Transglobal Sounds: Music, Youth and Migration 9781501311963, 9781501311994, 9781501311970

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of contributors
Introduction: Transglobal Sounds
Part One: Music, mobilities and processes of being
1. Afro-mandinga in Lisbon: Griots and the (en)chantment of the past
2. From Coimbra to London: To live the punk dream ‘and meet my tribe’
Part Two: Hybridism and aesthetic creativity
3. ‘More than pets of multiculturalism’: Diasporic hybridity in Icelandic popular music – the case of Retro Stefson
4. Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration in ‘postcolonial Finland’ – the case of Ourvision Singing Contest 2009
5. Nanyin and the Singaporean culture: The creation of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore and intergenerational contrasts
Part Three: Identity politics and negotiations
6. Protest rap and young Afro-descendants in Portugal
7. Music: A tool for socio-political participation among descendants of immigrants in Buenos Aires and Bilbao?
8. ‘Ich fuhle mich Deutsch’: Migrant descendants’ performance of integration through the Hamburg HipHop Academy
Part Four: Connecting sounds and ancestral homelands
9. ‘Portugal dos Xutos’: Portuguese music in the lives of ‘returned’ descendants of Portuguese emigrants from Canada
10. Drawing a homeland on the staff: Music of Turkey in Berlin
Conclusion: Understanding acoustic performativities, youth subjectivities and mobile identities
Index

Citation preview

Transglobal Sounds

Transglobal Sounds Music, Youth and Migration

EDITED BY JOÃO SARDINHA UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA, PORTUGAL

AND RICARDO CAMPOS UNIVERSIDADE NOVA DE LISBOA, PORTUGAL

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway

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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 Paperback edition first published 2018 © João Sardinha and Ricardo Campos, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sardinha, Joäao, editor. | Campos, Ricardo, editor. Title: Transglobal sounds : music, youth and migration / edited by Joäao Sardinha and Ricardo Campos, The Universidade Aberta, Portugal. Description: New York, NY, USA : Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015045501 (print) | LCCN 2015045982 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501311963 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781501311987 (EPub) | ISBN 9781501311970 (ePDF) Subjects: LCSH: Popular music--Social aspects. | Folk music--Social aspects. Music and globalization. | Emigration and immigration--Social aspects. Classification: LCC ML3918.P67 T73 2016 (print) | LCC ML3918.P67 (ebook) | DDC 306.4/842--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045501 ISBN: HB: PB: ePDF: ePub:

978-1-5013-1196-3 978-1-5013-4020-8 978-1-5013-1197-0 978-1-5013-1198-7

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CONTENTS

List of contributors  vii

Introduction: Transglobal Sounds 1 João Sardinha and Ricardo Campos

PART ONE  Music, mobilities and processes of being 11 1 Afro-mandinga in Lisbon: Griots and the (en)chantment of the past  13 Carolina Carret Höfs 2 From Coimbra to London: To live the punk dream ‘and meet my tribe’  31 Paula Guerra and Pedro Quintela

PART TWO  Hybridism and aesthetic creativity 51 3 ‘More than pets of multiculturalism’: Diasporic hybridity in Icelandic popular music – the case of Retro Stefson  53 Gestur Guðmundsson and Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen 4 Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration in ‘postcolonial Finland’ – the case of Ourvision Singing Contest 2009  73 Antti-Ville Kärjä 5 Nanyin and the Singaporean culture: The creation of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore and intergenerational contrasts  93 Kaori Fushiki

vi Contents

PART THREE  Identity politics and negotiations 111 6 Protest rap and young Afro-descendants in Portugal  113 Ricardo Campos, Pedro Nunes and José Alberto Simões 7 Music: A tool for socio-political participation among descendants of immigrants in Buenos Aires and Bilbao?  133 Natália Gavazzo, Sónia Pereira and Ana Estevens 8 ‘Ich fühle mich Deutsch’: Migrant descendants’ performance of integration through the Hamburg HipHop Academy  155 Emily Joy Rothchild

PART FOUR  Connecting sounds and ancestral homelands 177 9 ‘Portugal dos Xutos’: Portuguese music in the lives of ‘returned’ descendants of Portuguese emigrants from Canada  179 João Sardinha 10 Drawing a homeland on the staff: Music of Turkey in Berlin  201 Pinar Güran Aydin Conclusion: Understanding acoustic performativities, youth subjectivities and mobile identities 221 Anastasia Christou, João Sardinha and Ricardo Campos Index  233

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

João Sardinha is a researcher at IGOT (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning) – Center for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal. He has a PhD in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, UK and an MA in Geography and Regional Planning from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. His research interests include immigrant association phenomenon, immigrant descendants and ancestral homeland returns, lifestyle migrations, Portuguese diaspora studies, as well as migrations and music and sports, having published extensively on these issues. Ricardo Campos is a researcher at CICS-Nova (Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences), Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FCSH) at the New University of Lisbon. He holds a PhD degree in Visual Anthropology from the Open University and an MA in Sociology from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. His main line of research centres on urban youth cultures, youth and image, street art, and youth and music, having published broadly on these themes. He is also an illustrator. Pinar Güran Aydin is currently a New York Public Library Wertheim Scholar conducting research on the Turks in the USA with particular focus on the music consumption behaviour of this population. She holds a PhD in Sociology from University of Exeter and an MA in Ethnomusicology from the Center for Advanced Studies in Music, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. Her PhD work explored Turkish immigrants in Germany and their use of music in building cultural memories. Anastasia Christou is Associate Professor of Sociology, Middlesex University, UK. Anastasia has engaged in multi-sited, multi-method and comparative ethnographic research in the United States, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, Iceland. Anastasia has widely published research on issues of diasporas, migration and return migration; the second generation and ethnicity; space and place; transnationalism and identity; culture and memory; gender and feminism; home and belonging; emotion and narrativity; ageing/youth mobilities, care, trauma, race/racisms and intersectionalities, embodiment, sexualities, motherhood/mothering.

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Ana Estevens is a researcher at IGOT (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning) – Center for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal. She also holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Lisbon. Her PhD thesis focused on the complexity of social relations and conflict in the contemporary city, centring research on the neighbourhood of Mouraria (Lisbon) and Raval (Barcelona). Her current research looks at the role of arts in the transformation of the contemporary city. Kaori Fushiki is an associate professor at Taisho University in Tokyo, Japan. Since earning her PhD from Taisho University in 2004, she has carried out research in Bali, Indonesia and in Singapore on identities and political issues, as well as on traditional and popular music. She is deputy chair on the Intangible Cultural Heritage Commission, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and currently heads up a research project on the Hokkien Glove Puppet Theatre in Southeast Asia. Natalia Gavazzo is a National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) researcher and lecturer at Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and an MA in Latin American Studies from University of London, UK. She has also worked as consultant and curator. She studies regional migrations to Argentina, currently focusing on the identity negotiations and social participation in communitarian-based organizations of second-generation Bolivians and Paraguayans in Buenos Aires. Paula Guerra holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Porto where she is an Assistant Professor. She is also a researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Porto and an adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Centre for Cultural Research, Griffith University, Australia. Her research focuses on popular music, sociology of art, cultural sociology, sociology of music and cultural politics. She has published extensively on these topics of research. Gestur Guðmundsson holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is currently a professor of Sociology of Education at University of Iceland, having previously lectured at the Danish University of Education in Denmark. His research has focused on Icelandic rock music history and youth culture, vocational education, education of marginal youth, youth and unemployment measures, and young immigrants in Denmark and Iceland. He is the author of nine books and over ninety peer reviewed articles and book chapters. Carolina Carret Höfs holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon, Portugal and an

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MA in Anthropology from the University of Brasilia, Brazil. Her PhD research focused on the mobility and performance of Mandingo Griots from Guinea-Bissau in Portugal. She is also a member of C.E.M. – Centro em Movimento, an arts association dedicated to researching body and movement in a transdisciplinary manner. Within this organization she works with performance and dance artists. Antti-Ville Kärjä is an academy research fellow at Music Archive JAPA in Helsinki, Finland. He received his PhD in 2005 from the University of Helsinki, Finland. His fields of expertise include music and multiculturalism, historiography of popular music and music in the audiovisual media. He currently leads a research project entitled “Music, Multiculturality and Finland” (2014–2018) and is chair of the Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology. Pedro Nunes holds a PhD in Film and Media Studies from the Stirling Media Research Institute, University of Stirling, Scotland and a MA in Sociology from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal. He has taught at Portugal’s Open University and is currently a researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre for Music and Dance Studies, New University of Lisbon. His research interests include the Portuguese recording industry, music journalism/criticism, and music and youth cultures. His publications have centred on these issues. Sónia Pereira holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Lisbon, Portugal. She held a post-doc position at the Institute of Human Rights, University of Deusto, Spain from 2013 to 2015. Currently she is a researcher at IGOT (Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning) – Center for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon. She has been working in the realm of international migrations since 2000, within academia, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs. Her research interests include labour migration, labour agency, socio-spatial practices and participation. Pedro Quintela is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal. He also holds an MA in Sociology – Cities and Urban Cultures from the same institution. Moreover, he is a consultant at Quaternaire Portugal, SA, where he develops and advises on local, intermunicipal, regional and national cultural projects and policies, and on strategic urban projects and policies. His current research interests focus on cultural policies, urban cultures, and cultural and creative economies. Emily Joy Rothchild received her PhD in Anthropology of Music/ Ethnomusicology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines social integration in Germany, migrant youth, gender, hip-hop,

x list of contributors

and Islam. In 2015, she worked with migrant youth to produce music videos and songs against IS, Pegida, and terrorism. Other research interests include media representation of Muslims and Broadway musicals. She has published and continues to prepare work on these issues. She is also a soprano and pianist. José Alberto Simões holds a PhD in Sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities (FCSH), New University of Lisbon, Portugal where he is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. He is also a researcher at CICS.NOVA (Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences) at the same university. He has participated in research projects (both nationally and internationally) in the areas of sociology of culture, youth cultures, and communication and media studies, having published widely results from these projects. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Edinburgh in 2013 and is currently a PhD researcher at the same school, carrying out work on the social dynamics of Icelandic musicians. He also teaches socio-musical subjects at universities in his native Iceland and supervises students in these areas of research. He is also a long respected music journalist and the author of three books on Icelandic music.

