art music world, which was summarized by critic Chris Swithinbank on his blog16. Kreidler's official catalog17 lists about a dozen works per year, whereas his blog18 (not to mention his Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts) show a very different reality: he generally posts several new pieces per week, whether electronic, visual, or purely conceptual—these often contain a biting commentary on the world of contemporary art music. As there are limited resources for pieces to be played in public fora, he has turned to electronic means of production and distribution. This hyper-productivity is a way to mock the contemporary art music world and its sacralized composition processes, which are supposed to involve intense, laborious, and therefore long periods of research to develop true singularity for each individual piece. However, his official catalog remains within the norms of contemporary art music, and this critique becomes a marker of originality, a strategy for taking a position, without pulling him out of this art world.

The previous example shows one position-taking strategy, but the most common one encountered by far mobilizes the history of contemporary art music. Indeed, an artist cannot ignore the history of her chosen discipline. Multiple avenues are possible: rupture, continuity, dialogue, pastiche, stubborn ignorance, etc., but awareness of this history and a stance in relation to it are obligatory. This stance is an essential aspect of how an artist's work is evaluated. This applies to those producing works of art and those who consume them: Raymonde Moulin (1986: 378) shows that gallerists back their new discoveries up by explicitly displaying profound knowledge of art history. In this fashion, gallerists use this knowledge to increase the value of "their" artists, just as the artist does the same to justify certain choices. But what is history made of? And how do canons form? A striking example is that of the reception of J.S. Bach over the centuries. The musicologist Joël-Marie Fauquet and sociologist Antoine Hennion show how he became "the father of music", the legitimate source for the traditions that followed (Fauquet and Hennion 2000). The "historicization" of classical music, and therefore of contemporary art music, starts with the veneration of J.S. Bach, work that has

<sup>16</sup> October 2, 2018 (http://www.chrisswithinbank.net/2012/11/a-more-readable-version-ofthe-discussion-around-johannes-kreidlers-protest-at-donaueschingen/).

<sup>17</sup> October 2, 2018 (http://www.kreidler-net.de/english/works.htm).

<sup>18</sup> October 12, 2018 (http://www.kulturtechno.de/).

been undertaken by renowned performers, composers, critics, etc., beginning in the 18th century, and which still continues today (Ibid). For example:

I wish Messiaen would come back down to Earth, and that he would give us something to applaud that only owes its existence to music and seeks to glorify God only through its musical virtues. That was the method of Jean-Sebastien Bach, a rather good method, af ter all (Marc Pincherle, quoted in Hill and Simeone 2008: 195, author's translation).

This is a critique from the 1945 premiere of *Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus* by Olivier Messiaen19. This critic is taking Messiaen to task for providing both printed and verbal commentary on his music, a practice which was in its infancy in 1945. It is the commentary from the composer, and especially its religious content, which is seen as being faulty because it stands outside the field of "musical virtue". The critic is implicitly asking Messian to end his devotion to a pagan god (the Almighty himself) and follow the one "true" God, Jean-Sebastien Bach.

Each art world must undergo a canonization process in order to exist, and this work is constantly renewed and renegotiated by every generation of artists—this is the work they have to do in order to be part of the art world in question. The canon is first and foremost a tool for artists to position themselves in an art world. In my observations of the behavior of contemporary art music composers in social media, I observed that part of their activity consisted in precisely this: discussing and positioning themselves in relation to canonical composers. Here are some examples:

Come on, clearly the theatrical bit with the strings in "Périodes" [by Gérard Grisey] isn't acceptable (composer 23, USA, Facebook, 2014).

Something [String Quartet I-II-II—Mauricio Kagel (Arditti Quartet)] I will listen to tomorrow. I still haven't quite manage to find a way to full enjoyment to his music (totally my fault) but hoping to get there soon (composer 37, Facebook, 2014).

<sup>19</sup> Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) was a hugely influential French composer, known for his creation and use of 'modes of limited transposition' and birdsong, as well as for his deep Catholic faith and its presence in his music.

so i resisted playing this awful game until it became possible to force [X] to pick me a composer. / with a little nip of venom, he assigned me milton babbit, who is fine! i'd guess listening to this is better than, say, eating a square foot of unseasoned corrugated cardboard. i definitely enjoyed his guitar music quite a bit in high school. / i'm posting this as an exercise in ecstatic dutifulness, but if you want to continue the game, 'like' this and i'll tell you to listen to spahlinger (composer 36, USA, Facebook, 2014).

The composers discussed and critiqued here benefit from a reputation such that the expression of a negative opinion from lesser known composers will not necessarily affect them. Reputable and well-known figures such as Milton Babbitt and Gérard Grisey provide stable markers around which newcomers can position themselves. In the shifting sands of contemporary art music, some fixed points are necessary, and canonized composers act as precisely this. This is indeed the way a status market (Aspers 2009) functions—a stable hierarchy of actors is used to position oneself, and without this hierarchy, evaluating production becomes impossible. History and the canon thus have discursive merit: they can generate discourse or keywords to describe an artistic project, and thereby to take a position.

This work of taking position in relation to canonized composers has multiple effects: one shows one's knowledge of major figures in the world of contemporary art music—which shows one's desire to belong to this world and this is also a way to situate oneself aesthetically. In this respect, let us return to part of the comment on Mauricio Kagel<sup>20</sup> cited above: "I still haven't quite manage [*sic*] to find a way to full enjoyment to [*sic*] his music *(totally my fault) but hoping to get there soon.*" (composer 37, Facebook, 2014, my emphasis) This declaration shows the desire to adhere to the values of the world of contemporary art music and the efforts made to do so by this composer. The composer recognizes that he cannot categorically reject the work of canonical composers, even if he could provide a coherent critique of their music and thereby justify a negative judgment. Despite a negative judgment, this composer recognizes his obligation to take these canonical composers into account in order to be recognized as a member of this art world—adopting these values is thus a survival strategy. This judgment also provides a

<sup>20</sup> Mauricio Kagel (born in Argentina in 1931, died in Germany in 2008) was a composer known for focusing on the theatrical side of musical performance.

lens through which we can evaluate the work of the composer who made this judgment. It is clear that his work is not meant as instrumental theater (Mauricio Kagel's distinct legacy), and likely does not have the performative, even humorous, traits that are widely associated with Kagel's oeuvre. Generally speaking, one of the dividing lines in the world of contemporary art music is on theatrical/performative traits, so aligning oneself (or not) with Mauricio Kagel is a way to position oneself in this respect.

Taking position is an essential part of valuation work, and valuation and the criteria used to conduct it are only important to those who are personally invested in the maintenance of a given art world (Gracyk 1999: 216). Valuation is a manifestation of a commitment to a position, as we saw in the previous example, and I would even go so far as to say that in status markets, where there is no scale of value independent from the actors involved (Aspers 2009: 116), position taking *is* valuation.

\* \* \*

What this chapter has shown is that the characteristics of a genre are used in evaluating works produced within it: valuation is as much about fit as it is about quality. This can be seen in the judgments discussed regarding disinterestedness or production volume—the way the music sounds has nothing to do with these judgments, and they are not meant to say anything about the music itself. What actors are evaluating in such statements is whether or not the composer in question displays the traits necessary to be part of this art world, as it is understood by the actors within it. This is fundamentally boundary-making work, a task which takes up a considerable amount of energy within art worlds (Becker 1982: 36). The aim of this chapter has been to show how these boundaries are drawn not only by using what could be deemed aesthetic criteria, but also the specific features of the "reversed economy" of autonomous artistic production, as defined by Pierre Bourdieu (1992), particularly expressions of disinterestedness. The traits that define the pure pole of artistic production (among them: disinterestedness, low production volume, and struggles for position) are actually used by actors in these fields as valuation criteria and, as such, become intimately tied to considerations of quality. In this way, the features of the pure pole are passed down from one generation to the next.

### **Bibliography**


# **Culture, creativity and practice**

(E)valuating the Kenya Music Festival as a transnational music space

*Mukasa Situma Wafula*

#### **Introduction**

Performance being an integral part of the social lives of Africans, a festival that is predominantly music-oriented is not a new concept in their societies. Over time, the wave of change that has largely been catalyzed by civilization, modernization, urbanization and industrialization has escalated the idea of festivals to establishments beyond the traditional ritual-contextual institutions. This is the case in learning, religious, corporate, media and entertainment organizations, where festivals are held for exhibitive as well as competitive reasons. A unique characteristic of the proliferated festival is its ability to not only open up space for diverse music concepts in terms of creativity and performance but also enhance artistic, social, economic and political negotiation and interaction.

The Kenya Music Festival (KMF) is such an instance that provides an all-inclusive platform where music from many cultures of the world is performed. Apart from its diverse musical (re)presentations, the festival nurtures talent, is a cultural repository and serves as an avenue for testing and developing creativity. Whereas the festival's creativity is competitively evaluated, this paper views the KMF as a transnational music space with regards to its history, participants and, importantly, content that has over time defined its existence. This paper, therefore, seeks to demonstrate how different aspects of the KMF uniquely position it as a transnational music space. While it provides a distinctive opportunity for musical and cultural interaction, the paper is further concerned with the impact of such transnational collaborations, especially on the creative processes of music that are presented at the festival.

This paper is based on a tripartite methodological approach. Part of the data presented here is a result of my lived experience at KMF, having participated in it since 1986 as a performer, director (both choir and poetry), adjudicator and administrator. In addition to my participatory role as a researcher, I have also gathered data (via written notes and recordings) over time. Not much has been documented and/or published about the festival; nevertheless, this paper also drew substantial information from a few written sources (journals and conference papers) as well as KMF documents (annual syllabi and guidelines for adjudication). More information was sourced via interaction with members of the KMF community, who have lived this experience over time. Information from published sources and other members of KMF was necessary for the sake of diversifying opinion, thereby reducing levels of subjectivity. The descriptively presented information contained in this paper, therefore, is as a result of a triangulation of my own experience, published sources and responses from other participants in KMF.

In terms of presentation, the paper starts with an explanation of pertinent concepts, namely music festival and transnationalism. This is followed by a brief description of the people who contribute and shape the Kenya Music Festival in terms of organization, administration and management. The core of the paper is manifested in the discussion of the transnational dimension of KMF regarding its history, content, community and discourse. An interesting notion at this point is how the transnational facts affect the creativity and the diversity of music at the Kenya Music Festival. The paper concludes with ref lections on how important concepts of culture, creativity and practice have been to the idea of transnationalism at the Kenya Music Festival over time.

### **Concepts**

The Kenya Music Festival features a series of performances ranging from African folk music, instrumentation and dance, Western classical music, oriental and other world music. The KMF is also inspired by a unifying theme that changes annually. Such unification is further captured in the objectives of the organization, which guide the nature of expected performances, con-

duct and procedures. It is also notable that this is a competitive fete, where participants are rated against each other.

From a literal perspective, defining a festival can be viewed as bringing festivity with and/or in music, or music into festivity. From whichever side, it is a means of perceiving the collaborative aspect of festivity and music making. Participants and other players gather at the KMF to celebrate world cultures through music, which makes it a festive venture. Participants exhibit their artistic gifts and abilities which are celebrated by all who attend. Given its competitive nature, winning brings merry to the makers of the music. KMF also provides an opportunity for people from different parts of Kenya to travel to new places, meet friends, colleagues and new people, a situation that further brings a festive effect. In this regard, KMF may be viewed as an opportunity where music brings festivity to a people, as festivity enriches the musical experience that comes with artistic creativity, novelty and growth. The preceding definition that reveals its interactive, competitive, inter/intra-cultural, creative and multi-nationalistic nature of this festival lends KMF a unique space in the debate on transnationalism.

Transnationalism in most cases is associated with the interaction and relationships between different political states that are defined by citizenry. A pertinent question is whether economic, political and cultural processes between people of a single nation-state can achieve transnationalism in their practices, a concern that may be approached from the perspective of how nations are made. In citing Anthony Smith, the author of theories of nationalism, Brubaker distinguished the most well-known forms of nationalism as: "between voluntaristic and organic, political and cultural, subjective and objective, liberal and illiberal and civic and ethnic forms of nationalism." (1999: 55)

The later form of nationalism was pertinent to this paper in that it sought to qualify the reference to ethnic communities as nations, their interaction thus qualifying as a form of transnationalism. The preceding proposition has been used by scholars such as Makila (1978), who refers to the different sub-divisions of the larger Luhya community of Western Kenya as sub-nations based on the autonomy of their social, economic and political organizations. Many nations exist in the world, and many have been formed on an ethnic basis, although diplomatic demands euphemize such by referring to them as civic nations.

Over time, the term transnationalism has been innovatively defined and redefined to suit varied concepts. From an ideological and discursive view, Jackson (2004) for instance views transnationalism as being composed of social spaces that can be occupied by a wide range of actors, not all of whom are directly connected to transnational migrant communities. Drawing from preceding opinions, this paper views the KMF's concept, its ideology, processes and actors as a social space that allows for the exchange and creation of artistic ideas in a transnational guise despite the actors not belonging to migrant communities. Moreover, the participation and interaction of people from different cultural, ethnic and other backgrounds as communities in the festival enhances the concept of transnationalism. In part, the preceding proposition is qualified in the discussion of who and what the KMF is.

#### **The Kenya Music Festival (KMF)**

This is an annual fete that brings together pupils, students, teachers and lecturers for a music making and poetry extravaganza. Though competitive in nature, the festival envisages encouraging the study of music, providing a forum for mentoring and nurturing performers, preserving Kenya's cultural heritage and promoting quality of performance in music, dance and elocution (Ministry of Education 2017). The festival incorporates people from learning institutions only, a development that was realized in 1988 when Kenya Music and Cultural Festival (KMCF) was created from the KMF to accommodate participants from non-learning institutions (Musungu 2012). Re-making the KMF as an education-based event was a strategy towards better organization, administration and an effort to achieve its largely education-oriented objectives.

The Kenya Music Festival is administered by a national executive committee that is appointed by the minister of education. The committee is responsible for the organization, administration and management of the festival. Such committees are replicated at lower levels, that is, regional, county and sub-county levels, for the sake of easier management through the devolved system. This inter-institution competition starts at the lowest level (the sub-county) after which the winners are promoted to participate at a higher level (the county), to the regional then to the national level, which takes place in August every year.

The respective executive committees appoint adjudicators (from among the music teachers) who evaluate the performances. For the sake of maintaining standards, relevance and a unified approach in the adjudication process, the adjudicators are usually trained during a one-week workshop every year. The festival exhibits a wide-range of artistic (re)presentations, which have been stratified for ease of evaluation. For instance, folk music is a category that is further classified according to the ethnic communities that display similarities in idiomatic expressions. Such categorization is replicated for the dances and instruments.

### **History**

A brief highlighting of the main events of the festival will be necessary to elicit discussion about how such history reveals the concept of transnationalism in KMF. According to Hyslop (1955), Kidula (1986) and Musungu (2012), KMF was founded in 1927 by British settlers as a leisure activity to entertain their families, and they mainly performed Western classical music. The authors reveal that up until 1952, Africans were incorporated in the festival to perform a folksong and a Western set piece. Apart from African music, the festival gradually accommodated oriental music in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, the festival incorporated African instruments, where solo performers featured. In 1968, the responsibility for KMF was handed over from the British Foundation for Music Festivals to the Ministry of Education, which ran it in collaboration until 1988 when it was completely detached from the mother festival (British Foundation for Music Festivals). Since 1988, the KMF has been administered by an executive committee appointed by the minister of education. This committee draws from representatives of teachers in primary and secondary schools, polytechnics, colleges and universities, people with disabilities and the marginalized communities, all within the education sector. An important development just before the handover took place in 1987, when the festival brought on board elocution in the English language and later in the Kiswahili, French and German languages.

During the entire period that the KMF was affiliated with the British festivals, adjudicators were always brought in from Britain to judge the performances. To date, the festival is administered under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, under the patronage of the president of the Republic

of Kenya. A unique historical fact about this festival is how new categories have been introduced over time. It has been a challenge to establish the exact dates on which the categories were introduced. This was occasioned by the lack of documentation of these facts. The informants, therefore, tried to relay what they could remember, although in a number of instances, levels of agreement were not achieved. The situation prompted the presentation of such data within time ranges as shown in table 1 below.


The table above gives an impression of how new categories have been introduced in the KMF over time. The + sign at the beginning of the second column means that the previous categories have been maintained as new ones were added. The addition of new categories has unfolded on the basis of creative demands but not a specified number in a given time. The increase of categories has indicated a further growth in the number of participants. According to Musungu (2012) the festival in 2012 had over 500 classes involving

more than 80,000 performers at the national level, compared to two classes in 1927 and about five at independence (1963). *The Star* newspaper further reported that the festival attracted 120,000 participants to the 2018 National Festival held at Dedan Kimathi University in Nyeri County (Muchiri 2018). At the lowest qualification level (sub-county), *People Daily* newspaper reported that in 2018 an estimated 1.5 million participants took part (Muraya 2018).

Hyslop (1955) observes that the objectives of the festival (especially at the prototype stages) were to encourage the study of music, preserve traditional Kenyan music and promote the talents of upcoming musicians. The inception of KMF may thus be regarded as a transnational concept, not just because it was started by the British settlers, but because of its presentation in a relocated environment with a different philosophy of performance. In essence, African festivals broke their boundaries into a new realm of festivity with the KMF. Whereas over time the festival has accommodated and largely become African in practice, the philosophy of performance employed is new insofar as the music is no longer located within the traditional rituals but rather ref lects modern ones based in educational institutions. Apart from being translocated from the ritual-based scenario, the current festival situation allows for fewer performers on stage and a contemplative audience. This is a shift from the traditional scene where all gathered people participated for the sake of inclusivity as opposed to staging a few with a perfected skill.

It is the objective of the festival to focus more on music education, career and artistic development, as well as the preservation of Kenyan heritage. Compared to the African concept, music festivals are also geared towards education but from a more holistic and social perspective as opposed to a skill and artistic orientation. It is not the interest of this paper to draw distinctions but rather to show how the concept of the festival has brought on board varied philosophies, objectives and practices in space and time. The introduction of British music culture to the Africans was foreign and so was performing African music based on a British philosophy. One could argue that the KMF is a negotiated space where over time different cultures have interacted in a "give and take" manner to achieve an identity that does not embody any of the respective cultures in total but rather shows profound characteristics that unite them.

The handing over of the KMF to the Ministry of Education further broadened this space. It can be argued that given their cultural background and training, the British settlers' thinking was different from the Kenyan ones. It

can, therefore, be suggested that the administrative change ushered in a different system of thinking and philosophy about how KMF was to be run, its objectives as well as its content. The festival was transformed to have a more Kenyan face regarding its objectives, participants, content and especially performance practice. This was realized in the expanded repertoire whereby African instruments both solo and ensemble, dances, solo and choral folksong, popular music and elocution in different, especially Kenyan languages were incorporated in the festival. Whereas previously only a drum or rattle had been used to accompany folksongs, injecting a more African spirit into the music allowed for any and all Kenyan traditional instruments to be used.

As previously mentioned, traditional music festivals focused on holistic education for the entire community. Perhaps this concept has gradually been brought back to the festival where different institutions partner with the KMF so that certain pertinent information is communicated through music and elocution. In 2017 for instance, the festival participants presented items with themes about road safety, environmental waste management, countering violent extremisms, promoting ethical culture and national cohesion. While the paper will discuss the role of partnerships and sponsorships later, it is worth noting at this point that it forms part of the history of this festival as a form of a shift in thinking as a result of the KMF being handed over to the Ministry of Education. Such change is partly motivated by the traditional philosophy of the role of music in society and that of society in music, where they complement each other for the sake of better conformity and tranquility.

The introduction of elocution is evidence of how the African spirit was further injected into the KMF by the new administration (Ministry of Education). It is common practice that performance in traditional African settings incorporates many arts together (song, dance, instrumentation, poetry, narration, drama, visual arts). Having a festival that showcases song, dance and instrumentation was, therefore, lacking some of the essential ingredients of the composite nature of African performance. That is arguably why elocution and chanting were brought on board as a means of filling the void.

# **Content**

The KMF has continued to create new meaning based on ever-changing and renewed content. The festival currently features varied categories for performance by participants. The categories draw from African, Western, Oriental, and Islamic vocal, instrumental music and dance, elocution in English, Kiswahili and other African languages, French, German, Arabic and sign language. Within the African category, it is worth noting that Kenya, for instance, has 43 known ethnic communities, all of which present their music in the festival in different classes. Communities from other African countries also have a place at the festival. For Western classical music, there are solo performances for the respective voices, choral performances as well as solo and instrumental music. The expansiveness of the content presented at the KMF requires 12 days of performance for the festival to be complete. The table below shows how the different genres of music are categorized in the festival.


#### *Table 2: KMF classifications*

(KMF Syllabus, 2017)

The table shows how the respective content defines what the categorized participants can perform based on the idiomatic uniqueness. In the same table, the number of participants is a determining factor in how suitable the performances would be rendered, and that is why it is of fundamental consideration. The categories are further split for easier administration and technical facilitation. For instance, African folksongs and dances are further categorized by the respective ethnic communities. The Western and Oriental instruments are categorized by the mode of playing and sound production. Table 3 below shows an example of categorization in English verse speaking for secondary schools to demonstrate how the web of categories in the KMF reveal the diversity and transnationality of the festival over time.


(KMF Syllabus, 2017)

The table shows two major categories (solo and choral) of English verse speaking for secondary schools. Under the solos, different levels of ability stratify the participants. Under the choral section, the themes of the compositions further differentiate the classes. From the table, secondary schools participate in 25 categories in English verse speaking. But then verse speaking is done in Kiswahili, German, French, other African languages and Arabic. Some of the English categories apply to the other languages, but peculiarities exist that may not apply. For example, in Kiswahili there are instances of singing or chanting. Not all levels participate in all the categories above. Nursery schools, for instance, do not participate in special compositions. In replicating the above categories for primary schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities, not all apply to the secondary school ones. Given the particularities, I did a head count of the 2017 edition of the KMF syllabus and found that for each language there is the following number of elocution categories across nursery, primary, secondary schools, colleges, polytechnics and universities:



(KMF Syllabus, 2017)

The above adds up to a total of 308 categories in elocution only. The example of elocution here demonstrates the multiplicity of categories found at the KMF. Such multiplicity is found not just in the number of classes but also in the number of performers. A unique example is the category for the visually impaired and learners with cerebral palsy as revealed in table 3. Elocution in a music festival is attributed to the African philosophy whereby many arts are embedded and performed as one. In this case, they were separated as a form of creating specialty, diversity and nurturing learners

in specific areas of art. Such is also replicated in the curriculum where music is a separate discipline from poetry, which is categorized under literature. It is, however, still called a music festival due to its history and initial objectives. The KMF may end up being referred to as a music and elocution festival over time. A unique revelation of table 3 is the themes of the special compositions in the choral category. Their political, economic and social inclinations are a strategic approach by the festival to involve the learners in current issues, to use the festival as a marketing tool on such issues as well as to assume and/or ascribe corporate social responsibility and community building.

During performance, the festival emphasizes the need for maintaining idiomatic characteristics of the respective cultures from which the performances are drawn. Given the stratification of the performances based on their cultural idioms, the festival adjudicators look out for not only the artistry (creative packaging of musical elements) but also for strict adherence to culture-specific modes of presentation. This is revealed in dance styles, instrumentation, song modes and other performative elements that should ref lect how the respective communities uniquely manifest themselves. In watching the festival one can, therefore, be subjected to a variety of music traditions with dif fering levels of artistry, intensity, sound, color and dance movements among other performative characteristics. Interestingly, not all performers present that which comes from their culture. It is common, for instance, for participants from western Kenya (who are predominantly Luhya) to perform Pokomo music from the coastal part of Kenya. This is done as a form of intercultural sharing, interaction, appreciation and serves to educate learners about the country's cultural diversity. It is also an ef fort to complement classroom teaching about the music cultures of Kenya, thus serving as an alternative approach to education.

Regardless of whether a person is performing music from her or his community of origin or not, the evaluation of performances at the KMF is largely based on how the participants adhere to the categorization guideline, and maintain idiomatic relevance, artistic novelty as well as innovativeness. I sampled comments from selected adjudicators to establish what they considered in their judgement. With specific reference to folk songs, the following were common issues that they looked out for:


To achieve evaluative skills, competence and relevance, selected practicing musicians and poets gather at an annual week-long conference in which they are trained. Referred to as adjudicators at the KMF, these trained musicians and poets watch and listen to performances, at the end of which they critique, award marks and rank the participants. Depending on standards, performances are usually marked out of 100 per cent, and my experience shows that low ranking performances score no less than 78 per cent and the highest (very good) up to 95 per cent at the national level. At lower levels, it is common for the participants to be scored lower on account of insufficient preparedness and lesser competition. The result of their work is presented first with a short oral demonstration concerning how their performances were evaluated, followed by an announcement of marks awarded and the respective positions of the participants. An important question is what impact such exposure has on the performers and ultimately on the future of the festival's creative process.

It has been observed that in a number of instances the idiomatic characteristics of selected communities are borrowed from others. Given the demands of the festival, it is possible that such borrowing is necessitated by the need to make the performances more captivating for the participating groups to win. It is possible that due to a lack of creative ideas, some performers simply borrow from others, oblivious to the idiomatic differences. A captivating category at the KMF, for instance, is the "adaptation of popular music" for choral performances. This music features dance styles drawn from pop music performances. Given its captivating nature, such dance styles are gradually finding their way into folk music, which traditionally shows different styles of performance that are idiomatically unique to the respective cultures. Such stylistic borrowing makes it easy for adjudicators to evaluate, as cultural non-conformity renders participants irrelevant. In

those instances where a large number of the participants show non-conformity, adjudicators are relegated to looking more so at performative elements than idiomatic and cultural relevance. This situation indicates a gradual shift of idiomatic expression that with time may signify further changes in musical expression.

Another inf luence has been that of Western music on folk music. It is common for a "folk song" to be presented in form of a medley, where short "songlets" are joined to form a complete song. Most of the groups typically end with the song that they started with, an indicator of the sonata inf luence. Others make use of a main song from which they depart and return to in different instances, indicating a borrowing from theme and variation of Western classical music. While this is folk music supposedly unique to Kenyan communities, there is remarkable evidence of form and structure from other parts of the world.

With regard to choral music, conducting is a norm for Western classical music, and it is practiced at the KMF, too. But what happens when music that depicts traditional idioms of Kenya is performed with the aid of a conductor? The conducting draws more than hand movement to show the choir how pieces are performed, but also incorporates movement in the form of dance. Perhaps such inf luence is a result of the natural process of African music performance, where song and dance are complementary. It could, therefore, be difficult for a conductor to stand still and only wave her or his hands when the music is tempting enough for dance to be elicited. The conducting experienced in some instances at the KMF may, therefore, be regarded as a form "director participation" not conducting as it is within the Western classical domain. Directing in this case gives it a more holistic dimension where the leader makes use of gestures and performative mannerisms beyond the conducting box, fully participating in the performance yet not directing it.

The foregoing examples demonstrate the effects of cultural exchange as experienced at the KMF. It can be argued that it is possible to identify characteristics of the respective music cultures and/or practices in a given performance at the KMF. But it is also true that the cultural exchange coupled with consistent practice has resulted in a musical character that is uniquely KMF and/or Kenyan. A remarkable performance technique that can ably qualify the foregoing submission is realized in the "adaptation and arrangement of pop music", where the singers vocalize the instrumental timbres. This is distinctively a KMF product that arguably has been perfected in Kenya, courtesy of the creativity, culture and practice within the KMF space.

#### **KMF community**

This paper regards members of the KMF community as the people who in whatever way have contributed to writing the success story of the festival. Historically, mainstream communities are based on common heritage, language, culture and territorial placement. In this case, however, the KMF is considered a community based on a shared artistic commodity and processes in musical arts, an opinion that is shared by Shelemay, who believes that "shared habits bind people into social groups according to specific aspects of the self (gender, class, age, occupation, interests)." (2011: 355) This being a community, different members are charged with varied responsibilities. The conscious or unconscious isolation of any of the members of this community would lead to a malfunction of the whole.

As shown in the historical description above, the KMF was started by the British settlers who formed an important part of the community not just as players but as initiators of the concept, the culture they cultivated (based on their home culture) and the inf luence they have had on the subsequent members of the KMF. At its early stages, an important player in the KMF was Graham Hyslop (1910-1978), the then officer in charge of music and drama in the Kenya colony. Hyslop in many ways defined how performances were and are carried out to date. The officers (mainly the executive secretary) who came in after him maintained, built on and improved the technical and administrative structures that he left behind.

The other members include the teachers who train and direct participants during the performances. They are also drawn from all parts of Kenya as well as from outside. The performers include nursery and primary school pupils, secondary schools, colleges and university students, as well as teachers' and lecturers' clubs. The community extends to adjudicators, officials from the Ministry of Education and the president of Kenya, being the patron of the festival. Many other interested groups occasionally join the KMF community by partnering and sponsoring the festival, hence diversifying the community.

Currently, the KMF is held annually in a different region of Kenya on a rotational basis. An institution in one of the cities in the chosen region is then charged with the responsibility of hosting the festival. It can be argued that the hosting institutions and environments momentarily become part of the KMF community. This is based on the fact that at the given point, the hosting community consumes KMF products, just as the KMF consumes their products. Such exchange creates a sense of connection, shared values and communion. It is possible that after the festival, the hosting communities' knowledge about the KMF brings them closer together, making it easier to relate with and increasing appreciation of what it entails. Chances of making lasting community ties cannot be dispelled.

An interesting feature of this community is how participants are programmed to perform. The dramaturgy of the KMF is designed so that the nursery schools are the first. They are then followed by primary schools, who perform alongside teacher training colleges (TTC). The middle days of the festival are dedicated to polytechnics and diploma colleges. The last set of performers are usually secondary schools who perform alongside universities and university colleges. The reasoning behind this dramaturgy is that TTCs train primary school teachers. Performing at the same time as primary schools provide an opportunity for the student teachers to interact with their prospective learners in advance. It is an early opportunity to understand the primary school pupils with regards to performance. The same is true for universities which train teachers for secondary schools.

