HomePopular cultures and performative identities

HomePopular cultures and performative identities

Popular cultures and performative identities

Cultures populaires et identités en acte

Digital technology, music and dance in Africa and beyond

Technologie numérique, musique et danse en Afrique et au-delà

*  *  *

Published on Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Abstract

Français English

The international symposium “Popular cultures and performative identities. Digital technology, music and dance in Africa and beyond” brings to a close the AFRINUM program funded by ANR from 2019 to 2024. Its aim is to examine, through the prism of music and dance, what digital technology does to cultures and what cultures do with it, in terms of knowledge transfer and production, reconfigurations of social relations and cultural mediation. On a more theoretical level, it questions the relationship between music, technology and culture, and invites a critical re-reading of the innovation paradigm, largely based on a Western-centric narrative. Finally, this symposium provides an opportunity to explore a new field of research at the crossroads of Popular Music Studies, Sound Studies, Sciences and Technology Studies and Digital Studies.

Announcement

English Français

25-27 mars 2024

Argument

Everyone today recognizes that the digital revolution has transformed our daily lives and reconfigured our reality by giving rise to new ways of writing, exchanging, circulating and storing data, just as it has created new forms of authority, economy, understanding of time and relationship to the world (Rifkin, 2001; Doueihi, 2013). But it is just as true that because it is anchored in contrasting social, political and economic environments in the North as in the South, and because it is part of "socio-histories of technologies" (Lysloff and Gay, 2003: 15) that differ from one country to another, the digital technology manifests also itself in many forms and local uses that generate their own meaning and their own context. In short, the relationship that everyone has with this global technology is necessarily situated.

This is what the "Digital cultures in West Africa: music, youth, mediations" program, funded by the ANR, questions through the prism of music and dance since 2019, and what this symposium proposes to test in other fields: what digital technology does to cultures and what cultures do with it. An understanding of this two-way movement is indeed necessary to go beyond the notion of "transfer" and the still widespread idea that this technology works in a unilateral North-South movement, despite a growing number of works in social sciences that aim to remap the digital from the countries of the South (Berrou and Mellet, 2020; De Bruijn and Van Dijk, 2012; Ithurbide and Rivron, 2018).

We thus propose to consider the digital in its dialectic as globalized tool vs cultural artifact, to account for the multiple singularities it offers, as well as the representations, logics and underlying values to which it refers. What contributes to transforming, producing or reifying the digital, in terms of openness to the world vs identitarian closure, as well as of cultural mediations vs the reification of identity distinctions, and of projections into the future vs resurgence of memory? How do the new connections produced by this technology lead to renewing, or not, the forms of commitment, support or criticism of social models?

In this new ecosystem, new figures and new professions are emerging, including those of arrangers, sound engineers, music video directors or choreographers. New prescribers are also appearing: traditional media (radio and television, whose private channels have multiplied with cable and DTT), but above all digital media (streaming and download platforms, social media), financed by local and international private companies, associations, or religious movements. In countries where questions of infrastructure (Larkin 2013), professional training (Olivier & Pras, 2023) or digital literacy (Granjon, 2016) arise, what are the capacities for action of these individuals? The invention of new economic models (Eisenberg, 2022), “innovations through use” (Von Hippel, 2005), the creation of an “art of contingency” (Olivier, 2022), compliance with a new “industrial patronage” (De Beukelaer and Eisenberg, 2020), or even a “digital colonialism” (Kwet, 2019): what do we observe in the different digital fields?

On a more theoretical level, questioning the relationship between music, digital technology and culture in this way invites a critical re-reading of the paradigm of innovation, largely based on a Western-centric narrative. It is therefore a matter of rethinking the digital beyond a chronology of progress, to highlight the many “productive paths” (Grimaud et al., 2017) at work here and there, which testify to multiple and fruitful “alternative modernities” (Ashcroft, 2009).

This symposium, which extends the work of AFRINUM undertaken in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Mali and Senegal, finally offers an opportunity to explore a new field of research at the crossroads of Popular Music Studies, Sound Studies, Science and Technology Studies and Digital Studies. Some works already integrate this interdisciplinarity (Bates, 2016; Born, 2022; Devine & Boudreault-Fournier, 2021; Steingo & Sykes, 2019), but there is still a need to develop methodological tools suitable for analysing digital musical ecosystems in countries of the South, as well as to reflect on the place of technology in music research, which has long overlooked this question. This last observation leads to the double question that will be discussed during this symposium: how do we take digital technology into account in our work; and how does this lead to renewing our practice and our research tools?