Introduction: Transglobal Sounds João Sardinha and Ricardo Campos

This book is about music, youth and mobilities. It is a book that seeks to interface between these three themes, having as the connecting element the concept of displacement. Like people, music also travels. Linked to multiple territories and fulfilling diversified functions for groups and individuals, music is capable of being anywhere, at anytime, able of fulfilling whatever function a given group or individual wishes to have fulfilled. What lies behind the idea of this edited volume is not the individual side of musical experiences, but, instead, the collective dimensions of such experiences and the roles these dimensions play out for certain groups of people. For as long as it has been around, music has been a communication element, building cultural ties between individuals. The joyful, emotional and sensorial side connected to enjoyment derived from sound should not make us forget that this is a social construct, an acoustic language with its conventions, often learned within community. Music is, therefore, an aesthetic good, produced and reproduced in specific cultural contexts, constituting a fundamental heritage for the construction of personal and collective identities. Before different forms of musical reproduction significantly transformed the musical experience and dissemination, music was naturally more confined to territories and relatively limited contexts. Music, however, has always travelled, this owing to the fact that humanity has historically always been mobile. As humans travel, they carry not only their belongings, but their intangible heritage. The collective movement of

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people means that cultural and symbolic references, such as language, literature, customs, artifacts, instruments and sounds, move as well. This further entails that humanity has never had immobilized musical genres and styles, and that music can be understood as symbolic systems that are constantly changing. Given that they often permit unexpected cultural contacts, migrations are also one of the most important historical factors in the construction of cultural hybridization. This considered, it is equally safe to say that ‘transglobal music forms’ are seldom static, but instead, in constant mutation due to their hybrid nature, their constant crossbreeding, as well as the way they bridge the gap between the heritage of the past and the sounds of the present. They are thus musical formations, often living between the global and the local; reinventions that result from the way individuals and groups adapt old sounds and rituals to the new social and cultural contexts, this within the frameworks of migrations. The purpose of this volume lies in this very consideration, setting out to contemplate transglobal music from the perspective of mobility and displacement. Music, in this case, is conceived as echoing experiences and attachments to the art form from the perspective of young migrants and migrant descendant individuals. Music is perceived not only as giving voice to a sense of belonging, but also serves as an element of continuity with the past, perpetuating ancient and ancestral roots. Within migrant contexts, there is a double role played by music, one as a conservator, symbolically connecting migrants to a place and culture that is uniquely their own and keeping that culture alive; and second, as a unifying protector, capable of bringing people who share the same cultural background together, safeguarding against an environment that is different, even strange. This collection of articles deals with music within a dual framework, on one hand, as a cultural artifact transmitted and consumed through different experiences (media, concerts, etc.); on the other, as an aesthetic good produced by individuals. The focus, therefore, is not placed on individuals as mere ‘musical consumers’, but also as ‘creative social agents’ who engage in collective rituals of production and musical enjoyment that often leads to the reproduction/reinvention of musical formulas. Music and travel is not a new scientific research territory (cf Aparicio and Jaquez 2003; Raussert and Jones 2008; Krüger and Trandafoiu 2014; among others). This volume, however, makes unique strides by focusing on a specific sub-group which is that of mobile young people, be them first-generation migrants or migrant descendants. The relationship between young people, youth cultures and music has been the source of numerous works, namely in the field of youth studies (Bennett 2000; Frith 1981). The connections between youth and music are issues so proximate to each other to the point that the very notion of youth, as a contemporary Western social construct, depends to a large extent on the (re-)invention of certain



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musical genres. Resultingly, certain youth cultures and subcultures often merge with certain music genres. Several studies (Bennett 2000; Feixa 1998; Frith 1981; Huq 2006; Hall and Jefferson 1976; Rose 1994, Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003) report on the role that music has as a key element for the invention of certain youth movements and subcultures (punk, hip-hop, etc.). If these cultural and musical fields are originally linked to Western urban contexts, the reality is that, at present, they are global, consumed in very different and distant places. This means that not only are certain genres globalized, but the same can be said of certain youth cultures and subcultures associated with specific musical genres and lifestyles. This, however, does not mean that there is a cultural homogenization. What is frequently seen is the transformation and adaptation of multiple musical languages at the local level, generating specific forms of recreating global musical genres (Bennett 2001). The outcome thus becomes the creation of ‘glocal’ music genres. Within the context of migration studies, generational issues are also critical to the extent that they often indicate complex and problematic dynamics, particularly from the standpoint of cultural identities (Rumbaut 1994; Zhou 1997). In the case of migrant offspring, who, within diasporic contexts, are often raised drawn between the ethnic world (lived within family and their ethnic counterparts) and society-at-large (defined by the cultural norms of the country of residence), it is key to question how music styles define the often hybrid upbringings of these individuals, or on the contrary, how hybrid upbringings define their musical attachments. Often marked by ambivalence, it is not uncommon for young first-generation migrant or migrant descendants in diasporic contexts to define who they are in accordance with the cultural norms of the ancestral homeland. This may come about as a revendicating reaction against the society where they live, for example, or as a means of reconfigurating or mythifying symbolic references pertinent to their ethno-cultural sense of belonging. Migrants or their descendants may likewise define who they are through the renunciation of ethno-cultural references, pertinent to their ancestry, as a strategy of integrating themselves among their peers and society-at-large by ensconcing themselves in transglobal pop-culture phenomena. It is worthy to point out that the myriad of cultural contexts many of these individuals find themselves in and inbetween in today’s transglobal world, where the concocting of transglobal sounds and music genres may serve as a central pillar in the definition of the self, may lead to the creation of ways of being and identifying that may end up being altogether new. For these young individuals, music and music culture may, therefore, become folklorized or hybridized, not only as a function of ideological preservation of roots and ancestral memory, but also as a way of politicizing identity, bringing self awareness, as well as visibility, to ‘what one is where one stands’. Given that the mobility of

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peoples is an ever-increasing phenomenon and that modern technology and communications have come to simplify access to and distribution of music, this has equally led to a greater diversification of musical creations and consumption which, in turn, can be (re)contextualized given the ease of its translocation. The crossing of music, youth and mobility can bring about complex issues capable of being explored within a diversity of academic disciplines. For this reason, this book seeks to create a multidisciplinary work approach, providing an array of readings of respective phenomena. We understand that this option enriches not only the interdisciplinary dialogue, but exposes different analytical perspectives that, in its confrontation, may shed new light on widely studied objects. Another one of our goals is to diversify the cultural and geographic settings examined, by centring attentions on less studied locations and respective musical genres. This volume thus gathers a group of authors who write about different national realities from both sending and receiving perspective, such as: Portugal, Finland, Spain, Argentina, Singapore, Germany, Iceland, among others. This empirical mosaic is precisely intended to account for the variety and richness of approaches to subjects that reveal the importance of music in migratory contexts. To do this, the book is organized into four sections. Part 1 is entitled ‘Music, mobilities and processes of being’. This part identifies a set of texts that deal with processes of mobility specific to certain musical genres and artists. Special emphasis is placed on the idea of journey and displacement as a determining factor in how musical experiences are lived. Furthermore, the articles composing this section observe how mobility impacts upon the musical self and on music as well. Chapter 1 by Höffs, entitled ‘Afro-mandinga of Lisbon: Griots and the (en)chantment of the past’ deals with the ancient musical art of afromandinga as it is transplanted in the city of Lisbon. Setting out to observe how afro-mandinga musical traditions are reproduced and how afromandinga artists (also known as Griots or Djidius or Djalis) adapt their performances to different local contexts and audiences, Höffs scrutinizes the performance of Kimi Djabaté at the Lisboa Mistura Festival that took place at São Luiz Theatre in Lisbon on 5 December 2010 with the aim of demonstrating how Djaliá, the art form of Mandingo people, relies on tradition and history as the cornerstone of performances. Set within transnational frameworks, to which extent do these performance cornerstones get influenced once in the diasporic setting and how this might unsettle the balance between tradition and modernism, is the question at hand. Chapter 2 by Guerra and Quintela, entitled ‘From Coimbra to London: To live the punk dream ‘with my tribe’, depicts the migratory project of