Another reason is that universities and secondary schools show higher levels of performance given their level of artistic maturity and availability of resources. Them coming last gives the festival a chance to end on a climax. Such a climax is not only achieved by the performers but also by the type of music presented. It is common, for instance, that arrangements of pop music categories are presented last because of their competitive and entertaining nature. At the end of the festival, selected exemplary performances from all levels come together to present a finalist concert that is non-competitive. From the gala concert, a few of the more exemplary performances that are also based on culture-idiomatic diversity are selected for presentation to the president of Republic of Kenya, who is the patron of the festival. The last two instances show how the festival brings unity. After all the competitions in separate instances, performers come together to form a team that puts on a common non-competitive concert. The festival fosters unity in diversity.

Members of the KMF community described above show varied ages, levels of musical ability and experience, different cultural backgrounds as well as diverse personal and professional affiliations. Such a complex web of community members not only positions KMF as a transnational space based on diversity but exemplifies the miscellaneous impacts on the practice and creative process of the festival as well as the resulting musical culture. The fact is that music as the central commodity, process and activity plays an important role in identity and community formation, an opinion shared by Turino who states that:

music, dance, festivals, and other public expressive cultural practices are a primary way that people articulate the collective identities that are fundamental to forming and sustaining social groups, which are, in turn, basic to survival (2008: 95).

#### **Integrated discourse**

Drawing from the content of the KMF, it is evident that a wide range of music is presented at the festival, the themes of which are equally diverse. Seemingly, the performance of folk, art, dance and instrumental music focuses on reproducing what was composed several years back. It can be argued that such pieces are chosen for performance due to their technical and artistic relevance and not for what they communicate as such. Re-performance of music from the archive in essence brings the pieces to life and gives them a sense of artistic renewal in the current society. A pertinent concern for this paper is that apart from its artistic endowment, to what extent does the KMF delve into current societal issues? The concern is based on the fact that the festival is education-based and brings together people from diverse cultures, hence the need for discourse beyond artistic presentation.

On mentioning the phrase music festival, one would immediately switch into performance mood, hearing sounds and seeing people in artistic action. It is, however, interesting to note that the Kenya Music Festival communicates more than its musical sound. It is currently a norm that the festival has an overriding theme each year, where performances, speeches, merchandise and all activities of the festival focus on communicating the same. In 2017 for instance, the festival theme was "Enhancing National Unity, Cohesion and

Integration through Kenya Music Festival". It is, therefore, imperative that the different participants not only see the artistic substance of the festival but also their social and corporate responsibility towards better nationhood. It is in the interest of the international community that while international ties are fostered, the peaceful co-existence of people of the respective nations be achieved. KMF ably takes an important position in not only supporting this debate, but being a practical example of unity, cohesion and integration. This is noted in the way participants come together to compete in a friendly environment that is devoid of gender, regional, ethnic, racial or any other form of discrimination. By friendly competition it implies that winning or losing is not a recipe for enmity but rather presents an opportunity for participants to learn from each other, embrace each other's gifts and talents and importantly nurture talent as they build a community of artists.

It has also been observed recently that many persons and institutions partner with KMF with a view to supporting, promoting and sponsoring the festival all while engaging in alternative discourse concerning emerging issues in the society at national and international levels. The partners sponsor certain themes which are repackaged into songs and poems for performance at the festival. At the KMF, these are referred to as special compositions. But what is special about them? The focus of the compositions is to communicate pertinent information, hence the need for strategic thematic packaging and development of the songs/poems, yet not compromising their artistic relevance. What is more, the intention is for the performers themselves to know, internalize and practice what they seek to communicate through the special compositions. This brings a unique dimension of educational philosophy where learners are immersed in art from which they acquire important novel ideas outside of the mainstream classroom scenario. In this case, art and performance may be considered as an alternative or complementary classroom.

Over the years, organizations from the political, human rights, business and social sectors (among others) have been part of such discourses at the KMF. In 2018, for instance, a number of institutions sponsored themes that participants composed and performed (Ministry of Education 2018). Table 3 demonstrated some of the topics that addressed varied current social, economic and political issues. To give them the desired prominence, such topics were performed under special composition categories. Such topical issues are pertinent to the current society not only in Kenya but across the world. By the KMF providing a stage where such issues are presented in an artistic manner, the festival further positions itself not only as a music fete but as a platform for social, political and economic discourse. Art, in this instance, is employed to provide more efficacy to communication given that it reaches out to more people and is communicated by the people who are affected by the issues. Given the affective nature of music, artistic presentation lends the message to the desired recipients with ease and efficacy, hence enhancing the chances of better communication. Whereas such information is meant to correct certain issues in society, it also acts as a form of social control where through art young people learn to uphold certain virtues, hence preventing future negative occurrences.

Until 2005, the festival was held at the Kenyatta International Conference Center (KICC) in Nairobi, an infrastructural identity for the city that serves as a tourist attraction, as well. The center was a strategic site for the festival given that people from different parts of Kenya and the world were able to attend the festival as part of their touristic undertakings. In the process, the KMF became part of the touristic venture at the KICC where the diverse cultures of Kenya were exhibited on this international platform. It can be argued, however, that the international center ended up packaging KMF as a global commodity that would still attract many people even if it was held outside the KICC.

In 2006, the executive committee decided to stage the festival in different parts of Kenya on a rotational basis. Given its already achieved reputation, the festival moved its community away from the KICC, hence developing a new and more integrated community in the process of its mobility. While this may be viewed as a way of promoting local tourism, international tourists are also obliged to visit more parts of Kenya courtesy of KMF. The holding or staging of the music festival in different parts of the country also enables the participants to know their country better as well as to break ethnic nations' borders and tensions, thereby promoting better cohesion. Additionally, the people of the respective parts of Kenya are able to enjoy the music, and they also learn from the themes, especially from the special compositions that are presented in the festival. The KMF may be viewed as a strategic platform for diverse emerging social, political and economic discourse in the world.

# **The impact of the transnational space on creativity and diversity of music**

The KMF is a unique space that has had a far-reaching impact on many aspects of Kenyan society. It is for instance notable that the nation is comprised of 43 known ethnic communities that similarly exhibit distinct musical cultures. Given such diversity, one would be concerned about whether there exists a Kenyan choral identity. As previously discussed, the presentation of the diverse music of Kenya has facilitated a substantial borrowing from the respective cultures. It can, therefore, be argued that while each musical culture that is presented at the KMF has its own uniqueness based on idiomatic particularities, there are certain aspects of performance that can be clearly regarded as born out of the festival, over time constructing a Kenyan choral identity. In terms of staging folk songs, the performers arrange themselves in a semicircle of two lines, which is a complete departure from the traditional formations. Related to the folk songs are the dances, which are always started off stage. In the process of the performance, they make geometrical patterns as well as representations of letters of the alphabet. While this is regarded as a form of variation for the sake of artistry, it can also be a means for complementing and incorporating other areas of learning in performance, hence forming a transdisciplinary approach to education.

Western classical music is a genre that was the first on stage at the KMF and has existed at the festival for a long time. Currently, it continues to grow as more categories of classical music continue to be introduced into the festival. The music practiced at the KMF is based on theories that many choral directors have read in books. Few had the opportunity to interact with the early British musicians who showed them how such music should be performed. The current group of musicians, though, includes a fair share who studied in Europe or America and therefore have first-hand experience of classical music performance practices. Perhaps technology has equally been a good tiding for the KMF, given that many can now watch via the internet how classical music is practiced. It is, however, common knowledge that classical music is not as well internalized as the folk music of Kenya, which most musicians have grown up with.

To this end, the practice of classical music at the KMF has also been subject to substantial inf luence from the folk practices of Kenyan music. In terms of vocal rendition, it is common to hear choirs with broadened voices

and gliding approaches. As pertains conducting, the inf luence of African rhythm has led to an observable emphasis on the individual details of the rhythmic elements. A number of directors conduct while tapping their feet or snapping their fingers. Where the music calls for dance movement, the conductors unconsciously incorporate the entire torso movement. In a number of cases, conductors also sing along with the choir, perhaps alluding to the communal nature of African music. Whereas conducting has a specific character in the Western classical tradition, its employment at the KMF has experienced a shift that to a large extent is identifiable as a Kenyan choral identity.

Further inf luence is observed where musicians adapt Kenyan folk melodies, which they re-arrange in a Western classical style in terms of melodic, rhythmic and thematic development as well as the entire form and structure. The most common structure that was mainly propagated by the early British musicians is the Sonata form, which is notable not only in arrangements but also in performances of folk songs. Notably, "songlets" are joined in a medley to form one song, where the starting piece will also be employed as the ending. Apart from rearranging folk melodies, KMF musicians also compose in traditional Kenyan rhythmic idioms, albeit based on Western classical techniques. The most developed arrangements are the adaptations of pop music, where the singers vocalize the instrumental sections of the music. Such compositions and arrangements have over time distinctively come to achieve a character that in a number of ways borrows from Western classical music but then completely depart from it, especially when it comes to performance. African dance, instrumentation, ornaments, dramatization, among other visual and performing arts, are extensively employed in the execution of such songs. To this end, performance on stage shows a marked departure from the classical tradition, giving it a face that is distinctively Kenyan.

The foregoing discussions reveal how the KMF, through cultural interaction, has negotiated a Kenyan choral identity that is evident in dance, folk music and art music. The identities have been realized in the internal components and structure of the music, most markedly in terms of its performativity. It can be argued that perhaps the presentational aspects have mainly been shaped due to the traditional Kenyan music inf luence, which is primarily performative. It is possible to identify the specific idiomatic characteristics of the cultures from which they have been borrowed. It can, however, be presumed that the way the respective idioms have been combined has been

and is an ongoing process that is identifiable as Kenyan. The KMF has, therefore, fostered an identity construction for Kenyan choral music by localizing Western music while at the same time "exoticizing" local music.

#### **Reflections**

The Kenya Music Festival as a transnational space has been nurtured by three important concepts: culture, creativity and practice. The KMF model was born from a British culture but later incorporated Kenyan musical cultures as a means of making the festival more inclusive. Over time, musical representations from different cultures have defined the content of this festival. Given its interactive nature, the practice of the respective music at the KMF has led to the creation of newer cultures which share identifiable characteristics with their mother cultures yet are unique on their own. This paper views the KMF as a pot that is bringing together cultures due to the creativity and practices employed at the festival.

The day-to-day running of the festival has also gradually been transformed into a culture in and of itself. In terms of schedule, the festival is well programmed in the activities of the Ministry of Education, where one can anticipate it at specific times. The way music is performed at the KMF has a definite mannerism where the entire fete starts with an assembly for the performance of the Kenyan national anthem, opening prayers and a briefing about the program of the day. On stage, the participants start by introducing their work before their performances. A typical introduction is: "honorable adjudicators, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. On stage is school A ready to present…". This has been practiced so much over time that one is able anticipate what the participants will say. It is also common for adjudicators to start their public evaluation speeches by thanking the participants, highlighting positive aspects of the performance before moving onto the negative ones and the ratings. The running of the festival has thus become a culture with a defined liturgy due to continued practice.

The interactive nature of the festival has also had an impact on the creativity it exhibits. This has been realized in the way participants follow advice from the adjudicators, such that subsequent performances largely put into practice that what they have been advised. The participants keenly watch each other's performances so that they can try to imitate the winning group.

Such imitation has led to similarity in the way performances are done at the festival but has also improved on the creativity, thus leading to higher standards. It is also noted that music teachers play a big role in the innovation of newer ideas in the performances at the KMF. The interaction of cultures has equally contributed to the borrowing of ideas that has given rise to hybrid music performances.

The KMF can be viewed as a commodity and a process. Culture, practice and creativity are concepts that have over time strategically nurtured and positioned the KMF as a transnational music space. This has been realized in the way cultural integration and interaction have been fostered at the festival. Such interaction has over time created and recreated new cultures within the existing ones. The development of the KMF has largely been based on creative novelty, which when practiced over time has resulted in the emergence of certain musical identities. Importantly, diverse content and creativity have been fused to not only render artistic products but to communicate pertinent information to and within the society. Based on creativity, culture and practice, the transnational space at the KMF has in many ways helped the festival to achieve its artistic objectives as well as other pertinent societal roles and obligations.

#### **Bibliography**


# **"Come and expose yourself to the fantastic music from around the world"1**

Experiencing world music festivals

*Peter Lell*

### **Introduction**

Since the last century and even more for the last decades, the world has increasingly been connected, and people from the most distant places have become neighbors both virtually through the World Wide Web and physically through easier and faster ways of travelling. The worldwide interconnectedness has been termed "globalization", or in a more differentiated form, several "-scapes" have been described. Appadurai distinguishes five of them, including "ethnoscapes", "technoscapes", "financescapes", "mediascapes", and "ideoscapes." (1990: 297-300) Those parameters attempted to more adequately describe today's complex global cultural economies, their f luidity and the plurality of possible perspectives to be taken.

In similar ways, the production and consumption of cultural goods has become distributed over distant localities all over the world. Music production is one part of this and, in unique ways, has been changed by global interactions. Reaching far-off audiences, allowing global f lows of musical ideas and styles and providing an opportunity for musicians as well as audiences to "attend" distant places in the world, the distinction between the global and local dimension has been severely blurred. A remarkably interesting phenomenon in this regard is the music festival. Music festivals can be described as places offering "intense and concentrated interaction" (Chalcraft/ Magaudda 2005: 173) between people from different places sharing a local

<sup>1</sup> This is a quote from Derek, one of my interviewees at WOMAD.

experience. At music festivals, f lows of people from different regions, nations and continents come together at a locally situated, limited space. For that, music festivals have to be perceived not only as local but simultaneously as global events, aiming for potential audiences throughout the world.

A particular type of music festival will be discussed here: world music festivals. World music festivals operate on a global as well as a local dimension and have a special connection to this dichotomy. Music festivals, or rather fairs presenting the music of the world, can be dated back to colonial world's fairs such as the famous exhibition in 1889 in Paris, where the composer Claude Debussy for the first time heard Javanese gamelan music. Since the first world exhibition in London in 1851, cultural and artistic aspects have become more and more important, with competitive performances of industry sectors and trade co-operations being the primary reasons behind this growing importance. Transgressing nations and borders, from a certain perspective those exhibitions could be seen as the ancestors of world music festivals. Similarly, one of the first music gatherings explicitly presenting music of different ethnic groups was the North American "folk song and handicraft festivals" (Näumann 2017: 206) in the early 20th century. More direct predecessors of world music festivals can be seen in the folk and rock music festivals of the 1960s and 1970s, especially gaining popularity in the Anglophone space (Ibid: 206-207).

World music festivals as such cannot be found before the term "world music" was coined as a commercial music genre in 1987. Nevertheless, the first world music festival can be identified as WOMAD (The World of Music and Dance) in 1982. However, it generally remains difficult to pin down "world music" festivals as they do not all explicitly have the term in their name or description. Still, it is possible to identify festivals presenting artists mostly found in the world music genre or addressing a similar audience. For instance, the journal *Songlines*, which is all about music from the world music genre, provides a yearly guide to international festivals and might be used as an indicator for world music festivals. From 1982 onwards, world music festivals have grown and spread significantly around the globe in different sizes, with different musical foci, ways of presentation and intended audiences. Bringing together global musicians and local as well as global audiences, they constitute transnational spaces of encounter. Creating a temporal, artificial space where the world seemingly shrinks down to a local

festival site, they offer possibilities for interaction and exchange and furthermore shape the idea of something perceived as "world music".

Despite their significance in shaping and promoting the genre as well as their economic importance within it (Laing 2009), world music festivals have not yet been researched extensively. Furthermore, most of those referring to world music festivals are not based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the festivals themselves. This central perspective is what I am approaching in this work. The main question of this article is: How is world music experienced at world music festivals? For that, two case studies have been selected and ethnographic fieldwork has been conducted. The first case study is WO-MAD at Charlton Park, United Kingdom, and the second, the Africa Festival in Würzburg, Germany.

The structure of the article will be as follows: Firstly, an insight into the term "world music" and literature and ideas about it, including two narratives of world music, will be presented. Following that, the methodology of the ethnographic fieldwork will be outlined, and the two festivals as well as the ideas of world music they communicate will be delineated. Subsequently, five parameters of world music are outlined which represent the main part of this article and have been termed "signifiers of world music". Finally, the results will be interpreted combining theoretical as well as practical outcomes before research outlooks are enumerated.

#### **What is world music?**

Different perspectives can be taken on this question. Disjoining the term into "world" and "music", there seems to be few to no extra information to be gleaned by combining them, as the term "music" does not explicitly include or exclude any geographical restriction, which the addition of the term "world" would adjust. In practice, however, the term "music" has largely been used with regards to a particular understanding dependent on either the historical time or the context. Similarly, the term "world music" has a history of different meanings spanning from the early 20th century until today. Since the early academic discipline comparative musicology emerged at the beginning of the 20th century, the music of the world was equated with any music that was non-Western or not from the classical European tradition, and the research about this music was conducted with the idea of affirming

the superiority of the West (Rice 2014: 17). Within the ethnomusicology of the 1960s, the music of the world, though still merely called "world music", has been approached with more careful views, including the idea of music as every "humanly organized sound." (Blacking 1973: 3)

Is world music today simply referring to all the music the world has to offer? Not precisely. And it was for that reason that ethnomusicology had its differences with the term "world music" itself, though it does usefully describe the area of study. Particularly since 1987, there have been strong connotations which are anything but inclusive for all kinds of music. This is closely tied to the formation of the genre market of "world music" initiated by a number of record labels meeting in London in 1987 and creating "world music" as a genre category.<sup>2</sup> From that point on, "world music" or rather "World Music" was disseminated widely as a category for music formerly put in the "roots", "traditional", "ethnic", or "international" (Ibid) bin at record stores and which then gained a huge boost in popularity. For music journalists and today's listeners, it is this kind of music that increasingly dominates the idea of world music. While it still is presented as an inclusive music category without reference to any specific music or region, "in practice, [it is] systematically exclusive." (Frith 2007: 307) It favors particular kinds of music, mostly African (Howard 2009: 8) (and within that also very selective) as well as Latin, and ignores others completely, like "Cantopop and karaoke" (Frith 2007: 307) or anything from far East Asia (Taylor 1997: 17). While its origins can be traced in ethnomusicological field recordings, the world music found today in record stores, charts and in playlists of streaming services has little to do with those historical collections. Although the world music category can still include field recordings, in most cases it shares more commonalities with Western popular music in terms of promotion, distribution and, arguably, sound.

Music scholars have written extensively about this seemingly new genre and have been rather suspicious about it. While it generally can be described as the music of "people in different places creating, hearing and using different sounds" (Fairley 2001: 287), this description is not as neutral as it might appear at first sight insofar as it incorporates a particular understanding. The world music genre can be described as a highly sensitive intersection

<sup>2 &</sup>quot;Press Release 01—World Music" (https://frootsmag.com/press-release-01-world-music).

between the actors involved, the musicians, the producers, the labels, the festivals, the audiences and so on.

Throughout musicological literature, two prominent views on world music can be distinguished, attempting to both understand the phenomenon and to value it. Steven Feld differentiates between an "optimistic" and a "pessimistic view." (2000: 151-154; 165-171) Jan Fairley uses the terms "celebratory" and "anxious" (2001: 275) to describe them. Slightly simplified, the optimistic view outlines the possibilities of world music to foster intercultural encounter and exchange between musicians and audiences connected to a hope for cultural and financial equity and musical collaboration (Haynes 2005: 381; Krueger 2011: 298). The pessimistic view sees world music as dependent on the creation and maintenance of "difference" between self and other by outlining the authenticity, cultural and geographical localization, ethnicity or characteristics of the music (Taylor 1997: 19-27; White 2012: 190). Furthermore, this perspective criticizes the commodification of the music and, relatedly, the exploitation of the musicians (Feld 2000: 167). While there are arguments against such a dichotomous view and pleas for more careful analysis of world music production and "the entire set of power relations through which acts get signed, tracks recorded, releases playlisted [sic], concerts booked, and so forth" (Fairley 2001: 275), the discourse barely leaves the dichotomous sphere of either speaking in optimistic terms or in pessimistic outlooks. Timothy Taylor concludes that despite this attempt "to do away with binary oppositions as analytical tools, it is still the case that, ethnographically speaking, many people understand the world through such oppositions and organize their practices and epistemologies around them." (2004: 66)

This is where the contribution of my research comes into play. The majority of the ethnomusicological literature on the genre category world music is not based on ethnographic fieldwork; thus, this crucial perspective is still widely missed. My contribution to the discourse deals with the question of how world music is experienced at the attended festivals. The experiences of the visitors are approached through my interviews with them and my experiences are built up from observation and participation. As a research ground, world music festivals have been chosen for the following reasons: they represent a tangible manifestation and an essential representation of the world music genre bringing together global actors to a locality; they are one of the most profitable sectors of the world music market (Laing 2009: 227); and finally, they provide the possibility to gain insights into how world

music is presented at the festival sites, performed by the musicians as well as experienced by the audience. Despite these factors, they still have not been researched sufficiently.

For parts of the interpretation of my data, I am building on thoughts presented by Antoine Hennion (2005) on the performative nature of cultural practices. He suggests thinking about music listeners not only as passive consumers of objects according to their sociological affiliation but rather as having impactful aspects of "activity" involved in the process of their interaction with music (while he explicitly speaks about "tasting" as well as the "amateur" ([Ibid: 132-133], he addresses the music listener). Hennion highlights the music listener's "capacity to transform sensibilities and create new ones, and not only to reproduce an existing order without acknowledging it." (Ibid: 132) His thoughts bring into focus the music listener's, or in my case the music festival visitor's, active involvement in the experience of the genre world music rather than being a simple consumer of a fixed and definite genre as, for instance, the two described narratives purport.

#### **Two case studies and methodology**

The case studies for this research include WOMAD at Charlton Park, United Kingdom, and the Africa Festival in Würzburg, Germany. How was the selection made? There are numerous festivals presenting world music throughout Europe and the world. During the selection process, the main criteria were the festivals having a heightened reputation among world music festivals, a promising first impression on social media and websites, being geographically within reach and, last but not least, the dates of the festivals fitting into my timeframe. The first choice was made by picking WOMAD Charlton Park, UK, as a festival for the research. It fulfilled the chosen criteria and had preference over other choices simply due to the fact of being one of if not the first world music festival in the world as well as a very successful one. The second choice was made by picking Africa Festival in Würzburg, for relatively simple reasons. It is the festival I had received the most positive feedback about from my contacts, who highlighted its familial atmosphere and its respectable reputation and size.

My choices do not ref lect a representative selection of all world music festivals. There are too many and too different festivals of world music in many countries all over the world. Nevertheless, the choice does ref lect a reasonable sample of particularly interesting festivals: WOMAD as well as the Africa Festival are pioneers of world music festivals and are particularly prestigious ones. Though the Africa Festival is explicitly about African music and not world music, it makes up a large part of what is found in that musical category. Referring to this, systematic analysis still has to be conducted to outline the commonalities as well as the differences of world music festivals and African music festivals, but authors like Keith Howard suggest that "40% or more of world music [would …] always [have] been from Africa or African diaspora." (2009: 5) Furthermore, the festivals do present similar or even the same musicians and utilize similar presentation and marketing approaches. The data for this research was gained through ethnographic fieldwork at the two festivals in 2017, each of which was attended for three full days.

The methods which were mainly utilized were observation, participant observation, participation and interviewing the festival visitors. Observation and participation were mainly used to gain overviews of festival activities and insights into particular places or events. Regularly taken field notes throughout the research allowed subsequent analysis and ref lection upon the experiences. This was complemented by interviewing visitors at the festivals using a semi-structured approach. Though many possible questions were prepared, there was no fixed set of questions, and they were adjusted according to the course of the respective interview. Generally, they addressed the interviewee's idea and understanding of and affiliation with world music and festivals. All in all, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted, eleven of them at the Africa Festival and ten at WOMAD.

#### **WOMAD and The Africa Festival**

Both case studies analyzed two of the oldest festivals for world music, WOM-AD (The World of Music and Dance) being founded in 1982 and the Africa Festival in 1989. WOMAD has received international fame through various offshoots in 26 other countries all over the world. In 2017 (and still), it took place at the spacious park area of the Charlton Park country house in Wiltshire, relatively remote from any larger city. Different from WOMAD, the Africa Festival took place in the heart of the middle-sized German city, Würzburg, and thus was open to spontaneous visitors and day-visitors.

Both festivals offered a large festival area and a camping site allowing many visitors to spend the whole weekend at the festival. Furthermore, they both had large framing programs providing not only music but an immersive experience, which is also typical for the format of festivals. Various spa, relaxation and meditation activities (WOMAD), street parades and a cinema tent (Africa Festival) were accompanied by the obligatory markets, bazaars, food and drink stalls and also party spaces allowing the nights to continue after the concerts had ended. Both festivals had three main musical stages, which were supported by a number of additional stages (WOMAD), musical activities at the camping site (Africa Festival) and the music sounding from the speakers of the market stalls.

A distinguishing feature of WOMAD was the offer of musical workshops for visitors to participate with various musical groups and instrument workshops for Gambian kora, xylophone and gamelan. Furthermore, and especially at WOMAD, music was ubiquitous and f looded the whole festival site, be it from the main stages, the smaller stages, the workshop places or the large number of market, food or coffee trucks. The unique characteristic of the Africa Festival was the camping site being its own little musical world. Groups of visitors informally gathered in communities bringing their instruments, mostly djembe, dunduns, bells, talking drums and koras, and created their own musical experience detached from the festival happenings. Different from most other festivals as well as WOMAD, the visitors had organized their own practical music groups.

Regarding the music and musicians at the main stages, both festivals shared commonalities. A mix of musicians established in the world music genre with newer, younger acts and a few newcomers could be heard. At WOMAD, Orchestra Baobab, Ladysmith Black Mambazo or Afro Celt Sound System have been active for years or even decades and are thus well known to anyone interested in the music genre. They were complemented by newer, younger acts, incorporating more contemporary forms of world music such as Ifriqiyya Electrique, Alsarah & the Nubatones or Trad Attack! Also, newcomers who had not or had barely appeared at festivals or released records could be heard, including the Tanzania Albinism Collective, the Khmer Rouge Survivors or the Zhou Family Band.

Moving on to the Africa Festival, it was a generally similar line-up. However, there was a strong domination of particular regions and countries from Africa. While this year the motto was West Africa, music from Senegal,

South Africa and Mali has also been strongly favored over the years. Since the first festival in 1989, Senegal has been represented by 41 artists, South Africa by 32 artists and Mali by 23 artists, significantly outpacing the other countries of Africa or the African diaspora with the only exception being "Afro-German" artists, with 36 of them having performed at the festival.

It is worth noting that a few particular artists lead the statistics, but some of them are the lonesome representatives of their country. For Senegal, it is Youssou N'Dour with a total of six performances; for Mali, Habib Koité & Bamada have seven, while Salif Keita has six and Fatoumata Diawara has five appearances at the festival. Lokua Kanza was one of the few artists from Congo but has had a record-breaking number of nine performances there, and Manu Dibango from Cameroon has had seven performances at the Africa Festival. These statistics underscore the festival's affiliation with particular regions and/or artists and world music's exclusive praxis compared to the heavily advertised inclusiveness. This year, well-known acts from those particular countries and within the world music scene performed, including Salif Keita, Faada Freddy, Sara Tavares and Fatoumata Diawara.

Similar to WOMAD, there were a number of younger and more hybrid artists such as Tibau Tavares Feat. Pupkulies & Rebecca, Inna Modja and Sista Fa. Also, some lesser known artists within the market could be heard, like Elida Almeida and notably musicians playing West African music on non-amplified drums on the stage for traditional music. They seemed not to hold a position within the world music market but merely gathered for the Africa Festival in that formation and were accompanied by a similarly unknown Senegalese kora player, Saliou Cissoko. All in all, there were minor differences in their approaches, with WOMAD providing a more easily digestible experience and the Africa Festival allowing more open spaces for the visitors themselves. Apart from that, both festivals represented similar musical experiences and attitudes towards something presented as African music and world music.

#### **Five signifiers of world music**

Now I want to have a more detailed look at particular observations and musical acts. While trying to make sense of the data collected at the festival site and in the interviews, it became apparent that there were particular aspects

which were pivotal about the genre of world music as it was experienced at the festivals. Inspired by ethnomusicological literature (Taylor 2004: 66; Guilbault 1996), I have made an attempt to interpret my ethnographic data in a certain way. A number of aspects were found to be especially noteworthy within my ethnographic notes as well as the interview statements. Following that, five parameters were found to be significant for the music to be perceived as "world music". I refer to them as the five "signifiers of world music" and they are by no means exhaustive. After a short introduction to these "signifiers", they will be presented in more detail.

The first signifier addresses musical exoticism, while the second describes the similar need for differences and exceptionalism in visual appearance. The third signifier relates to a visible happiness and devotion of the musicians, and the fourth addresses the idea of music as a universal language. The fifth and last of the signifiers calls attention to the political side of the music, which inherently or explicitly is present for most of world music and musicians.

#### **The first signifier**

The first signifier is related to what the festivals seemed to be trying to communicate at every musical encounter: the unfamiliarity, exoticism and exceptionality of the musical instruments, sounds and rhythms. This seemed often to be related to a particular country, ethnicity, musical tradition, religion or minority—putting it in a simplified way, anything emphasizing a difference between the self (of the audience) and a perceived authentic "other" (of the musicians). At WOMAD, this was particularly apparent at the performance of the Zhou Family Band, which played on noisy and tinny instruments, cymbals, a plain drum, mouth-blown pipes (sheng) and trumpets. Also, King Ayisoba's performance could be strongly connected to this signifier, being played on rather simple and exotic-looking percussion instruments (udu, djembe, talking drum) and a single-stringed lute (kologo) accompanied by a rough singing voice. Another example from WOMAD was Parvathy Baul and Somjit Dasgupta, who used a plain small drum (duggi) and a stringed percussion instrument (ektara) as well as trance-like vocals, which was accompanied by the explicitly announced "ancient instrument", the sursingar.