In the field of digital studies, Africa appears both as an emerging object and as a laboratory. This symposium is all the more relevant as it gives for the first time an opportunity to present these materials and these situations, and to make them dialogue with other fields, in order to discuss an Africa which is in the world and the world in Africa.

Axis 1: A music, sound and image factory

Almost everywhere in the world, the popular music industry is experiencing major changes due to the digitization of creation and distribution media. Musicians today go to studios not only to record, but also to compose their music and shape a “sound”, before making music videos, in collaboration with dancers, choreographers and audiovisual producers. Recorded and clipped music allows them to acquire a visibility that guarantees their notoriety in a media regime. With the arrival of 3G technology and access to mobile and inexpensive digital audio equipment, studios with digital audio stations are thus becoming the "nerve center of the creative process" (Meintjes, 2012), within economies characterized by mass consumption and a rapid renewal of music. From a place of performance reproduction, the studio becomes a place of "performance production" (Stuhl, 2014) where music is repeated, composed, arranged, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered, danced and put into images on the spot. The performative dimension of music thus fully integrates the work of the studio, which therefore constitutes a social situation in its own right.

Building on the work of Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, Trevor Pinch suggests taking into account the analysis of machines and their agency in the analysis of cultural movements (Pinch, 2005). The research undertaken within the AFRINUM project has shown that beatmakers, arrangers, sound engineers and videographers consider their machines as instruments in their own right, whose handling, subtleties and playing possibilities they have had to learn, and with which they maintain a permanent dialogue. A tool is not simply an object, but a means of expression, the use of which reflects experience and skill level; it is a producer of effects on people, even a cultural actor (Olivier & Pras, 2023; Péneau, 2023).

Proposals included in this axis could relate to:

  • The figure of these sound and audiovisual professionals: their biographical journey, their methods of acquisition and transmission of digital knowledge, or their work in interaction with musicians or dancers during the different stages of
  • Human-machine relationships: audio and visual effects, software instruments, as well as samples and presets used, the use of which is dictated by fashionable musical aesthetics, economic constraints or even imaginations of globalization or of the past. The methods of implementing these tools and resources can thus be understood as so many "ways of doing things" (de Certeau, 1980) where the distinction of aesthetics is subtly played out, between musical genres, between studios or between
  • Images, sounds and identity construction: how the images and sounds produced contribute to the construction of cultural, religious, gendered or even generational identities; how images and sounds carry imaginations or refer to standards of behaviour and to cultural representations; and how individuals and groups identify with and relate to

Axis 2: Youth and cultural entrepreneurship

The central use of digital tools in the production and circulation of music and dance has the effect of shifting the “knowledge-power” relationships (Foucault, 1977) from the elders to the youth. In our fields of investigation, mastery of digital technology allows digital natives to acquire their own modes of expression, to become professionals, and ultimately to take control of the ways of making and living music and dance.

This emancipation is reflected in the emergence of a new cultural entrepreneurship linked to the world of music and dance, of audiovisuals and events, in a context where music is “watched” almost more than it is listened to (Kaiser and Spanu, 2018). We are thus witnessing the creation of labels, collectives, platforms and digital media, as well as the appearance of new professions (community managers, influencers, TikTokers, etc.). These singular professional paths are articulated with unprecedented logics of individualization where the values of neoliberalism - in particular that of the auto-entrepreneur or self-entrepreneurship - are reworked and resignified in the light of issues specific to the ecosystems in which they evolve. Indeed, the cultural and socio-economic practices that are deployed with digital technology are not transformed uniformly or with the same intensity, but are part of genealogies of pre-existing and locally-located knowledge as much as in appropriations and “captures” (Balandier, 1982) of globalized knowledge.