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a group of punk musicians hailing from the Portuguese city of Coimbra in search of success and new cultural experiences in one of the most emblematic musical production centres, that of the city of London, UK. In this text the idea of mobility is strongly associated with the search for identity and the fulfillment of personal musical projects in which the process of migration is a key step in concurring one’s objectives while being ensconced by the music culture one is trying to find one’s self in. Part 2, entitled ‘Hibridism and aesthetic creativity’, deals with music as an element of inventiveness and performativity through which identities and traditions are renegotiated. Further examined is how cultural mergings and hybridity, resulting from contacts between different cultural and symbolic references, are not always exempt of conflicts. Questions concerning the cultural authenticity of produced goods (performance, music, language, etc.) frequently arise and may become community dividers. This division often pits those who identify themselves as the defenders of tradition against those seeking to innovate and merge references (Barber 1996; Huntington 1996). Chapter 3 by Guðmundsson and Thoroddsen, ‘“More than pets of multiculturalism” diasporic hybridity in Icelandic popular music – the case of Retro Stefson’, examines the career and artistic outlook of Icelandic indierock group Retro Stefson from the theoretical perspectives of diaspora, hybridity and post-colonialism, this within the historical context of Icelandic rock. Analysis focuses on the re-interpretations and innovations of Icelandic rock from one generation to the next and how each new generation has liberated itself from the modes of thought and cultural expressions of older generations. The authors advance that every generation has stood on the shoulders of previous ones in repeated attempts to amalgamate inter­ national influences into Icelandic cultural heritage and social life. Currently, a new generation of intercultural musical acts (e.g. Retro Stefson) greatly contributes to this, adding new influences to existing heritage and social life also previously influenced by different waves of globalization. Chapter 4 by Kärjä, entitled ‘Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration in “postcolonial Finland” – the case of Ourvision Singing Contest 2009’, focuses on the generational dynamics in the Finnish Ourvision Singing Contest. The complex relationship between the media, ethnicity and music are addressed here, revealing how music serves as a vehicle of discussion on the nature of ethnic identities and their representation in the public sphere. By focusing discussion on the postcoloniality of Finland as regards to popular music and migrant generational dynamics, Kärjä’s contribution focuses on the relationship between musical repertoires within the Finnish multicultural landscape. Within this context, the author asks how are generations of migration unified by musical genres, and what are their implications in terms of national traditions and belonging? Chapter 5 by Fushiki, titled ‘Nanyin and the Singaporean culture: The creation of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore and intergenerational

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contrasts’ concludes Part 2. Nanyin is a form of musical performing arts brought to Singapore by Chinese migrants over a century ago. Through an analysis of the nanyin preservation and performing organization Siong Leng Musical Association and individuals tied to this organization, past and present, Fushiki demonstrates the varying approaches to new creativity within nanyin in Singapore, paying particular attention to the multilayered and highly complex collective identities and intergenerational conflicts and negotiations when it comes to this musical art form’s maintenance and transmission. Part 3 of this book, entitled ‘Identity politics and negotiations’, gives special attention to contexts where music stands out as a resource of political and civic nature, used by certain groups to assert a singular cultural identity in opposition to the dominant culture. The texts presented emphasize the more conflictual nature of the relationship between ethnic and social groups, highlighting the ways in which communities use cultural and symbolic creations to discuss their role in society. Generational issues also gain special importance in these articles, revealing how music is appropriated by young people to give voice to their feelings in relation to their minority status and migrant upbringings. Part 3 opens with the chapter by Campos, Nunes and Simões entitled ‘Protest rap and young Afro-descendants in Portugal’. Protest rap is suggested to be considered an expressive form within Portuguese society. Mostly created by Afro-descendant youth and, in most cases, possessing an important ideological and identity function, it often serves to define a political agenda based on issues of stigmatization, ethnic and class discrimination. Stressing both ethnic and class elements of cultural products within expressions of hip-hop culture, the authors set out to analyse the use of protest rap as created and expressed by Lusophone African youth, a juvenile population already born in Portugal and who live in low-income housing neighbourhoods characterized by the ethnic and cultural singularity of their inhabitants (originating from the former Portuguese African colonies). Located on the outskirts of the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, these neighbourhoods have repeatedly been labelled by the media and in some political discourses as ‘problematic’. Chapter 7 ‘Music: A tool for socio-political participation among descendants of immigrants in Buenos Aires and Bilbao?’, authored by Gavazzo, Pereira and Estevens, sets out to examine how young firstgeneration Bolivian migrants and migrant descendants living in the cities of Bilbao and Buenos Aires negotiate their identities through ancestral homeland music, and to what extent this affects the possibilities for socio-political participation. The text explores how these individuals use diverse musical practices, based on their Bolivian culture, to express meaningful messages to society-at-large and to contest the conditions of their inclusion (or lack thereof). The authors do this by discussing and



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exploring music-making and public space performances, analysing such acts as forms of political expressions that reflect power relations and create spaces for political claims, resistance, and alternative ideologies. Ultimately, this is done with the aim of developing an understanding of contemporary political concerns about real processes of integration through the analysis of musical acts in the context of urban immigration. The chapter by Rothchild, ‘“Ich fühle mich Deutsch”: Migrant descendants’ performance of integration through the Hamburg HipHop Academy’, concludes Part 3. With her exposé, Rothchild analyses the performance of macro- and micro-political integration as demonstrated by Hamburg HipHop Academy’s top-level Ensemble members, a paid group of rappers, dancers, and beatboxers. The analysis focuses on the use of hip-hop as a platform of integration, focusing specifically on how the Hamburg HipHop Academy shapes feelings of belonging and perceptions of dual identities. This is done through an examination of the Hamburg HipHop Academy’s dance theatre production DISTORTION, a production piece that examines migrant descendants’ places in Germany and provokes audiences to contemplate the ‘new faces’ of the nation. Through the symbiosis of hip-hop and contemporary dance that makes up the production of DISTORTION, the author thus sets out to analyse how the boundaries of German national identity are disrupted by the presence of interculturality. Part 4 of the book, ‘Connecting sounds and ancestral homelands’, brings together texts that deal with the role of music when it comes to memory and cultural heritage, highlighting the importance of these variables in respect to maintaining ties with the country of origin or ancestry. If the previous section accentuated the divisions and the political role of music, this section privileges the continuities and connection to roots. This implies finding ways to preserve traditions at a distance, transposing ethnic culture in a new setting that serves to establish an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983), for what gets transposed is a reflection of another space and often another time. In the state of migration, other influences not specific to the country of origin often assist in mutating what one might assume is reality, creating something that is altogether different. This section begins with the article by Sardinha entitled ‘“Portugal dos Xutos”: Portuguese music in the lives of ‘returned’ descendants of Portuguese emigrants from Canada’. Sardinha analyses constructions of transnational belonging through music among a group of Portuguese emigrant descendants from Canada who have ‘returned’ to take up residency in Portugal. The chapter delves into the voices of these descendant returnees, analysing narratives that reflect on the impact and importance of Portuguese music as a variable of cultural proximity to Portugal before the return was accomplished. The analysis thus delves into memories of growing up – of childhood years, of later adolescence as well as adulthood – having participants recount encounters and experiences within the cultural

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component under question – music. The analytical framing attempts to outline the role of Portuguese music when it comes to strengthening attachment to ancestral roots, negotiating personal identities and feelings of belonging. The author analyses how via four means of influence – family and home life, ethnic community, return visits and technologies—greater proximity to Portugal and ‘being Portuguese’ is created, to the extent of playing a role within a broader spectrum of identification and belonging that served as a motivator for wanting to pursue a return to the land of ancestry. The final chapter by Güran Aydin, is entitled ‘Drawing a homeland on the staff: Music of Turkey in Berlin’. This chapter aims to focus on the music production and consumption of second- and third-generation immigrants from Turkey in Berlin, Germany and how their relationship with music has shaped and continues to contribute to the construction of an imaginary homeland in the city where they now live. The article sets out to conceptualize music as what the author terms ‘a memory mechanism’, leading to question how cultural memory is both prompted and conserved through musical practice, how listening to music from the homeland is part of the creation and re-creation of cultural memory and identity over time and over one’s lifespan, and, lastly, how musical forms migrate and become hybridized. In order to reach conclusions, the author concentrates her analysis on three environments: music schools, türkü bars and the home environment (here giving special attention to new media technologies) setting out to reveal that these ‘places of (Turkish) music’ are key when it comes to constructing community togetherness and aiding ethnic identity preservation.

References Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Aparicio, F. R. and C. F. Jaquez (eds) (2003), Musical Migrations: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America, Volume I, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, A. (2000), Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place, London: MacMillan. Bennett, A. (2001), Cultures of Popular Music, London: Open University Press. Feixa, C. (1998), De jóvenes, bandas y tribus, Barcelona: Ariel. Frith, S. (1981), Sound Effects: Youth. Leisure and the Politics of Rock, New York: Pantheon. Hall, S. and T. Jefferson (eds) (1976), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Cultures in Post-War Britain, London: Hutchinson. Huq, R. (2006), Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth, and Identity in a Postcolonial World, London: Routledge.



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Krüger, S. and R.Trandafoiu (eds) (2014), The Globalization of Musics in Transit: Music Migration and Tourism, London: Routledge. Muggleton, D. and R. Weinzierl (eds) (2003), The Post-Subcultures Reader, New York: Berg. Raussert, W. and J. M. Jones (eds) (2008), Traveling Sounds: Music, Migration, and Identity in the U.S. and Beyond, Berlin: LIT Verlag. Rumbaut, R. G. (1994), ‘The Crucible within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants’, The International Migration Review 28 (4), Special Issue: The New Second Generation (Winter): 748–94. Rose, T. (1994), Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, London: Wesleyan University Press. Zhou, M. (1997), ‘Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants’, Annual Review of Sociology 23: 63–95.