At the Africa Festival, this signifier was equally represented at most concerts and especially by the drummers on the traditional stage, performing on traditional, acoustic percussion instruments (djembé, dundun, bells, rattles, balafon) and the camping site musicians playing on similar drums as well as on a pleasant-sounding multi-string instrument (kora). In those examples, the signifier of unfamiliar and exotic music, sounds and rhythms was especially apparent, but the insistence on those parameters was inherently existent throughout most performances. From the interviewees' statements, this signifier represents one if not the major aspect of their interest in world music and their attendance of the festivals, as Susanne explained:

I really prefer the drummers, the percussionists. They are simply…I can stay there for hours. […] those [with the] real drums, without any electronic devices. For me, that's it.

Another interviewee, Holger, described it like this:

The rhythms are simply so beautiful. It's not the standard 4/4 time, like we Europeans are used to. But rather things like 12/8 or something like…That is what I really like.

#### **The second signifier**

The second signifier that was found to be pivotal refers to the appearance and look of the musicians. In order to be credible as a world musician, it seemed to be crucial to share the ethnicity associated with the music, such as looking African for "African music", looking Asian for "Asian music" or European for "European music". That could refer to the color of the skin or the hair, the stature of the body, the characteristics of the face or any other recognizable ethnic difference. In short, they had to be "coming from the right country" (Schippers 2010: 48) to be perceived as authentic world musicians. Traditional dress, visual accessories and the behavior on stage were also important.

Here again, the performance of King Ayisoba was noteworthy as the musicians appeared wearing furs and colorful dresses and danced wildly, spreading a sense of authenticity and tradition. Other examples were Junun feat. Shye Ben Ztur and the Rajastan Express, Parvathy Baul and

Somjit Dasgupta or Goat (WOMAD) and Fatoumata Diawara and the musicians at the traditional stage (Africa Festival). While Junun wore dresses of plain white linen, Parvathy Baul and Somjit Dasgupta donned somehow sublime attire and the members of Goat wore elaborate, colorful costumes and masks. While it might have been their usual performance clothing for some members of Junun as well as Parvathy Baul, Goat was explicitly playing with this signifier by exaggerating it. Being a band from Sweden, their clothing, masks and appearance would rather suggest that they were from some "exotic" place—or, if not that, they at least met the desire for this kind of appearance. In my interviews, the appearance of the musicians seemed to be a crucial aspect for the interviewees to perceive the music as world music or simply drew attention to a perceived difference in the musicians' looks from what they were used to in other music genres.

#### **The third signifier**

The third signifier that seemed to be important throughout the festival experience was the devotion and visible happiness of the musicians. In literature, this phenomenon is frequently described in connection to world music, in extreme form referring to a "romanticization and exoticization [… of the musicians] as happy, premodern children." (Taylor 2015: 217) This signifier was central to the overall atmosphere of the festivals being celebratory and positive throughout, and it almost felt like an obligation to adopt that attitude and visibly express it. Apart from the musical aspects, the overall atmosphere was strongly shaped by a holistic perception of the various foods, drinks and market stalls visually shaping the festival site as well as the different f lavors they promised.

Particularly at WOMAD, the atmosphere was ref lected in the audience's colorful dresses, glitter makeup or f lashy accessories as well as the thunderous rounds of applause after concerts, which, however, made the impression of being almost compulsory and forced. All this was intensified by the musicians' expressions. One striking performance ref lecting this was King Gurcharan Mall and the Dhol Blasters (WOMAD). During their performance, which was strongly dominated by celebrative gestures, sounds and screams, they repeatedly attempted to encourage the audience: "All the happy people, put your hands uuup!!" Another example was Fatoumata Diawara's performance (Africa Festival), where her own devotion to the music as well as the relationship with the audience was a frequent topic in her announcements in between the songs:

Are you ok? Are you feeling good? I wanna show you some African step. Are you gonna try the African step? […] Are you feeling the rhythm? Are you feeling [it] like a heartbeat? We get the music inside. […] Now I know that you can feel this music! We gonna try to dance all at the same time, one time... because we are all one.

Furthermore, the performances of the drummers at the traditional stage (Africa Festival) similarly enforced this signifier which people from the audience regularly affirmed to their neighbors. After one performance, a woman next to me told her friend excitedly: "Wild, wild...that was wild!" The drummers were playing very physically on non-amplified drums and were also dancing in front of the audience, whose cheering increased in step with the perceived devotion of the dancers.

In general, various forms of obligatory happiness and devotion could be found in most places and expressions, musical or non-musical, at both festivals. In my interviews, almost all interviewees in one way or another referred to this signifier of the general visible happiness of the musicians or their physical devotion and positivity, which they firmly distinguished from Western pop musicians. For instance, my interviewee Anna was impressed by the drummers at the traditional stage (Africa Festival): "Even though in their countries they are not very well…they show so much energy here. They seem simply so happy also about the smaller things, like the drumming here. There is so much happiness in it, they live it like this."

#### **The fourth signifier**

The fourth signifier that seemed to be ubiquitously present was the idea of music as a universal language, building on the belief that no matter what language is sung or how far the music has travelled, if it is an authentic expression, it would be understood and equally enjoyed. It is a widespread assumption, which also used to be supported by ethnomusicologists, and while they mostly have abandoned or at least adjusted it, in commercial music promotion it is still a very popular narrative (Campbell 1997: 32-39). Peter Gabriel (the founder of WOMAD) precisely describes this signifier which echoes many of my interviewees' descriptions:

Senegalese […] singing […] has an intensely spiritual feeling […] It doesn't matter to me that I don't understand all the words of a song. The voice is such a powerful means of communication, and it's so direct, it can transmit a feeling without having recourse to words (Gabriel cited in Barrett 1996: 242).

While it is difficult to prove or disprove the statement, it seems to be important as a constituting signifier of world music.

This signifier incorporates the paradox that world music is desired as unfamiliar, exotic, unknown music on one hand (the first signifier), but on the other hand, the newly found, exotic music is expected to be comprehensible without too much effort. World music, therefore, should be unfamiliar and new but at the same time not demanding, which again enforces notions of a primitive, predictable "other". Preferably it should be "not too much old style, not too much crossover: what some would call easy listening." (Hutnyk 1998: 403)

 From my ethnographic observation, this was underlined by the fact that the musicians were singing in a large variety of languages which most visitors very likely could not understand but seemed to especially enjoy. My interviewee Holger put it like this:

African music…even though I do not understand it, I like the language very much! When they speak real African, you, or at least I, cannot understand a single word. But it does not bother me, because the music, the rhythms are simply so beautiful.

Regarding the music, it was noteworthy that neither at the Africa Festival nor at WOMAD were there musicians whose music could be called "hard to listen to". Even the most unfamiliar music was made up of relatively pleasant sounds which would quite easily fit into anyone's taste who was socialized in Western countries today.

Only a few musicians were challenging this, for instance Parvathy Baul and Somjit Dasgupta, the Zhou Family Band or the Tanzania Albinism Collective. Notably, those musicians had entertaining aspects in their performances, making it more accessible, with the Zhou Family Band having an

entertaining jester-like show, the Tanzania Albinism Collective telling their stories in between songs or Parvathy Baul dancing in a trance-inducing manner with her knee-long hair waving around her body. Most of the musicians featured at the festivals, however, represented the assumption quite well that music would be universally understandable.

From my interviewees' statements, this signifier was regularly affirmed referring to the border-crossing, transnational abilities of music being understood "anywhere". As often as they described it as unusual and different from pop music, they pointed out how effortless the music was to understand and how groovy, danceable and pleasing it was. Emily put it this way:

In Molly's bar [one of the stages] they had a really good…group, but they weren't pop music! […] Music has to give you something. It has to either...a nice tranquil piece that [is] relaxing or that you want to move [to]. I can't sit and listen to really good beat music...I can't sit! You gotta move, even if you're sitting. You gotta move. So, that's good music. As long as it has a good beat a good sound and it's melodic...put all that together, that's what you look for!

#### **The fifth signifier**

The fifth signifier of world music can be described as the music's involvement with a certain degree of political engagement. This appeared in different ways. Both festivals had political organizations spreading information about world problems or asking for donations such as Amnesty International, Free Tibet initiatives and Médecins Sans Frontières. At both festivals, they were found at fixed places, where several organizations presented themselves. At WOMAD, there was a section at the main festival site for the larger and more professional organizations such as Amnesty International and spots around different places for others like Free Tibet initiatives. At the Africa Festival, those organizations were bundled in a tent ("bamboo hall") with Médecins Sans Frontières represented in front of the tent.

Apart from these formal political associations, there were also other engagements of these kinds. Several musicians held announcements during their performances about problems in their country or general issues, such as Fatoumata Diawara (Africa Festival) about the consequences of war in Africa and in the world or Sista Fa (Africa Festival) about the circumcision

of women in Senegal. Other artists even incorporated that signifier in their identity as musicians, such as the Khmer Rouge Survivors or the Tanzania Albinism Collective (both at WOMAD). Rather than purely musical aspects, it was their background stories that seemed a main reason for them to be able to perform at the world music festival.

For both, it was the successful music producer Ian Brennan who gathered them and formed the bands for the record. In the case of the Khmer Rouge Survivors, it is the history of genocide through the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot's regime in Cambodia that constitutes the narrative of the band's identity. In the case of the Tanzania Albinism Collective, it is the severe persecution of people with albinism in Africa that creates the narrative allowing them to release a record and appear on stage. No matter if it was appropriate in the particular cases, these examples constitute extremes of political affiliation in world music.

While it was an aspect found throughout the festival, it would be a reach to call it a political festival or to refer to world music as politically engaged music. However consistent this signifier was, it was equally superficial and awoke the impression of only seldomly providing significant information or leading to any further engagement. What generally could be seen as desirable for a musical scene, again seemed for world music to be obligatory and represented a constituting genre signifier. From the interview statements, this signifier was seldom directly covered but after further inquiry turned out to be very important for the interviewees' attraction to the world music genre in general and, in particular, the tangible representation of it through the music festival. Derek underlined it in the following way: "Well, we should have campaigns to make people aware of negative things. I think so. There is a refugee tent, I think it is to raise awareness and [it is] very, very important...yeah." Or as Melinda told me: "If people are coming from an oppressive regime, performing...then it's a good thing. People should be made aware of things...rather than just eat the food."

#### **Experiencing world music festivals**

So far, the collected data has been used to delineate experiences of world music from the ethnographer's and the visitors' perspectives. Five "signifiers" have been described which seem to constitute the genre of "world music". In

that sense, the exceptionality and exoticism of instruments, rhythms and musical characteristics were found crucial for the music to be perceived as world music. Similarly, the appearance of the musicians, be it their ethnicity, their dress or their costumes, was found important. Going on, the devoted musical performance and explicit expression of happiness was found to be central in many musicians' performances and the latter, too, for the behavior of the audience. The idea of music being a universal language that could be understood across languages and borders constituted the fourth signifier. Finally, as some examples outlined, a certain political affiliation of the musicians or the festival was found to be important.

Taking these findings and relating them to the two narratives described above could easily lead to the interpretation of the festivals as opportunities to sell the "difference" of musicians, instruments, sounds, appearances and behaviors to a desiring audience. However, this would not adequately suit or depict the experiences. While the signifiers can be seen as constitutional for the genre of world music, the interview statements suggested further ways of interpreting them. Most of the interviewees had more complex ideas and more careful understandings of world music and the people involved than the descriptions and short quotes in the signifiers section suggest. Their statements suggested more diverse interpretations of the data. For instance, nearly all the interviewees were very curious and open-minded towards unfamiliar musical instruments, styles, rhythms and unknown, traditional ways of dressing and appearing on stage. Also, they did enjoy the music and the musicians showing devotion and spreading happiness among them, which they might not have in the course of their everyday lives. While not knowing many of the languages being sung and possibly also not knowing the musical styles, they still kept listening and strengthened the idea that music somehow can cross borders of language and culture. And even though their interest in political questions appeared not to be very profound, the topics nonetheless were given a certain visibility, which they otherwise would not have received at all. Throughout most of my conversations with them, the interviewees ref lected strong interest in the musicians' lives, their musical heritage, their stories and the struggles they might have.

Taking the festival visitors' holistic attitudes towards world music from my interviews into account, the ways in which world music was experienced go way beyond the two narratives outlined above. Instead of simply perceiving and reproducing the ideas of world music that were presented to them

at the festivals, the visitors seemed to play a crucial role in shaping how they experienced world music. The ways of experiencing seemed to have proceeded in the way of "transform[ing] sensibilities and creat[ing] new ones, and not only to reproduce an existing order." (Hennion 2005: 132) It is the ability of the music listener to actively shape and create meanings of his or her experience of world music. These cannot be simply located at particular places, performances or in phenomena at the festival sites, from representations in media or from academic narratives, but have to be found out in interaction with the visitors themselves—for instance, by interviewing them. Therefore, as a conclusion and appeal for further research, world music festivals seem to present a musical genre that can be condensed into five signifiers which, however, are experienced in many different ways. Finding out the ways in which this happens in detail and describing the precise roles the visitors play in perceiving, transforming and shaping the genre of world music are suggestions for further research.

#### **Bibliography**


Liana Giorgi/Monica Sassatelli (eds.), Festivals and Cultural Public Sphere, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 173-189.


# **From desire for recognition to desire for independence**

World music filtered in the market economy

*Sandrine Le Coz*

"If artistic creation is always the expression of absolute subjective singularity, the gap and novelty inevitably become the touchstone of work's value.<sup>1</sup> "

Jean-Marie Schaef fer

In a global plethoric system where music, festivals and travel are offered in overabundance to individuals, creative practices must be leveled. Hence, institutions are responsible for establishing valuation's logic to classify artistic products. This contribution will involve the structuring of a sector of music industry in a full reconfiguration—the one still awkwardly designated by world music syntagma—into transnational and heterogenous networks of key players.

In this way, I propose to analyze the impact of their decision-making power in new art venues—what its participants commonly call markets, exhibitions, fairs. Circuits, hot spots, honorary awards, expert panels: the question that arises regarding this ecosystem's functioning is how is the value of an artistic act established and decreed, and what, therefore, is the value of the one who produces it? The word value comes from the Latin "valor", derived from "valere" which means "to be powerful". Whoever has value, therefore, becomes desirable and worthy of esteem. In economic jargon, we talk about useable value or exchange value. In this text, I will look at the socio-

<sup>1</sup> Seminar La création artistique, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

logical acceptance of value, defined by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (1991), as economy of greatness.

I will engage in an examination of value(s)-making within the world music industry, inserting my heuristic perspective at the heart of an axiology determined by its actors. For this purpose, I will adopt a participant observation's strategy, a "marginal secant" (Crozier/Friedberg 1977: 52) position, that will make my immersion as an insider researcher within a professional environment a lever for understanding its driving forces, its different and contradictory logics of action and as a way to peer into the evolution of its value's parameter.

In order to understand the zones of inf luence in which these interpersonal territories operate, it is essential to study their methods of linking. Conducting a thick description of new transnational connections, I'll demonstrate how music exchange occurs through market mechanisms—materialized by selective physical or virtual encounters—approaching the music industry's reality and its migration of sense thanks to the study of f lows, movements and inertia's forces weaving the weft of a contemporary globalized space.

# **The professional world music markets: inventory of a space with shifting geography**

The prices—and therefore the prizes—are not the privilege of economists. They constitute a central element in the experience of attachment and thus in the study of social structures underlying the exchanges. Music, as an important cultural commodity, has become decisive in terms of monetarization of artistic practice, to the point that the world music niche cannot avoid it.

World music: a worn-out language paradigm, a terminology with questionable historical connotations? Mathieu Rosati, whom I met during a meeting of the Collectif des musiques et danses du monde en Ile-de-France, defines world music as a conceivable compromise of communication that does not dispense to ref lect on the actions to be put behind, actions which belong to us. World music has aroused many fantasies and, in some way, has been fueled by its own myths. Why not deliberately set aside the endless debate on the legitimate use of this commercial label—in an absence of consensual defining framework (cf. Laborde 1997: 245)—to instead look at those who mobilize around the music as powerful vectors of economic values?

The professional world music markets, true platforms for negotiating international visibility, want, above all, to represent a means of interaction, to bring protagonists to exchange together in order to improve the functioning of their sector. These "expos" are then conceived as spaces of knowledge where commitment is total in order to establish the conditions for the creation of a network—a true watchword as a promise of providential encounters.

First of all, the discursive use of the overhanging category "market" participates in an efficient rhetorical process in terms of ideological authority. This aura of power is embodied in the world music sector by the superstructures of WOMEX (World Music Expo) in Europe and SXSW (South by Southwest) in the USA, which have a bilateral partnership. Would the reality of this professional world of world music be transfigured by the market's fetishism, this transcendent force producing a dominant ideology? Social relationships coagulate outside men, outside of the most immediate social relationships, because they end up being dependent on social abstractions such as money circulation, financial markets etc. (cf. Blanc/Vincent 2004). Thus, money consists in hypostasis, in the embodiment of a pure function, that of exchange between humans (cf. Simmel 1987). Would the music industry therefore become a regime of truth where culture is measured? Faced with this apparent omnipotence of the profitability logic, nothing could be better than leaving the f loor to three protagonists of these markets so that they can give us their own vision of this space at the crossroads of a social collective and individual imperatives.

Let's start with Bernard Aubert, former director of Babel Med, a professional market in Marseille that prematurely ended in 2018 after 13 years of "good and loyal service" to the world's music community:

They're called markets, but the question is, are they really markets? Do the co-ordinations around the tours really happen during these Expos? A market should not only present showcases. However, the current markets, for many, do not exceed the status of storefronts; the two are of ten confused, storefront and market. There are market specialists who go to all markets, but they're not necessarily the buyers, by the way. Monitoring is not evaluated for many expos. For ours, we have seen that between 20 and 40 additional dates are obtained for artists thanks to Babel Med. WOMEX is the superstructure, but what are the benefits? Due to its seniority, it enjoys a certain attractiveness, but what are the repercussions for artists in terms of tours and funding? Real work must be done on the follow up of artists af ter the exhibition, otherwise it is only limited to the aesthetic, auditory and intellectual pleasure that a festival provides. But there is a dif ference of nature between market and festival.

During the first and only edition of Borneo World Music Expo in Malaysia in 2014, I met Divya Bhatia, director of the RIFF (Rajasthan International Folk Festival) in Jodhpur (India). In addition, as a professor of cultural management, he talked about his market conception:

For the market, we—cultural operators—are just in front of one choice: to close it or to open it. To close it would be equal to fascism and to try to define it isn't our job. Our objective is to bring the artist to the audience. But how do we select the artists? First, we work with our intuition, because all the process is subjective, it's a matter of choice, of elective decisions. Then, in a second time, we think about the organization on a practical plan. There is a necessity to link all the dif ferent ways of media coverage for a band to be seen, not just the expos but all the ways which are attempts to seed something that can bring a fruit in the future whatever it could be because you don't know. The market can be absent in the creation. For example, the Rajasthani musicians who played with Jef f Lang didn't think about it at all and, in the end, they will showcase in the next WOMEX. So this is an example that the market can come af ter, it isn't influencing any creation even if it may have an impact af ter.

Emere Wano, artistic director of WOMAD in New Zealand, whom I met in Melbourne in 2011 at the Australasian World Music Expo, gives her vision of Oceanic artists' integration in the world music market:

Of course, there is an interdependence between the world music market that can format the artists in function of the audience and artists that format themselves in order to correspond to some criteria. But who is establishing the criteria of success on the one hand and those of being authentic on the other hand? With Sounds Aotearoa, we are trying to build the capacity and responsibility of indigenous Maori and Pacific artists, to form managers in

order to participate to the industry. We are trying to do something where no attention was paid to this in the Maori sector.

In the light of these remarks, we can emphasize both the paramount importance of penetrating Western markets and at the same time the emerging desire to create one's own mode of being on the market. Indeed, the geography of the economic power is still implicitly considered to be stronger in Europe and North America, meaning more well-paid opportunities, better technical conditions and increased visibility. But, at the same time, a necessity for Southern countries is felt to create a new formula for their own cultural development that would not have to duplicate that of the developed countries but just learn from them. By wishing to take over from perennial hegemonies, these newcomers nevertheless retain the same functioning as their predecessors, their existence beforehand being very compromised without those connections. Therefore, the world music protagonists find themselves gravitating in the same system, with, in all the expos, the same structure the first time developed by WOMEX: conferences, trade fairs, stands, speed meetings with personalized career coaching and showcases.

Since the professional market is seen as a springboard, a catalyst for economic opportunities, the participation of an artist would be crystallized as an investment—sooner or later—to internationally propel the aura of his creation. WOMEX, a symbolic reference point of the self-baptized "Womexicans" community, is however the subject of strong criticism about its capacity to fulfill this mission. The deprivation of space-time imposed on artists during showcases—these concerts in miniature—would enjoin the opposite effect: the forgetfulness facilitated by overcrowding. Indeed, the hiatus is considerable between the format, the rudimentary listening conditions and the crucial importance of capturing the target audience in record time because, under the guise of informality, contacts are formed, decisions are made and contracts are signed. The border between the concert hall where we speak about art and the backroom, the professional market, where we speak about money, is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the price and masks the fact that a whole set of people works to guarantee it.

#### **The role of intermediaries in valuation process**

The artist—as Howard Becker's (1982) theory of interaction emphasizes does not decide everything in a solipsistic manner; his work is constantly interacting with institutions that allow it to come into the world, confronting him with a range of determinations and particular strategies to adopt. If creativity, as a production of mind, is not depending on an external system, it is the case, however, for its presentation on a stage insofar as listening requires a structure. Who, then, are the architects, the conductors, who give themselves the vocation of promoting and disseminating this global creativity?

To make the passage from creation to reception possible, intermediaries are necessary, "gate-keepers" who present these shows to the audience, an audience which is itself a stakeholder in the artistic creation process. My interview with Manu Théron, leader of the iconic group Lo Cor de la Plana, is enlightening about the eminent role of the perspective-builder:

The programmer becomes almost an exhibition curator who links works to produce meanings. The view is not fixed but it doesn't emerge between the bearers of the works since they are not simultaneously presented. The works do not converse among themselves on an equal footing; the meaning appears only in the programmer or in the viewer.

The action of cultural operators is indeed crucial because their adopted mediations bring world music to audience and disclose, from one angle, the meaning they claim to be intrinsic to the musical works of otherness. The shows then become, by capillarity, "goods of belief" that demand (the audience) chooses based on who creates them (the artists and their representatives), perceiving only what they have been taught to see and hear. The professional markets work as authorities of classification and contribute to the evolution of the status on valuable scales. So, we attend an institutional construction which produces standards, horizons of expectations, deliberately granting itself the power of legitimization over the music by protecting its circulation.

At the hierarchy level, the same protagonists are interwoven between various institutions with differentiated status. For example, Gerald Seligman, former director of Borneo World Music Expo, Mercado Centroamericano de la Musica in Costa-Rica, and co-director of IOMMA (Indian Ocean

Music Market) on Reunion Island, was also, until 2009, the managing director of WOMEX and was head of EMI's strategic marketing, one of the most important majors in the global music market. Thus, the multi-polar networks of world music are affinity networks of co-optation, accounting for a certain "entre soi". Networking in world music is not limited to business; it is also and above all based on elective affinities, human relationships between peers, promoters, festival organizers, artists and on the confidence that they hold in each other as reliable colleagues, who are supposed to work in a spirit of collaboration and not competition: The weaving of social interaction is not done from acts of knowledge, but from the material provided by postures of recognition, as elementary forms of intersubjectivity (cf. Honneth 2007).

The question that arises is: within these competitive platforms, do we reveal, or do we build some value? Music can have intrinsic aesthetic value or instrumental value, but its emergence inside the professional markets reveals another concept: the "added value". What are the criteria, the "invariants" that allow programmers and cultural operators to make their choice? When categorization determines the value, how does the musical prescription work? The standard benefits from past success and the original is the guarantee of new success, but the already-known risks of getting tired and the new risks of displeasing (cf. Morin 2008). Thus, my main aspiration is to identify the actual global dynamics of diffusion in the world music industry while describing its process: the artistic fight for accreditation to be on stage. Not all evaluations are based on the same concept of value because there is no universal value but rather disjointed systems of values derived from representations. So, it appears essential to proceed to the analysis of selection criteria—promulgated by a fraction of professionals—in order to succeed in defining what builds the legitimacy and reputation of an artist at an international level. This ref lection inevitably leads to a questioning of assignment processes of the artistic value which is determined by the negotiations about what makes sense for its actors. Ideology is not first and foremost an illusion produced by the specialists of ideas, but the subjective and more or less refined organization of objective social appearances born out of the productive and merchant process (cf. Garo 2008). It is interesting to analyze the attempt of these intermediaries to objectify their selection process within a liability scheme, even though it remains fundamentally based on their own subjectivity. The first impression must deliver a strong emotion. While asserting

in unison that there is no magic formula for capturing attention, they point out certain conditions and prerequisites for assigning the value of the artist:


But how can programmers absolutely and objectively determine whether or not music will be accessible to an international audience? The same applies to the apprehension of originality. They are measured only in relative terms. There is no univocal measurement scale of this unlimited differentiation. Howard Becker (1982) examined the problems of the charts by indicating that this selectivity is partial because it is not based on a panoptic view of the artistic production of a society.

Moreover, the evaluation of quality combinations that make the difference remains relatively indecipherable and is based on a priori estimation, on a calculus of probabilities, which cannot be assimilated to an expertise of the creative act. We cannot objectively measure the initial talent, but we can only see that reputations, levers of achievement, widen these gaps and bring out the exogenous category of originality on the social scene.

Finally, the works of John Dewey, Nathalie Heinich and Luc Boltanski are of great help in analyzing how the bias of value's negotiation lets us catch a glimpse of the manufacture of a space of social relations. The challenges of social reproduction, in a configuration like the microcosm of professional world music markets, are easily identified thanks to the relationships maintained by its actors and the construction of their sustainability within, paradoxically, piecemeal meetings set around the world. What ensures their presence? A belief based on a rhetoric manifesting the necessity of belonging to these networks in order to make and maintain one's place. For exchange and cooperation to exist, there must be a system of reciprocal expectations:

these systems are deployed in worlds governed by the coherence of principles that are activated there (cf. Boltanski/Thévenot 1991).

 An archipelago of places, of justification cities (cf. Foucault 1970), is drawn, in a short-lived temporality, by the reputations conveyed all over the world on those meeting places, generating a performativity of the trade fair: the importance of attendance is built by the speech which makes the event's existence all the more essential. As Foucault (1970) would say, the creators are the instigators of discursiveness. Cultural operators, artists demonstrate a feeling of obligation to appear at WOMEX: if they are not recognizable, they incur the risk of dissolution of their visibility. If this collective configuration works and comforts, it is because its prerogatives respond to the prevailing desire for recognition from actors who accept playing in this family compound. As Nathalie Heinich (2017) notes, the power of values especially resides in the fact that they are lived by actors neither as simple illusions, nor as logical arguments, but as imperatives strongly affectively invested. Anthropology deals with observing, dissecting prospects, enthusiasms, satisfactions and disappointments felt by actors within some configuration. In spite of a feeling of resignation on the part of stake-holders in front of a fundamentally unequal system, the professional markets remain moments of sociable excitement, opportunities of conviviality, in order to form a unique entity on the global scale. These privileged times of networking during trade shows could be indicated as epiphanies which crystallize the symbolic and material investments of world music professionals.

#### **Fieldwork as an insider researcher**

"A triple promise falls to the anthropologist: to himself, to his discipline and to his object."

Sophie Caratini (2012)

In 2016, I was in charge of diffusion and programming for the Festival de l'Imaginaire in the Maison des Cultures du Monde, and since 2017, I have been an artistic advisor to several international festivals: World Sacred Spirit Festival (Rajasthan, India), Festival des Musiques Sacrées (Fès, Morocco)

and Al Kamandjati Festival (Palestine). The adoption of a new posture, at the interface between institution, artists and audiences, has enabled me to live these years of professional learning, not as a derivative effect but rather as an instrument of knowledge, allowing me to alter the gaze on my object. For the ethnomusicologist Michel de Lannoy, the key position of "talent seekers" that of programmers—requires a rigor equal to the ethnomusicologist's in the field, in the proper relationship to build between his own problem and the studied object (cf. Lannoy, quoted in Defrance 1996: 336-338).

In this immersive perspective, I therefore question the place and positioning of the embedded anthropologist, at the intersection of the worlds of work and research, and more generally the multiple forms of engagement induced by applied ethnography. This new status and ethical approach, involving an analytical distancing specific to my discipline, induce constant learning about how to elucidate the gossip practice, how to thwart seduction, how to neutralize pressurization from artists who are victims themselves of social bulimia. My participant observation is, indeed, located on a moving field dealing with conjunctural issues, power relations, funding, qualms, etc.

Investigating the ambivalence and the unthought-of in the system by placing myself inside leads me to practice a "cameralistic type of activity", that is, an activity that would amount to make environments and facts that are more or less transparent visible to the concerned individuals but remain poorly known to those who want to act on these environments and transform them (cf. Lenclud, quoted in Baré 1995: 65-84). If we take a closer look, the Greek etymology of the word "scene" points to what is behind it, which enables the front of the scene, the stage. To quote Dwyer and Buckle (2009):

Our position as qualitative researchers is from the standpoint of being *with* our participants. The *with* is in *relation to* our participants and can suggest a tensioned space. As Sidebotham (2003) ref lected, his personal and professional roles added to his research, and through his research he learned what he might never have through his personal and professional experience. So knowing an experience requires more than simply having it; knowing implies being able to identify, describe, and explain (cf. Fay 1996).

For this purpose, it would be appropriate to survey a space between, perceived not as a path but as a dwelling place for people so that insider and outsider are not disparate destinations, but a space occupied by the researcher (cf. Dwyer/Buckle 2009). Without having to justify my presence in the field, I certainly enjoy privileged access and facilitated relationships of trust, but

can, at the same time, meet the difficulties that this posture poses. Fieldwork "at home" is possibly even more complex in terms of the personal relationships it impinges upon (cf. Chiener 2002).