Communication proposals in this axis may address, without necessarily being limited to, the following issues and questions:

  • Economic values: Music and dance circulate within very diverse markets, from local to global, and even respond to a non-commercial use, depending on economic issues, social logics or contrasting political situations. The acquisition of mastery by cultural entrepreneurs and economic actors, and the recomposition of the value chain(s) can be the subject of precise descriptions here. Attention may also focus on the links between old and recent social and economic practices, and their transformation with digital technology, or even on the question of the sustainability, or not, of new economic
  • Dynamics of professionalization and recognition: Despite the dynamism of this new audiovisual culture, artists and studio professionals, dancers and music video choreographers, still suffer from a lack of recognition, while some are forced to perform very diverse activities, in and out of the field, to earn a living. In this context, we will consider how the digital allows artists and studio professionals to become “entrepreneurs of their notoriety” (Beuscart, 2008) and to develop new visibility strategies. If one utilizes tools from the economic models of the GAFAM, which make it possible to articulate relational networks and socializing promotional practices with the public, is this enough to develop an international career?

Axis 3: Cultural mediations and returns to context(s)

This third axis discusses the widespread idea that digital technology, by allowing a globalized circulation of content, establishes social ties, or even creates larger communities. But what is happening in Africa, where a large number of countries are in crisis – political and security crises, identity crises, postcolonial crisis, religious crisis – and where the perimeter of States is most often restricted? In this “revenge of contexts” (Olivier de Sardan, 2021) which provokes changes, reforms and sometimes revolutions, what does the accelerated development of digital tools and the sharing of audio and visual content produce: an openness to the world, new globalized imaginaries, or, conversely, a specificity of local cultures, astrengthening of conservatism, and a return to nationalism?

In terms of temporalities, digital technology arouses as many projections into the future as it does examples of a resurgence of memory, which result in the re-editing and rediscovery of musical recordings and film sequences linked to key periods of the past. How do these sounds and images from the past constitute creative resources for musicians and music video producers? How is this past selected, reworked, even manipulated in the light of contemporary issues? How is it combined with globalized content to perform in these contexts?

In Africa, most cultural industries operate on a local or regional scale. However, they are in demand by the GAFAM and international telephone operators who are counting on a “digital transformation” coupled with economic growth in these countries. How, by integrating the local music economy into their strategy of conquering markets, do GAFAM and telephone operators become actors of social change and the dissemination of cultures, or even establish privileged partnerships with States up to supplement in their cultural policies?

A number of themes can be presented in this axis, including:

  • The cultural agency of the digital: Considered as an agent of mediation work that creates symbolic and political entities, how does digital technology contribute to negotiating and renegotiating the place of cultural signifiers within States, but also within cultural industries? What influences can the “digital revolution” have on the ways of thinking about others and about oneself through music and dance? Does it give more agency to artists, but also to the public, and to young people in particular who are the main consumers of music and dance?
  • The development of streaming platforms: In 2022, music streaming accounted for 67% of total global music sales revenue and the platforms had around 618 million users. Despite criticism of the creation of platforms and the new cultural hegemonies they engender, the realities are often more complex and raise questions about local re-anchoring in terms of content, formats and partnerships, as well as about the rise of new local and regional streaming companies.

Submission guidelines

Abstracts must be submitted to the scientific committee in French or English. Abstracts should be between 250 and 300 words in length, including a title and an indication of the desired thematic axis focus.

Abstracts should be accompanied by a short biography indicating surname, first name, title and/or position, institution, country and e-mail address.

Abstracts and biographical notes should be sent by e-mail to: afrinumsymposium2024@gmail.com

before October 15, 2023

Symposium venue

Auditorium 150 Campus Condorcet Cours des Humanités

93322 AUBERVILLIERS

Calendar

  • Call for papers: July 7, 2023
  • Receipt of paper proposals: October 15, 2023
  • Selection of papers by the scientific committee: December 15, 2023
  • Finalization of program (panels, lectures, round tables, master-classes, concerts): February 1, 2024
  • AFRINUM symposium: March 25, 26 and 27, 2024
  • West African Electronic Music Master Class and Coupé-Décalé Choreography Master Class: March 28 and 29, 2024

Organizing Committee

  • Marta Amico (Univ. Rennes 2)
  • Sarah Andrieu (Univ. Côte d’Azur)
  • Alfonso Castellanos (EHESS)
  • Stéphane Costantini (EHESS)
  • Daouda Gary-Tounkara (CNRS)
  • Gilles Holder (CNRS)
  • Abdoulaye Niang (Univ. G. Berger)
  • Emmanuelle Olivier (CNRS)
  • Amandine Pras (Univ. York)
  • Maël Péneau (EHESS)
  • Baptiste Venet (Univ. Paris Dauphine PSL)

