HomeOrchestrer la nation. Musiques, danses et (trans)nationalismes
Published on Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Abstract
This conference will address music and dance together in order to discuss the complexity of national productions in a context of transnationalisation and cosmopolitisation of trajectories and identities. Inputs from music and dance will lead to understand how different logics — sliding, confrontation or co-construction — are intertwined between nationalisms and transnationalisms within postcolonies, through state politics, alternative nationalisms or transnational nationalisms conveyed by diasporas. This conference seeks to bring together empirical works as well as theoretical reflections and to gather researchers from various disciplinary backgrounds: ethnomusicology, dance/music anthropology, history and sociology, in order to foster a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue and mobilise various academic perspectives conducive to an understanding of the entanglement between nationalism and musical and/or dance productions.
Announcement
Argument
Over the past twenty years, monographs in the field of music and dance studies have analysed the construction of musical worlds, genres and markets in non-Western and postcolonial countries. Music is not only presented as a melting pot of social transformation linked to production of "modernity" (Erlmann, 1999) and urbanisation (Waxer, 2010), but also as an outstanding space that produces both nationalisms and representations of the nation. Peter Wade (2000) has shown how music in Colombia simultaneously allows for the construction of national borders and the cultural imaginary projected from within those borders to the rest of the world, while in Tanzania Kelly Askew (2006) brought substantial revisions to the knowledge of nationalism, showing that in a context where the spread of writing had not been generally achieved, dance and music served as vehicles for political and national consciousness at the end of colonisation and during independence.
While paying attention to transnational dialogues underlying these musical practices and to the cosmopolitanisms they create (Turino, 2000; Glick-Schiller, Meinhof, 2011), different works brought important insights upon the logics of nation production in postcolonial countries (for instance, through the creation of national artistic ensembles: ballet, orchestras, etc.). Others have analysed, particularly in Africa, the combination between state nationalist projects and identifications to a transnational black nation (Apter, 2006; Dorsch, 2010; Aterianus-Owanga and Guedj, 2014). Current appropriations of various globalised music genres for the purpose of national identity building — rap (Aterianus-Owanga, 2014), rock (Dorin, 2012), jazz (Martin and Roueff, 2002; Kelley, 2012), salsa (Waxer, 2010), reggae (Cooper, 2012) — further demonstrate how state-driven nationalism (Trebinjac, 2000, 2008) oriented by cultural policies, as well as “alternative nationalism” (Kiwan, 2014) or "transnational nationalism" brought by diasporas (Pacini, 2014) are expressed in the crucible of music and dance practices.
Furthermore, because of the expansion of heritage policies and national cultural recognition to get a place within cultural markets, several music and dance genres have become national heritage (Senegalese sabar, Ghanaian highlife, Cuban salsa, Colombian champeta, Argentinian tango, Uruguayan candombe, Indian Bharata Natyam, etc.). At times such recognition is even accredited by international organisations such as UNESCO. While social sciences and diaspora studies have emphasised the need to build a theoretical framework more in line with the global turning point (Caillé, Dufoix, 2013), speaking of "transnational" or "post-national", these examples underline how music and dance offer a privileged site to observe the infinite variations and the multi-layered entanglement of (trans)nationalism in a globalised world, marked by increasingly complex networks of circulation and identity-formation.
This conference considers the fields of music and dance together in order to discuss the complexity of national productions in a context of transnationalisation and cosmopolitisation of trajectories and identities within globalisation. Through the musical input, this will lead to understand how different logics — sliding, confrontation or co-construction — are intertwined between nationalisms and transnationalisms within postcolonies.