The first field, the one on which we keep coming back, always seems to bear lessons, no doubt because it corresponds to the initial experience, the initiation of an encounter with others that will never again come with the same strength. I had the wisdom to understand that I was there first to follow the movement, see and hear (cf. Augé 2013).

My first observed international professional market was the Australasian World Music Expo in Melbourne in 2011, which launched my ref lection on the conditions of access disparity of the so-called native artists on local and international stages.

The question of representativeness is omnipresent in "escort discourses" (Cheyronnaud 2002) of traditional music: what do we want to represent? Would putting on stage an artist with an "ethnic" identity be better to represent the reality of a group and its members? How can the authenticity of an artist or of a musical ensemble be judged, how can what is important about a culture be decreed and presented?

Placing musical practices under the seal of identity, beyond representing a major danger of reifying the fossilization of cultures, initiates processes of putting artists in competition. For example, only one group is selected to represent New Caledonia at the Australasian World Music Expo. Between Ykson and Tevita, two artists met in Melbourne, the trajectories diverge: the first, Kanak, was invited to all the indigenous festivals and the second, who is not Kanak, was much less distributed on the circuit. Here the words of Julien Mallet (2002) resound: the commercial attempt of hegemony from music industry—taking world music as a bait for profit—would therefore have the effect of subjecting otherness to the dominant structures by retaining only the exotic difference, removing it from this universality to which it claims to lead.

At the Australasian World Music Expo, I also met Rhoda Roberts, artistic director and aboriginal activist. She told me about her misadventure with WOMEX before Gurrumul became an iconic figure of Aboriginal music with resounding success in Europe: "WOMEX were saying they didn't want Gurrumul because he's not Aboriginal enough. I was accused of lying to the director of WOMEX: 'You told me he was primitive! He's western, he plays a western guitar'." The frustrations of being defined by their aboriginality

relate to the inability of the music industry to integrate hybrid contemporary music. Faced with these norms, barely veiling an ecstatic and nostalgic approach of a time when it was still possible to discover "untouched" indigenous people, an artist, Charlie McMahon, proposed to challenge them by being the first white man with one arm to play didgeridoo. What in the musical matter itself, in the intrinsic character of music, allows the existence of those essentialist discourses? No replies. In a willingness to bring artists and audience together through recognition, the institution ends up orchestrating a restraining order due to an arbitrarily imposed mediation in the link between them. On the pretense of wanting to introduce the unique, the unreleased, to show, in a lancinating obsession, musical authenticity as a tacit inheritance on a territory, the institutional compartmentalization of aesthetics hardens, dramatizes otherness and conceals the richness of emerging creative music practices, yet at the heart of a new cartography composed of syncretic "narrative identities." (Ricoeur 1985)

Following my Australian experience, I decided, in 2014, to look more specifically at a recent phenomenon: the WOMEX consulting relationships with regional markets. As Arslan (2018) affirms, field is a multilayered concept that does not depend on geography, but on the self-constructed identity of the ethnographer and his or her aim.

The exponential creation of world music professional markets—and their international array—brought me to analyze the WOMEX strategies used to increase its inf luence by an expansion of satellites, which eminently raises the issue of the reproduction of hegemonic relationships of power. On purpose, I did not choose to study one professional market because I wanted to assume a transnational bias by concentrating my analysis on their reticular dimension. In the light of their emergence, it's about describing the swarming strategy thanks to interconnections between decision-making actors and the rhetorics mobilized by them.

My anthropological positioning is divided at the intersection of several affiliation groups. Therefore, I do not favor any site but, on the contrary, juxtapose different levels of geography: to the globalization of the fields corresponds the mobility of the researcher (cf. Copans 2000). In multi-sited ethnography, comparison emerges from putting questions to an emergent object of study whose contours, sites, and relationships are not known beforehand (cf. Marcus 1995).

 The notion of circuit allows me to analyze decisive places and key moments, or catalysts, where the protagonists in the game of world music meet. The circulation seems indeed to represent an essential component, even a condition of the actors' existence in this artistic world. The orientation towards places is important because it allows me to identify people and networks, to map actors who appear then disappear.

My participant observation with the pioneer markets of world music includes the following places: WOMEX in Budapest (2015), created in 1994, Babel Med in Marseille (from 2009 to 2017), Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland (2017) and APAP in United States, New York (2017). These events constitute a part of my research but, above all, my ref lection has been focused, since five years, on the new generation of regional trade fairs of world music (including "musiques actuelles") such as AME in Praia, Cape Verde (2014), Borneo World Music Expo in Kuching, Malaysia (2014), Visa For Music in Rabat, Morocco (2014), IOMMA in Saint-Gilles, Reunion Island (2015), MOSHITO in Johannesburg, South Africa (2015), Mundial Montreal in Canada (2015), Tallinn Music Week in Estonia (2016), Circulart in Medellin, Colombia (2017), Porto Musical in Recife, Brazil (2018), PMX in Ramallah, Palestine (2018), Primera Linea in La Havana, Cuba (2018) and ACCES in Nairobi, Kenya (2018). These events aim to develop music industry around local actors and to create new international disseminating channels. Therefore, they give shape to economic partnerships and allow new territorial connections that end up creating true "mental landscapes" (Appadurai 1997), unprecedented archipelagos of meanings in which the economic poles are more and more in the Southern part of the globe: Lusophone Africa, Indian Ocean, Latin America, Maghreb/Mashrek, East Africa, etc.

I will look here at two of them: the Atlantic Music Expo (Cape Verde) and the Indian Ocean Music Market (Reunion Island) where I led fieldwork in 2014 and 2015. The AME highlights the specificity of its discourse around the identity marker of creolity. Its founder, Mario Lucio, former minister of culture and a musician himself, presented his ambition in these terms:

Ten islands caught in between three continents, a mother tongue embracing words from all languages, a wide variety of music styles such as funana, batuco, morna and coladera, or else mazurka, contredanse, waltz and samba. Such is Cabo Verde, the country where the world's creolization originated. Cabo Verde was the first transatlantic turntable of slavery trade. The ministry of culture is now willing to make it a positive exchange point based upon music and culture.

Reunion Island, also, has grown as a hub for an entire region, the Indian Ocean. It develops projects with neighboring islands Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte and, simultaneously, has acquired a place on the world market. Not satisfied with the annual visibility granted by WOM-EX and thanks to the European Union's support, the IOMMA was created.

These two new markets form a crossroads establishing bridges between continents while highlighting a rhetoric of insularity that exhibits its assets—especially touristic ones—outside and seeks exogenous contributions. It's important to note this insularity's topography insofar as it spatializes, geographically circumscribes, a mental space of "entre soi". The associates already acquired at WOMEX go to a place where strong cultural history requires them to join. They go there to discover, to change from the "conventional" framework of European metropolises, but they'll find the same people. Following these examples, more and more expos have been developed on islands like Cuba (Primera Linea), Mauritius (MOMIX) or the Canary Islands. Another significative dynamic is the creation of fairs based on a presumed common "identity", on a privileged transcultural dialogue, between wide geographical areas: for Exibmusica (Portugal) it's Latin America, for Crossroads (Czech Republic) Central and Eastern Europe.

It should be noted that these communities of actors, a priori unshakeable and all powerful, are nonetheless dependent on political and economic institutions that regularly recall the transitory and volatile nature of these events by suspending their funding, thus resulting in the temporary cancellation of the market or even its complete end, e.g. the end in 2018 of the Mediterranean market Babel Med; the suspension of Porto Musical in 2017; the strong threats to Atlantic Music Expo and Visa for Music even though they have been considered promising platforms since their creation.

The evolution of the relation between these regional professional markets and the WOMEX has been, moreover, fulgurant in a five year time span: the WOMEX which was sought-after when these platforms were created as a marker of credibility, as a way of increasing professional capacity, is now denied its role and usefulness in relation to the financial shortfall and accumulated debts due to its expensive service for franchising (with the label Piranha). As a result of this shift, but not only because of it, new networks have appeared between regional markets themselves and have formed new clusters of inf luence:


The inconsistency issue of this sector is crucial insofar as it's fast and f luctuating: are we heading from now on to a segmentation of the world music markets or to a unique global network of interconnected actors? Wouldn't the proliferating profusion of professional world music markets correspond to what Baudrillard (1986) calls the saturation of a system neutralized by its own strengths?

## **Interstices, intervals and bridges: at the time of new prescription**

"There is no single, absolute, privileged system, but subsystems; between them, cracks, holes, gaps. The irreducible manifests af ter each reduction."

Henri Lefebvre (1968)

One might believe that when one is dominated, there is no other choice but to occupy the designated place in the framework delivered by the dominant power. For instance, does the expectation of a "permanent revolution"*,* induced by the music industry, undermine the very concept of marginal? It's nevertheless important to highlight the fact that the artists are not reducible to the sum of the predeterminations which weigh on them. Monique Sélim evokes, for instance, "kaleidoscopes revealing endless meshings between incorporation of local and global dominations, exile fantasies, alienations, restatements and shifting constraints.2 " The final step will be now to analyze the amplitude of this issue of situational adjustments in the manufacture and broadcasting of the sounds of today.

Transnational practices are not specific to the world music market; they also occur for other artistic genres such as jazz (Jazz lam in Barcelona) or performing arts like theater, circus, dance or street art (MAPAS on the Canary Islands). In the field of "musiques actuelles", there are also MAMA (Paris) and Linecheck (Milan), which actually integrate world music in their showcases. Bill Smith, member of the American company Eye for Talent—whom I met at the Borneo World Music Expo—precisely evokes a significative shift in the world music valuation and reveals how institutions, in order to last, make way for emergent niches:

Artists need to incorporate elements that people enjoy, like hip-hop. The market is dif ferent of the artistic vision. Contemporary manners are now more interesting for the market than pure folk traditions. It's a recent change in the world music market, a turn into the electronic, the alternative music.

We could also find the same dynamics of reputations, trends and value negotiation in Biennales or contemporary art fairs (FIAC, Paris). But beyond those large-scale events, more and more emerging independent music markets are focusing on entrepreneurship like Show Me (Switzerland), created in 2018 at the artist Blick Bassy's initiative, or IndiEarth Exchange (India), a trade event for independent music, film and media. The link of music with the creative industry is more asserted than ever, especially in Africa and South and Central America. For Octavio Arbelaez, director of Circulart (Colombia), whom I met in Medellin, culture is the most important factor in generating wealth nowadays. Panama, Nigeria, Argentina, Chile: the global role of cultural operators is now to take advantage of music's power to increase the economic force of their country.

Behind the term artist, there is a multitude of logics of action, of different economies within trajectories driven by different conventions. The artists who are visible at fairs, inscribed in the art market's laws, do not prevent those, transformed into real "artisans-entrepreneurs", from existing at the

<sup>2</sup> Seminar Anthropologie politique de la globalisation, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.

periphery and from developing their own networks by creating new cartographies of membership. This is particularly obvious with the growth of virtual network platforms allowing individuals to federate their initiatives and to directly share resources with this back and forth dynamics between singularity and need for belonging.

World music 2.0, post world music, world music revisited: the regime of the music industry's prescription, the figure of authority regarding the qualitative identification of taste, has been indeed upset by the digital boom and the fact that now everyone can become an inf luencer, whether on a blog, on a YouTube channel or even a producer with a home studio, which is completely restructuring the relationship between artist and audience and between artist and professional intermediary which is the topic of the Future Music Forum (Barcelona). With an appropriate name or an evocative native myth, the appointment of a friends' group will appear from outside as a fervent world of activity and the online exaggeration can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy (cf. Clayton 2016).

In this wild disintermediation, artists' presence and communication on social networks seem to be a "sine qua non" condition of their new autonomy; nowadays, even Madonna posts on Instagram. The unlimited access to musical creation online brings the artists, one more time, to distinguish themselves in a regime of evanescence, to stand out by drawing their own path among a multiplicity of tags and new categories which don't elude the risk of homogenization. The digital era with these new spaces of diffusion and interaction—where consumer, amateur and professional are more and more difficult to differentiate—raises a lot of issues in terms of value attribution. From prescribers, we've moved to inf luencers but especially to online aggregators, to playlist editors, who have, precisely, acquired the increased role of creating value by making their artists visible and identifiable by the greatest number. It is, however, important to question the expertise of these extremely competitive distribution platforms (Believe, Klox, Spinnup, Tradespotting) regarding the appropriate targeting of audiences. Their ranks include not longstanding musical specialists but rather geniuses of databases, algorithms of recommendation, assisted by the artificial intelligence of the machine, who see their adaptability to a very wide panel of music as an asset.

All the means to try to be more inventive and create visibility are good. With Goover, the customer is paid by listening. In other development systems of micro-inf luencers, such as Verve, the word-of-mouth process and recommendation are replicated on a larger scale by converting fans into ambassadors in exchange for rewards.

The world music 2.0 takes shape based on the fundamental web's asymmetry. It's an autochthonous native structure of the internet in compliance with the logic of information economy. More than creating it, is worth knowing where to find it. The artists take a back seat. The fact that an intermediary can have a stronger impact on the meaning and on the reception of a song than the one who has created it, is one of the constitutive paradoxes of world music 2.0. (cf. Clayton 2016).

Last but not least, if the Internet and streaming platforms—these new "machines du goût" (Gras 2014)—have somehow improved artists' visibility and their symbolic value, it has unfortunately not been the same so far regarding the economic value, namely their financial incomes. Indeed, the digital contents have truly become collective goods (cf. Bacache et al. 2010), impossible to sell and to extract value from, insofar as they can easily circulate from one consumer to another. An album that was worth between 15-20 Euros is now included on platforms whose unlimited access costs 10 Euros per month. Denis Ladegaillerie, Believe's boss, asserts that as long as you don't have quality of service, something that justifies the payment, the price of music is zero euro (cf. Fanen 2017). For his colleague, Arnaud Chiaramonti, music has become contents like any other, which you have to be able to listen to with the least affect to spot artists according to audience research figures, popularity on social networks and ability to make it on the right playlists. The heart of tomorrow's music business is a technical infrastructure (Ibid).

Therefore, compensation scales and value allocation are now organized around the unique criterion of the circulation intensity defined by clickbait, number of views on YouTube or likes on Facebook. Only an exponential ridership finds a market value on Internet, anything that does not produce a huge impact in the very short term is excluded from the outset (cf. Brunet 2018). The following helps soften the blow of this disarming observation.

The most appropriate measures are not quantifiable: a song which settles in the mind of all the ones who learn it by heart, a choral song that lif ts a room full of strangers on a shared emotion, the soundtrack of a first kiss that af ter decades still leaves two lovers transfixed and speechless. The value of these songs is inside ourselves (cf. Clayton 2016).

#### **Conclusion**

I shall end this paper with Michel Agier's (2013) words: "Anthropology has to shift its view, or more exactly duplicate it, while transforming its manners to investigate, to accompany the transformations and the movements of the actors and the studied practices, starting with networks rather than normative structures."

By considering local and international scales simultaneously, the professional world music markets and its virtual go-between constitute a point of entry to empirically question the impact of the globalization within cultural industries. They also incite to think about the function of representations in order to move from the desire to recognize to the challenge to see.

Through the circulation of musical practices at the crossroads of genres and geographical spaces, undeniable relations of power are drawn which raise the fundamental issue of access to cultural diversity for a wider audience. From the circulation spaces of WOMEX and its international satellites to the digital platforms and their increasing number of services providers, the discriminating power relationships are reproduced with a lot more strength, increasing the role of reputations and inf luencer networks. Therefore, we're observing a constant and parallel development of possibilities and disparities for artists' visibility insofar as the evaluations, the expertises, are made from non-representative samples of artistic exponential creativity upon which the assumed "objectivity" of selection builds itself, accounting for a bigger heuristic gap regarding the legitimate understanding of musical practice and creative talent.

In this paper, I have tried to demonstrate the functioning of a professional micro-society in terms of explicit conventions and shared equivalency systems. As it owns these objective values, a plurality of subjective commitments is nevertheless unbreakable among its members, serving as a motivation to develop distinct action strategies. The changing role of intermediaries from a transnational market centered on big trade fairs to new satellites and then to the current digital platforms has allowed me to observe the mutation of value parameter in the music industry around the world: previously indexed

to a presumed authenticity of a singular territory, then coupled to independent creative attempts bridging transcultural spaces, it is now entrusted to statistics and maps of listening. The qualitative value of the artistic message belongs to the old world; instead, databases reign supreme!

### **Bibliography**


l'anthropologie: Un essai de réf lexion collective depuis la France, Paris: Karthala, pp. 65-84.


Morin, Edgar (2008): L'esprit du temps, Paris: Armand Colin.

Orléan, André (2011): L'Empire de la valeur: Refonder l'économie, Paris: Seuil. Ricoeur, Paul (1985): Temps et Récit, Paris: Seuil.


# **The invention of African art music** Analyzing European-African classical cross-over projects

*Nepomuk Riva*

## **The Black Beethoven—an African answer to the dominance of Western classical music?**

Since the 1970s, a popular belief circulating within the Afro-community worldwide has held that Ludwig van Beethoven was African. Websites point to his African ancestry, his dark skin, the physiognomy of his face, his social context and the fact that his colleagues called him "black" or a "Moor." (cf. Raptorific 2010; Rinehart 2013; Owono 2015; Maarten 2017) In contrast to French composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1745–1799), who was only nicknamed "Black Mozart" for his Guadeloupean descent and composition style, this discourse sees Beethoven as a composer "whitewashed" by Europeans. Interestingly, these theories also reference Beethoven's compositions. Some authors perceive West-African polyrhythmic structures in his piano works and have produced special interpretations of his piano sonatas to prove his "African roots." (ANY 2015)

There is no need to compare this conspiracy theory with the historical facts, but the discussion shows that European classical music and its worldwide dissemination today have resulted in postcolonial reactions from African contexts. The "myth of Beethoven's descendent" can be interpreted as an inferiority complex because in contrast to Asians, Africans have few roles in the Western classical music scene. The myth can also be seen as a sign of resistance. Africans no longer want to accept the unique position of classical European art music. They want to overcome the image of their so-called "underdeveloped" musical cultures. By reclaiming a famous European composer as their compatriot, they want to draw attention to possible interconnections between European and African music cultures.

Unfortunately, most European-African classical cross-over productions that have enjoyed great popularity in recent decades are rather Eurocentric. Although they invite several African-born musicians for joint music projects and give them the possibility to present themselves to an international audience, they do not change the dominance of the Western music scene. Part of the problem is that they do not start out from an African viewpoint but from a European perspective, searching for exotic enrichments of its own popular musical canon. These productions also follow old-fashioned "comparative musicology" methods, comparing and mixing different sounds and rarely trying to promote an exchange of different social and cultural contexts.

In this article, I want to analyze four cross-over productions created between 1992-2006 that were produced by major labels and gained successful distribution in the Western hemisphere. Every single one works with different musical sources and constructs the European-African connection differently. The first three are the most popular productions that have constituted the genre, while the last one is less known but portrays a different approach to European-African collaboration. First, *Pieces of Africa* (1992) by the Kronos Quartet claims to represent African art music played by Africans and members of the United States Kronos Quartet. This production clearly wants to address Western listeners of classical music. Second, in *Lambarena: Bach to Africa* (1993), French musician and producer Hughes de Courson and Gabonese musician Pierre Akendengué mix Bach with so-called "traditional" Gabonese music to honor organ player, Bach expert and medical doctor Albert Schweitzer. Here, the producers want to reach a broader audience composed not only of experts in the field of Christian baroque music, but those who come from the educated middle class. Third, *Mozart the Egyptian I+II* (1997/2005) was also produced by de Courson in collaboration with cultural attaché and Egyptian academic Ahmed El Maghraby. In these two volumes, they explore possible musical connections between Mozart's classical music and Egyptian music. The important role North African music ensembles play in this production shows that the producers want to enter the world music market with their product. Finally, I want to draw attention to Austrian group MoZuluArt and its album *Zulu Music Meets Mozart* (2006). In this project, three Zimbabwean singers and an Austrian piano player interpret Mozart's music against the musical backdrop of Southern African choir-singing

traditions. This production represents pieces that were developed collaboratively within the group and had been tested on stage before they were recorded. The album is mainly meant for an audience that knows the artists from their performances or the media and wants to own their recordings.

In looking at these four examples, I am interested in the production process and in the audio-visual and textual messages these albums intend to convey. Wherever possible I tried to get into contact with the producers, the composers or the performers and to discuss with them the long-term impact of their albums. Does the label "cross-over" guarantee musical cooperation on the same eye-level? Concerning the production process this entails, do the projects evolve out of a collaborative work or do Western musicians determine the outcomes of the project? Concerning the performances and distribution, the question is whether both partners gain from the project in the same way. Analyzing the audio-visual elements of these albums, I want to show which image of Africa is constructed by these music projects. Do they simply reproduce colonial concepts and stereotyped images of "African music"? Or does the intercontinental collaboration lead to new forms of portraying diverse African societies and their music? I believe this research is important to show how the most successful albums of this genre determine a Western image of Africa that most of the time follows colonial imaginations. At the same time, it uncovers the power dynamics between Western art music culture and African music that still prohibits most African musicians from entering the Western art music scene.

Before analyzing these productions in detail, I want to ref lect on their implications for the terms "Africa", "music" and "classical art music". A critical look at African colonial history is also needed to reveal what Western classical music means to Africans. Finally, the participation of Africans and the target audience of these productions are questioned.

# **"European-African cross-over projects" in the context of postcolonialism**

To analyze cross-over projects with African music and musicians, the meaning of the term "Africa" used within the productions must first be defined. Considering the use of this term is crucial because since the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the 17th century and the colonial exploration of the continent

in the 19th century, Europeans always created an image of Africa that supported their political and economic interests. Following Edward Said's theory of orientalism (Said 1979), Europeans constructed a collective image of the whole continent as a counterpart to Europe, meaning "uncivilized", "heathen", "wild" and "animalistic". Therefore, if producers of these cross-over albums use the term "Africa" collectively and combine it with the imagination of "wildness" and "nature" in their audio-visual or textual presentation, they reproduce these colonial views on Africa and already show a certain white supremacy towards African music. On the other hand, producers that give a geographical reference to the African continent or specify an ethnic group and its musical culture will more likely have a serious interest in a musical exchange on the same eye-level.

Another form of a collective use of the term "Africa" is not to differentiate between its general regional music cultures, like the Arabian-inf luenced musical cultures of North Africa or the West-, Central- and South African cultures. It was a colonial strategy to name music "African" that was derived from the Sub-Saharan or so-called "black Africa" and to project the cultures of these regions collectively as the whole continent. This definition also led to the stereotyped idea that "Africa is a country".

The titles of the four albums under consideration already show that the producers work with different terms and meanings, i.e. "Africa", "Egypt", "Zulu", and "Lambarena". In this context, producers' presentations of composers and musicians are also of interest because, due to the history of racism against blacks, Europeans tend to interpret the descent of Africans and their cultures as essential. As research on everyday racism in Germany shows, most Europeans see somebody who is born in Africa as an African, even if he or she migrates to Europe and eventually receives European citizenship. Likewise, someone who is black is regarded as an African and as part of an African musical culture, even if her or his family has lived in Europe for generations (cf. Arndt 2006). Naming an album "African" even if its composers and musicians are black migrants that do not live on the African continent is a form of racial imagination. Showing the diversity of inhabitants in African countries, on the other hand, will ensure a balanced representation. Furthermore, following Gilroy's theory of an intercontinental interrelated black culture that he calls "Black Atlantic" (1993), the term "Africa" in these productions could also be used in the sense of "Black Atlantic" cultures. If these productions include black music or African musicians in

the diaspora, the albums could represent the interconnection of black musical cultures. Yet none of these productions refer to this concept in their audio-visual or textual materials, even though they all make use of composers and musicians who do not live on the African continent. This analysis will help determine if the purpose of the projects studied is an honest musical exchange with Africans and blacks or merely the construction of an "image of Africa" as the counterpart to Europe as a means to successfully distribute the albums in the Western hemisphere.

Secondly, a music production must have an idea of to what the term "music" refers. In ethnomusicology, for decades researchers like Gerhard Kubik (1988) emphasized the fact that many African cultures do not have a term for "music" corresponding to the European concept. There might be terms for special genres, dances and music performed within specific social contexts but no central category without mentioning music/dance being performed at the same time (cf. Kubik 1988: 52-113). It is, therefore, necessary to consider the context in which music is played in Africa. The concept of music as organized sound is a purely European idea, and any blending of sounds makes sense only for European listeners and those in contact with European music cultures. Productions that use this restricted term likely reproduce the stereotypes of African music that Kofi Agawu (2003: 55-96) describes as mainly repetitive rhythm-based, in a call-and-response form accompanied by drums and improvised singing.

When discussing European classical music, it must be remembered that European music was one of the tools to suppress and to transform African cultures during the colonial period (cf. Radano/Olaniyan 2016). Pre-colonial musical practices were marginalized, forbidden and destroyed. Various anthropological and ethnographic sciences constructed the idea of "uncivilized" and "ahistorical" African music in sub-Saharan regions. Regarding the binary division between "art music" and "folk music" in European cultures, only within Islamic cultures and feudal states in Africa can a distinction between "art/court music" and "folk music" be drawn, and this distinction is often already part of a colonial terminology. However, European music was introduced as "civilized" music within the missions and colonial armies. The consequences for the musical cultures on the African continent have been quite diverse. Western classical music remained "white music" in all settlers' colonies in Southern Africa but strongly inf luenced the local music scenes in North African countries around the Mediterranean Sea, especially in Egypt. There, in the 19th century, the form of a European orchestra was adapted, local instruments were introduced in these ensembles, and neo-classical music was composed (cf. El-Shawan 1985; Kamel 1999). In the West African countries of Nigeria and Ghana, a genre of African art music developed after the founding of higher education institutions for music subsequent to independence from the colonial regime (cf. Euba 1993; Nketia 2004). Benjamin Ziech (2017), in his doctoral thesis on African art music, counts 85 African composers and more than 540 works in this context of African art music. Church music also saw development towards the composition of works in the European sense of the term.

The composition of African masses primarily by missionaries in collaboration with African musicians during the 1960s were examples of how Africans should be introduced to or "civilized" by European music history (cf. Klein 1990). This tradition inspired musicologist David Fanshawe to compose his *African sanctus* (1972), partly based on his field recordings from North and Eastern Africa (cf. Fanshawe 1989). This history still very much inf luences the musical cultures of the postcolonial states in Africa. However, although the diatonic scale and the basic harmonic structure of Western music have been introduced throughout Africa, certain features can only rarely be found in African cultures, as Agawu (2016) states, such as modulations and the singing of scales other than major scales. So far, higher education institutions that teach classical European music exist mainly in countries with a history of European settlement and were mainly meant for white students. Unlike those from Asian countries, many African musicians who would like to join the European music scene are excluded. Along with these, there is also a long history of black composers who have worked but who rarely been performed in the United States and Europe since the 19th century. It will become obvious that some cross-over productions play with an imaginary of colonial fantasies and give references to missionary times. None of them follows a bottom up approach to represent African art music; neither do they open the door to the Western classical music scene for the African musicians.

Finally, it is important to consider what the term "cross-over production" means to the musicians and the audience. In general, "cross-over" was used as a socio-economic term to define musical products that were successful in different segments of the music market in the USA in the 1960s. Musicians were called cross-over artists if they gained success with different audiences, especially in the race-segregated society (cf. Brackett 1994). Regarding mu-

sical works, the term is also generally used to describe fusions of different genres in order to popularize one of the sources, i.e. classical musicians are called cross-over artists if they reach the audience of the popular music scene. Yet, in my understanding, the term only makes sense if productions are defined as musical cross-overs when musicians cross different, unrelated musical styles unrelated and combine them to create a new meaning. In the special case of "European-African classical cross-over productions", I describe products that combine popular Central European baroque and classic music with diverse African music and compositions labelled as "African music". The way this fusion is done shows a power relationship between the two sources and creates a message about both musical cultures. This "cross-over" can be achieved by: mixing and blending different musical pieces; playing them at the same time; accompanying the music of the one culture with the instruments, voices and stylistics of another; or using material from both musical cultures as the basis for a new musical exploration. Only the latter guarantees working conditions in which European and African musicians meet on the same eye-level. All other combinations always depend on the producers and their ideas for the projects. It is therefore important to know who creates cross-over cooperation. Who participates in the recordings? Who is meant to listen to them? A detailed analysis proves that the four mentioned productions all differ in their approaches and outcomes. Some of them show a clear dominance of the Western producers in the general framework of the production, even if they offer African composers and musicians the possibility to work together with Western musicians and to reach a wider audience. Mo-ZuluArt is the only group where a balance of power between the participants can be noticed that also inf luences the musical cross-over in itself.

## *Pieces of Africa:* **introducing African composers to the Western classical music scene**

The Kronos Quartet is best known for its project-based approaches that simultaneously promote classical music, *Neue Musik* and world music. Often, the musicians work at the borders of art music, film soundtracks, world music and experimental music. In 1987 and 1991, the quartet recorded string music by white South African composer Kevin Volans (1949), and its engagement with African musicians led to a recent production together with the

Trio-Da Kali from Mali (2017). The group has thus demonstrated an enduring interest in promoting African art music within the Western classical music scene. Yet questions remain about how the Kronos Quartet sells its products and how sustainable its engagement with African art music is for the African musicians and composers.