Scientific Committee

  • Francis Akindès (Univ. Bouaké, Côte d’Ivoire)
  • Eliot Bates (CUNY, USA)
  • Ndiouga Adrien Benga (UCAD, Sénégal)
  • Christiaan de Beukelaer (Univ. Melbourne, Australie)
  • Jean-Samuel Beuscart (Télécom Paris, France)
  • Philippe Bouquillion (Univ. Paris 13, France)
  • Gérôme Guibert (Paris Sorbonne, France)
  • Fatoumata Keita (ULSHB, Mali)
  • Philippe Le Guern (Univ. Rennes 2, France)
  • Denis-Constant Martin (Sciences Po Bordeaux, France)
  • Kevin Mellet (Sciences Po Paris, France)
  • Hélène Neveu-Kringelbach (University College London, UK)
  • Nicolas Puig (IRD, France)
  • William Rouerie (Rhodes University, South Africa)
  • Catherine Rudent (Paris Sorbonne, France)
  • Laura Steil (Univ. Luxembourg)
  • Martin Stokes (London King’s College, UK)
  • Chab Touré (Institut National des Arts, Mali)
  • Ibrahima Wane (UCAD, Sénégal)

Bibliographical References

Ashcroft Bill, 2009, « Alternative modernities: Globalization and the post-colonial », ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 40(1) : 81-105.

Balandier Georges, 1982, Sociologie actuelle de l’Afrique Noire, Paris : PUF (4e édition).

Bates Eliot, 2016, Digital tradition. Arrangement and labor in Istanbul’s recording studio culture, Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Berrou Jean-Philippe et Mellet Kevin (eds.), 2020, «Le mobile et ses usages en Afrique subsaharienne»,

Réseaux 219.

De Beukelaer Christiaan et Eisenberg Andrew J., 2020, « Mobilising African music: How mobile telecommunications and technology firms are transforming African music sectors », Journal of African Cultural Studies, 32(2) : 195–211.

Beuscart Jean-Samuel, 2008, «Sociabilité en ligne, notoriété virtuelle et carrière artistique. Les usages de MySpace pour les musiciens autoproduits», Réseaux, 152 : 139-168.

Born Georgina, 2022, (dir.), Music and Digital Media. A Planetary Anthropology, London : UCL Press.

Bouquillion Philippe, Ithurbide Christine, 2022, “Audio-visual industry and digital platforms in India: A contribution from political economy of communication”, Global Media and Communication, 18(3) : 345-364.

De Bruijn Mirjam et Van Dijk Rijk, 2012, «Connecting and Change in African Societies: Example of ‘Ethnographies of Linking’ in Anthropology”, Anthropologica, 54(1) : 45-59.

Devine Kyle et Boudreault-Fournier Alexandrine (eds.), 2021, Audible Intrastructures. Music, Sound, Media, New York : Oxford University Press.

Doueihi Milad, 2013, Qu’est-ce que le numérique?, Paris : PUF.

Eisenberg Andrew J., 2022, “Soundtracks in the silicon savannah: digital production, aesthetic entrepreneurship and the new recording industry in Nairobi, Kenya”, in G. Born (dir.), Music and Digital Media. A Planetary Anthropology, London : UCL Press, pp. 46-89.

Granjon Fabien, 2016, «Les sciences humaines et sociales au prisme du digital turn», Variations. Revue internationale de théorie critique, 19: 1-5.

Grimaud Emmanuel, Tastevin Yann Philippe et Vidal Denis, 2017, « Low tech, high tech, wild tech. Réinventer la technologie? », Technique & Culture, 67 : 12-29.

Guibert Gérôme, 2023, “Live Performance and Filmed Concerts: Remarks on Music Production and Livestreaming before, during, and after the Public Health Crisis", Ethnomusicology Review, 24 : 123- 140.

Von Hippel Eric, 2005, Democratizing Innovation, Cambridge & London : MIT Press.

Ithurbide Christine et Rivron Vassili, 2018 , «Industries culturelles et plateformes numériques dans les Suds: des reconfigurations sociales et spatiales en question», Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, 277 : 5-36.

