HomeDigitizing Performance in Africa
Digitizing Performance in Africa
Politics, Aesthetics, and Historical Continuities in the Circulation of Music
Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Abstract
This conference brings together anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and historians to discuss the ways that communication devices have continued, reinforced, or altered how African people are sharing sounds and images of performance.
Announcement
Argument
This conference brings together anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and historians to discuss the ways that communication devices have continued, reinforced, or altered how African people are sharing sounds and images of performance.
The practice of exchanging and circulating music, dance, poetry, or rituals has shifted to include use of new technologies over time. During the latter half of the twentieth century, the radio and analog audio recorder were key tools used during African self−liberation movements. Since the end of the 2000s, the widespread use of cell phones and media file sharing applications has impacted not only urban areas, but also rural areas. Excerpts from ritual musical performances, funerals, weddings, or even military events are shared and circulated via SD cards, Bluetooth connections or social networks on the continent and on a transnational scale.
The local and global music industries have had great impact on the way people circulate, listen to, and relate to music. However, the visual and sound recording of musical events is now also implemented by participants of the performance themselves, and not only by outsiders, non−African visitors, or (inter)national media.
How to describe practices of “fileization” of musical performances? What are their historical continuities and connections? How are they embedded in histories of colonialism and neocolonialism? What are the political or aesthetic stakes when these music files are used in intra or inter−community interactions?
Organisation
- Katell Morand (UPN / LESC-CREM),
- Giordano Marmone (ULB - LAMC)
- Raymok Ketema (University of California-Santa Barbara)
Programme
Thursday, January 19th
- 9:15am Coffee
- 9:45am Welcome and Opening
10am-1pm Sensitive Files: Conflict, Control, and Propaganda
- 10:00 Sandra Bornand (CNRS, LLACAN, Paris) Controlling the narratives: three generations of Zarma griots facing the recording [en Français/in French]
- 10:40 Raymok Ketema (University of California Santa Barbara, Department of History) Music Circulation & War: the Underground Nakfa Music Studio in Eritrea and its impacts (1970s to 1990s)
11:20am Coffee break
- 11:40 Sébastien Boulay (Université Paris Cité, CEPED /IMAF) Engaged Hassanophone poetry and new electronic media (Western Sahara): what artistic renewal for what political significance?
- 12:20 Katell Morand (Université Paris Nanterre,CREM-LESC) Of Song, Smartphones and War: Exploring Music Circulation in Northern Ethiopia
1pm Lunch
2pm-7pm Power, Ritual and Socialities: From Direct Contact to Digital Sharing
- 2:00 Angela Impey ‘I keep my cassettes in my head’: Orality, mobile socialities and the analog–digital continuum in South Sudan
- 2:40 Giordano Marmone (FNRS, Université Libre de Bruxelles, LAMC) Sharing the rhythm of institutions. Circulation of music files and political hegemony in northern Kenya.
3:20pm coffee break
- 3:40 Kawkab Tawfiq (IFAO-CEDEJ, Cairo) The Egyptian Zār recording circulation in Cairo and Delta
- 4:20 Elena Bertuzzi (Université Paris Nanterre, LESC) Debaa: a new women’s musico-choreographic genre between spiritual heritage, mass-media, and new technologies [en Français/in French]
Friday, January 20th
9:30am Coffee
10am-1pm Overt or Hidden Circulations: From Local Industries to Global Listening
- 10:00 Joella Bitter (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department ofAnthropology) From Peddling to Cassette Recording to Digital Reproduction: Putting the Affect in Gulu Uganda's Histories of Music Circulation
- 10:40 Dexter Story (University of California Los Angeles, Ethnomusicology) Coffee ‘Give me this song’: Ethnographic Perspectives on Eritrea’s Digital Storefronts and Download Industry
11:20am break
- 11:40 Alessandra Ciucci (Columbia University,Department of Music) Subterranean Listening among Migrant Moroccan Men in Umbria (Italy)
- 12:20 Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (CNRS, IMAF, Paris) Re-circulating “Gnokko” in the 21st century: songs, aesthetic choices, and changing discourses on migration in Soninke diasporas
11pm Lunch
2pm-5pm Streaming and Social networks: The New Platforms of Digital Performance
- 2:00 Andrew J. Eisenberg Platforming Kenyan Popular Music (New York University Abu Dhabi)
- 2:40 Schalk D. Van der Merwe (Stellenbosch University)New futures, new identities: The impact of music streaming in Africa South Africa
3:20pm Coffee break
- 3:40 Alice Aterianus-Owanga (University of Cape Town, Anthropology Department / University of Geneva) “FOMO is real!” Learning, Longing, and (Dis)Connecting through Online Performances in the Cape Town Salsa community
- 4:20 Elina Djebbari (Université Paris Nanterre, CREM-LESC) From a music file to a dance challenge on TikTok: The many digital lives of a bolloaloukou song from Ivory Coast
- 5-5:30pm Roundtable / Closing Remarks
Subjects
- Ethnology, anthropology (Main category)
- Zones and regions > Africa
- Society > History
Places
- Bâtiment Max Weber, salle des conférences - Université Paris Nanterre
Nanterre, France (92)
Event attendance modalities
Full on-site event
Date(s)
- Thursday, January 19, 2023
- Friday, January 20, 2023
Attached files
Keywords
- ethnomusicologie, Afrique, numérique, circulation, performance
Contact(s)
- Katell Morand
courriel : kmorand [at] parisnanterre [dot] fr
Information source
- Katell Morand
courriel : kmorand [at] parisnanterre [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Digitizing Performance in Africa », Conference, symposium, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, https://calenda.org/1040766