PART ONE

Music, mobilities and processes of being

CHAPTER ONE

Afro-mandinga in Lisbon: Griots and the (en)chantment of the past Carolina Carret Höfs

Introduction In the last decades, the migration of Mandingo musicians from GuineaBissau to Lisbon has brought complexity to the local artistic scene. Having two primary performance circuits – them being the local Guinean community and association parties, on one hand, and the general public, via concerts in theatres, bars and festivals, on the other – these musicians play and promote what is known as afro-mandinga, a contemporary version of the more traditional djaliá (or jeliyá in Mandingo), the art form of Mandingo people (Becker 2009) composed of music, poetry and praise singing that tells the history and speaks of the values of the Mandingo (Dorsch 2002; Ebron 2002; Charry 2004; Hale 2007). Defined as bards, historians, poets, singers, musicians, actors, genealogists, diasporists, storytellers, mediators and spiritual guides (Dorsch 2002), the griots conceived djaliá during the Mande Empire of the thirteenth-century, a cultural component that still figures in Mandingo society today; a key component of social structure and safeguarding of this group’s history.1 This article sets out to observe a performance by young Guinea-Bissau musician Kimi Djabaté at the Lisboa Mistura Festival that took place at São Luiz Theatre in Lisbon on 5 December 2010. On that evening, Djabaté was the so-called ‘Guinea-Bissau revelation artist’. He was not the only griot to take part in the event. That afternoon, griots from Tabato, the same village where Kimi Djabaté was born, also performed in the theatre’s Winter Garden. My opting to analyse this emblematic event is due to the

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fact that it tells us about the systemic importance history and past traditions have on griot performances, now transmitted by a new generation of mobile musicians. The past orders the present, bringing significance to the presence of griots and their artistic and cultural scenes around the world. Through Kimi Djabaté and his fellow countrymen’s performances on that day at the São Luiz Theatre, and through statements provided by key informants deriving from a fieldwork period carried out between 2009 and 2011,2 my aim is to observe how the past is transmitted by griot performances in order to bring significance and create a legitimate artistic space for these musicians, not only in Lisbon, but also in Guinea-Bissau. Via the way these musicians perceive their artistic practices, connected to historical issues and practices, my analysis will thus be rooted in the theorization of Mandingo transnationalism.

Mandingo transnationalism through time De Bruijn and Van Dijk (1997) conceive Mandingo as an umbrella of different ethnic groups from an ‘original country’3 named Mande. Furthermore, Mamadou Diawara (1997) puts forth the existence of a Mande cultural area influenced by the old Mande (or Mali) Empire (thirteenth- to fifteenthcenturies), occupied by Mande speakers and other groups sharing similar social organizations. Historically connected to the Malian hinterland, the arrival of Mandingo groups to the Atlantic coast was due to the spread of the Mande Empire from the thirteenth-century onward. Their arrival on the Atlantic coast imposed a new social order and a tripartite structural organization, on one hand, leading to a weakness of relations based in ethnicity, on the other, seeing the strengthening of relations among similar social groups (Wright 2010). The existence of ‘specialized groups’ (sometimes seen as castes or social classes) was, and still is, crucial to the functioning of Mande society due to their ability to provide important services to certain groups and individuals (Tamari 1991; Conrad and Frank 1995). In this context, Mande history is highlighted in griot songs and in this group’s ability to entertain, chanting the glories and honour of noble families. Transnationalism is adopted in order to understand how people lived through Mande history (from the thirteenth-century until the present), for not only do griots accompany the conquests and the spreading of the Mande territory, their travelling and migration are key to the dissemination of their art and enrichment of knowledge. Griot’s transnational lives have allowed them to take back and forward narratives and songs that have become important spiritual pathways for society to follow, having become historically responsible for the creation of an imaginary and an ethos that



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serves as the background for individual and collective actions. Literature on Mandingo identity and social dynamics draws attention to travel and adventure in the construction of the imaginary. Nowadays, migration and diaspora are the two main elements that most contribute to the so-called ‘constructed imaginary’ (Johnson 2009). Once settled in a new country, departure is never forgotten. Similar to other immigrants living in transnational contexts, griots articulate roots and trajectories (Salih 2003), building public spheres, and communal consciousness and mechanisms of solidarity. Supported by their roots and their own narratives of trajectories, they maintain their singularities in a transnational field that insists on homogenizing lives (Vertovec 2009). Transmigrants often construct new practices and social networks, connecting individuals to two or more societies at the same time (Basch et al. 1992). Using transnationalism to discuss life and people’s experiences, Basch et al. (1992) defend that transmigrants see themselves forced to confront, re-design and re-work different identities (national, ethnical or racial) in which religious identity can be included as well (Riccio 2001; Salih 2003; Mapril 2008). As Basch and her colleagues (1992) further advance, understanding transmigrations is not only necessary in order to be conscious of economic dynamics, but of political processes as well. For the griots, Lisbon not only appears as a possibility to further their artistic careers, given that it’s a cheaper city to live-in in comparison to other European capitals, but also their choice is marked by the legacy of the colonial past that links GuineaBissau to Portugal. In this case, relations and connections made in colonial times continue in the post-colonial era (Sarró and Mapril 2011). In Portugal, three waves of Guinean immigration have been identified. With this paper, focus is on those belonging to the third migration wave: people who left Guinea-Bissau at the onset of the 1998 civil war.4 Here we are in the presence of a wave that has changed the way Guineans connect to their homeland given that they have at their disposal greater means that permit the creation of a stronger transnational field. Through technological means and social networks, individuals are able to keep up with Guinean social, cultural, political and religious issues at a distance (Machado 1998, 2002; Quintino 2010).5 In the context of Lisbon, the gathering of Mandingo, Fulbe and Beafada individuals has strengthened community and Muslim associations.6 These organizations are important to my interlocutors given that they are a means of integration in Lisbon, making it possible for these artists to begin their artistic lives as well. In conjunction to the above, it is also necessary to understand the interplay of ethnicity and religious identity. Johnson (2002, 2006) explores the conflation of those two dimensions to Mandingo people in GuineaBissau and how they are interwoven and complexified in diaspora, a space where Africa and Islam are built by dissonant discourses and practices.

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Mandingo identity must be understood by taking into consideration the interrelationship between ethnicity and religious identity. Griots are responsible for communicating and perpetuating this bond – narrating not only Mande history facts and the path of its founding father, Sunjata Keita, but also the path of Surakata, first griot of the Prophet Mohammed. The immigration setting additionally adds another dimension to their ethnic identity. Besides the connection to the Mande World and to the idea of a Guinean national identity (where their ethnicity and religious identities are emphasized) at a distance, living in Europe also gives griots other possibilities to experience their identity and their art (as their connection to a Pan-African identity is amplified). Kiwan and Meinhof (2011) refer to transmigrant links as hubs made of multi-dimensions and multi-directions that create transcultural capital. Moreover, hub is a concept that, according to the authors, does not essentialize the artists because of their ethnic origins, but sees those as strategies and tools to describe the way the artists use valid resources from their homeland and their culture of origin in order to develop their art, and at the same time, launch themselves in the music industry. This imported cultural capital, as Kiwan and Meinhof further suggest, reveals the connection of migrant artists and diaspora networks. It is as if they use diaspora as a platform to make themselves visible to a mainstream audience and its music industry. This cultural and translocal capital rises from local styles, rhythms, knowledge of landscapes, rituals and dialects from the artist’s homeland. Kiwan and Meinhof (2011) suggest that migration gives many rituals and songs an aura of tradition and authenticity. Singing and playing songs is understood as traditional because it seems to evocate what is ‘in the blood’ and also serves to define an individual. We can see griots in Europe through those lenses; nonetheless it is important not to miss the point that these individuals evocate their values and pass them along in diasporic settings (in this case, Lisbon). Their art is thus a part of their identity as it is a way of being in the world and a way of communicating outside their own society. It is in this context where we can see the rise and force of afro-mandinga, the contemporary version of the traditional djaliá. As defended by Cole (2001), in the context of past–future tension, the present is where ‘new’ practices rise, configured inside transnationalism. Within these practices, music (and art in general) is a cultural reproduction medium of the people that is representative of their origins (Vertovec 2009). In Lisbon, many griots have been helped in their careers by immigrant networks and associative groups, often hired to work parties and celebrations. Outside these networks, they also look for a wider audience and perform at different places, such as world music festivals. In both contexts, artists are adopting the term afro-mandinga to rename the practice of djaliá, to mark the modern character of their music and performance, and



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to highlight their connection to the language and practices of the music industry. Although a musical expression built from the perspective of the African diaspora, namely from afro-music created in the Americas, afro-mandinga was, in fact, created in Guinea-Bissau. When the diasporic afro-music ‘returns’ to Africa, it tends to gain localized identities. Afro-mandinga, therefore, is a style and musical genre created in Africa inside an historical and traditional framework mixed with newness coming from overseas griot communities. Alongside afro-mandinga, there are other afro-music types such as afro-fula and afro-beat. From the griots’ point of view, afromandinga becomes stronger in its circulation between African countries and Europe, and part of its effort is to be recognized as an artistic genre, representative of Guinea-Bissau national’s identity, as are other modern music styles (i.e. the Gumbé). Djumbais – a kriol name implying meeting and have fun – echo landscapes of African history to debate contemporary themes, entertaining audiences while also acting as counsel sessions. Here, griots keep their roles as spokespersons and are kept responsible for maintaining harmony, social justice and peace. Through the performance of afro-mandinga in Lisbon, we can thus visualize the tensions between tradition, innovation and the statement of a ‘new’ musical genre in the African and European scenes.