Kaiser Marc et Spanu Michael, 2018, « Introduction. « On n’écoute que des clips ! » Penser la mise en tension médiatique de la musique à l’image », Volume ! La revue des musiques populaires, 14(2) : 7-19.

Kwet Michael, 2019, « Digital colonialism: US empire and the new imperialism in the Global South »,

Race & Class, 60(4) : 3-26.

Larkin Brian, 2013, « The politics and poetics of infrastructure », Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1) : 327–343.

Le Guern Philippe (dir.), 2017, En quête de musique. Questions de méthode à l’ère de la numérimorphose, Paris : Hermann.

Lysloff René T.A. et Gay Lesly C., 2003, Music and technoculture, Middletown : Wesleyan University Press.

Meintjes Louise, 2012, « The recording studio as fetish », in J. Sterne (ed.), The sound studies reader, London : Routledge, pp. 265–282.

Olivier Emmanuelle, 2022, « Les localités d’une technologie globale. Pratiquer l’ethnomusicologie en régime numérique », Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie, 35 : 9-24.

Olivier Emmanuelle et Pras Amandine, 2022, « Généalogies des professionnels du studio d’enregistrement à Bamako (Mali) », Cahiers d’ethnomusicologie, 35 : 123-149.

Olivier Emmanuelle et Pras Amandine, 2023, « Creative uses of low tech in Bamako recording studios (Mali) », Journal of New Music Research, DOI: 10.1080/09298215.2023.2201242

Olivier de Sardan, Jean-Pierre, 2021, La revanche des contextes. Des mésaventures de l’ingénierie sociale en Afrique et au-delà, Paris : Karthala.

Péneau Maël, 2023, Le beatmaking à Dakar: Savoirs, pratiques et cultures du numérique. Thèse de doctorat. EHESS.

Pinch Trevor, 2005, « De Trumansburg à Detroit : Comment LA MACHINE MOOG fabrique la culture », Mouvements, 42(5) : 61-69.

Pras Amandine, Turner Kierian, Bol Toby et Olivier Emmanuelle, 2019, « Production processes of pop music arrangers in Bamako, Mali », Audio Engineering Society Convention 147.

Pras Amandine, McKinnon Max et Olivier Emmanuelle, 2022, « The Art of Remixing in Abidjan (Ivory Coast) », Audio Engineering Society Convention 153.

Pras Amandine et Olivier Emmanuelle, 2023, « De-fetishizing audio signals and technologies in Bamako (Mali) », Audio Engineering Society Conference: 2023 AES International Audio Education Conference.

Rifkin Jeremy, 2001, The age of access: The new culture of hyper-capitalism, New York : Penguin. Steingo Gavin et Sykes Jim, 2019, Remapping sound studies, Durham : Duke University Press.

Stokes Martin, 2022, « De l’ethnographie, à l’heure où nous sommes « tous (ethno)musicologues »,

Volume! La revue des musiques populaires, 19(2) : 133-151.

Stuhl Andy, 2014, « Reactions to analog fetishism in sound- recording cultures. », The Velvet Light Trap, 74 : 42-53.

Thioub Ibrahima, et Benga Ndiouga Adrien, 1999, “Les groupes de musique ‘moderne‘ des jeunes Africains de Dakar et de Saint Louis, 1946-1960”, in Goerg, Odile (dir.), Fêtes urbaines en Afrique. Espaces, identités et pouvoirs, Paris : Karthala, pp. 211-227.

Wane, Ibrahima, 2016, “Investiture and Investment of a Prominent Singer: the (Ad)venture of the Youssou Ndour Head Office”, in Röschenthaler and Schulz Dorothea (eds), Cultural Entrepreneurship in Africa, New York and London : Routledge, pp. 288-302.

Places

  • Campus Condorcet, EHESS, Cours des Humanités
    Aubervilliers, France (93)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Sunday, October 15, 2023

Keywords

  • culture populaire, technologie numérique, plateforme, streaming, musique, danse, sciences and technology studies, sound studies, afrique

Contact(s)

  • Emmanuelle Olivier
    courriel : afrinumsymposium2024 [at] gmail [dot] com

Information source

  • Emmanuelle Olivier
    courriel : afrinumsymposium2024 [at] gmail [dot] com

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Popular cultures and performative identities », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, July 12, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1bk5

Archive this announcement

  • Google Agenda
  • iCal
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search