The cover and booklet of the album *Pieces of Africa* (1992) show images of an African canvas, leaving the impression that it contains African music. In fact, all the composers were born on the African continent: Northern Africa (Morocco), East Africa (Sudan and Uganda), West Africa (Gambia and Ghana) and Southern Africa (Zimbabwe and South Africa). Yet most are international world music and jazz artists who have moved to Western countries or have at least resided there for some years. For example, Zimbabwean musician and teacher Dumisani Maraire (1943-1999) lived in the US during 1968-1982 and 1986-1990. Hamza El Din (1929–2006) moved to the US in 1964 after he lost his home due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam. Obo Addy (1936-2012) has also preferred to live in the US since 1978. Volans, a white South African, studied in Europe during 1973-1981 and settled in Ireland in 1986, where he received citizenship in 1994. It is questionable whether he should be called an "African" composer at all, even if the string quartet that was recorded by the Kronos Quartet contains melodies of black South Africans and refers to the anti-apartheid struggle (cf. Ziech 2017: 86-115). Also considering the exclusion of composers from the Lusophone African countries, perhaps *Pieces of Africa* might be better named *Pieces of the Black Atlantic* to avoid an essentialist view of Africa-born composers.

The Kronos Quartet commissioned the works with funds from by the Beigler Trust, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts and Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Some composers were introduced to the Kronos Quartet, while violinist David Harrington actively sought out others. Only in the cases of El Din's *Escalay* and Volans's *White Man Sleep* were existing works rearranged for the string quartet. Justinian Tamusuza's (1951-) *Ekitundu Ekisooka* was written while he studied composition under Volans in Belfast in 1988. Therefore, the production partly represents works of black composers in that it partly creates the repertoire that would not have existed without external funding. All the pieces were recorded by the Kronos Quartet with African musicians and singers—most often the composers themselves—and a choir from Oakland. Clearly, it would be difficult to perform this collection live on stage without these musicians. Consequently, the project as a whole has remained a studio album produced and sold under the label of the Kronos Quartet. In that way, an impact on the career of the composers is rather limited.

The American musicians seem to pretend to work with the African composers on the same eye-level. The composers are allowed to add vocal and instrumental parts, and the quartet even appears to sing for the first time in Obo Addy's *Wawshishijay*. In the simplicity of harmonic developments in pieces such as *Mai nozipo* by Maraire and *Ekitundu ekisooka* by Tamusuza, the composers make little use of the possibilities of a Western string quartet and instead compose in a minimalistic, repetitive way. Complex rhythmic patterns, the impression of continuous improvisation against simple harmonic patterns, singing in African languages and the sounds of African instruments, are the main characteristics that give the audience the notion of listening to "African" music. The Kronos Quartet thus reproduces a stereotyped form of African music merely fused with Western string sounds.

Some of these limitations arise from the composers' efforts to transform the musical styles of their cultures of origin into works for a Western string quartet. This can clearly be heard in Suso's piece *Tilliboyo*, which starts with a theme on the kora played by the composer, taken over and enriched by the string quartet mostly playing pizzicato. In his work, Tamusuza also tries to imitate Ugandan instruments and musical styles on Western instruments (cf. International Opus 2001). Unsurprisingly, those composers already in contact with the US art music scene cooperate with the founding generation of the American minimal music genre, such as Suso, who worked with Philip Glass on several other projects (cf. Glass 1988; Glass/Suso 1992; Glass/Suso 2011), and El Din, who was introduced to the Kronos Quartet by Terry Riley (see booklet of *Pieces of Africa*). Some of the American minimal composers even drew their initial inspiration from albums such as El Din's *Escalay: The Water Wheel* (1971) (cf. Dümling 2013). Therefore, *Pieces of Africa* partly represents not the African but rather the US-American art music scene. That some of the works from Black composers have actually led to the development of the American genre of minimal music is not mentioned at all.

However, this production meant to introduce so-called African composers to the Western classical music scene was not very sustainable. Suso's *Tilliboyo* is the only piece that was recorded again, in this case by a brass ensemble (Nederlands Blazers Ensemble 2000). Tamasuza did receive funding to compose further works for the International Society of Contemporary Music (Essen, Germany 1995), Chamber Symphony of Princeton and Richmond Symphony Orchestra of Virginia (International Opus 2001). All the composers, though, did gain international recognition from the album's success, which helped build their careers in the world music scene. Maraire re-recorded his piece *Kutambarara* in an arrangement for marimbas, the instrument with which he enjoyed success as a performer and teacher (cf. Maraire 1993). Sometimes, the effects were not as visible. For example, Susan Addy, the widow of Obo Addy, reported in a private communication that his piece *Wawshishijay* was performed several times "by other chamber groups—Cuatro Puntos Quartet, Chicago Sinfonietta, Charleston Symphony orchestra. Others too, but I don't know their names." The work also had a deep impact on Addy's career and personality: "Writing 'Wawhishijay' ('Our beginning') definitely gave him more credibility with the classical folks and as a composer." (Private communication via LinkedIn, August 2 and August 6, 2018)

Not coincidentally, *Pieces of Africa* was produced shortly after political change in South Africa in 1990. The Kronos Quartet was interested in presenting a new image of Africa as the post-apartheid era began. Maraire, whose country, Zimbabwe, became independent only in 1980, makes this motivation very clear in the booklet of the album: "Africa and Africans have been suppressed for a long time. It was only around the 1950s that Africans resisted and fought for their rights in their own land and started gaining the political power to rule themselves and try to determine their own future." (Maraire 1993) He, though, does not accuse all Westerners of colonialism, especially not his overseas musical colleagues: "The other message of the song is that not all non-Africans oppressed Africans. Actually, there were and still are non-Africans who fought and fight to free Africa from oppression financially, educationally and politically. Music can dismantle cultural, political and racial barriers." (Ibid)

This cross-over project album, which features an US-American string quartet as the only element connecting all the compositions, clearly shows the power relationship between Africa and the West. Except for Ghana's Addy, the project does not represent the main leaders and compositions of the African academic art music scene in West Africa. Finally, it must be acknowledged that the producers sought to address an audience of highly educated listeners of Western classical music that was open to foreign cultures and desired to experience some "exotic", so-called "African" sounds. These listeners likely would not have bought an album of avant-garde music by unknown African composers but would prefer the mixing of well-known string sounds with foreign textures.

#### *Lambarena: Bach to Africa***—the illusion of a colonial bi-musicality**

The idea behind the studio project *Lambarena: Bach to Africa* (1993)was to bring to life the historical soundscape of Lambaréné, Gabon, where French-German theologian, philosopher and medical doctor Albert Schweitzer (1875- 1965) rehearsed Bach on his "tropical organ." (Schweitzer 1926: 25) "In Lambaréné Albert Schweitzer, through music, brought about the meeting of Europe and Africa." (de Courson/Akendengué 1993: 6) It is obvious that colonialism and Christian missions are at the core of this production featuring the music of one of the most prominent church-music composers worldwide. The album cover shows a collage of the first building of his "rainforest hospital" in Lambaréné made out of notation paper. The booklet presents black-and-white pictures of Schweitzer and Bach with a colonial map of the Lambaréné area in the background. Photos of the recording sessions are also reduced to black-and-white as if they were taken at the same time. Overall, the visuals present a colonial illusion, and the use of the collective term "Africa" in the title instead of "Gabon" reproduces the Western stereotype that Africa is a country, not a continent.

The album was developed by de Courson (1946), a French musician and producer, and Akendengué (1943), a Gabonese author, philosopher and guitarist. Akendengué, who studied in France in the 1960s, met de Courson, who produced his world music album *Mando*, in 1983. For the album *Bach to Africa,*  Akendengué did casting in Gabon and invited ten Gabonese ensembles to a recording studio in Paris, where they joined Western classical musicians and other international jazz and tango musicians (cf. de Courson/Akendengué 1993: 4). The producers seriously tried to compare extracts of Bach's music with corresponding songs from the Gabonese social context. For instance, an incantation of the dead within Bombé, a Bouiti-Apindji ritual, is mixed with *Ruht wohl, ihr heiligen Gebeine* from Bach's *St John Passion* about Christ's resurrection from the dead. The choral *Lasst uns den nicht zerteilen* is combined with the song *Sakanda* from the region Haut-Ogooué, which also celebrates the end of a period of mourning. The extracts blend into each other: sometimes Bach's music and a Gabonese piece are performed at the same time;

sometimes they translated the German lyrics into a Gabonese language; and often Bach's music is simply accompanied by African drums or instruments. In that sense, this cross-over production simultaneously creates something new and propagates an interreligious musical dialogue. Akendengué tries to build a comparative of musical cultures on the same level, although he can be criticized for using only local music styles, giving the impression that pre-industrial Gabonese music traditions is the only existing musical genre in the country today.

Problematically, this sound collage is based on purely historical imaginings. There is no evidence that Schweitzer ever played with Gabonese musicians. He only occasionally accompanied hymns during church services on the harmonium. His daily organ rehearsals in Lambaréné were necessary, because he sometimes went to Europe and America to perform Bach concerts for the charitable purpose of financing his hospital, which was completely dependent on private funding. Even though he did not dislike Gabonese music, Schweitzer tried to prohibit its performance on the hospital campus so patients could relax and recover. Thus, the two musical cultures co-existed in Lambaréné independently of each other and did not fuse as the album purports (cf. Riva 2018; Klein 2007).

The construction of a strong contrast between two musical cultures is also still apparent in *Lambarena: Bach to Africa*. Even when the international musicians play together, the album reinforces the difference between German art music and Gabonese "traditional" music. The production consists of extracts of Bach's music performed by an orchestra and a choir with mediocre intonation and technical precision and diverse pieces of Gabonese music. Special sounds are added to the Gabonese music to give the impression it was recorded outside in the rainforest, whereas Bach's music was recorded inside a church hall. This presentation reproduces the contrast of Africans as "children of nature" and "civilized" Europeans. The contrast of the two music forms is also reinforced by a form of mixing that rarely leads to new interpretations of Bach's music. Unlike the soundtrack of the German movie *Bach in Brazil* (Ahlers 2015), which uses Bach's melodies and harmonic patterns as the basis for a creative improvisation of Afro-Brazilian music styles in a Brazilian setting, and the US-American funk-and-soul album *Handel's Messiah: a Soulful Celebration* (Lipuma-Nash et al. 1992) performed by Afro-Americans, the album *Lambarena: Bach to Africa* does not present a new way of playing Bach in Gabon.

It should also be stated that the combination of different music styles or forms is only possible when short extracts of the two are mixed together. The complex harmonies and modulations within Bach's works could not fit with the harmonic structures of the Gabonese songs and dances in the long term. The common denominator bringing the two musical styles together is the constant rhythmical and metrical basis of Bach's music. However, this element permits mixing Bach's music with nearly all music in the world and does not convey any special message about a European-African connection. It is simply easier to mix Bach's music with non-Western music styles than the music of composers such as Chopin and Wagner.

The production with 250 singers and 50 musicians is impossible to ever perform on stage. It portrays a soundscape that not only is imagined but also cannot be reproduced outside a recording studio. For de Courson, the success of 80,000 sales within the first year opened a new area of work in crossover productions, leading to *Mozart the Egyptian* (1997/2005) and *O'Stravaganza - Vivaldi in Ireland* (2001). Akendengué, like most of the composers of the Kronos Quartet production, did not follow up with more projects in classical art music but continued his career within the world music scene. This development must not be regarded as an economic disadvantage for him, but it shows that it is very hard for an African musician to enter the Western musical scene, even if he has produced one successful album. It is not possible to trace the careers of the Gabonese ensembles involved in the production. The history of this cross-over production thus shows that it is mainly intended for a European audience still attracted by keywords such as "Schweitzer", "Lambarena", "Bach" and "Africa". The Gabonese musicians' creativity is still interpreted as foreign, "natural" and underdeveloped. The profits of the production mostly went to a French producer, and it barely changed the careers of the Gabonese musicians involved.<sup>1</sup>

<sup>1</sup> For a dif ferent concept of mixing Bach with African music, see i.e. the group AfrikanEr, September 27, 2018 (http://afrikaner.de).

# *Mozart the Egyptian I+II:* **Musical transformations around the Mediterranean Sea**

It is a well-known fact that Mozart drew inspiration from the music of the "Orient"—wherever he thought it was. He imitated the music of the Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, as in his singspiel *Die Entführung aus dem Serail* and in his *Alla turca* movement from the piano sonata in A major (cf. Head 2000). He also showed interest in elements of ancient Egyptian culture, like in his stage music for the play *Thamos, König von Ägypten* or in his singspiel *Die Zauberf löte* (cf. Ebeling 2003). To some extent, he even portrayed Africans, such as the stereotyped and racist role of the "Moor" Monostatos in the latter (cf. Stenzl 2002). The album cover of *Mozart the Egyptian I+II* plays with these associations, showing ancient Egyptian sculptures and cosmic symbols in the background in combination with Arabian writings.<sup>2</sup>

Hughes de Courson and Ahmed El Maghraby, an Egyptian cultural manager and director of the Egyptian Center for Culture and Art *Makan* (ECCA)<sup>3</sup> , go one step further with their album *Mozart the Egyptian*<sup>4</sup> . They perceive an intense inf luence of Arabic Egyptian music on Mozart's work and seek to prove it by compiling a medley of so-called "traditional" Egyptian music and the most popular of Mozart's pieces from his operas, concertos, and symphonic works to his songs and the requiem. They do not differentiate among Turkish, Arabic and North African music or any historical stages of Egyptian music. Indeed, they do not refer to ancient Egyptian music at all. Therefore, from the general outline the album specifies a certain country on the African continent but gives a rather diffuse impression of what the producers actually mean with "Egypt". Do they refer to ancient times, to the 18th century empire or to the present-day state?

Some mixes on the album, primarily performed by the Bulgarian Teg and the Egyptian Nasredine Dalil, are surprising and revealing. The combination of the first movement of the symphony N<sup>o</sup> 40 with the song *Lamma bada* 

<sup>2</sup> There are also sporadic projects that try to mix Mozart with Sub-Saharian African music, see Klaus Högl: "So fanden sich Mozart und Afrika" in: Mittelbayrische Zeitung 30.09.2014, September 27, 2018 (http://www.josef-bayer.de/cababana/himbisa-mukama/berichte/sofanden-sich-mozart-und-afrika-1/index.html).

<sup>3</sup> September, 27, 2018 (https://egyptmusic.org/en/).

<sup>4</sup> Also published under the title: *Mozart in Egypt*, based on an idea by Hughes de Courson and Ahmed al Maghraby, Virgin Classics 7243 5 45311 2 5, LC 7873, 1997.

*yayathenna* (of doubtful origin and time) sounds as if Mozart has attempted to adjust Arabic music stylistics to his "limited" diatonic scale system. The producers are aware of the challenging process of blending two opposing musical systems into one based on different concepts. They describe their interpretation in the booklet of the album in the following way:

Western classical music, tempered, rich in harmony and counterpoint, demands that one listens to the sound simultaneously, "vertically". Oriental music, on the other hand, makes its impression by never superimposing one over another its exquisitely ornamented melodies with their subtle modes and intervals are complex, sometimes asymmetric rhythms. It demands that one listens "horizontally" to the sounds one af ter another. In trying to marry this horizontally and vertically, this musical game presents a sort of "crazy diagonal". We hope the listener will pardon this audacity, and will take the same pleasure in this adventure as have the 150 musicians, Arab and classical.

To avoid this "crazy diagonal", Mozart is sometimes played only on Egyptian instruments, as in his *Concerto for oud and piano N*<sup>o</sup>  *23*, whose second movement is arranged for an Arabic instrument and the European piano. In the track *Dhikr/requiem/Golgotha*, Sufi meditation is mixed with extracts of Mozart's Catholic mass for the dead and chants of the Coptic Church of Egypt. Again, the interreligious soundscape produced represents more the idea of the late 20th century than that of the 18th century.

The different viewpoints and the historical gap between the music of an 18th century composer and the diverse Egyptian musical heritage become apparent in the producers' general statement in the album booklet comparing Mozart's interest in Egypt with recent perceptions of his music in that country:

Steeped in the orientalism of the 18th century, a freemason fascinated by the Pharaonic myths, Mozart loved Egypt from which he of ten took inspiration. And the Egyptians love Mozart, whose art pleases or enchants, going from the light-hearted to the sacred in a way which is very reminiscent of the great Arab composers.

Is this "fascination" and "love" for each other a basis for i.e. combining the lullaby *Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein* (attributed only to Mozart) with the Nubian lullaby *Mahdiyat*? Actually, the analogy of these two songs is that they are both lullabies. Because of the social context (female singing) and the function of the songs (to lull a baby to sleep), these songs share similarities. But that does not construct any connections between Mozart and Nubian music. *Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf ein* could be mixed with almost any lullaby in the world in that way.

The main point of this critical analysis is that de Courson and El Maghraby's production fuses Mozart not with Egyptian music from the 18th century but with arrangements of Egyptian music in recent decades. What the producers pretend to have invented is actually nothing new—or perhaps new only for European listeners. Neoclassical compositions and arrangements of Egyptian traditional music played by a Western orchestra with additional Egyptian instruments have existed since the early 20th century. Most prominently, this can be heard in the arrangements of the songs of Umm Kulthum (cf. Danielson 1997). A long list of Egyptian composers has written concertos for Arabic instruments (cf. Kamel 1999). From an historical perspective, Western art music has inf luenced popular Egyptian music since the 19th century (e.g. the first opera house on the African continent opened in Cairo in 1869) but not so much vice versa. Furthermore, what happened in Egyptian music history also occurred in parts of Asia, especially India, where the melodies of European classical composers were integrated into many popular film songs. The album *Mozart in Egypt* merely documents one of these typical processes of transforming Western classical music into non-European musical cultures. Egyptian music, too, is relatively easy to mix with European music as the North African countries around the Mediterranean Sea share many cultural traditions (e.g. the distinction between "art music" and "folk music") even if they pretend to be "different".

Due to the success of the first album of *Mozart the Egyptian* and several concerts with Egyptian and Bulgarian musicians—sometimes completed with multimedia dance performances<sup>5</sup> —the production team decided to produce a second volume of *Mozart the Egyptian II* (2005) for the Mozart Year 2006. The album follows the same concept but shows a shift in the target audience. While in the first production, the Bulgarian Symphonic Orchestra and Children Choir of Radio Sofia are mediocre in their intonation and

<sup>5 &</sup>quot;Egyptian Mozart", September, 27, 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWODiz7DjlY).

musical expression but are still enjoyable, the quality of the recording of the second volume is barely acceptable for trained listeners of classical music. The musical dynamics are poorly performed and strictly bound to the meter. The mix sometimes sounds as if the instruments have even been produced by virtual instruments in a sequencer program. However, this production features different talented North African musicians and ensembles, including the Egyptian group Mawawil and the Nubian group Aragide, both also featured in the ECCA's *Makan*. Again, all of the groups remained in the world music scene in the long-term and did not profit from the success of the album for their careers. The producers seem to primarily have targeted the world music audience that enjoys occasionally listening to classical favorites. This shift can be seen as a ref lection of the audience's changing interests. For instance, at the time of these productions, musicologist Jan Ling (2003) asked: "Is 'world music' the 'classic music' of our time?" Perhaps this album is not a "cross-over" production in a strict sense anymore, but a world music album that draws its inspiration from Mozart's music.

#### *Zulu music meets Mozart:* **a niche for black singers in Europe?**

Among the four productions analyzed here, only *Zulu music meets Mozart*  (2006) features an existing ensemble, MoZuluArt, an Austrian group that has produced three albums so far and has performed regularly in more than 20 countries, including several African nations. Their different approach towards an intercultural music project can already be recognized in their group name. MoZuluArt does not only blend the name of the composer "Mozart" with the name of the South African group "Zulu", but does it by imitating the grammar of South African languages. The prefix "mo-" can be found in the Sotho-Tswana language groups, meaning "man", i.e. "MoSotho" is a "Sotho person". The similar prefix in Xhosa and Zulu is "um-". For South Africans, this linguistic imitation is quite obvious, not to mention that the group name also emphasizes in the end what the people involved do: "art". Therefore, the group directly shows that the two musical sources that are connected in their work are regarded as having the same value. This message is strengthened by the cover image that shows a white spot in the shape of a silhouette of Mozart on a cow skin, an animal that is a symbol for wealth and strength in Southern Africa.

The ensemble consists of three singers born in Zimbabwe (Ramadu, Vusa Mkhaya Ndlovu and Blessings Nqo Nkomo) and the Austrian piano player Roland Guggenbichler, all of whom are based in Vienna. Some of the singers come from the families of freedom fighters and arrived in Austria in 1995 through a cultural exchange program. The group first performed in 2004 at a jubilee concert at the Radiokulturhaus in Vienna for the tenth anniversary of the end of the South African apartheid system. Their success motivated them to found a cross-over ensemble. After their first programme in 2005, they were invited to play with the Wiener Symphoniker to open the Wiener Festwochen in 2006 and thus became part of the celebrations of the Mozart Year 2006 (private email communication with Roland Guggenbichler, October 3, 2018). Although the group presents both South African songs and their own compositions, their focus lies on new interpretations of Mozart's music. In doing so, they hope to mix musical cultures and overcome ethnic and imagined racial differences, as they state on their website (www.mozuluart.at):

Music is and has always been a unifying factor around the world, bringing together people from dif ferent backgrounds, races, ethnicities and, of course, traditions. It is through music that people get to know and understand other cultures and develop a liking to adopt into that culture.

Although the group is based in Europe, the Zimbabwean singers must have been familiar with Mozart's music in Zimbabwe as part of the "white's music" from which they were excluded. Their motivation to overcome differences, therefore, can be applied to the European-African relationship as well to African internal contexts. At the same time, the group is a living collaboration between Zimbabwean singers and an Austrian continuously trying to bridge various cultural misunderstandings. For example, piano player Roland Guggenbichler said in the television feature *MoZuluArt - Steine am Weg*:

Me, I don't understand the lyrics. I only speak some loose scraps of Ndebele. But this year, we already played in South Africa, and there, the people did understand the lyrics of course.<sup>6</sup>

<sup>6</sup> TV-Magazine "Feierabend" (26.12.2011) "MoZuluArt - Steine am Weg", September, 28, 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11zOHoHtyCQ ).

In contrast to the L'Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste, famous for its conventional interpretations of European classical music in the documentary film *Kinshasa Symphony* (2010), the Zimbabwean singers use Mozart's music only as a basis to develop new vocal lines in the singing style of the Zulu "isicathamiya" men choirs. This style became very popular after Paul Simon's album *Graceland* (1986), in which he performs with the South African group Blacksmith Lady Mambazo (cf. Erlmann 1996). The piano enriches the music with jazz-oriented accompaniment. Giggenbichler describes this form as a new interpretation of Mozart's work in the already mentioned television feature in the following words: "He [Blessings Nqo Nkomo] listened to the music in detail and added what he believes the music wants to tell him." The newly written lyrics also refer several times to the Christian faith, but in the case of MoZuluArt it is a confession of individual Africans who have grown-up in Christian communities. Their religious expressions do not refer to the European missionary time any more.

From performances with dancing choreography and entertaining announcements between songs, it is apparent that MoZuluArt wants to attract a wider audience than just classical music listeners. Indeed, its show even won a German comedy prize. Its performances are often staged in the context of Christmas concerts and charity events focused on Africa. Political and social engagement play important roles in the group's activities, and its use of popular classical music that has a big audience in Austria may be interpreted as a means to accomplish this goal. The group members do not see themselves as Western classical musicians, as Vusa Mkhaya Ndlovu writes:

We've never thought of entering the classical music scene as classical singers. The best thing to do as an artist is to stay true to your craf t and work on being the best version of yourself. This is what we are trying to do and achieve. If an apple tries to be an orange, it will spend the rest of its life being compared to the best oranges, but it will remain an apple (Private email communication with Vusa Mkhaya Ndlovu, October 5, 2018).

However, the group's attempt to work on the same eye-level and to reach an honest exchange of musical genres and identities and at the same time raise awareness for social and political issues has not led to the economic success enjoyed by the other productions discussed above. MoZuluArt works with a music agency to secure performance opportunities outside the relatively small Austria, but all of the musicians have to work with other ensembles to survive. To be sure, this group shows a new and more sensitized form of collaboration between European and African born musicians. Founded in 2004, it portrays a new generation of musicians that are aware of the historical and actual power dynamics between the two continents and tries to overcome that in their structure, their music and their social engagement. Unfortunately, to work on a project where the musicians really exchange ideas of different cultures on the same eye-level seems to be less successful in the Western hemisphere than to fantasize a colonial or collective "image of Africa".

#### **Conclusions**

Due to Africa's colonial history, no collaboration takes place between Western classical musicians and African musicians without a definition of what African music is. In *Pieces of Africa* by the Kronos Quartet, we see the noble motivation to record at least some works of art music by African-born composers. However, even the production's success did not open the doors to the Western classical music business for these composers; instead, the fame of the Kronos Quartet increased. De Courson's *Lambarena: Bach to Africa* and *Mozart the Egyptian I+II* are Eurocentric productions that reproduce colonial imaginations of the "other". The engaged musicians had the unique chance to present their music to a wider Western audience, but they weren't able to cross over to the Western classical music market in the long term, because of this "othering" of their music. It is questionable if the *Lambarena* production should not be called cultural appropriation, because sounds of other cultures are mainly used to enrich a European musical setting. What these productions are intended to reveal is not even clear. In the cross-over production *The Arabian Passion* (2009) by the jazz ensemble Sarband and Fadia El-Hage, for instance, the producers at least have a visible intent to raise awareness of the suffering of groups in the Middle East by interpreting Bach's passions in Arab languages with Arab instruments. What, though, do we learn from de Courson's albums apart from the blending of different musical extracts? MoZuluArt has initiated the only sustainable project that consistently blends Western classical music and music styles from Southern Africa. It is part of a movement that deliberately uses European music to express other musical identities. Just how much the colonial context generates the devel-

opment of these European-African cross-over productions becomes even more obvious if you compare these albums with the participation of Asian musicians and composers within the Western classical music scene. For decades, composers from Japan and China have been recognized internationally, and their works are performed and recorded. The infrastructure of institutions for Western music education all over the Asian continent enables musicians to learn Western music, to study abroad and to enter the international music market. There are several neo-classical works that combine the classical orchestra with Asian instruments and music, but they are written by Asian composers themselves and are mainly performed in Asia. If you look at the African continent, similar but even more sophisticated projects have been initiated in recent years. For instance, in *Mozart's Magic Flute* by Impempe Yomlingo (2009), an all-black cast accompanied by marimbas perform Mozart's *Zauberf löte*, enlarged with South African songs and staged within the context of South African people groups. If the Western music business wants to overcome its colonial structures, it should support more Africa-based cross-over productions in the coming years. For example, it is difficult to understand why no major international label has ever produced a work from the rich, innovative genre of African pianism (cf. Nketia 1994; Kimberlin/Euba 2005)—or the interesting cross-over projects realized in Africa, such as Cameroonian opera singer Christian Akoa's blending of Cameroonian church-choir repertoires with Western bel canto singing on his privately produced album *Dieu des Traditions* (2009). African musicians have sufficient potential to develop their own cross-over albums and do not need to imagine oriental soundscapes of Africa or to fantasize about whitewashed black composers.

### **Bibliography**


Gilroy, Paul (1993): The Black Atlantic. Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.


# **Contemplating musical life in Tunisia under the French protectorate—the society and challenges**

*Alla El Kahla*

#### **Introduction**

Musical life in Tunisia under the rule of the French (1881-1956), despite its vitality and diversity, has been the object of much speculation. Only a few musicologists and ethnomusicologists dedicated themselves to studying its developments and making a deep account of "music in culture." (Merriam 1964: 3f) Most of what is known today stems from historical documentation and fieldwork that were undertaken only in some historical periods. For example, eminent figures such as Baron D'Erlanger, Robert Lachmann, and Erich von Hornbostel, among others, began to research music traditions in Tunisia starting in 1910. They established a vital arena of academic discourse surrounding the musical life conducted at the ground level, which contributed to planting a seed of research in an attempt to improve comprehension with regards to musical culture in Tunisia, the musical landscape that makes up the musical culture from the ground up. Nonetheless, fieldwork undertaken in ethnomusicology on Tunisian music has unfortunately ceased to dig for alternative issues of Tunisian music for decades, meaning the field enjoys little focus. Only rare traces of scholarship remain, so that there is a gap in Tunisian musical scholarship.

The present essay brings the state of music in Tunisia under the rule of the French (1881-1956) into focus. During this period, francophone culture was a central element in Tunisian society. Music had been an integral cultural component well before the French occupation, when the land was under Husainid rule, which witnessed the establishment of a music department within the military academy of Bardo in 1837, along with the formation of a symphonic orchestra in 1872, in order to preserve Tunisian musical heritage. However, music commenced to alter its state in 1881 under the rule of the French, who established laws to abolish any musical practice among the Tunisians. Tunisian intellectuals opposed this move and committed to establishing a movement to emphasize the values of Tunisian identity. Then, the 1930s witnessed the Rachidia's foundation, which played a central role in preserving Tunisian musical heritage. The movement contributed to the emergence of an eminent cultural life, which witnessed the purpose of the element of music in the daily mood; music, therefore, became part of society.

In order to shed some light on the role played by music in Tunisian culture in this specific historical period, this essay engages with a review of historical studies and points out the impacts of politics on the Tunisian musical life as well as turning points that changed music practices. Methodologically, the instrument of ethnomusicology as the study of music in culture guides the investigation, a method paradigm that allows the issue of music traditions in non-Western cultures to be covered in depth. By rethinking the status of music in Tunisia during the French protectorate, we expect to offer some paths for further ethnomusicological ref lection on Tunisian music.

This essay is structured in three parts. First, several inf luences on music in Tunisian territory will be discussed. Tunisia depicts a crossroads of different cultures such as Maghreb, Andalusian, Arab, Mediterranean, and Ottoman and sub-Saharan, among others, that outline the country's cultural extent. The music culture resulting from the exchange between these cultures is transnational in essence and has caught the attention of researchers interested in cultures of the orient at the beginning of the 20th century. In the second part, the pre-colonial musical life in Tunisia will be brought into focus. The efforts to preserve musical traditions and enhance musical life during Husainid rule will be discussed in more detail. The third part concentrates on musical life under the French protectorate, which will be analyzed in three steps. First, the effects of the abolition of music from cultural life is discussed, when Tunisian culture witnessed a threat from the French rule, which imposed a strategy for purposes of blurring any autochthone culture emblem. Second, a new way to evaluate Tunisian music through the ethnomusicological work of Baron D'Erlanger will be discussed, who was a pioneer with regard the study of music traditions in Tunisia, and who left traces of written sources. Third, the popular reaction in the form of a cultural movement around the Rachidia, an association of traditional Tunisian music, and role-playing in musical life will be discussed. In this context, Tunisian so-

ciety formed a cohabitation milieu under the French protectorate and witnessed the presence of many foreign communities, who played a central role in moderating the cultural life of the Tunisians and improved the context of cultural discourse in society.