Lisbon, São Luiz Theatre: An afro-mandinga performance Lisbon, 5 December 2010. São Luiz Theatre, Lisboa Mistura Festival. The main room was nearly full with everyone waiting with great anticipation to see the performance of the ‘revelation artist’ from Guinea-Bissau. Kimi Djabaté was part of the festival’s main programme that day alongside other renowned artists, both national and foreign. The festival, which advertised the event as a meeting point for ‘people, arts and artists from different geographic and cultural origins’, was further billed as ‘an homage to the people, soul and spirit of the Lusophone world’.7 The stage was set for Kimi Djabaté. On stage, the back row was filled with drums, the calabash, the kongas and the djembés ending on a small platform where there would be the backing vocalist, a woman in a red and yellow dress, a green scarf around her hair, big arrow earrings and bracelets on both arms and necklaces. In a sort of middle row, the kora and the balafon, the latter in a small pedestal covered by a purple cloth.8 In a triangular-like formation, the bass and the guitar supported the two microphones dressed in a wax cloth (the pattern cloth sold in markets all over West Africa) situated front and centre. Kimi Djabaté’s acoustic guitar was

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next to one of them. As the musicians took their places, the first accords started: the song Djaliá had commenced. In the middle of the introduction, Kimi Djabaté entered. He came from the backside, making his way to the front of the stage and facing the public. He wore a pale orange shirt and vibrant orange saruel trousers, matched by many necklaces around his neck. With his bare feet, he slowly crossed the stage from one side to the other. He faced the audience and bowed, as to thank the people with his hands in a praying gesture. Calmly, he directed himself to the microphone and sang the first verses: Yo Alala que, yo jonma que/Kube kara bailé/Ala barro jonte baila/ Kube kara baile/Ala barro jonte obaila/Yo Alala que, yo jonma que/ Kube kara baile/Ala barro jonte obaila/Hote banha djalia de banna de/ Mote banna/ Hote banna/Tabato kaluco djalia te/Banna Hote banna, hote Banna/ Hote banna djalia te Banna de He moved to the balafon and kept singing those words: ‘Only God has the power and what God decides can’t be overruled. This cannot end. Djaliá cannot end. People of Tabato say that djaliá cannot end’. Since 1994, Djabaté has been based in Lisbon and travels around the world presenting his music in concerts and world music festivals. He also occasionally goes to Guinea-Bissau where, during his short stays, he plays concerts and does media events, often speaking about his life and work in Europe, drawing attention to his role as an ambassador of griot identity. That night at the São Luiz Theatre, similar to other shows before, Djabaté decided to open his concert singing Djaliá, his adapted composition that derives from Allah la ke, a traditional song of the Mandingo griot repertoire. In its original version, the song tells the story of a dispute between two warriors. The song Djaliá is taken from Djabaté’s second album entitled Karam (Mandigo for ‘education’). Songs on Karam are mostly sung in Mandingo (with some exceptions sang in Kriol). The album consists of songs and rhythms of the Mande traditional repertoire mixed with other references such as salsa, afro-beat, blues and morna. The lyrical content of songs depicts the struggle of women’s rights in Africa, calls for the end to wars, speaks of lost friendship, among other social issues. In many of the songs, Djabaté uses names of people from his own background and from his home village of Tabato.



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Djaliá, afro-mandinga and the performance of the past It is important to highlight that griot’s performance and performativity is linked to their ability to enchant social groups via social interactions (Ebron 2002). With the Lisboa Mistura Festival, we observe how a griot performance transmits an imaginary of Africa, through the enchantment and chanting of its own past and traditions. Djaliá, and also its contemporary partner afro-mandinga, live in the present by the emanation of the past, transmitted by a new generation of mobile performers to a new generation of listeners and observers. Concerts such as Djabaté’s seem a key moment to observe how tradition, as expressed through djaliá, is made to come alive, and how griots activate their social roles through the act of the performance itself. Though contemporary lyrics are sometimes simplified, music is adapted to incorporate other instruments, becoming marketable. Performance, however, remains the locus of persistence of values, where the tension between innovation and tradition is made visible. The choices made by griots as performers – the clothes they choose, their gestures and how they communicate – are indicative of the forces of tradition believed to be carried by griots in their bodies. Moreover, it is through performance and the body that words and sounds reveal meanings to the audience. The rise of the term afro-mandinga is often a catalyst of tension between griots, bringing to life performance difference divided by innovation and tradition of the performance and Mandingo culture. Djaliá and afro-mandinga represent the force of tradition and modernity, but afromandinga leans on djaliá (by extension of tradition) to create itself as something unique in the artistic world. Thus, djaliá remains as something traditional that, at the same time, is informed by modern values and aesthetic tendencies. Kimi Djabaté is a key actor in the modernization processes of Mandingo musical aesthetics. When such processes generate tensions, however, their only resolution is through dialogue with the elders, who are seen as the guardians of traditions and the connection to ancestrality and history. Young individuals bring references from their mobility experience that may influence the way they play their instrument, the melodies of songs; they may add new problematic themes to traditional song lyrics, such as the fight against AIDS or violence against women, themes often frowned upon by the elders. Moreover, the information and incorporation of new references create tendencies that are replicated, not only in the afro-mandinga, but also in djaliá, creating a flow between these two performance practices. Djaliá and afro-mandinga are both understood as performances told from an artist’s perspective – as artistic practices conceived within the artist

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that then produces a performance product. As Harding (2002) affirms, the performance entity is defined live (and that makes the interaction a central item). The performer is both the agent and the object of art, with his or her body being the communication media. The author (2002: 3) further writes: [performance] is seen and heard through presence, voice and movement and its temporary existence verified by the presence of spectators. The quality of its temporality is physical, embodied in the performer, and only in the performer, and because of its immateriality outside of the performer performs. Each ‘reality’ which appears – seems – to exist and which appears in order to exist, does so only for the duration of performance. After the performance, there remains only the memory of the performance. Each performance is unique, each perhaps a ‘subsequent performance’ (Miller 1986) of a familiar text, each neither an original nor a final product, but a reproduction, a representation of previous actions: ‘performance means: never for the first time. It means: for the second and nth time’ (Schechner 1985: 36). In concerts and in festivals like Lisboa Mistura, music is the main attraction of griot performance, but it is more powerful when it is heard and seen through the body of the artists. Music transports the continuity of historical knowledge, habitus and values transmitted to the audience through words and gestures of the griot. The interaction with the audience and how they react are also important, as the impact of words and sound (the bigger and stronger the better) gives life to the happening. Performance is a vehicle that articulates concepts, serving to move griots in their art. More than that, there are other elements and relations that build up and become the base for performance, i.e. the creation and experience of a geographic and an historical map that localizes and connects individuals; how griots see themselves as being connected through kinship and family bonds, as well as the experience of Islam and how it conforms a notion of people and places in the art form. All of these relations bring complexity to the griot’s art, transforming them not only as musicians and singers, but also as storytellers, historians, genealogists and spiritual guides. Djaliá and afro-mandinga performances allow us to observe structural, affective, ethological and sociological relations. The way griots bring to the stage many of those aspects reveals social relations and the social structure to which they are connected. Gell (1998) points out that aesthetic principles are mobilized in the course of social interactions, emphasizing that that is part of the dynamics of their art. Ebron (2002) equally highlights that the art of the griots happens in the subjects’ agency, be it on stage or during interactions.



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Gestures, music, voice, dance, clothes and the relationship created, construct aesthetic practices with the audience, taking into consideration the way these are integrated in the performance. All those elements turn into a typology that organizes the performative world and the experience of it. In this sense, morals and values are brought into artistic practice. Everything happening in a performance presents and represents different historical, political, economical, religious and social processes that are part of griot’s experience. Praise singing is a central key to djaliá and a controversial element in afro-mandinga performance. Praise songs ideally discharge an inverted cathartic moment. In the Aristotelian concept, catharsis happens when the tragedy causes an emotional rush and provokes the audience into a purification state. Contrary to a tragedy, praise songs do not necessarily transmit what may be a person’s negative moment, but, instead, recalls the potential for acting towards something negative; in many cases justifying this potentiality by the individual’s connection to a collectivity. Praise singing is generally about great events in history but often altered to be sung about or towards an individual in the present day. During the song, the person who is being praised is surrounded by the rest of the audience who will then raise the arms of the individual being praised up into the air, then covering the floor with clothes for him or her to walk upon. Waldman (1997/98) points out that in the Mande world, the individual is central for it is his or her responsibility to bring and take information, history and knowledge. Also, each individual is responsible for the achievement and the creation of ‘the new’. This individual agency, nonetheless, can only be accomplished if the person is aware of his or her history – of where he or she came from. It is the responsibility of griot performers to communicate this to individuals. In djaliá, music is a door for history to pass through. But, as a traditional element, praise singing is transformed or adapted in afro-mandinga. In the traditional concerts, it is an obligation for those who are being praised to offer griots money or presents, most commonly jewellery, clothes, cars or instruments. For those who carry out their performance in a more modern context, this attitude is not a welcome one, as it could be a portrait of a misunderstanding or an inability to read the difference of performance contexts. Ingold (2011) points out that the relation between past and present appears in performance of speech, music or theatre. The literature on djaliá points out that the past, present and future, and how time becomes history and is turned into action, is called panegyric (Austen 1999). The interrelation between time, artists and audiences, and how the past is preserved and brought to the present in the performance, is thus key (Ingold 2011; Austen 1999). Djaliá and afro-mandinga are, therefore, both re-invented, but differently interpreted depending on the occasion (for example: traditional

