{"title":"‘Imagined Balkans’ meets ‘imagined Africa’: the contemporary practice of jembe drumming in Serbia","authors":"Iva Nenić","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2152249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2152249","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the jembe (djembé) as a symbol of Africanness in contemporary Serbian culture. Players’ narratives often underline the universality and spirituality of distant, romanticised Africa linking these supposed features to ‘archaic’ aspects of Serbian and Balkan traditional music. The trope of universally adaptable rhythm has united different players, from pioneers of cross-cultural sound during late Yugoslav socialism to the proponents of present-day multiculturalism in Serbia. This paper is informed by ethnographic research with the group Đembija, a recent Belgrade-based music project, and by the use and discourse surrounding the jembe and other African instruments by other contemporary Serbian musicians. The jembe's use in world music bands serves as the basis for a diversity of ideological, poetic and musical practices. Simultaneously, the aural learning, small scale and ‘slow pace’ of musicianship, in contrast to the hectic everyday experience of contemporary capitalist society, acquires nostalgic resonances within Serbia’s budding cross-cultural jembe playing practices.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"429 - 448"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48926846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Whose jembe? A drum as a countercultural icon and a symbol of African authenticity in Zagreb","authors":"Linda Cimardi","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2151027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2151027","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ubiquity of the jembe in western and northern Europe, as well as in North America, was instigated during the 1970s by influential West African jembe players, later developing within world music, where this drum came to represent the essence of ‘African music’. In Croatia the popularity of the jembe did not arise until the late 1990s, motivated by local Croatian musicians who shaped an African music scene in Zagreb. More than a decade later, the first performers from West Africa—specifically from Senegal—settled in Croatia and claimed a space in the limited scene that had mainly crystallised around the jembe. Albeit within a climate of open collaboration, frictions emerged between these two groups of jembe performers surrounding issues of authenticity and labour. This article focuses on the initial phases and issues at stake in this encounter between Croatian and Senegalese jembe practitioners. Although these tensions resonate with exoticising discourses and notions of appropriation that have often characterised the world music industry, it is argued that generalising interpretations as well as the actors’ subjective readings must be deconstructed in order to grasp the complexities of this encounter and the processes shaping the African music scene in Zagreb.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"393 - 411"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41535839","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The art of appreciation: music and middlebrow culture in modern Britain","authors":"Ben Earle","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2117227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2117227","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"32 1","pages":"149 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59951533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Musical resilience strategies for African asylum seekers in Italy: the cultural mediator Bawa Salifu","authors":"Fulvia Caruso","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2144402","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2144402","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines music’s contribution to the wellbeing, identity affirmation, and cultural integration of African asylum seekers in Italy, in a context where the Italian majority is often hostile to migrants and denies multiculturalism. As part of a broader long-term action-based project dedicated to improving intercultural understandings, this case study focuses on the life story and initiatives of a single musician: Bawa Salifu. It follows Salifu from his status as an irregular migrant, who travelled to Italy from Ghana, to his role as a cultural mediator for asylum seekers in Italy and as the founder in 2015 of the musical project Oghene Damba: Cremona Boys Musical Theater. The sensitivities surrounding getting to know Salifu well enough to discuss his personal experiences are highlighted; this was only possible after documenting Oghene Damba performances for four years. Other ethnographic interaction strategies are also discussed, including jointly watching and commenting on Oghene Damba recordings and YouTube videos. Despite the limitations imposed on asylum seekers, Salifu’s various musical initiatives and collaborations reveal the potential of music to give meaning to their disorientated lives and to make steps towards acceptance into Italian society.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"373 - 392"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46542223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Malian music ‘made in France’: postcolonial relationships through world music festivals and ‘transcultural creations’","authors":"Elina Djebbari","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2147669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2147669","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As a former French colony, Mali's musical landscape contributed in important ways to the formation of the world music scene in France, where many of its most famous musicians have recorded, performed, and sometimes settled, especially from the 1980s onwards. Drawing on this context, the essay offers an overview of the African world music scene in France through some of its main vectors of development, including labels, festivals, and cultural institutions. This is approached through the analysis of programmes from important French world music festivals showcasing Malian musicians, such as Africolor or Musiques Métisses, and by exploring examples of musical collaborations—referred to in France as ‘transcultural musical creations’—which were often implemented within cultural institutions and featured in festivals. Elaborating on how an elitist art culture was created, by stressing certain features of Malian music to the detriment of others, it is argued that these musical productions perform a play with otherness, which, in turn, has enabled western canons to take the guise of praising Malian music genres and instruments. Ultimately, these creative processes—and the discourses that foreground them—shed light on how France articulates and negotiates the postcolonial relationships it sustains with some of its former colonies.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"412 - 428"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44230719","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music as a Third Space? – African musics as a field of collaboration in Finland","authors":"Elina Seye","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2095294","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2095294","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The history of African musics in Finland has specific characteristics because the African diaspora communities in Finland are relatively young and small. Many African professional musicians living in Finland moved there because of their personal connections with Finns rather than because of broader flows of migration. Despite the minimal numbers of Africans living in Finland, a lively scene of African musics began to develop from the 1980s, and this scene has continued to be characterised by collaborations between Africans and white Finns. This article discusses the early history of African musics in Finland, with a focus on these collaborations that have created cultural spaces where ideas of ‘Africanness’ are central but not strictly tied to Blackness or Otherness, thereby resembling Homi Bhabha’s idea of a postcolonial ‘Third Space’ that opens conventional meanings to negotiation and redefinition.","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"353 - 372"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42674334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Movement of the people: Hungarian folk dance, populism, and citizenship","authors":"Andrea Conger","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2093016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2093016","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ethnomusicology Forum (Vol. 32, No. 1, 2023)","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"351 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138505450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Turkish Folk music between Ghent and Turkey: context, performance, function","authors":"Hélène Sechehaye","doi":"10.1080/17411912.2022.2093765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2022.2093765","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43942,"journal":{"name":"Ethnomusicology Forum","volume":"31 1","pages":"454 - 456"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46690224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}