### **Sketching the music in the Tunisian territory**

Though a small African land, Tunisia has cultural history marked by continuous exchange. The land's geographic position played a central role in making it a suitable target for conquest by many civilizations since the antique era. Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, Spanish, and Ottomans, among others, attempted expeditions to the land. The land was coveted so much so that there was a persistent threat to its sovereignty. Nonetheless, that not only contributed to establishing an exuberant cultural atmosphere, but also outlined a cultural pattern, which witnessed a reshaping whenever a conquest occurred at the ground level. Different cultures resided in the land and played a role in establishing a vital cultural life, which contributed towards inaugurating an enthusiastic cultural discourse, and which encompassed different features of the culture's components that crossed borders and resided at ground level, hence sketching the cultural landscape. Tunisia has been a warm host to foreign inf luences, which assimilated and then became integral elements of its cultural diversity.

"Mousiqa", the Tunisian expression for music, occupies a prominent status in the Tunisian culture and is a vital component in the life of Tunisians. Tunisian music depicts a miscegenation of different cultural strata, which marks its musical culture by a significant trademark (Davila 2012: 785) and distinguishes it from twin music cultures such as the Arabian music culture, Andalusian, Mediterranean, and Sub-Saharan music culture. Tunisian music owns a proper expression and entertains itself as idiosyncratic. Indeed, music traditions in Tunisia depict the land's musical culture, which encompasses the multicultural factor in the music repertoire, and which brings a hybridity of different music expressions into play vis-à-vis the cultural context — either the integral context such as Maghreb, sub-Saharan, Arab, and Mediterranean among others, or local-urban, rural, mountain, Bedouin, and Saharan (Guettat 1982: 227).

The Tunisian music repertoire is usually classified in three main branches, according to the nature of music and its role in society: traditional, folk and religious. Although this classification is commonly used in Tunisia, these different genres were not well analyzed in their different dynamics in history, especially regarding their relevance as a cultural backdrop during French occupation. We consider that their study offers a path to deepen ethnomusicological research on Tunisian music practices.

#### **A glimpse into the pre-colonial musical life of Tunisia**

Tunisia witnessed significant events during the 19th century that challenged the land, which led to a turning point in Tunisia's modern history. Indeed, the land had been under the rule of the Husainid dynasty since 1705, after which it became autonomous and split off from the Ottoman Empire that had reigned over Tunisia's territory for more than two centuries. The dynasty survived significant occurrences vis-à-vis the unsettling political atmosphere, which threatened its sovereignty. However, eminent decisions taken by main political figures in the dynasty brought about vital reforms in order to establish the Husainid's modern state while following a Western tendency within states under the Ottoman Empire apropos the society's lifestyle.

In 1837, Ahmed Beyascended the Husainid rule's throne as the tenth "Bey", a Turkish military title. His governance was marked with vital reforms intended to establish the Husainid modern state and is especially linked to the abolition of slavery in Tunisia in 1846. Husainid rule witnessed the inauguration of a military academy known as Madrasat Bardo Al-Harbeya to establish the state's military so as to reassure the land and guard its boundaries from any external danger. Actually, the academy didn't focus on military training alone, i.e. military science, but consisted of an additional curriculum of music education as per Ahmed Bey's decision. He is known as a music-lover, his palace was stage to music performances and had a special music ambience, in which concerts took place every night throughout the year. He ordered the establishment of the academy's music department for the purpose of founding a military music ensemble. This became a vital component in the military's hierarchy to perform in the dynasty's official ceremonies in accordance with the music-Westernizing tendency in the Ottoman states (Shiloah

1995: 243), and although the Husainid rule split off from the Ottoman Empire, it kept up a close relationship with the Ottoman government of Istanbul.

The academy's music department worked to tend to music traditions at the ground level—indigenous music and local musical practices. The paradigm of oral tradition marked the music teaching, which was a transmission method in order to save the music tradition and was conducted by music masters in the society. The department undertook fieldwork in the form of music performed at the ground level, which was then turned into transcriptions to guard the written sources of music in Tunisia (Ministry of Culture 2005: 1–10). In 1872, the department published its first musicological treatise on traditional Tunisian music entitled *Ghayet Al- Mouna Wa Sourour*. It consists of the 13 masterpieces of the "Nouba" (Tunisian music repertoire) and the "Malouf" (Tunisian old chants). While the "Nouba" is a term linked with Maghreb music as a musical suite, built as a succession of vocal and instrumental musical pieces, the "Malouf" is a genre of Maghreb music. Additionally, the department conducted a study on a musical instrument used to perform local music, as well as a demonstration regarding the musical life conducted in society. Thus, what we could call an ethnomusicological interest in traditional Tunisian music has been part of the academy's assignment. Meanwhile, music had a vital status in Tunisian society (Rezgui 1965: 62–63), in particular in the Arab-Andalusian music culture, which depicted eminent illustrations of musical life at the ground level, and which spread over rural and urban areas. In fact, the Arab-Andalusian music tradition is the descendant of the Moorish communities who found refuge in Maghreb countries after Grenada's fall at the hands of Catholic monarchs in 1492. These communities brought in their autochthone music, which inf luenced the Maghreb societies, forming transcultural music practices.

The 1860s witnessed the nomination of a prominent personality in the Husainid rule: Kheredine Pacha, who occupied the post of government head, and contributed juridical reforms in order to improve the state's governing pattern (El Moussaoui 2013: 1–3). In this period, Tunisia was undergoing a financial crisis and needed to strengthen its trading activities in order to boost its economy while also consolidating friendly diplomatic relations. Under Kheredine's reforms, the Husainid rule established a foreign policy for the purpose of bridging diplomatic relations with Western countries, such as France, Great Britain and Italy, and also with neighbors and close cultural lands such as the Maghreb and Ottoman states. It followed that some foreign communities established in Tunisia, such as Italians, French and British-Maltese, contributed to reshaping the country's lifestyle and demography (Ganiage 1966: 867). They brought their cultures into Tunisia, causing an eminent cultural shift in local music practices. Thus, it is of high relevance that prior to the French protectorate, Tunisian music practices were greatly inf luenced by multiple music traditions.

Yet, during the 19th century, Andalusian music practices in particular spread throughout Tunisian territory, becoming part of local customs and traditional ceremonies, such as weddings, circumcisions, religious feasts and rituals. With the arrival of the foreign communities, who attempted to gain a foothold in the musical life, new musical elements were introduced and started to play a central role in Tunisian life and received a scope in Tunisian society (Cleveland 1978: 33). Indeed, Tunis City—the capital—meanwhile exhibited a cosmopolitan atmosphere, as most foreign communities were concentrated here, and it witnessed the emergence of the phenomenon of "Cafichanta"—a local idiom that means "café-chantant". Though café halls were mainly used for business by foreign communities to improve their economic activities, they were also vital spots as they acted as a host to Western music/theatre/dance shows, which was an unfamiliar art context for the Tunisians. Foreign communities also played a central role in introducing Western musical practices by staging theaters to host musical concerts and theater masterpieces, including a symphonic orchestra in 1872 in Tunis City, whose membership was comprised of Tunisians and non-Tunisians (Darmon 1951a: 88–90). The aim was to assemble both cultures, Western and Tunisian, proposing a cultural model of good integration that stood out as a cultural discourse among other cultures in the society.

Kheredine Pacha's reforms continued at the ground level, and included the education domain—the inauguration of the "Sadikia" school, which is a high school in Tunis City, was a key event—to provide Tunisian students with modern education (Katz 2012: 695–697), focusing on academic training in languages such as French, Italian, and English in addition to humanities, natural sciences and exact sciences, a counterpoint to the "Zaytouna" education connected to the famous Zaytouna mosque in Tunis City that focused mainly on religious education, i.e. Islamic teachings. However, these reforms did not materialize on account of the resignation of Kheredine Pacha from the post of government head. The Husainid rule was faced with a predicament of authority, which led the state to an economic crisis and wors-

ened the political atmosphere at the ground level. As a result, the dynasty had to borrow credits and became indebted. This led to a famous occurrence in Tunisian modern history: The Treaty of Bardo was signed in 1881. This treaty allowed France to extend control over the Husainid's soil. In addition, France attempted to take advantage and profited from the weak Husainid state that led to another treaty known as the Treaty of La Marsa in 1883. This treaty stripped the dynasty of its sovereignty (Dewhurst Lewis 2009: 107– 109), establishing what we call the French protectorate that showed quite a different face considering music practices in Tunisia.

Looking at these notes on pre-colonial music practices in Tunisian society, we see that here fascinating transnational entanglements pop up, entanglements that would greatly benefit from ethnomusicological consideration. While the official national music department at the academy was interested in developing a canon of Tunisian music, multiple music practices from diverse parts of the world melted in the thriving atmosphere of Tunisia. Thus, questions of transnational significance arise when music practices are exercised between local Tunisian traditions and foreign communities, and they become more and more localized like in the example of the "café-chantant" or as we see regarding Andalusian music practices. Indeed, this is still a blank area in need of further research.

#### **Musical life under the French protectorate**

The French protectorate represents a difficult stage in Tunisia's modern history, wherein the French colonial presence played a central role in deepening the predicaments in Tunisian society. The French government took advantage of the dynasty's wealth in natural resources and avoided resistance, since the general public refused the protectorate's military forces on Tunisian soil (Cohen 1972: 369–372). Therefore, the French authorities employed a strategy that would create predicaments among Tunisians, especially utilizing religious conf licts among citizens, since from a religious perspective Tunisian society was split in two, with Muslim Tunisians in the majority and Jewish Tunisians, a minority, emphasizing the Jewish-Arab conf lict within the society. Regarding cultural participation, it is important to note that the number of illiterates among Tunisian increased, since they were excluded from schools (Tarifa 1971: 150-151). As a result, Tunisians were treated as second-class citizens in relation to Western citizens, who were privileged and had many advantages.

In fact, the colonial presence in Tunisia worsened the dynastic situation and created a social crisis. The Tunisians experienced difficult circumstances as penury was widespread among the population, and attempts were made by the protectorate to disrupt cohabitation in a society which had long known different cultures and communities. Nonetheless, Tunisians' cultural life contributed to enlivening their daily life.

#### **The music scene in the first years of the French protectorate**

Tunisia's music tradition was a vital component of its cultural life and provided an escape from the state of disruption brought upon them by the French authorities. At the same time, the protectorate gave privileges to the foreign communities of Europe. This led to a split in musical life into two different patterns: the Western music tradition and the Tunisian music traditions. European communities improved the music spectacles performed in café halls and attempted to expand Western cultural life. Therefore, they established associations dedicated to Western culture for the purpose of bridging a network with European communities that resided within Tunisian society by organizing events such as music concerts/recitals and theater performances that were dedicated only to the European audience. The music scene observed a vibrant movement, from which emerged music ensembles/orchestras, instrument factories of Western musical instruments, and leading to the establishment of the first musical training institution in 1897, which is now the Conservatoire National de Tunis (Darmon 1951b: 62–66).

In parallel, Tunisians had their own musical life, which did not cease to animate their daily, albeit poor, life conditions. The musical life had two main music patterns: religious and secular, which took root mainly in the Andalusian music traditions that split into two principal branches— "Malouf al jad" (religious musical repertoire) and "Malouf al hazl" (secular musical repertoire) (Rezgui 1965:72–77). Tunisians got accustomed to heading to Sufi lodges, which played a central cultural role in moderating the musical traditions of the Tunisians. The "Zawia" (i.e. "Sufi") lodges emerged as a vital spot where Tunisians started to conduct such religious rituals. They noticed a growth in musical activities where Tunisians assembled for eminent occasions in opposition to the French protectorate. Tunisian society saw an emergence of 12 different Sufi lodges including Chadouleya, Tijaneya, Issawiya, Azouzia, and Soulameya. The Sufi lodges witnessed an exuberant music movement, where music was a crucial factor in moderating the rituals conducted in each lodge, and which differed from one school to another (Davis 1996: 316). Besides, they were vital spots to host Tunisians' traditional ceremonies and feasts. At the same time, secular music traditions were timid compared to the Sufi lodges. Its followers were mainly Tunisian Jews, who were in a minority in the Muslim-majority Tunisia. Their music practices occurred mainly in private spots and had a small audience (Taieb 1982: 953–954).

To sum up, musical life in Tunisia witnessed significant traces of different music genres, which contributed to the music scene of the Tunisian society. Tunisians' music traditions did not disappear, although they were marginalized as compared to foreign communities' music activities. Still, there are many gaps in this history that an ethnomusicological approach could help fill. For example, little is known about the relationship between Western and Tunisian music practices, if there was some form of exchange or indirect transfers that inf luenced both sides. It would also be interesting to investigate whether this clear separation between Western and Tunisian music traditions led to a homogenization of music practices in Tunisian territory, diminishing its diversity.

#### **A new form to evaluate Tunisian music**

The 20th century observed a turning point, which contributed to shedding light on Tunisians' musical life and allowing user to evaluate it from a different perspective. Scholars became interested in the Arab world, attempted to grasp Arab cultures through many narrative accounts and depicted the Arab world as a spot of exotic atmosphere. As a result, the Arab world witnessed a wave of scholars, researchers, and explorers, who aimed to survey the cultural life of the Arab societies. This tempted studies in different disciplines such as anthropology, ethnography, history, and musicology, among others. In this context, the musical element is stated as a paradigm by studies conducted for grasping music as a component in Arab societies, and therefore, to bear witness to musical life.

Tunisian musical scholarship includes the name Rodolphe D'Erlanger, an Arab music connoisseur (1872–1932), who emerged as a leading figure with regards to studying the music of Tunisia and conducted a seminal study on Tunisian music. Indeed, D'Erlanger was a successor of the British-French bourgeoisie, who supported the Husainid state during the economic crisis and offered a loan to the dynasty. In 1910, D'Erlanger opted to sojourn to Tunisia and study the society's music traditions. D'Erlanger built a palace in the region of Sidi bou Said in Tunis City's northern suburbs, which is now Tunisia's Centre for Arab and Mediterranean Music with the National Sound Archive, and has observed the establishment of a workshop dedicated to improving the grasp on Tunisian music (D'Erlanger 1917: 91–95).

D'Erlanger established a new form to evaluate the Tunisian musical tradition. The fieldwork was proposed to study the musical life of Tunisian society in order to improve the perceptions held of it. The work dissected the music traditions in different regions in Tunisia, which included ethnographic fieldwork at the ground level to collect a repertoire of folk songs and old chants, and which was then followed up by data transcription. Tunisian music thus began to be researched by scholars in the musicology field through D'Erlanger's contributions, which played a pivotal role in providing testimony on the status of music in Tunisian society:

[D'Erlanger] published his first article in the Revue Tunisienne in 1917: "De la musique arabe en Tunisie". It is a long painful cry, the spleen of a bored man, the complaint of an individual who feels invested with a mission to accomplish. It is also a kind of working plan that the Baron set himself to fix (Poché 2001: 8; author's translation).

With this quote, D'Erlanger intended to diagnose the state of Tunisian music as painful and in need of aid. Hence, D'Erlanger created a network of connoisseurs, i.e. musicians, performers, "Cheikhs"—meaning a Tunisian music master—and Tunisian intellectuals among others, who planted a seed in the fieldwork. In addition, D'Erlanger attempted to improve the perception regarding Tunisian musical scholarship vis-à-vis the field of musicology by bridging the theory gap and supporting the study of music from non-Western cultures. His main aim was to find out the typical features of Tunisian traditional music, to document the Tunisian music repertoire and to transcribe it in scores, since they depended on oral transmission. Additionally, D'Erlanger translated oeuvres of Arab music such as the treatise *Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir*, the Great Book of Music, written by the philosopher Al-Farabi, from the Arabic into the French (D'Erlanger 1930: 3–4), a work conducted with the assistance of Manoubi Snoussi (1901-1966), a Tunisian musicologist and historian (Sahhab 1997: 147).

To boot, D'Erlanger attempted to improve a transcription's additional phase in Tunisian music that marked the achievements of the music department of the military academy of Bardo: the 20th century transcription's paradigm performed by Ahmed Alwafi (1850-1921), a musician and composer of traditional Tunisia music (El Mahdi and Ka'ak 1982: 20–21). Ahmed Alwafi was tasked with collecting the musical repertoire on the ground and performing the musical transcription following the written tradition of Western music. In addition, D'Erlanger decided to discuss his experience with other scholars such as the British musicologist Henry George Pharmer (1882-1965), the French orientalist Cara de Vaux (1867-1953) and the Austrian ethnomusicologist Erich von Hornbostel (1877-1935), so as to get additional ideas in order to accomplish the project. D'Erlanger's name is recognized vis-à-vis contributions to Tunisia's music, for which he was given the title of baron. He also contributed to a collection of ethnographic fieldwork, realized in south Tunisia in 1929 and performed by the Tuareg community of the sub-Saharan region (Brandes 2000). This work became part of the collection of the Berliner Phonogram-Archive, mainly because of D'Erlanger's friendship with von Hornbostel, who was the head of the institution.

In this period, D'Erlanger planned to organize a summit that would bring the question of the musical state of Arab cultures to the forefront and pinpointed the argument of modernization vis-à-vis Arab music. This event was the Arab Music Congress in Cairo in 1932. D'Erlanger was not only a vital contributor to this discourse, taking part in the committee of the organization, but he also played a central role in assembling the members of the Tunisian delegation, who performed at the Arab music summit. However, he couldn't attend the congress due to his critical health status (Louati 1995). D'Erlanger wasn't only a leading figure in the field of Tunisian music but also was a man of vision whose work has become a fundamental instrument. Nevertheless, he was a foreigner in Tunisian culture; his fieldwork contribution brought the musical life in Tunisia into focus, there were regular concerts at his palace, and so he opened the possibility for other musicians to engage with the tradition and for musicologist to study it.

It would be interesting to follow up these studies and build ethnomusicological research on Tunisian music from this tradition. One focus should be not only the figure of D'Erlanger, but also the content of the material he collected and archived in order to know more about the way musical traditions managed to survive in a period in which they were expressed only as subaltern culture.

#### **The political and cultural challenges of the 1930s**

The thirties were a critical period in Tunisia owing to disturbing circumstances. Tunisian society witnessed a political tension which led to a national eminent movement, wherein a demand for a Tunisian autonomous state and sovereignty was put forward, signaling independence from France. Indeed, Tunisian intellectuals led the movement (Moore 1962: 465), and established the "neo-Doustour" party, the New Constitutional Liberal Party, to raise awareness in Tunisian society about their rights so as to gain independence. Therefore, Tunisian society witnessed the springtime of a vibrant cultural movement, which had stepped out of shadows. The party believed in a path of diplomacy to negotiate an independence treaty and also raised awareness among Tunisian about their indigenous culture as a national emblem, working to improve the notion of culture within the society. Musical life witnessed a springtime, as well; Tunisian music practices commenced to step out of the shadows. This contributed to giving Tunisian music a new value and status.

In fact, the cultural scene saw the establishment of the Rachidia, an artistic and cultural association specializing in Tunisian music, created on November 3, 1934, with the aim of preserving music traditions and emphasizing indigenous culture in society. In addition, the Rachidia played a central role in continuing the work of D'Erlanger and his collection of local music repertoires and their transcription, paying homage to him (Davis 1997: 2–4). The Rachidia hence inaugurated an arena among different music genres present in the society, a step which brought schools of different musical traditions together. Additionally, it transformed into a vital field to debate the status of Tunisian music vis-à-vis identity. The Rachidia committed to improving the work on musical heritage; however, the work didn't encompass the academic perspective and only focused on musical practices, establishing a teaching method in the Tunisian music repertoire for amateur musicians, with a significant number of students. There, students could also learn Western instruments using the Western method.

On the other hand, the music scene was enriched with the Jewish migration, resulting in the formation of a community known as the Jews of Tripoli, Libya, referring to their roots. The Jews of Tripoli inf luenced Tunisian music, joining the larger groups of Tunisian Jews, who were eminent players and enlivened the musical life in Tunisia. Tunisian Jewish musicians played a central role in enriching traditional music practices, which was observed during their splendid and popular performances in musical circles. Tunisian Jewish musicians occupied a prominent position in Tunisian society and played a central role in moderating Tunisian customs and feasts, becoming the musicians most preferred by audiences to enliven their events (Jones 2012: 779).

To sum up, musical life in the 1930s witnessed an elevated status, after coming out of a shadowed state. Through new forms of valuing local musical traditions, new musical practices emerged. Tunisian musical traditions were rather timid, and were accustomed to close spots, such as Sufi lodges and private spots, but had now gained access to larger public spaces. The musical component encompassed the cultural movement, which played a central role in Tunisians' daily life. What is more, Tunisian music witnessed a reconciliation of the different music patterns in society, which depicted a cohabitation context beyond Tunisians' music tastes in order to shore up the emblematic Tunisian musical identity despite its diversity. Ethnomusicological research on this period would shed more light on how these different musical traditions coexisted and merged to form a national canon, revealing how musical exchanges in the transnational space of Tunisia constantly created new practices.

#### **Conclusion**

This essay presented a review of historical studies on the period of the French protectorate in Tunisia, exploring the references made to musical practices during this time and attempting to point out the impacts of politics on Tunisian musical life. Revealing pivotal transitions in the musical life of Tunisia under the French protectorate, we identified four historical moments in which there were changes in musical practices. The first was the creation of the military academy with the music department, where music was written

in Western notation and performed by orchestras, and the creation of "Cafichanta" in the pre-colonial time. The second concerns the beginning of colonial time, an era in which music became a private practice, strongly related to religious contexts. The third is related to a seminal ethnomusicological account of Tunisian musical traditions around D'Erlanger, which were collected and transcribed following Western methods. The fourth was the new valorization of Tunisian music traditions in the independence movement around the Rachidia, in which music once again became a public practice. In all these moments, music was evaluated differently, leading to adjustments in its practices.

An ethnomusicological analysis of these periods would shed light on the ways music was made, performed, experienced and transformed. The different exchanges that took place in Tunisian territory still have to be investigated in depth. The relations between oriental and Western practices, the concrete exchanges occurring in Tunisian territory, the tensions between public and private spaces, written and oral traditions, and forbidden and privileged music practices compose a dense field for ethnomusicological research. Both musical practices in Tunisian territory and by Tunisians themselves reveal a diversity characteristic of transnational spaces, which blur borders between nations and cultures and construct them anew with new evaluation forms. All these aspects still represent a gap in the analysis of Tunisian music and offer some paths for further ethnomusicological ref lection.

#### **Bibliography**


# **The construction of an Italian diasporic identity in the city of Buenos Aires at the turn of the 19th century**

*Daniela Anabel González*

### **Introduction**

Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Argentina experienced one of the biggest population increases in its history as a consequence of a f lood of transatlantic migration. This explosion in population caused deep and far-reaching transformations in culture as well as in the physiognomy of the affected urban centers. The city of Buenos Aires grew to be one of the most densely populated areas of Argentina and, as a consequence, became a transcultural space par excellence in which a fundamentally rural, creole culture and a multiplicity of diasporic cultures came into contact, of which Italian was the largest. In this space, popular art and music expressions became a symbolic arena where all kinds of dialogues, tensions and identity negotiations took place, particularly between an alleged "Argentine creole culture" and a nascent Italian diasporic one.

Now, in this specific context, is it possible to consider the Italian identity as something homogeneous and clearly delimited? Was the process of construction of this identity linear and unequivocal? What characteristics did such a process acquire and what social actors were involved in it? How were the tensions between self hood and alterity manifested within the aforementioned symbolic arena?

In order to answer these questions, in this essay we analyze the strategies developed by the diasporic Italian community to construct its identity and the particular relationships that it established with the creoles during these processes. To this end, a textual corpus has been delimited. It consists

of approximately 100 written documents that can be classified as: a) songbooks, which contain no musical notation but lyrics and some indications such as the genre or the musical instrument that should be used to play it; b) specialized and general interest magazines; and c) memoires. These documents belong to the Biblioteca Criolla Collection, a group of small printed publications mostly edited in Argentina and Uruguay between 1880 and 1925, and assembled by the German researcher Robert Lehmann-Nitsche during his stay in La Plata city (García/Chicote 2008), preserved in the library of the Ibero-American Institute of Berlin and also accessible online.<sup>1</sup> This wide set of documents is an unavoidable source for scholars interested in Argentina's popular culture. According to Miguel García and Gloria Chicote, this collection constitutes a very valuable and representative documentary archive, relevant for the characterization of the different poetic and musical expressions that circulated in Argentina during this period (2009: 110).

 Before going further, it should be noted that the study of the popular music developed in this period of time and scenario is a particularly complex task. Strongly anchored in oral tradition and active in a changing collective imaginary, the popular musical expressions that converged in the city of Buenos Aires between the late 19th and early 20th centuries require for their study a critical and attentive scrutiny of a set of heterogeneous documents that offers very fragmentary and disparate data. To explore such a variety of documents, it is necessary to adopt a qualitative perspective which hierarchizes hermeneutics without neglecting heuristics, promotes the interpretation of what is said and what is silenced, deepens the analysis of socio-cultural contexts, and emphasizes the articulation of textual and contextual aspects.

Taking this into consideration, the processes of identity construction developed by Italian immigrants and expressed in this particular symbolic arena are approached through the analysis of song lyrics, comments made in specialized magazines, memories of the artists of the time, and related bibliographies. To carry out this analysis, it is first necessary to describe the particular socio-cultural context in which these processes take place, with special emphasis on migratory f lows and their impact on the urban scenario and the variety of social actors that meet there. Second, some brief and historically contextualized definitions of "creole" and "foreign" culture should

<sup>1</sup> https://digital.iai.spk-berlin.de/viewer/collections/biblioteca-criolla-des-iai/

be presented. After that, the theoretical framework is presented and its key concepts—diaspora, appropriation, resistance and identity—are defined in relation to the case study. Finally, in two successive sections the different processes that Italians developed to build and (re)define their identity in the diaspora, and the variety of relationships that they establish with creoles along these processes, are analyzed.

#### **A brief note on the Argentine social-historical context**

Around 1880 in Argentina a period known in local historiography as "the process of national organization" (Halperín Donghi 1980; Oszlak 1997 [1982]; Romero 2004 [1965]) came to end. The culmination of this period involved: 1) the end of armed conf lict between the so-called interior provinces (the ones that do not enjoy the benefits of the port), the river lands, and Buenos Aires; 2) the adoption of an economic model based on agricultural export and the incorporation of Argentina into the international division of labor as a provider of raw materials; 3) the establishment of a modern nation-state; 4) the beginning of a period of growing economic development; 5) the designation of Buenos Aires as the capital of the Republic; and 6) the creation and implementation of a systematic plan for settling the land.

In this context, a series of measures was taken by the government with the objective of contributing to the consolidation and modernization of the recently unified national state and of promoting the development of an expanding economy based on agricultural export. One of these measures was the approval of the 817 Law of Immigration and Colonization, also known as the Avellaneda Law. This law consisted of two sections that were intended to regulate immigration and the settlement of national territory. The first ten-chapter section defined, amongst other things, the category of immigrant, the requisites that must be met, as well as the responsibility of the Argentine state towards him or her. According to the law, an immigrant is:

any foreign laborer, artisan, industrialist, farmer or professor who, being under sixty years of age and accrediting his morals and aptitudes, arrives in the Republic to settle on a steamships or sailing ships, with a second or third class ticket, or with a ticket paid on behalf of the Nation, of the provinces, or of the private companies assigned to protect immigration and colonization (Chapter V, Art. 12; author's translation).

The second section of the law, composed of seven chapters, describes how lands should be divided into lots, to whom they should be assigned, what specific tasks must be undertaken upon them, and how new settlers should be distributed according to the demand for labor. Regarding this law, José Luis Romero (2004 [1965]) notes that while it facilitated new immigrants' incorporation into the country, it did not guarantee their ownership of land. On the contrary, it reinforced the system of plantations that conceded large tracts to a small sector of the population. As a consequence, immigrants that had "scarce possibilities of becoming landowners" (Romero 2004 [1965]: 93; author's translation) tended to establish themselves in big cities, especially in Buenos Aires due to its proximity to the port.

According to the information provided by the first censuses, between 1895 and 1914, Argentina's population doubled in size. Of the inhabitants registered in 1895, 25.4 per cent were foreigners. In the 1914 census, this figure reached 30 per cent. Of this number, 80 per cent were Spanish and Italian. Their geographic distribution was far from being in balance with opportunities for housing or work. Though the law's objective was to guarantee the population rural spaces in order to propel the agricultural economic model, its scarcely regulated implementation brought abrupt population growth to the city of Buenos Aires. According to the census of 1914, 32.9 per cent of the foreign population—777,846 inhabitants—was concentrated in the city of Buenos Aires.

It is important to point out that until 1887, the capital city had approximately 4,000 hectares of territory of which a very low percentage had been constructed upon—less than 1,000 hectares. During that year, the government of the Province of Buenos Aires ceded 14,000 hectares to expand the city and, in 1888, demarcated the city's limits: the Riachuelo River and the General Paz Avenue. As a consequence of this expansion, the capital became "one of largest municipal jurisdictions among the most important metropolises." (Gorelik 2016 [1998]: 13; author's translation)<sup>2</sup> However, only two thirds of the traditional municipal area—that is, the initial 4,000 hectares—and

<sup>2</sup> In the same era, Paris had 7,900 hectares, Berlin, 6,300, and Vienna, 5.540 (Gorelik 2016 [1998]).

only a few blocks of the territory that was later given over to the city contained any significant constructions (Ibid). The complete urbanization of this extensive territory took approximately two decades. During this time period and in the face of a marked population increase, tenement houses known as "conventillos"—became common. They were collective living arrangements with precarious health conditions in which entire families lived together in a single room and shared the utilities and some common areas, like patios or rooftops, with the other tenants. According to the doctor Guillermo Rawson, by the end of the 19th century there were approximately 2,200 houses of this type in Buenos Aires (Prieto 1988).