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ceremonies, international festivals, individual concerts, marriages, etc.). The performance and the event depend on the relation between griots and the audience. The systematic analysis over the artistic creation allows us to lose focus on the artist – as the central figure – and to observe the information and experience transmitted, where artist and audience operate at the same level (Leuthold 2011). Besides that, the artist is understood as someone with agency over the object of the art form, just as the object is an index of its existence and the existence that of social relations (Gell 1998). When Kimi Djabaté performed Djaliá, he emanated what the audience was prepared to receive: the representation of Africa as a place full of greatness and wisdom, as transmitted with the grace of God to the people of Tabato. Clearly, it must be questioned how much of this message is understood by the audience, one composed by individuals that do not speak Mandingo, and the efficiency of the artist’s efforts in translating the message with gestures and materials brought on stage. Still, beyond what may be a lack of communication, griots believe they are raised and educated to incarnate the collective, possessing the capacity to convey knowledge during a performance, indifferent of obstacles. It is believed that their bodies are registers of what society should be, having the past as a guide. Djaliá, it is thus believed, uses a kind of technology of enchantment (Gell 1992), be it a modern or traditional version. The techniques used in the art form are crucial to the reproduction of a society, for it’s what informs the content and gives form to the backdrop in a djaliá performance. Inspired by Bateson (2000), we observe that, in the artistic creation of djaliá, the unconscious and the senses can be codified in a rational knowledge so that the meanings it brings to the public are part of a knowledge inscribed in the body illuminated by the performance. Praise songs establish euphemisms for social relations and underlie the value of the person for the society. The praised is not anyone but someone who, at present, is good or important to other people. Praise songs celebrate society and educate the individuals to take part in it. In the performance, the griot is the one who personifies these social relations because he/she communicates and transports this same society in his/her gestures, body and words. Kimi Djabaté praised many people in his songs, as well as the families of these individuals and their culture. To praise their own kinship and their art, performers like Djabaté underline the importance given to a person, as a guardian of social relations marked by historical ties. The individual, according to Strathern (1996), is thus a social being and his/her life an expression of social life. Moraes Farias (2004) points out that praise singing, in the history of Mande, is a result of the original sharing between two persons who founded structural social places occupied both by griots and the honorow,9 as individuals born free. Nowadays, the contracts established between the



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two parts, praisers and praised, are established in different ways, with both occupying the structural position once occupied only by the honorow. Praise songs call for a primordial gesture between griots and their king. At the moment of the performance, a tension is created between the one who speaks and the one who listens. Praise songs appeal to the praised ancestors and call the individual and his collectivity to commit to cultural and social paradigms. At the front of the stage a game takes place. The praised person resists the griot’s call. They make eye contact. The praised person accepts the message of the griot who is then rewarded for his/her work receiving money or a gift from the praised individual as a sign of his/her honour and pride (if the moment so calls for it). At Kimi Djabaté’s performance at the São Luiz Theatre, this kind of relation did not happen. On that evening, the griot praised his own family and culture, but also called the audience to observe the performance and somehow establish a relation with what was taking place. That evening at the São Luiz Theatre, Kimi Djabaté reaffirmed Africa and brought to the audience images, both old and new of his place of origin. Praises were addressed to people who were not there, but the audience was invited to feel and listen in their honour. More than that, Djabaté’s performance invoked a vision of Africa. Ebron (2002) calls attention to how performance and representation are important instruments in the teaching of Africa. The performance of sounds and rhythms, and the engagement of the body within the performance, is not only a manner in which Africa is represented through history, but is also a manner through which Africa chooses to talk about itself. According to Ebron (2002: 11), therefore, performance appears as ‘[a] mode through which representation is enacted and negotiated, and this is relevant whether one is studying written texts, oral traditions, or social interactions. Performance brings representation to life’. The enchantment of the art, meanwhile, explains how the artist uses his or her technical knowledge and charisma to get to the audience and to articulate in words and sound a message to an individual or a group of individuals (Gell 1992). Utilizing the concept of structure of feelings (Williams 1961), Ebron (2004) searches for meanings in the art of djaliá that allows for the creation of a community feeling among audiences and artists, with the aim of understanding how meanings could equally be translated to both diaspora communities and the world music audiences. The structure of feelings that the art of djaliá conveys to the public, along with the understanding of how such feelings can possibly be a part of the music and dancing, makes the art an instrument of encounters. Blau (2009) contributes to this argument in a similar fashion, seeing the musical performance, not only as a place for entertainment – given that afro-mandinga and djaliá go beyond danceable performances – but also as community engagements in which an

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artistic performance reproduces and reacts to something mystical. Thus, despite being marked by the entertainment, afro-mandinga music and djaliá reallocates the subjects inside a universe of meanings and historical relations. In the role of (re)generating realities, performance is an actualization of the past, which may either serve as a backdrop for future actions (Palmié 2007; Wirtz 2007), or be something obsolete or incomplete that needs to be transposed in order to change and innovate (Auslander 2004; Blau 2009). In the words of Blau (2009: 9): […] performance generates new meanings, even when those meanings are shaped by the past. Performance is – or, at least can be – heuristic, constitutive, expansive, restrictive, hegemonic and liberating. As we study music our interest is in uncovering how and why this is the case. […] Indeed, it is precisely because music is – in and of itself – an inducement to know, to be, to do, and to act that it is a potentially meaningful event, always already standing in potent relation to society, to culture, to politics. Although afro-mandinga and djaliá are often seen as working for the maintenance of the status quo, they also offer other perspectives pertinent to this same status quo and often discuss more contemporary issues affecting society and experience. For example, it may raise tensions between the maintenance of values of the Mandingo society in relation to certain issues (e.g. polygamy, female circumcision, etc.). And in this sense, young griots are protagonists. In the context of musical performance, music is played to raise energies and create different atmospheres, setting out to acquire (or not) the power to generate an event that transcends what is being presented to an audience. During the event, the individuals engage in a common reality, in a communitas feeling that creates a reflexive moment where people share the sentiment of being together through dancing, singing and other outcomes of performance. According to DeChaine (2002: 95), it is ‘an instructive, collaborative energy that we breathe (or scream) into each other’s ear. In the space of musical experience, we foment transformation’. The choices of artists when they are on stage are important to compose the meanings of their messages (Auslander 2006). What they wear, how they behave, and the pre-conceptions of what makes a good or bad artist are seen in the performance. In and through their performance, more than music is being worked with/on. Auslander (idem) makes it clear that notions of authenticity are very much constructed – i.e. performed. For example, whether or not Western rock stars realize what they’re doing – and why they are doing it when they do it – the fact is that their embodied actions instantiates a great deal of semiotic and cultural material to be unpacked



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for meaning. In other words, behaviours were modelled, orientations are posited and values are enacted (Blau 2009). In his performance in Lisbon, when Kimi Djabaté entered with no shoes, wearing the clothes that he did, and walking from one side of the stage to another as if he were an old man, he connected to an African imaginary past. His initial gesture and his first song transported everybody in the theatre to Tabato (even if not understood by all in the audience) and to the struggle of its people, especially Djabaté’s great-grandfather, Budunka Djabaté. As he turned himself to the balafon and played it solo, Djabaté gave the instrument the protagonist role as a transmitter of history, for the balafon was the object that had brought Budunka Djabaté and his family to Guinea-Bissau.10 In this sense, it is important to highlight that Kimi Djabaté, as an exponent of the new generation of griots, systematically calls on his forebears as a sign of respect, stating his belonging to a tradition that sometimes he breaks with, but tries to maintain in all performances. His connection to his ancestors is an important legitimacy factor, not only to an external public, but also to his techniques and abilities to perform his art. For Kimi Djabaté, in keeping with history and tradition, it is most important to pay tribute to those who forged the path of djaliá art in Guinea-Bissau.

Concluding discussion: Performance connection to and transmission of Mandingo history and culture The idea of chronotopes (Wirtz 2007) helps us reach the many temporal topoi existing in history. The past is something to be transcended in the present day-and-age, made turbulent by different realities that, in turn, also threaten the existence of the past in the presence. The past disseminates discursive genres and attempts to detain a sort of authority over the present. Its symbols are incorporated in the subject matters that glue griots together through a common historical consciousness. The power of history is observed through the use of musical instruments, for example. During my fieldwork period in Guinea-Bissau, one of my main informants, Baba Canuté,11 explained that instruments strengthen djaliá and improve its capacity to communicate, as it reaches audiences in a unique manner that is connected to Mandingo history and culture. Musical instruments particularly mark the connection of individuals to their families and ancestry (e.g. Djabaté’s family, for example, is known by playing the balafon). When griots get on a stage, many often have family members in their musical group, or will invite family members to join them in singing or

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dancing and have them be part of the show. In doing this, they are not only accomplishing what is ethically expected of them, but also taking responsibility in the protection of codes and values. That is what Kimi Djabaté does when he crosses the stage with his hands in a pray gesture and calls the people of Tabato, possessing the ultimate aim of inscribing the familial and traditional relation in the audience’s mind. The music played at the São Luiz Theatre connected the public, not only to a culture, but to its character or authenticity, a doing that, according to Auslander (1998, 2006), is obligatory when creating a relationship with the audience. Language is an important index of this authenticity, as is motion and rhythm. Although we may be talking about a tradition that may also be turning to the world music market and growing in popularity among an audience composed by non-speakers of Mandingo, the aim is still to communicate with non-speakers, keeping within tradition and history. Thus, with the help of traditional instruments (balafon, kora and the guitar), djaliá may be a question of tuning them up as seen fit, getting them to speak in ‘the language’ they possess. In a migratory setting, the tendency, for the new generation of griots, is to search for festivals, such as Lisboa Mistura and other world music stages, where recognition of their place as artists is granted and where their traditions are often seen as being legitimized. In order for this to happen, the new generation blends what is considered traditional aesthetics to contemporary world music tendencies. Some of the interlocutors during the fieldwork pointed out the importance of change in order to obtain the recognition of non-Africans, or the necessity to adapt traditions in order to enter the world music circuits. Changes, however, cannot take place without causing conflicts, given that changes often require breaking links between the music and performance, the historical past, traditions, the elders who guard traditions and history, as well as protection from God. The presence of Kimi Djabaté in the Lisboa Mistura Festival was a synthesis of djaliá essentials, turning to history, present in every musical note played; and tradition, seen in the performance acts. Following an almost Lévi-Straussian thought, Umaro Djabaté, Kimi Djabaté’s uncle, in an interview that took place in Guinea-Bissau in March 2010, kept repeating that it is music that opens the way for history to pass through to the present. For Lévi-Strauss (2004), music opens up the listener’s body to the sensitive and visceral dimensions. It is the materialization of his affirmation that permits music to live and be lived; where we can hear ourselves and others through it. As a transmitter Kimi Djabaté is an example of a bigger objective, that is to redeem griots into a national artistic scene in Guinea-Bissau and inside a transnational field, where Lisbon is the reference place, not only for griots like Djabaté, but for Guinean community in general. Mandingo artists, or griots, explain their existence through history and their historical



