Music and the political: a dialogue with Martin Stokes

Abstract

About Conversation Τhe following conversation is what was humorously called a “jammin’ article”, which was an attempt to improvise a mostly theoretical dialogue on a variety of themes broadly defining Martin Stokes’ oeuvre until today. It is a sort of “free improvisation” produced in the course of spontaneous and rather intimate dialogic writing, as it developed as a non-prescriptive and open-ended process: there was no preset structure or any sort of detailed discussion about our writing strategy, neither any sophisticated editing. Moreover, it is in no way, neither has it aspired to become, an exhaustive overview of the plethora of issues pertaining Martin Stokes’ work, which besides would be impracticable given the article’s economy of words. Most important, such an overview would inevitably be incomplete, as Martin Stokes continues to be a prolific and highly impactful scholar and researcher. Instead, what follows is a specific knot of questions and reflections born out of the residuum of reading and digesting Stokes ever since the early stages of my ethnomusicological studies - questions and reflections also intuitively sculptured in the course of our “jamming”. I am deeply thankful to Martin Stokes for accepting my proposal.