On the one hand, how can music and dance be used to produce, stage and embody an ideology coming from the West and then transform it into new meanings? How has state nationalist project (either marked by ideology such as "multiethnic", "mestizo", "nativist" or "multicultural") been performed by these practices? On the other hand, how music and dance could get round the state order or reinvent the nation ideal? Furthermore, through production, dissemination and reception of music, how have the complex interaction between production of national borders, invention of ethnicity and self-imagination in the world been negotiated? In this conference, we will consider approaches that deal with music and dance through emotions and sensation, in order to understand how music and dance practices can give flesh or embody the ideology of nation, express its emotional dimension (Stokes, 2010), or, on the contrary, move away from it, be opposed to it, or resist to it.
This conference seeks to bring together empirical works as well as theoretical reflections in order to lead to new debates on the production of (trans-)nationalisms within postcolonial countries through music and dance, and offer a space to develop the most favorable conceptual tools to study these phenomena. For this event, we would like to gather established researchers and pioneering thinkers as well as emerging young scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds: ethnomusicology, dance/music anthropology, history and sociology, to foster a fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue and mobilise various academic perspectives conducive to an understanding of the entanglement between nationalism and musical production.
Paper proposals may be based on case studies in Asia, Africa and South/Latin America, as well as identity and musical reconfigurations within diasporas and migrations. By examining the long-term processes underlying these fabrications of nationalisms, proposals would inform the heterogeneity of actors, spaces and institutions involved in this process, on the side of state cultural policies as well as international broadcasting and production markets (festivals, world music, labels) and technologies and objects that are mobilised (phonographic reproduction, radio, sampling, distribution platforms and online sales, etc.).
Submission guidelines
Paper proposals, up to 250 words, should be sent by May 22, 2015, along with bibliography and a short presentation of the author (3 lines), at this address: orchestrerlanation@yahoo.fr
Selected papers will then have to be sent three weeks before the event, in order to facilitate the work of discussants. We will really appreciate whether the participants could use audiovisual materials to animate their presentations.
Provisional planning
-
May 22: CFP Deadline
- June 22: Selection
- October 15: Papers have to be sent to the organisation committee
- November 12-13: Conference
Scientific committee
- Sarah Andrieu (CTEL, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis)
- Marie-Pierre Gibert (CREA, University Lyon 2)
- Pauline Guedj (CREA, University Lyon 2 / CIRHUS, NYU)
- Christine Guillebaud (CREM, CNRS)
- Ananya Jahanara Kabir (Modern Moves, King's College London)
- Ulricke Hanna Meinhof (University of Southampton)
- Marissa Moorman (Indiana University)
- Emmanuelle Olivier (CNRS, Centre Georg Simmel-UMR CNRS-EHESS 8131)
- Catherine Servan-Schreiber (CEIAS, CNRS)
- Martin Stokes (King’s College London)
- Sabine TREBINJAC (LESC, UMR 7186, CNRS)
Organisors
- Dr Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Labex CAP, Paris
- Dr Elina Djebbari, King’s College London
Organising committee
- Marta Amico (Center for World Music, University of Hildesheim / Centre Georg Simmel, EHESS)
- Alice Aterianus-Owanga (Labex CAP, IIAC/LAHIC, Musée du quai Branly, CREA - Lyon 2)
- Clara Biermann (CREM / LESC - Paris Ouest Nanterre - UMR 7186 CNRS)
- Elina Djebbari (Modern Moves, King’s College London)
Partners
- Labex CAP – Paris
- King’s College London
- Modern Moves
- IIAC - LAHIC
- Maison des Cultures du Monde - Festival de l’Imaginaire
Subjects
Places
- Maison des Cultures du Monde - 101 Boulevard Raspail
Paris, France (75006)
Date(s)
- Friday, May 22, 2015
Attached files
Keywords
- musique, danse, nationalisme, transnationalisme
Contact(s)
- Alice Aterianus-Owanga
courriel : aliceaterianus [at] yahoo [dot] fr - Elina Djebbari
courriel : distdanses [at] gmail [dot] com
Information source
- Alice Aterianus-Owanga
courriel : aliceaterianus [at] yahoo [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Orchestrer la nation. Musiques, danses et (trans)nationalismes », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, April 22, 2015, https://calenda.org/325045