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genesis dating back to the Mande Empire. Griots are kept at the core of the Mandingo social structure, seen as important actors in the process of Mande transnationalism. In contemporary times, they are confronted by the traditional codes of their profession. Their transnational lives allow them to be critics of their own art and artistic choices, at a time and place when the world music market provides them opportunities to reach other audiences. On world music stages, singing the past and bring it into the present gives them a platform that permits the acknowledgment of non-African audiences. The past needs to be (en)chanted and ancestors to be sung and praised, but will new audiences understand? In order to be modern in a cosmopolitan world, it is necessary to bring traditions up-to-date. Messing with tradition, however, may cause a generational divide, bringing conflict to the community. To what extent the power of hybridization, as experienced in the diaspora, can influence the griot is a question worthy of further analysis. Young griots are central to the understanding of the dynamics between innovation and tradition as it happen in the transnational space Mandingo art now resides in. The young griot generation is responsible for questioning the current world order, while, at the same time, they are visionaries of the values that tradition contains, not only in possible surplus value on the world music market, but also as something to be connected to in order to maintain cohesion with their own culture. In the case of Kimi Djabaté it is important to try to understand such dynamics, keeping in mind that his journey and accomplishments, not only reflect movements prior to him and pay homage to where he comes from and those he left behind, but he is also a reference to a new community in the diaspora, as a transmitter of who they also are.

Notes  1 Although literature on Mandingo culture uses such words as jali (in Mandingo) and djidiu (in Kriol – lingua franca from Guinea-Bissau) to define Mandigos (Hale 2007), for this article, I opt to refer to the Mandingo artists as griots, this due to the fact that this is the term used by the artists themselves.  2 This fieldwork was part of my PhD thesis which followed the mobility of Mandingo artists and observed their performances in different settings (baptisms, marriages, world music festivals), aiming to analyse tensions between tradition and musical innovations in both African and European settings, as influenced by transnational and cosmopolitan experiences.  3 The expression ‘Mande country’, frequently used in Africanist literature, is used to refer to the Mande territory as well as to other territories ruled by kingdoms originally centered along the common border between Mali and

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TRANSGLOBAL SOUNDS Guinea that then spread into other African countries such as Burkina Faso; Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Ghana, via Mande culture and language.

 4 Machado (1998, 2002) describes three great waves of migration from GuineaBissau to Portugal, the other two being the Liberation war in the 1970s, and the political and economic instability Guinea-Bissau went through in the early 1980s.  5 In Lisbon and Bissau, griot parties and concerts are blessed by godfathers and godmothers who are either members of local associations, businesspeople or mouros (Muslim spiritual guides). The community associations look for griots to play and entertain their parties which are seen as a form of entry for griots into this network, giving them an opportunity to work. Personal contacts are most frequently obtained through other immigrants who have lived in Portugal for a long period of time, as well as through other Mandingo artists living abroad (Höfs 2014).  6 Fulbe people and Beafada people are two ethnic groups living in West Africa. Both are Muslim and generally have vicinity relations to Mande people.  7 Taken from the event brochure (http://www.teatrosaoluiz.pt/catalogo/detalhes_ produto.php?id=209). The Lusophone world is composed by the former Portuguese colonies in Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, São Tomé and Principe) as well as Brazil, East Timor and the former colonial outposts of Goa, Diu, Damão in India.  8 Kongas and djembés are West African drums. Kora is a harp built from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator with a long hardwood neck. The skin is supported by two handles that run under it and it supports a notched double free-standing bridge. Balafon is a kind of wooden xylophone or percussion idiophone which plays melodic tunes and usually has between sixteen to twenty-seven keys.  9 In traditional Mandingo society there is a category of people known as honorow. They are descendants of noble people or free-men. 10 During my fieldwork, Djabaté interlocutors used to say that Budunka Djabaté left Mali for Guinea-Bissau, led by dreams he used to have in which a balafon talked to him and incited him to look for a new land to settle with his family. 11 Baba Canuté is a griot from Guinea-Bissau who was one of the most important interlocutors during my fieldwork. The Canuté family is based in Bafatá, 12 km away from Tabato.

References Auslander P. (1998), ‘Seeing is Believing. Live Performance and the Discourse of Authenticity on Rock Culture’. Literature and Psychology 44 (4): 1–25. Auslander, P. (2004), ‘Performance Analysis and Popular Music: A Manifesto’. Contemporary Theatre Review 14 (1): 1–13.



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Auslander, P. (2006), ‘Music as Performance. Living in the Immaterial World’. Theatre Survey 47 (2): 261–9. Austen, R. (ed.) (1999), In Search of Sunjata. The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature and Performance, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Bateson, G. (2008), Naven: um exame dos problemas sugeridos por um retrato compósito da cultura de uma tribo da Nova Guiné desenhado a partir de três perspectivas, São Paulo: Edusp. Becker, H. (2008), Mundos da Arte, Lisboa: Livros Horizonte. Blau, J. (2009), ‘More than ‘Just’ Music: Four Performative Topoi, the Phish Phenomenon, and the Power of Music in/and Performance’. Revista Transcultural de Musica, 13, online. Charry, E. (2004), Mande Music. Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa, Chicago: The Chicago University Press. Clifford, J. (1994), ‘Diasporas’. Cultural Anthropology 9 (3): 302–38. Cole, J. (2001), Forget Colonialism? Sacrifice and the Art of Memory in Madagascar, Califórnia: University of California Press. Conrad, D. and B. Frank (eds) (1995), Status and Identity in West Africa. Nyamakalaw of Mande, Indiana: Indiana University Press. De Brujin, M. and Van Dijk, R. (1997), ‘Introduction: Peuls et Mandingues: Dialectique des constructions identitaires’, in M. De Brujin and R. Van Dijk, (eds), Peuls et Mandingues: dialectique des constructions identitaires, 13–29, Paris, Leiden: Karthala, Afrika-studiecentrum. Diawara, M. (2000), In Search of Africa, London and Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dorsch, H. (2005), ‘Cosmopolitans, Diasporists and Griots. The Role of Diasporic Elites’, in C. Weißköppel and A. Adogamé (eds), Religion in the Context of African Migration, 56–77, Bayreuth: African Studies Series. Dorsch, H. (2008), ‘Griots, Roots and Identity in the African Diaspora’, in W. Kokot, K. Tölölyan and C. Alfonso (eds), Diaspora, Identity, and Religion: New Directions in Theory and Research, 102–16, London: Routledge. Ebron, P. (2002), Performing Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ebron, P. (2004), ‘Continental Riffs’. African Identities 2 (2): 133–49. Gell, A. (1992), ‘The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology’, in J. Coote and A. Shelton (eds), Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, 40–66, Oxford: Clarendon. Gell, A. (1998), Art and Agency, Oxford: Clarendon. Glick Schiller, N., L. Basch and C. Blanc-Szanton (1992), ‘Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration’. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 645: 1–24. Hale, T. (2007), Griots and Griottes. Masters of Word and Music, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Harding, F. (2002), The Performance Arts in Africa: A Reader, London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (ed.) (2011), Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description, London: Routledge. Johnson, M. (2002), Being Mandinga, Being Muslim: Transnational Debates on Personhood and Religious Identity in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal. PhD diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Johnson, M. (2006), ‘“The Proof Is On My Palm”: Debating Ethnicity, Islam and Ritual in a New African Diaspora’. Journal of Religion in Africa 36 (1): 50–77. Kiwan, N. and U. Meinhof (2011), Cultural Globalization and Music: African Artists in Transnational Networks, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Leuthold, S. (2011), Cross-cultural Issues in Art. Frames for Understanding, New York: Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, C. (2004 [1964]) O Cru e o Cozido, São Paulo: Cosac & Naify. Machado, L. (1998), ‘Da Guiné-Bissau a Portugal: Luso-Guineenses e Imigrantes’. Sociologia: Problemas e Práticas 26: 9–56. Machado, L. (2002), Contrastes e Continuidades: Migração, Etnicidade e Integração dos Guineenses em Portugal, Oeiras: Celta Editora. Mapril, J. (2008), ‘Os sonhos da “modernidade”. Migrações globais e consumos entre Lisboa e Dhaka’, in R. Carmo, D. Melo and R. Blanes (eds), A globalização no divã, 65–88, Lisbon: Tinta da China. Moraes Farias, P. (2004), Griots, louvação oral e noção de pessoa no Sahel, São Paulo: Casa das Áfricas. Palmié, S. (2007), ‘Introduction. Out of Africa?’. Journal of Religion in Africa 37: 325–36. Quintino, M. (2010), ‘Práticas associativas de guineenses, conexões transnacionais e cidadania incompleta’. Revista Migrações 6: 81–102. Riccio, B. (2001), Disaggregating the Transnational Community Senegalese Migrants on the Coast of Emilia-Romagna. Working Paper 01–11, Transcomm Programme, University of Oxford. Salih, R. (2003), Gender in Transnationalism. Home, Longing and Belonging Among Moroccan Migrant Women, London: Routledge. Saraiva, C. (2008), ‘Transnational Migrants and Transnational Spirits. An African Religion in Lisbon’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (2): 253–69. Sarró, Ramon and J. Mapril (2011), ‘“Cidadãos e Súditos”: imigração, cidadania e legado colonial na Europa contemporânea’. Revista Migrações 8: 27–34. Strathern, M. (2005), Kinship. Law and the Unexpected. Relatives Are Always a Surprise, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tamari, T. (1991), ‘The Development of Cast Systems in West Africa’. Journal of African History 32 (2): 221–50. Vertovec, S. (2009), Transnationalism, New York: Routledge. Waldman, M. (1997/98), ‘Africanidade, Espaço e Tradição. A topologia do imaginário espacial tradicional africano na fala “griot” sobre Sundjata Keita do Mali’. África 20–21: 219–68. Williams, R. (1961), The Long Revolution, New York: Chatto and Windus. Wirtz, K. (2007), ‘Divining the Past: The Linguistic Reconstruction of “African” Roots in Diasporic Ritual Registers and Songs’. Journal of Religion in Africa 37: 242–74. Wright, D. (2010), The World and a Very Small Place in Africa. A History of Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia, New York: M. E. Sharpe.