Due to the convergence of these heterogeneous social actors, the urban area of Buenos Aires can be defined as a fundamentally transcultural space, that is, a geographic space where culturally different groups actively participated in the development of a shared social life while at the same time fighting to differentiate themselves through the preservation of diverse cultural practices. In this case, the term co-existence doesn't allude to harmonious cohabitation nor does it describe the happenstance sharing of space and time but rather refers to the unavoidable exchange between these actors, an exchange that cannot be stripped of its social and political asymmetry and imbalance of power (Walsh 2012). In this particular context, popular music can be thought of as a symbolic arena, that is, a space or public sphere in which different cultural actors come together to negotiate and/or dispute representations of themselves and the "other". These identity negotiations involved the appropriation, transformation of, or resistance to certain elements of the receiving culture. Of all the immigrant communities that settled in Argentina, the Italian community was the most numerous, coming to far exceed the Spanish community. The integration of Italians into Argentine culture—that developed in this transcultural space and within a recently organized nation-state—implied an extensive and complex process, which found in popular musical expressions a place of manifestation.

# **How to understand "creole" and "foreign" at the turn of the century in Argentina**

Before moving on to the study of popular musical expressions—and the tensions and negotiations that take place within them—it is important to describe, even if only brief ly, what is meant by creole culture in this context and in what way the delimitation of it is linked with foreign presence. The ethnic composition of the population that inhabits the territory known today as Argentina has been, from the period of conquest, heterogeneous. The result of the encounter of the Spanish, native groups and slaved Africans is a population that is fundamentally mestizo and whose main characteristic is its diversity. In this framework, the definition of local identity and the differentiation from the "other" constitute complex and changing constructive processes that should be thought of in their specific historical contexts. The appearance of creole culture as the general paradigm for local identity around the end of the 19th century was a strong response to a significant inf lux of foreigners. In this era, foreigners—and mostly Italians—were perceived as a "perturbing presence" (Prieto 1988: 13) that "[…] threatens to disintegrate the Argentine spirit." (Vega 2010 [1981]: 33; author's translation) As Adolfo Prieto attests:

[…] particularly in Buenos Aires, the number of immigrants, during many years, was equal to the native population, creating an air of foreignness, of cosmopolitanism that was *as irresistible as it was confusing* in its trends and manifestations (Ibid: 13; author's translation; emphasis added).

This situation (re)activated the dichotomy "self/other" under a particular expression of "local/foreign". It is important to highlight that during the period after the declaration of independence from Spain (1810) and until the creation of the nation-state (1880), the "self/other" dichotomy had fundamentally adopted two shapes. Within the country, it represented the tension between: 1) the native populations of the interior, embodied in the figure of the "gaucho"—the inhabitant of the pampas considered brutish, lazy, dangerous and marginal—and the "caudillo"—a political leader conceived as a demagogue that hindered the establishment of the nation-state; and 2) the creole elite of Buenos Aires. Outside the country, it generally denoted Argentine/ Spanish. At the time, Spain with its oppressive monarchical system was con-

sidered basically greedy, cruel and archaic, and represented an "other" from which it was necessary to become completely independent and different.

 As a result of the massive arrival of immigrants, mostly Italians, at the end of the 19th century, this conception of "self" and "other" started to change. According to Santiago Javier Sánchez (2011), the increasing presence of Italian immigrants—especially of Sicilians and Calabrians—was perceived by the Argentine creole elite as a threat. So, many intellectuals started to see in Spain, in their shared history, and in the cultural and idiomatic legacy, a reinsurance against the immigration advance (Ibid). In this way, authors like Manuel Galvez affirm that: "We [Argentine people] are Spanish because we speak Spanish […] Language is perhaps the only element that characterizes races [...] the kinship of the language originates the same or similar ways of feeling, thinking and even proceeding." (1943 [1913]: 17; author's translation)

Together with this Hispanic movement that sought to erect an Argentine nationality with Spanish roots, the so-called Traditionalist Argentine Movement (Vega 2010 [1981]), also named "nativism" (Romano 1998), "Cultural Argentine Traditionalism" (Fernández Latour de Botas 2006) or simply "Traditionalism" (Rubione 2004), emerged. This movement, widespread between 1890 and 1915, vindicated the development of presumably rural cultural expressions as a way of constructing an authentic national identity. With the aim of building up such an identity, the members of this movement founded creole centers, civil associations that try to revitalize rural practices—linked with the figure of the "gaucho"—through the organization of popular parties in which rural musical genres are performed and danced, and where other rural traditions are (re)created—such as the use of specific clothing or certain verbal expressions. They also published specific periodicals,3 created the creole circus and creole drama, and spread "gaucho" literature and poetry (Ludmer 2012 [1988]). In symbolic terms, this movement appealed to the romanticization of the "gaucho" as a mechanism to outline a homogeneous, rural identity, named creole. So, the once despised "gaucho" became an experienced and sensitive man of the country, a faithful soldier of the motherland, and a pillar of local tradition. The mestizo character of the "gaucho"—born

<sup>3</sup> For example*, La aurora* (*The Aurora*, directed by Antonio A. Ferrari), *La enramada* (*The Brush*, directed by Alfredo I. Marini), *Revista criolla* (*Creole Magazine*, directed by Rafael Cejas), *El fogón pampeano* (*Bonfire on the Pampa*, directed by Francisco J. Neira), *Pampa florida* (*Flowered Pampa*, directed by Raúl M. Peña), *La tradición* (*The Tradition*, directed by Floro Racero), among others.

from the union of Spanish and native people—may have helped to reinforce, in this context, the search for a common past that has its ethnic and cultural roots far enough removed from the Italians. Facing a newly defined nation-state, and a strong cultural eclecticism, the "gauchos", their way of speaking and their customs, became "the plasma that seemed destined to unite the diverse fragments of the racial and cultural mosaic." (Prieto 1988: 12; author's translation)

In this scenario, some specific groups of European immigrants that settled in Argentina were perceived as true outsiders and identified as the counterpart of the creoles. These groups built variable bonds with the local culture and, at the same time, developed their own community spaces—where they fomented, recreated and reterritorialized their customs and cultural expression—and exchanged tangible and intangible goods with their family abroad, such as money, books, photographs, news, musical expressions, etc. Of all of these groups, the Italian was not only the most numerous but also the most obsessively represented and discussed in the popular musical expressions of the time.

#### **Studies of musical change: Some concepts of interest**

To analyze the exchanges and negotiations that took place within the aforementioned popular music, a few concepts from the studies of musical change have been put to use. Before referring to them specifically, it is worth noting that the processes that have emerged in the meeting of cultures and the effects that this has had on music have been an area of recurrent interest for ethnomusicologists and popular music scholars. Along these lines, between 1960 and 1980 some researchers (Blacking 1973; Nettl 1980) expressed their concern for the growing Western inf luence in the expression and practices of non-Western music, going so far as to predict the latter's disappearance. Most of the examples that these scholars selected for their analysis pertained to colonial situations where relationships were markedly asymmetrical. Therefore, in referring to these relationships, they used a series of concepts that crystallized this asymmetry—for example, "Westernization" or "acculturation".

This trend began to change near the end of the 1980s, in line with the development of post-colonial thought and emergent theories of globalization.

Since then, the interests of ethnomusicologists and popular music scholars, among other things, have been directed towards: the phenomenon of world music and its production and spread (Bohlman 2002; Feld 1994); the inf luence of emergent technology and mass media on music and its practice (Frith 1998; Mintjes 1990); and the music industry itself (Frith 2006). In this framework, ref lections on musical change multiplied and diversified significantly, giving way to diverse perspectives.

One of these perspectives centers on the analysis of immigration. The use of concepts like diaspora (Ang 2013; Bohlman 1997; Clifford 1994; Gordon/Anderson 1999; Hall 2010; Solomon 2015) or nomadism (Pelinksi 2000; 2009) gave accounts of the displacement of individuals, musical expressions, instruments, practices, discourses, etc. The interest in the circulation of symbolic and material goods beyond the borders of nation-states provided a second point of emphasis (Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002; Glick Schiller/ Levitt 2004). Next came inquiries into the processes of identification and/or rejection developed by immigrants (Hall 2000; Kartomi 1981). The fourth major thematic point turned its gaze to the study of the re-signifying of music in new geo-political situations (Slobin 1994; Turino 2004). This perspective highlighted the multiplicity of processes that music undergoes when it is moved from one space to another. Additionally, this perspective deepened the interconnected relations between music, space and identity.

## **The exchanges between Creoles and Italians in light of the musical change**

In line with this last perspective, which focuses on the analysis of population displacements, a series of concepts that help to account for the negotiation process developed on popular musical expressions are taken up in this study. The first one is the notion of diaspora that can be defined, broadly speaking, as "a denotative label for the dispersed people removed from a common territorial origin." (Gordon/Anderson 1999: 284) In more specific terms, diaspora is thought of as the displacement of a group of social actors from one place to another, and the set of strategies designed by this group to coalesce into the new territory (Solomon 2015). This coalescence is neither univocal nor does it develop in a single direction. According to James Clifford, diaspora involves

"forms of community consciousness and solidarity that [help to] maintain identifications" (1994: 308) with the country of origin.

At the same time, diasporic cultures can never escape—even when trying—from practices of accommodation because diasporic movements comprise not only displacement, travelling and disarticulation but also—and sometimes fundamentally—settlement, dwelling and (re)articulation what Ramón Pelinki (2000) called reterritorialization. As Clifford (1994) points out, diasporic cultures simultaneously combine strategies of community maintenance and cultural interaction. This combination produces a tension between self hood and otherness and attempts to assume, against the norms of the modern nation-states which permanently pursue cultural homogeneity and unity, the "nation-state/assimilationist ideologies" in Clifford's terms (1994: 308). So diasporic cultures, constituted by displacement, try to negotiate and also to resist their socio-cultural reality, which means that they struggle to incorporate themselves into the new culture and at the same time intend to maintain their differences.

This was the case for the Italians who arrived in Argentina at the end of the 19th century. As mentioned above, their massive arrival weakened the recently unified Argentine national state, caused tension the relationship between self hood and otherness, and prompted the redefinition of an allegedly homogeneous and unified creole identity. Likewise, Italians carried out actions to preserve their cultural identifications and, at the same time, developed strategies to integrate themselves into the receiving culture. In this regard, they built, on the one hand, a variety of institutions—social, recreational, mutual<sup>4</sup> —that were used by a significant number of immigrants not only to send remittances or important news to their homeland but also to socialize, develop their political lives and strengthen their customs and cultural expressions (Devoto 2006; Weber 2011). On the other hand, they enrolled in public school en masse, in numerous cases they aspired to nationalization, they actively participated in patriotic celebrations, and they even attended dance or parties organized by local creole centers (Garavaglia 2003; Casas 2015). This permanent and unsolved attempt to resist and integrate into the local culture finds a place to express itself in popular music.

<sup>4</sup> For example, newspapers and magazines, banks, the Italian Hospital, the Italian Chamber of Commerce, multiple law firms, etc.

In order to understand this complex process and to delineate the strategies developed by the Italian diasporic community in Argentina, the concepts of appropriation and resistance are used. Appropriation can be defined broadly as the use of some culture's symbols, objects or expressions by another culture. This action is inevitable when different cultures come into contact even though they strongly try to preserve their own "purity." (Kartomi 1981; Rogers 2006) More specifically, it can be said that appropriation is a voluntary process, which means an "active 'making one's own' of another culture's elements." (Rogers 2006: 476) Nevertheless, this action is always conditioned by a variety of issues like power relationships, the use of violence, and the characteristics of the cultural element in question. Likewise, the appropriation of some element of another culture can be creative, partial, fragmentary and/or subject to changes. Besides, the term resistance accounts for the process of opposition or the "virtual rejection" (Kartomi 1981: 235) of cultural interchange. This process, as has been suggested before, is never completely possible. Even when members of a culture intend to remain impervious to contact with others, cultural exchanges occur anyway. However, preserving certain aspects of their own culture—in some cases more systematically, in others less so—reveals how this process of resistance operates.

Finally, the concept of hybridity helps in referring to the results of these cultural exchange processes. Closely related to the notion of diaspora, hybridity appoints "the novel combination of heterogeneous cultural elements in a new synthesis." (Hall 2000: 240) It is important to make clear that the notion of hybridity does not imply the existence of a "pure" or essentialized culture in contrast to a hybrid one. It simply seeks to emphasize the synthetic, unfinished, and potentially changing character of cultural constructions, particularly from the diasporic ones. In Stuart Hall's approach, it is used to recognize the "necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of 'identity' lives *with and through, not despite, dif ference.*" (Ibid: 235; emphasis added)

At this point, it is worth noting that the notion of identity which underlies and articulates this work is the one synthesized by Eduardo Restrepo (2007), who in turn was inspired by the ideas of Stuart Hall, Lawrence Grossberg, Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, and Judith Butler. According to the author, identities are: 1) constructed in relation to "others" through a series of identification and differentiation practices; 2) procedural, historically situated, potentially changing but not simply "freely-f loating"; 3) produced, disputed

and transformed in the discursive sphere, which does not mean that they are "pure discourse" that takes place outside a social and material reality; 4) traversed by power relations and capable of becoming places of resistance and empowerment; and 5) not defined in a stable and unequivocal way by all the members that ascribe to it—"[the meanings] associated with a specific identity derived from concrete significant practices, from the specific interactions between different individuals." (Ibid: 31; author's translation)

## **The Italian elite and the civilizing discourse: An integration strategy through difference**

As has been said before, Italians composed the highest percentage of the vast number of immigrants that arrived in Argentina at the end of the 19th century. According to the census of 1895, more than half of the foreigners that lived in the country were Italian. Of the 3,954,911 inhabitants registered in the census of 1895, 492,676 were Italian. The second largest group of immigrants was the Spanish with 198,684 inhabitants (that is to say, less than half). As one might imagine, the composition of this large population group was not homogeneous and neither was its identity. Although the largest volume of Italians living in Argentina at that time belonged to the working classes, a relevant minority of high-class intellectuals coexisted with them. While the first arrived on the new continent in search of work and better living conditions, the latter sought to establish themselves as an identifiable and important elite in the local intellectual scene. With this objective in mind, Italian intellectuals advocated for the creation of specialized magazines, such as *La patria degli Italiani* (*Italians' Motherland*), *El mundo del arte* (*The World of Art*, 1891-1896), *La revista teatral* (*Theatrical Magazine*, 1896-1908), *La revista artística* (*Artistic Magazine*, 1908-1909) and *El arte* (*The Art*, 1885-1886). Likewise, several of them actively participated in Argentina's extensive traditional and large-circulation newspapers such as *La Prensa* (*The Press*) and *La Nación* (*The Nation*, Weber 2011).

The specialized magazines quickly became important tools for cultural promotion, and, surreptitiously, of identity construction. José Ignacio Weber says that through these publications this group

[…] sought to raise awareness of the achievements of their compatriots, debate trends in local culture, and create and promote spaces and practice of idiosyncratic congruence between the culture of the migrants and that of their host country (2011: 108; author's translation).

Thanks to diligent cultural work in the local press, this group of intellectuals won recognition from the upper class in Buenos Aires, establishing themselves as a prestigious elite linked to artistic activity.

The aforementioned process of identity construction finds in the set of specialized magazines its favorite means of expression. Among the most significant and persistent publications over time is *El Mundo del Arte* (*The World of Art*), founded and published by the Neapolitan Giacomo De Zerbi,

an influential character from Naples who as a young man joined the national army, was a politician and journalist, edited the newspaper "La Patria" in Naples and founded "Il Piccolo" that became the third-most distributed newspaper in the city (Weber 2011: 104, author's translation).

*El Mundo del Arte* has alternated since its founding between Spanish and Italian—in fact, on the cover page it is made clear that the magazine is written "in national and Italian language". Thus, on May 25, 1892, it published an article with the intention of commemorating Argentine Independence, which contained statements such as:

[It is not] possible to compare the secular labor which prepared our revolution […] with the *brief historical development of Argentine Independence* which was intrinsic and completely formed the day that Spain fell to insolent Napoleonic conquest […] The voice of this *young nation* was thunderous however […] The current state of the Argentine Republic doesn't measure up to patriotic daydreams, nor humanitarian ideal (3; author's translation; emphasis added).

The celebratory, strongly paternalistic tone of this example speaks to a relevant trait in the process of the construction of this particular Italian identity.

With respect to music, there are several references—some of them more, some of them less explicitly emphatic—to the central role that Italian musicians, composers, and critics played in the development of Argentine culture. The Italian theater critic and dramaturge Vincenzo de Napoli-Vita's (1906)

historic essay constitutes an example of this strategy of identity construction. According to the author, with his work he hopes to give an account of "[...] the history of Italian art that has come here [to Argentina] to *contribute to its civilizing ef forts.*" (Weber 2016: 265; author's translation; emphasis added) Through the course of his writing, Napoli-Vita carries out a careful "operation of selecting experiences from the past in order to construct a history of Italian contributions to musical theater in Buenos Aires." (Weber 2011: 113) With this sort of operation—which includes biased omissions and classifications—the representatives of the intellectual elite defined the Italians as a kind of "other" that integrates into local culture from a position of superiority and wrought a pedagogic, even civilizing inf luence in Argentina.

This particular way of building an Italian diasporic identity might also be conceived of as a resistance strategy, insofar as it advocated at some point the strengthening of its own culture, intended to maintain its differences and helped to firm up the identification of its community. However, this procedure worked as an integration practice since it involved, on the one hand, the strategic appropriation of local news, themes and/or artistic expressions on the part of Argentine journalists and critics, and even in the "local language". Taking this into consideration, it could be said that the Italian identity was constructed here in relation to others and through, not despite, difference*.* On the other hand, through this procedure of identity building, the elite presented an alternative narrative that opposed the extended hispanophile perspective by incorporating the Italians into the "local genealogy" as an important cultural inf luence.

As has been suggested, such a definition of the Italian diasporic identity represented only a fraction of this numerous and heterogeneous group of immigrants. Broad social sectors of this community remained outside this definition and developed their own identity construction strategies.

## **Popular arts and music expressions as symbolic arena of the "other Italians"**

In the transcultural space of Buenos Aires, popular arts and music expressions constituted a symbolic arena in which identity negotiations and exchanges were put into action. In this arena, different socio-cultural groups participated in the construction of their own identities—either as creators, performers or audience—in relation to other groups, revitalized cultural differences and disputes, and tightened the relationship between self hood and otherness.

Likely because of their numerical predominance and their identification as "true alterity", Italians were the immigrant community most represented in popular arts and music, as well as the favorite target of jokes. The analysis of these representations within the particular socio-historical context in which they developed and in relation to the comments of some protagonists of the local artistic scene allowed us to realize that Italians' identity construction processes have been heterogeneous and variable. The inevitable coming together of the Argentine lower classes and the large masses of Italians—with whom they shared everyday spaces such as factories, taverns, dances, parties, tenement houses, schools, etc.—promoted different kinds of exchanges which gave rise, in the long term, to significant cultural transformations embodied in new and hybrid identities.

One of the most eloquent examples of the basically hybrid character of these identity constructions is the "cocoliche". In the memoirs of the actor and dramaturge José Podestá (2003), it is stated that "cocoliche" emerged as a drama character during the staging of *Juan Moreira*, a very popular theatrical piece centered on the life of a famous "gaucho". In relation to this, Podestá relayed that during one of the representations of this play (c.1890), the creole actor Celestino Petray unexpectedly bounced into "the scene of the country party" (Ibid: 66) dressed up ridiculously and mounted on "a skinny useless horse not fitted at all for work." (Ibid) Once in the scene, Petray presented himself using a mixed jargon of Spanish and Italian, saying: "My name is Franchisque Cocoliche and I am a creole to the marrow of my calf bone, just look at me, my friend." (Ibid; author's translation) According to the author, the success of this character was immediate and, from then on, he was included in the plot of this theatrical piece—which was put on stage for at least two more years. It is possible to think that such a role, created and initially performed by a creole, could have later been interpreted by some Italian actor (Cara-Walker 1987; Seibel 1993). The possible incorporation of Italians as performers of this mocking representation of themselves must have provoked significant identity transformations. Their insertion as new enunciators in this symbolic arena can be thought of as a gesture of relative acceptance of this "identity assignation", as a strategy of identity (re)definition, and also as an opportunity to dispute power.

But this character quickly transcended the limits of the theater. Thus, the word "cocoliche" started to be used as a cultural label that designated the Italian immigrants who adopted—in diverse and creative ways—some characteristics of the "gaucho", and as the specific name of the mixed jargon used by them. Hence, it is possible to find different songbooks that refer to the "cocoliche" and that, by the use of popular music genres, relay the vicissitudes, entanglements and ambitions of this character, generally in a humorous way.

So, in the songbook *Canciones Napolitanas y Criollas* (*Neapolitan and Creole Songs*) by the creole folksinger Manuel Vargas (1902: 16), a series of popular genres from the countryside—such as "estilo", "milonga", "copla", and "vidalita"—written and sung by "cocoliche" are presented. The first verses of one "copla", for example, reads:


These verses are written neither in Spanish nor in Italian but rather in a mixed jargon that clearly shows that the singer has not mastered Spanish. However, he categorically affirms that he is a creole, and adds that he is a "payador", a folk-song improviser. To reinforce this auto-denomination, the singer appropriates a fundamental creole cultural element: the guitar. The counterpoint between these statements, which describe the romanticized, stereotypical image of the "gaucho" and this character's mixed way of speaking, results in an absurd discourse that promotes laughter. This absurd discourse also shows the tension between self hood and otherness. The creole folksinger who wrote these verses highlighted through them just how ambitious the Italian immigrants were to incorporate the receiving culture and, at the same time, how threatening this ambition could be for the creole lower classes, who were not organically or stably incorporated into the re-

cently unified nation-state. Likewise, the "average Italian" is represented as prone to integration—for instance, through the strategic appropriation of elements of the creole culture—but also as resistant to merging himself with the "other". Even if the literacy plan promoted by the Argentine state was widespread and mostly effective, the first generations of Italian immigrants in Argentina resisted—more or less systematically or consciously—speaking Spanish. The result of this resistance is ref lected in the previously mentioned hybrid jargon called "cocoliche".

In the same songbook (Ibid: 26), a few pages later, verses from another "copla" are placed in the mouth of a Neapolitan.


In contrast to the previous example, here there is no humoristic effect that emerges from an absurd discourse or situation. Even though the singer also uses the "cocoliche", he identifies himself as an Italian immigrant that has acquired Argentine nationality through the legal process of naturalization. He also affirms that his wife and his son are creoles, which represents a very common situation at the time and illustrates the strong miscegenation between creoles and Italians. Then, the singer adds that he loves the country that has welcomed him and that he is willing to respond to its f lag. As in the previous case, two strongly representative elements of the Argentine culture are appropriated by the singer: Mariano Moreno and José de San Martín, fundamental figures during the process of the organization of the nation-state. The former was an ideologist and promoter of the May Revolution that led to the definitive independence from Spain; the latter was a military man in charge of the liberation of Argentina. The use of Argentine history as a means for demonstrating belonging and loyalty to the receiving country is a resource that appears recurrently in many other examples. This recurrence can be considered, on the one hand, as a sample of the effects that the application of the law of common, secular, free and compulsory education had

among Italian immigrants in Argentina, an important feature in the process of cultural integration. On the other hand, the recurrent appearance of Argentine patriots and/or historical facts in the mouths of Italian characters in popular music songs can be considered a pedagogical strategy that sought to contribute to the immigrants' integration.

Finally, in the songbook *Nuevas y Últimas Canciones del Napolitano Cocoliche* (*New and Last Songs of the Neapolitan Cocoliche*) (1902: 15), which is entirely dedicated to this character, the following verses appear:

What do you think, Moreira About this Italian "payador"? Even the blonde girl looks at me When I sing to her about love And the circus owners Offer me a liter of wine So I can sing them milongas The ones typical in the countryside.

Cá te pariese Morieria Isto tano payatore Si asta la rubia ma mira Cuando le canto el amore Y del circo lo patrone Me da nu litro di caña Per ca le cante mironga Desa de per la campaña

Qué te parece Moreira Este italiano payador Si hasta la rubia me mira Cuando le canto de amor Y del circo los patrones Me dan un litro de caña Para que les cante milongas De esas de la campiña

In this last example, also written in "cocoliche", the relationship between creoles and Italians is again exposed to tension but in a different way. In this case, the singer—who is called Francisco Cocoliche—provokes the exemplary "gaucho" Juan Moreira. Not only does he emphasize that he is attractive to women—particularly blond woman—but he also remarks that he is such a good "payador" that the owners of the circuses pay him to interpret Argentine popular music from the countryside—that is to say, creole popular music. The level of integration that the singer shows seems to be such that he can comfortably live and grow in the receiving culture. With great irony, this character seems to defy the subaltern, loyal and respectful attitude that his Italian contemporaries adopt in the previous examples.

These limited yet representative cases show the different strategies that the broader Italian diasporic community developed in order to integrate into the creole culture. Those strategies did not univocally involve submissive or acritical appropriations but instead relied on multiple ways of negotiation, (re)presentation through difference, and differentiation from the other. Likewise, these examples show the spaces of resistance and the effects that this inescapable cultural exchange had on both creoles and Italians.

#### **By way of conclusion**

As we have tried to show, the Italian diasporic identity developed by the extensive mass of immigrants that arrived in the transnational space of Buenos Aires city at the turn of the 19th century was neither homogeneous nor responsive to lineal and unequivocal processes of construction. Heterogeneous social actors managed their own inclusion and differentiation strategies in diverse discursive spheres. Thus, a small but significant Italian intellectual elite tried to construct, from the rostrum of their own specialized magazines, a distinctive erudite identity. Such an identity was basically built through difference when presenting the Italians as an "other" organically integrated into local culture from a paternalistic position of superiority. To develop this identity, the Italian elite strategically appropriated some aspects of the receiving culture and created an alternative narrative which positioned them as a fundamental inf luence in the development of Argentine culture. The ambitious and carefully designed product of that construction served to define only a very specific social sector of the Italian immigrants in Argentina. Even so, its analysis is relevant not only in terms of understanding the Argentina's complex cultural amalgam but also insofar as it highlights the unavoidable tensions that occur within the same socio-cultural group.

Simultaneously, the greater mass of Italian immigrants who remained outside this identity definition have developed their own processes of integration. In their case, popular arts and music expressions were the preferred symbolic arena where they could dispute and (re)build their own diasporic identity. In these expressions, Italians were almost obsessively represented. In some cases, they were characterized as a subordinate alterity, in other cases as a challenging one; sometimes mockingly, sometimes not. According to the examples analyzed here and to the other songbooks that constitute the corpus, this large sector of Italian immigrants seems to have managed different strategies to integrate into the creole culture. Even though it was not always in a submissive or uncritical way, the appropriation of strategic elements appears as a constant. The atypical use of the traditional attire of the "gaucho", the reference to patriots or to relevant historical events in Argentina, the mention of their "payador" skills, the use of the guitar and even the self-denomination as a creole, are some of the appropriations repeatedly mentioned in these documents. Besides, the refusal to completely adopt Spanish, represented in the permanent use of the "cocoliche", can be considered as a strategy of resistance, not in the sense of rejection but of permanent autodefinition and (re)negotiation.

Both the elite and the broader sectors of the diasporic Italian society worked on the construction of their identity in relation to an "other"—ambiguous and potentially changing over time. In order to carry out these constructions, they adopted different strategies of appropriation and resistance that they put into play in specific discursive spheres. Through the enactment of their identities, the Italians in the diaspora produced and reproduced themselves, stressed their relations with otherness, recognized themselves in difference, and also redefined and integrated—sometimes more, sometimes less conf lictingly—into the receiving culture.

### **Bibliography**


# **Brazilian grooves and cultured clichés**

*Janco Boy Bystron & Chico Santana*

#### **Introduction**

"While a Latin percussionist has syncopated rhythms in his blood, the European, and especially the German, musician gains his skills by disciplined practice." Using a provocative cliché like this as a starting point, in this article we will present a method for analyzing the musical differences between Brazilian and German percussion groups playing samba rhythms ("batucada" groups, known as "baterias"), to ascertain what kinds of musical macro- and microstructures are subsumed under the term "samba" and how these structures differ in Germany and Brazil. This research question will be answered using case studies which we have already begun in Brazil.

Popular musical practices spread transnationally, retaining the same label but gaining diverse performance forms. "Samba" in Brazil and Germany is just one example of a transcultural musical practice which has been (re) constructed internationally by the application of aesthetic patterns of identification. Just as African music culture was reconstructed in a different societal context in Brazil, the transfer of cultural symbols like "samba" music is a phenomenon that can be observed in an abundance of cases. By analyzing the structure of "samba" rhythms in a detailed way, we want to verify whether an interactionistic concept of identity is connected to the repertory of a "samba" group. Concerning the macro-groove structures, we want to examine if within an interactive process the "samba" rhythms are recreated from traditional styles, developed in an innovative way or if the rhythms are completely invented anew but played on "samba" instruments.

At first, we will present a model which structures the presented method and connects it to the concept of transcultural identity. Then we will relay important information about "samba" music in general and how it got to Germany. The following chapters feature the visual, the perceptual and the corporeal access of the method to musical practice of samba music. In the final considerations, we discuss whether or not the cliché mentioned above could have impacts on musical practice and performance, because it accompanies the reality of musicians all over the world.

# **Structuring the method in a model**

The creation of an identity, as a fundamental human need, never proceeds according to predefined patterns; every case is unique and dynamic. Interactionistic approaches of classic sociological and socio-psychological identity theory (Krappmann 1969; Mead 1973) do not have an empirical fundament (Hill/Schnell 1990: 5). Although our method is empirical, we capture the interactionistic concept of identity in the model because "samba" music happens in an interactive process in which a transcultural and artistic field inf luence each other.

*Figure 1: Model for coherences of artistic processes within a transcultural field* 

The concept of transculturality, in which culture is not fixed locally and temporally, suppresses older concepts of cultural identity, which principally held to the idea of separated (ethnic) cultures. Modern concepts of cultural identity focus on the participation of the individual in a heterogeneous cultural environment. Identity is not fixed by birth or finished by puberty; rather, it is an ambivalent, selectable and alterable progress: "For a stable identity formation, it is necessary to be skilled to sustain and to ref lect the ambivalences and contradictions of the (musical) cultures, within which one moves." (Barth 2012: 158; our translation) Therefore, in our model, we applied an artistic field (instead of a cultural field) within a transcultural field. The artistic field is characterized by individuality concerning performance forms, which are achieved through three ways of access. Visual, perceptual and corporeal facets in "samba" performances are mixed individually in the artistic field and finally result in recreation, innovation and new creation of samba rhythms. The resulting fields are closely linked: if a musician is unable to recreate a traditional style, he or she invents something, thus filling the innovation field.

To make our model easier to understand, we would like to use the example of US-American jazz rhythms. Because of the no-drumming laws passed from 1740 onwards (slave-acts), slaves were forbidden from using any kind of percussion instruments in the United States. In their new artistic field, they used different items to play African rhythms (including homemade drumsticks played on everyday items, homemade tap shoes, European military instruments). In this moment, their access was a perceptual one because they had neither original African instruments nor scores of their music. One consequence of this development was the invention of jazz rhythms played on a drum set with drumsticks and drum pedals which provided a completely different corporeal access. The result of the newly created jazz rhythms was very different from traditional African rhythms. In Brazil, the restriction on drumming was not enforced as strictly; therefore, the Brazilian rhythms and ways of playing stayed tendentially closer to the African sources. The recreation of original rhythms was rather possible.

Because of improved communications via the Internet, it is much easier than ever before to imitate foreign music like "samba" in Germany, or African rhythms in Brazil, but this does not lead to a lack of new creations. Although it is possible to get detailed information about a specific musical culture, the demand for new musical styles and artistic development is unabated and coexists with the intention of authentic reproduction in a museal space.

To ref lect on the three needs in musical practice (recreation, innovation and new creation), it would appear to be beneficial to apply a methodological framework which connects the artistic and scientific plains in interdisciplinary research, recently named artist research (Cano-López/Opazo 2014). The advantage of this kind of research is that the researcher, as a musician, would be able to perform the music he or she was investigating and, if not, could be taught by musicians from the culture being researched more easily than a researcher with no musical ability. In this way, he or she would be able to establish a close connection to the researched field and would be able to distinguish between the researched musicians' artistic and pragmatic motives. The disadvantage of artists carrying out research is that most of them have more difficulty integrating the insights obtained into established scientific frameworks, because they completed their main studies in artistic courses.

The concept of artist research is positioned close to modern ethnomusicological perspectives in which the whole musical process is also in the foreground and musical behavior is structurally analyzed (Klingmann 2010: 84). Therefore, our special interest in micro rhythms concerns their impact on different aspects related to performance quality. What inf luence does the bodily movement have on the rhythms played, and what correlations exist between playing techniques and the macro- and microgroove structure? An accompanying, interview-based study aims to align the players' and listeners' intentions with our model. Thereby, we want to ascertain whether a specific "samba" group is more oriented to traditional "samba" playing, or whether it is particularly innovative and refines known musical material or creates new rhythms. With this question, we would like to record a historical dimension in our research. As for musical details, we will analyze percussionists' perceptions to determine the phenomenon of the so-called "molho" and "balanço" (swing), a kind of musical treatment which, according to professional musicians, reduces the groove quality, although it makes it livelier for traditional "samba" percussionists.

#### **What is "samba" and how did it get to Germany?**

"Samba" may be seen as more than a musical genre: it is music, dance and a party/social event (Graeff 2015: 22). Speaking generally, samba contains a great inf luence of African music, mixed with European elements. In fact,

this is the basis of almost all Brazilian music, which in some regions has an inf luence of indigenous culture as well. It is difficult to state a chronological line of "samba" development, and this manifestation may seem to be a dynamic performance formed and transformed within transcultural processes. "Any attempt to define a model for samba will be obfuscated by the dynamics of the constant changes in Afro-Brazilian culture, in which concepts such as tradition, fixation, innovation and analysis must be interpreted with care." (Naveda 2011: 28)

The most well-known "samba" style, "samba carioca"*,* was developed in Rio de Janeiro at the beginning of the 20th Century. We may find some important roots of "samba" in Bahia State, in Northeast Brazil, but in Rio de Janeiro "samba" has developed its main characteristics as an urban musical genre. During several meetings at "Baiana's houses", specially "Tia Ciata" (aunt Ciata), the black musicians and cultural agents used to play while partying (Sodré 1979: 20). Each room of the house had its own features: in the living room people used to play "choro"*,* instrumental music forged as European music played with an Afrobrazilian accent; in the kitchen, people used to play the improvised "samba", creating lyrics collectively; the backyard was the place of "batuques" with liturgic aspects, related to the Afrobrazilian religions ("umbanda" and "candomblé"). In those places, "samba" developed its first features, concatenating several African elements, specially from Bantu culture (Lopes 2003: 13) within the urban context of Rio de Janeiro's Middletown.

Afterwards, "samba" migrated to the "favelas" and far neighborhoods, accompanying the black and poor population that was impelled to the peripheral regions of the city. After the creation of the "escolas de samba" ("samba" schools), "samba" became part of the Carnival, the most popular party in Brazil. In this context, the "samba" started to be played by big percussion ensembles called "baterias". Those groups were dedicated to the "batucada", meaning the rhythm of "samba", the "samba" groove.

In different parts of Brazil, "samba" has developed many features and local accents, like in Bahia, São Paulo and Pernambuco. Rio de Janeiro was the Brazilian capitol until the 1960s, and especially because of the National Radio, was the place that guided the main axis of "samba" development. The "samba carioca" (samba from Rio de Janeiro) spread all over Brazil, becoming the main reference of this cultural manifestation.

In Germany, the political movement of the 1968 generation stimulated a demand for foreign popular music. The wish for a global peaceful society was ref lected by the concept of world music, and many European musicians were inspired by foreign music cultures. Interest in Indian music in particular was significant because of a group of musicians around the Beatles, who caught most of the medial attention with the publication of their *White Album*. An album perceived as one of the first world music contributions was recorded by Swiss musician Patrick Moraz in 1976. On *The Story of I,* he mixed Brazilian rhythms with jazz and rock elements and also classical music. One year later, the group Weather Report published their album *Heavy Weather,* which was one of the most successful recordings of the jazz, rock and world music genre.

Not only the professional music business was inf luenced by the concept of world music; civil music culture also absorbed new inf luences. Dudu Tucci was one of the first Brazilian percussionists who founded samba groups in Germany during the 1980s, working mainly with "batucada carioca" and "samba-reggae" (traditionally from Bahia State, a "samba" style developed at Carnival groups called "blocos afros", from Salvador city). After the middle of the 1980s, the first German "samba" festivals originated mostly in the context of already existing Carnival events, for example for the Carnival of Bremen. Today the "samba" festival in Coburg (Bavaria) is known as one of the largest "samba" events outside of Brazil. During three days, around 100 "samba" groups present themselves in front of 200,000 visitors. Most of the "samba" groups participating in German festivals not only play "samba" rhythms but also freely invent rhythms or adapt most diverse rhythms of other cultures, which they then play on Brazilian percussion instruments.

#### **Three accesses: To see, hear and feel "samba" music**

From the perspective of active musicians, we aim to investigate the way in which Brazilian "samba" rhythms are acquired and shared by drummers and percussionists in Germany and Brazil. Considering these acquisitions and sharings as dynamic processes, the "samba batucada" can be seen as a kind of experience that extends beyond the musical dimension. The musical aspects ref lect how people learn, as well as some social issues related to the cultural context. By taking appropriate measures from detailed observation and

identifying cultured clichés, it may be possible to improve the learning processes in "batucada" groups in Brazil and Germany. Our analysis is divided into three forms of access, focused on the visualization, auditory perception, and corporeal conversion (embodiment) of "samba" rhythms. Below, we will offer examples for each access based on our previous case studies and experiences as musicians with "samba" groups in São Paulo, Campinas, Salvador da Bahia, Berlin and Stuttgart. This methodological approach may be used, also, to approach different musical genres and styles, not only "samba". It can be useful specially for Afro-Latin music.

#### Access I: Visualization of "samba" rhythms

Visualizing popular music like Brazilian "samba", which stands in an oral tradition, involves impacts in the stress field of etic and emic perception. There are essentially three possible settings: the cultural outsider or the cultural insider invent a notation independent from each other, whereas the third possibility is that both develop a notation together. Within these possibilities, there are different intentions. The notation of a rhythm can serve as an aid to memory, which allows the repetition of a presentation or helps to teach and learn the rhythms in a more effective way. Conserving and understanding musical details via a transcription method is intended in scientific works, whereby this process very often involves cultural heritage preservation. Commercial purposes are implemented in all of these intentions: like the music itself, in a performance or recording, its visualization can also be converted into products of the entertainment or education industry.

Although the application of transcription methods in popular music practice is tendentially not the central issue, the process of transcribing sound structures extends and deepens the access to different dimensions of one's own musical experiences. One could claim that the benefit of transcriptions cannot be seen in the written product but rather in the process of transcribing itself. The repeated listening to a certain piece of music trains the attention for sounding details (Pf leiderer 2006: 31).

In Brazil, as a former Portuguese colony, written music was imported from European countries, and its method of notation was used for Brazilian styles of music like "modinha", "lundu" and "choro". The first printings of music in Brazil were produced by Arnaud Pailière (1784-1862) in the 1820s in

Rio de Janeiro. An example of one of the first exploring expeditions with the aim of preserving folkloric music traditions was the "missão de pesquisas folclóricas" (mission of folklore research) by Mário de Andrade (1893-1945) in 1938. The writer and ethnomusicologist was afraid that through processes of urbanization and intermingling with the upcoming entertainment industry, the original folkloric music culture in Brazil would be destroyed. Unfortunately, the collected recordings disappeared due to political impacts but were released 70 years later with the help of the Brazilian civil association Vitae and non-profit private institution SESC in 1990 and in digital form in 2006.

Today, processes of petrification through historically informed performance and "liquidation" (creating new individual rhythms) of the musical material of "samba" music co-exist. While traditionalists in institutions like UNESCO want to preserve an immaterial musical heritage, new innovative rhythms appear every day. The most common way to fix new musical material happens via uploading videos on the internet platform YouTube. The advantage of this medium is obvious: the sound and choreography of a samba performance is clearly fixed, although it could be difficult for an outsider to imitate the rhythms, especially when he or she does not have any kind of musical education. The same problem exists with the application of music scores.

Samba rhythms as parts of rooted popular phenomena have been developed in musical practice. Upon first sight, there is no need to write down anything as long as the "samba" players keep their culture alive through steady rehearsals. However, upon further consideration it seems that the manner meaning how and where this happens—is crucial. Today, the Brazilian Carnival is celebrated worldwide. As well as the "capoeira" movement, "samba batucada" groups or "blocos afros" can also no longer be regarded as exclusive Brazilian music, although the Brazilian source culture has an important function as a glorified center point. Similar to the transfer of African rhythms to Brazil, Brazilian rhythms are cultured today in extended zones worldwide.

Due to the improved possibilities of mobility and communication, a "samba" group in Germany is more easily able to copy percussion arrangements of Brazilian groups. However, despite these accomplishments in a global network, there is still a great difference between the steady experience of the "samba" scene in Rio de Janeiro or Salvador and the rehearsals in a German city like Berlin or Stuttgart. At this point, the medialization

of music as a transcription or a recording gains a key function: leaders of "samba" groups in Germany often import their skills and knowledge in teaching methods from Brazilian musicians. In many cases, they combine these methods with the utilization of scores. In Brazil, in matters of visualization of samba rhythms, a tendency towards professionalization has long become noticeable. The macrostructure of the rhythms is written in either different kinds of box systems or in conventional European notation.

*Figure 2: Dif ferent ways of notating (for the same groove) used by the German group Bahia Connection*


The crucial question in terms of the application of visualizations in the musical practice of "samba" rhythms is: which form of notation is able to facilitate the intercultural transfer of rhythms without altering their liveliness and spontaneity (assuming that this is desirable)? A disadvantage of the box system notations (fig. 2) is—for example—that they place the finest subdivisions of a polyrhythm strongly in the foreground, which leads to a discrepancy with the kinetic dimension of the music. When only one stroke in one bar is played, the duration of the sound of the particular ("surdo") drum and especially the playing movement is much longer than one of the boxes implicate. The dictation of musical timing through corporeal movement is a fundamental issue in "samba" rhythms based on ostinato patterns. Through the inf luence of reading a notation emphasizing the subdivisions or even through the instruction to "think" them while playing, ("samba") music sounds and feels different. Accordingly, we aim to examine the way in which this is perceptible for percussionists and auditors in the presented project by means of analyzing micro-rhythms.

The analysis of the microstructure of "samba" rhythms holds special interest for ethnomusicologists who want to concretize the so-called Brazilian swing or "balanço". These expressions stand for the groove quality, which is

very often considered from the drummer's perspective as the most important attribute of popular grooves. The method applied derives a visualization of the groove via an average calculation of sixteen bars of different rhythms performed in a group context and the observation of the corporeality of the performers. The analysis of sixteen notes has already been carried out in case studies with percussionists from the Brazilian state of Bahia by Christiane Gerischer (2006, 2010) and Janco Bystron (2018) during comprehensive field research in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Figure 3 shows a rhythmic pattern comprising steady sixteenth notes in 2/4-bar played by four different percussionists.

*Figure 3: Microrhythmic structure of a "pandeiro"-rhythm played by four percussionists*

In order to generate the visualization shown, it is necessary to take measurements of the periods between every stroke of the percussion instrument (in this case a "pandeiro"). To accommodate changes of tempo, an average calculation of sixteen bars of the performed rhythms was undertaken. The translation of the absolute periods to percentage values allows comparing microstructures of patterns in different tempi. In the case of ideal phrasing, the differing periods of sixteenth notes (each one represented by one column in the diagram) would have a value of 25 per cent. In every diagram in figure 3, the typical "samba" phrasing is obvious: the first and the fourth sixteenth notes are longer than both of the central notes. A comparison of the diagrams illustrates the different peakedness of the same pattern. In the second diagram (fig. 3, example 2), the maximum difference of the duration between the strokes has a value of 5 per cent, whereas in the first diagram (fig. 3, example 1) a value of nearly 15 per cent is reached. The differences could be caused by the utilization of different playing techniques. While the student realizes the rhythm with a turning movement of his left wrist, the percussionist of the group Sou da Raiz plays the rhythmic pattern without any movement of his left arm. Figure 4 shows the microstructure of a rhythmic pattern played by three different percussionists combined in the same coordinated system.

*Figure 4: Micro-rhythms of two slightly dif fering patterns played by three percussionists*

Considerations of the reasons for varying micro-rhythms lead us directly to assumptions of certain potential clichés. For example, due to his education, the academic percussionist has the tendency to play more accurately than the

self-taught percussionist of the group Sou da Raiz. This idea could be ref lected in the minor erratic values (the small lines on the top of each column). The micro-rhythmic structure itself in figure 3, example 2 is more graded than in figure 3, example 1. In this case, the academic percussionist plays with a stronger "suingue" than the possibly more "popular" percussionist of the group Sou da Raiz. Relating the micro-rhythmic structure to playing techniques leads us to insightful awareness for the practical musician. The investigation of the biographical and social background of the percussionist could generate interesting details for ethnomusicologists in terms of the relationship between the background and the musical accent of each performer.

Correlations between the individual conditions of a player (age, autodidact, professional, etc.) and the groove quality are unlikely to be provable since it is hardly possible to find homogeneous groups of percussionists (or humans in general). However, the comparison of statements made by musicians and listeners with the measured micro-rhythmic proportions in "samba" grooves will offer evidence for the kinds of microgroove structures that trigger psychological associations with Brazilian rhythms. This will crystallize the meaning of the Brazilian expressions "molho", "balanço", and "suingue", which will be supplemented by an analysis of the auditive perception of players and listeners.

#### Access II: Auditive perception

An important aspect that we wish to present in connection with the auditory perception of "samba" rhythms is the appearance of rhythmic diffusion and its evaluation of players and listeners. It is in the nature of things that when many drummers are playing a polyrhythm, the strokes that are theoretically considered to happen at the same point in time are not exactly played at once. In a systematic analysis of collective percussion performances, Iyer (2002: 400) and Gerischer (2006: 45) highlighted the f lam-stroke, a type of stroke formed by two very close sounds that are perceived as a single attack (apud Haugen 2016: 25). Through her analytical model of the "beat bin", Danielsen (2010) demonstrates how two conf licting points of attack merge into one, which she calls an "extended beat". This fact inf luences the experienced perception of samba rhythms and leads to expressions like "molho", which characterizes the "imprecise" playing in terms of the simultaneity of the rhythmic events, which are actually micro-variations (instead of imprecision). The

crucial question is whether this kind of characterization is a glorification of a poorly conceived musical result or the musical diffusion actually intended by the percussionist.

In this respect, it would be enlightening to examine at which point and under what conditions the "imprecise" playing changes from a random product to a subconscious periodic result. At this point, it is important to distinguish between non-random micro-time structures (also called micro-rhythmic asymmetry) and rhythmic diffusion as a micro-timing structure, an accidental product. Both phenomena facilitate the perception of different tonal sources since single frequencies are more easily identified.

The dynamic process that happens in musical ensembles after a series of rehearsals or performances is obvious for every musician: the interplay improves, and a better musical f low is perceptible. Moreover, the random timing diminishes and is replaced by a micro-timing, which inf luences and is inf luenced by the musical environment. This process makes a musical situation in terms of the common groove of musicians unique. In musical interplay in classical music styles, a derivation of 30ms between musical events still gives the impression of perfect blending (Rasch 1988). In groove-oriented music like "samba", differing micro-rhythmic structures are played at the same time. However, what would the impression of this music be if the blending was perfect and every percussive pattern was played with the same micro-rhythmic structure? Santana (2018: 161) discusses the "involving sonority" of "batucada" grooves, highlighting how different "personalities" of players affect the micro- and macrostructure of "samba". Through the "conjugation of the patterns", the performance creates a "rhythmic gear" that allows the players to play together, even with micro-variations.

With our method we would like to verify how the perception of "samba" players is linked to micro-rhythmic structure and diffusion. With the help of (non-)manipulated recordings, it is possible to highlight whether determined rhythmic structures can be identified by "samba" players and how they are evaluated. The mutual inf luence of single players in a group context will be verified by the comparison of a recording at the beginning and end of a series of rehearsals. The alteration of micro-rhythmic structures through the inf luence of the musical environment will be compared with the statements of players and listeners. This will offer a detailed insight into the perceived musical reality of the percussionists and hopefully unmask the inf luence of clichés respecting the musical practice of German and Brazilian players.

#### Access III: Corporeal conversion

Luis Ferreira describes the role of the body in Afro-American rhythms and performances as "part of the sound production, promoting interaction not only with dancers […], but between musicians while they make music." (2013: 232) The body is both a musical emitter and receptor, and gestural patterns are connected to sound patterns. Le Breton (2010) asserts that through corporeality, people make the world into an extension of their experience, whereby they transform it into familiar and consistent patterns, available to action and permeable to comprehension. Considering this perspective, we suggest that in "batucada" the body plays a mediation role. It acts in terms of a f lexible and interactive pattern, externalizing performative aspects of sound and movement and transiting through symbolic dimensions. The body mediates the individual and collective levels of the practice, integrating the personality of each rhythm player—the way in which one plays—and the sonority of the whole group.

The micro variations in the rhythmic structure may be understood by observing the performer's body movements. Tiago de Oliveira Pinto points out the so-called "acoustic-motional sequences" (2001: 101), a set of movements related to the sound production in African and Afro-Brazilian music. The acoustic dimension is linked to the motional dimension, meaning that the rhythm structure is constituted by movements producing sound. Graeff (2015) suggests that acoustic and motional events are structured and result from the musical rhythm at the same time. In other words, there is an intrinsic relation between sound and body movement.

According to this perspective, Santana (2018) has analyzed the performance of "samba batucada" using motion capture recordings. Through the observation of the physical structure, it was possible to state some relations between the corporeality and the rhythm characteristics. The main structure of "samba" rhythm is constituted by three integrated "musical behaviors": (i) "marcação" (marking), (ii) "condução" (conducting), and (iii) "base" (basis) (Ibid: 170).

Musically speaking, "marcação" comprises a pattern played in low drums, the central pivot for the practice, playing a regular beat. In the "samba batucada", the lowest voices of "surdo" drums are responsible for this pattern behavior, which acts as a rhythmic bedrock supporting the musical structure

and performance. The "condução" corresponds to the elementary pulsation, usually called a subdivision of the beat. This pattern creates a constant f lux, "conducting" the movements of the collective practice. Patterns formed by sixteenth notes are usually responsible for this rhythmic layer. "Base" is a pattern similar to a timeline (Nketia 1974; Kubik 1979), the same as "rhythmic-line" (Graeff 2015; Pinto 2001), constituted by cycles with varied accents and musical figures. "Base" also refers to some rhythm accents (stressed notes) that characterize a musical style or genre. This kind of pattern may thus be implicit when some instruments are played, as a tacit presence in the rhythmic structure.

Those musical behaviors are responsible for creating a constant movement in the rhythmic structure, through the interaction and "conjugation" between different patterns, establishing relations of suspension and support in a motional f lux. These kinds of movements may be observed in a sonic dimension, although they can also be noted in the physical structure of the players.

*Figure 5: Example of a "caixa" player, illustrating the movements of physical structure*

The physical structure presents similar relations of suspension and support in a constant f lux of movements. The "marcação" behavior may be present in feet and leg movements, which gives support for the rhythm structure and physical structure. The movements at the upper level of the body are related to the lower level, suspending and creating a kind of tension between the pivot of "marcação" and the stressed notes played by instruments like "caixa" (snare drum), with a base's musical behavior. This interrelation occurs in a f lux of movements conducted by a f low of the elementary pulses. As we learned, in this kind of pattern ("condução") there is a f lexibility in the way in which each performer can play.

Subsequently, the movements of rhythmic structure come from the movements of the body, and corporeality assumes a central role in the musical characterization. Considering this perspective, the *swing* comes from the movement of the body, it *is* in the movement of the body and *induces* the movement of the body.

#### **Final considerations**

The benefit of our method lies in the combination of a quantitative investigation of performative details and a qualitative investigation of the possible factors inf luencing these details. A conceptual framework is provided by the terms of artistic identity within a transcultural field. This frame is characterized by an ethnomusicological perspective on the connection between Brazilian and German "samba" groups. The finding of musical details in "samba" rhythms and the documentation of their ref lection by practicing "sambistas" of two nations provides a valuable empirical foundation for the analysis of transcultural processes in musical practice.

With the three forms of access, we try to capture the complex phenomena connected to "samba", and we are very confident to have found meaningful results. Through the alignment between the analyses of the micro-timing (access I) and the corporeal movement (access III), it is possible to verify in which way these two elements correlate. Alternatively, perhaps there is no categorical correlation, and the macrostructure of a performed rhythm is more responsible for the micro-timing. That the macrostructure in "samba" rhythms has inf luence on the microstructure, was already shown by a comparison of the structures of "samba-reggae"- and "samba de roda"*-*rhythms (Gerischer 2004: 182; Bystron 2018: 48, 102). Nevertheless, the corporeal movement was not considered in these analyses. The hypothesis that a possible desire for musical authenticity is ref lected in the micro-timing structures or in the corporeal movement of the respective percussionist can be verified by their comparison with the perceptual access (II). The question regarding how the "sambistas" perceive their music leads to psychological and sociological aspects. Therefore, this access contains a promising potential for a connection with theoretical concepts of identity. Though we primarily focus on the qualitative verification of musical details, the investigation of "samba" groups from a socio-psychological perspective can help to more clearly define the connection between a transcultural dynamic and an artistic identity. An exemplary case which can be analyzed under this perspective comes from previous interviews with Brazilian percussionists from Bahia, who held a certain aversion to transcultural activities. Through the spreading of musical material via the Internet, they felt pressure to innovate, which stimulated a stronger desire for a consistent artistic identity. If such an attitude actually does have a verifiable inf luence on musical practice, and one possible consequence is that clichés like the one mentioned above are established or fortified, further research could be very revealing.

#### **Bibliography**


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# **About the authors**

**Glaucia Peres da Silva** is postdoc researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Duisburg-Essen. Her research focuses on economic sociology, sociology of the arts and global and transnational processes. Her PhD thesis was published in the book *Wie klingt die globale Ordnung. Die Entstehung eines Marktes für World Music* (VS Springer 2016). She is currently investigating transnational labor markets for artists in the case of the world music market, focusing on dynamics around trade fairs, festivals and exhibitions.

**Konstantin Hondros** is research associate in the DFG-project Organized Creativity and a PhD candidate at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He studied sociology, theater, film and media studies and art history at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the inf luence of copyright on music creation processes. In his PhD, he analyses processes of soundalike productions in media music and how the involved actors deal with regulatory uncertainty. His works concentrate on organization studies, the sociology of law, the sociology of culture and the arts as well as visual sociology.

**Annelies Fryberger**, as a sociologist of music, is interested in valuation practices and processes of institutionalization in contemporary art music and sound art. She obtained her PhD from the EHESS in Paris in 2016, with a dissertation on peer review and commissioning processes in the field of contemporary art music. She has since been working as a postdoctoral researcher (DAAD grant at the University of Hildesheim, Germany, Labex CAP position at the IRCAM/Pompidou Center, Paris, and visiting scholar at the New School, New York). Her current research looks at how sound art has been integrated into the world of contemporary art.

**Mukasa Situma Wafula** is a Bachelor of Music and Master of Arts graduate of Kenyatta University, Kenya, and is currently a doctoral student at the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar, Germany. He's a lecturer of African musicology at the Technical University of Kenya. He previously worked as a music resource manager at a South Africa-based retail media store that combines books, music and a cineplex. Artistically, he's a player of the Bukusu Litungu (a seven-stringed lyre from Western Kenya), a singer and a choir director. He's also a composer of choir music and a music critic, drawing on extensive experience at schools and colleges and the Catholic church.

**Peter Lell** studied musicology and philosophy at the undergraduate level at Kiel University and the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar. Following that, he completed a master's program in "Transcultural Music Studies" at the UNESCO Chair on Transcultural Music Studies, Weimar, and spent a year for research purposes at the University of Leeds, England. His research interests include contemporary music, music festivals and the traditional music of Afghanistan.

**Sandrine Le Coz** is currently writing a PhD in Social Anthropology (EHESS Paris). In addition, she works in the world music field as a producer, journalist, programmer, diffuser, artistic stage manager and scriptwriter for various institutions and international festivals. Her research topic focuses on the professional networks, markets and fairs that structure the world music industry. Through a multi-located ethnography, she proposes to investigate the relationships between key actors and the impact of their decision-making power in terms of visibility and the valuation of artistic careers.

**Nepomuk Riva** studied musicology and theology in Heidelberg and Berlin. He received his PhD in 2012 at the DFG-Graduate School "Schriftbildlichkeit (Visual Iconicity)" at the Free University Berlin, where he researched the written and oral transmission of church music in Cameroon. Between 2012-2014 he was an assistant lecturer at the department for sociology of music at Humboldt University. Since 2016, he has been an assistant lecturer at the HMTM Hannover in the department of ethnomusicology where he has been working on a postdoc project about the representation of Africa and its music in European music culture. He has also served as coordinator of the DAAD-Graduate School "Performing Sustainability" at the University

of Hildesheim, the University of Maiduguri (Nigeria) and the University of Cape Coast (Ghana).

**Alla El Kahla** is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. He obtained a major in music and musicology studies from the High Institute of Music, University Tunis, Tunisia, and then completed his graduate degree in cultural studies at the same institute. His current research proposes to study the practice of Al-Istikhbar in Tunisian traditional/popular music, shedding light upon and dissecting the roots of its cultural features. He is interested in the field of Tunisian music, with an emphasis on musical life throughout French rule and the status of music within society.

**Daniela Anabel González** is a teaching assistant at the University of Buenos Aires and is part of two research projects: "The Knowledge of the Archive. The Documents Referred to Musical Activities on the Digital Collection 'Biblioteca Criolla' (Ibero-American Institute of Berlin)" and "The Musical Practices of the Late 19th and the Early 20th Century through the 'Biblioteca Criolla' Collection". She is a PhD candidate in the theory and history of arts with a project entitled "Musical Genres, Performances and Competing Discourses in Buenos Aires between the Late 19th and Early 20th Century". Since 2012, she has been the editorial producer of the Argentinian musicological journal *El oído pensante*.

**Janco Boy Bystron**, born in 1979 in Hannover, Germany, studied drums and percussion (jazz/rock/pop) at the Carl Maria von Weber Hochschule für Musik, Dresden, Germany. For his PhD in musicology, he focused on the musical culture of Brazil and published the results in Brasilianische Grooves (2018). With the exposition of macro- and micro-rhythmic structures in popular music and their embedding in sociocultural practice and ways of thinking in modern societies, he wants to contribute to a detailed ref lection on motives for artistic activities and their reception. Janco currently works as a freelance drummer and music teacher in Stuttgart, Germany.

**Chico Santana** has a PhD in Music from the University of Campinas, Brazil, and the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar, Germany, where he studied samba batucada. His research topics include transcultural music studies, musical education and performance, with a focus on percussion, collective apprenticeship, rhythm and corporeality. He has published books and didactic materials in Projeto Guri and has taught at the music department of the Arts Institute at UNICAMP and the Itajaí City Conservatoire of Popular Music. He regularly teaches and acts as an instrumentalist, composer and musical director for several groups in Brazil and Germany.