CHAPTER TWO

From Coimbra to London: To live the punk dream and ‘meet my tribe’1 Paula Guerra and Pedro Quintela

Introduction It has been nearly four decades since the punk movement first came into being – in the UK and USA – having changed drastically since then on different levels. One key aspect of this transformation has to do with how punk has been globalized and differently appropriated by urban youth from different parts of the world. This dynamic fits within a new framework of music bonds and identities, in a time and space that are translocal, marked by networks and mobility. In this chapter, we address punk’s globalization, as well as its consequent localization, which has allowed the constitution, development and maintenance of local and trans-local musical scenes. In Portugal, the desire to leave the country in order to broaden personal, musical and symbolic horizons has been a constant in the Portuguese punk scene. Here, our intent is to discuss the importance of these dynamics, exploring the journey and circumstances of a group of players from the Coimbra2 punk scene set in a translocal and transglobal music context, giving particular focus to the migration processes of the punk band The Parkinsons3 to the United Kingdom (UK) to illustrate these dynamics.4 Before analysing the case of The Parkinsons, discussion will first address the pathways and causes of emigration of Portuguese punk actors, observing their destinations and the rationales for their choice. From a total of 217 interviews conducted with actors of the Portuguese punk scene (musicians, publishers, promoters, fans and critics), we identified a

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set of thirty-eight respondents who maintain or have maintained residence abroad. We concentrate on these thirty-eight respondents in an attempt to reach conclusions concerning their transnational mobility options. In order to carry out this analysis, we relied on the cross-referencing of discursive tendencies using the qualitative data analysis programme NVivo, as well as the application of social network analysis techniques aimed at crossing information as provided by the respondents.5 Further concerning the methodology, all the fieldwork associated to the findings discussed in this article was carried out between January 2013 and February 2015. Throughout the article, we use excerpts from the interviews as a way of illustrating specific arguments. We use the real names of the three members of the The Parkinsons interviewed to identify the quotes presented, choosing to do this in order to make the interviewees easily identifiable through their dialogues. We opt to use their real names for the reason that they are known musicians that have been identified through other media forms. Permission to use their real names was given by the three band members.

‘The world is tearing apart’ and I need a ‘good reality’: Music, identities, migrations and transglobal sounds Contrary to the traditional idea of cultural identities – which speaks of solid and fixed selves, umbilically related to a territory and collective history – nowadays we must take into account the volatility of these identities. This increasingly volatile nature stems from a flux of social uprooting, constant technological innovation, the physical mobility of goods and ideas – all of which are deeply rooted in late modernity. This volatility is often brought into focus in the plasticity of human beings and the provisional nature of social roles and bonds (Hall and Jefferson 1993; Featherstone 1995). Crane’s (2002) perspective on this is of the utmost importance, revealing that global music culture, spread through media conglomerates, is mostly centred in English-speaking countries, with the repertoires of major labels increasingly focusing on a small number of international stars. Resulting from this, we witness a renovated model of ‘media imperialism’ based on global capitalism. Simultaneously, we also have globalization and localization in a complex web of network flows, showing progressive cultural homogeneity, whilst ensuring that identity and specific values are ever more crucial in understanding popular music (Huq 2006). This background further leads us to analysing the changes which have begun to occur in different local music scenes, namely focusing on roots and subcultural logic, as has been the emphasis of cultural studies since the 1970s. The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in Birmingham (UK)



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has adopted the concept of subculture to study post-war youth cultures and their collective appropriation of music (Bennett and Peterson 2004). Post-subcultures associated with the post-subcultural theory (Redhead 1995), however, move away from the CCCS perspective, inducing us to reflect on the political, cultural and economic realities of the twenty-first century. These include the association of members of neo-tribes to several music genres and subgenres (Singh 2000; Thornton 1995) in a context of ever-increasing complexity. All of this takes place in a progressively more interconnected world in which people, music and ideas circulate on a scale and at a speed never before seen (Castells 1996), thus moving away from the dichotomy of ‘monolithic mainstream versus resistant subcultures’ (Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003; Stahl 1999), a dichotomy deeply rooted in the CCCS’s academic conceptualization (Guerra 2013; Hebdige 1979). The virtues of post-subcultural theory will be shown in this analysis through a dialectic approach, moving between the local and global in the Coimbra case. Previous studies on the relationships between music and locations have focused mostly on such topics as the socio-economic conditions for the production of music (Guerra 2015); the narratives between the local and the identity constructed by local musicians (Shank 1994); the relationships between the local, music and ethnic identity (Stokes 1994); and the appropriation of global music genres through local signifiers (Mitchell 1996). Along with these themes, there are also numerous and noteworthy works focusing on the impact of new technologies in globalization and the restructuring of local music scenes (Hodkinson 2002). According to Brah (2004), transnationalization has also led to tendencies that connect multiple places. The same can be said of identities. This has naturally created great instability in the social order, which has well-defined established dominions – and thus borders positioning the social actors – with the potential to offer stability and self-definition to the altered relationships (through which meaning is first gained and then confirmed). In this way, difference has taken on a key role in the contemporary sociological debate. Underlining the increasingly relational nature of identity, Brah (2004) notes the emergence, through transnationalization, of diachronic processes of dispersion and calls to roots. In discussing diaspora, it is necessary to provide an image of the current processes of spatial and identity reconfiguration in contemporary societies. Huq’s (2006) investigation of new Asian dance music (NADM) and French rap music, reflecting (trans)national European identities, makes use of post-colonial theory and shows that some of the places with greatest social dynamics, namely those in Europe, are the result of the presence of individuals from former colonies. This context shows the frailties of subcultural theory as posed by the CCCS, especially in relation to second-generation minority youth who are often confronted with two cultures (Anwar 1976; Watson 1977): the parents’ culture and mass culture. The great majority of these music manifestations indicate a multiplicity of cultural identification

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points for youth (Huq 2006). With the help of Gilroy’s (1993) concept of ‘double consciousness’, it is shown quite exemplarily that young immigrants are the product of several ‘diasporas’ of a post-colonial nature. Let us look now at the case of punk. The word punk was originally a popular north-American term used to describe certain groups of young people at the bottom of the social structure, such as itinerant workers, African Americans and homosexuals. It only gained recognition when applied to music, first in the New York music scene and then in the British scene, mostly in relation to London when the Sex Pistols achieved world recognition. In the UK, punk reflected worries of class and was presented as a hybrid music form. It sought its roots, not only in the New York punk scene, but also in the British subcultures which preceded it (skinheads, mods, teddy boys, glam rock, reggae and rockabilly) (Guerra 2014). From London and New York, punk spread to other cities, countries and regions. It was built gradually as a popular geopolitical culture and integrated numerous variations and spatialized music styles. This double movement of globalization and localization emphasizes the nature of punk as an assemblage of pieces of cosmopolitan transglobal popular culture in a chaotic and paradoxical mix. It combines aesthetics, music, images, texts and landscapes and articulates both specificity and hybridism (Guerra 2013). As Guerra and Bennett (2015) pointed out, punk rock has become a global mediascape – that is, a gathering of characteristics which mixes practices and configures a certain kind of cultural capital and a habitus which is dominant in the field of popular music (Mendonça 2002). The global influence of the aesthetics and sounds of rock in the production of music projects on a local scale is a supreme demonstration of the cultural production logic which is characteristic of globalization (Regev 2013). In different countries, rock has appeared as a reproduction of the styles introduced to them, or as the creation of hybrid styles in which musicians combine local memories and global elements. The construction of these local rock styles is then strategically placed in accordance with the characteristics of social identity construction processes in two spaces of cultural practice: the field of popular music and the field of national and local identity. This presumes, however, a greater intensity of the role of the migration contexts. It’s on this important premise that the analysis of the trajectories lived by our actors from Coimbra is based. Their lives are configured by their music projects, their musical tastes, their love of art, contexts of transition, mobility and global migration.

‘City of nothing’ or a ‘long way to nowhere’: The desire to go away In this section we intend to focus on the migration phenomenon within the Portuguese punk scene. In order to do so, as previously mentioned, a



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set of thirty-eight respondents (17.5 per cent of the sample), who either maintain or have maintained residence abroad, will be the subject of this analysis. The significant percentage of migrants among the punks interviewed supports the perspective that Portuguese society has maintained an intense flow of out-migration in recent decades that has particularly intensified the last half-dozen years (Fradique 2003). This is important at two levels: first, concerning the fact that, similar to the case of most young Portuguese today, the drive to leave the country has been guided by the search for better self-realization, in particular with regard to finding a job or obtaining a professional or educational qualification, within the context of a social and economic crisis in Portuguese society. Second concerns the particular incidence that emigration seems to have on these Portuguese punks, leading to a hypothetical relationship between the defence and recovery of certain values tied to the punk ways of life, and the search for a different setting and life. These are individuals aged between thirty-six and fifty, mostly male, possessing at least a high school education and with professions mostly related to the arts, tied to design, restoration or cultural tourism. Figure 1 shows the migration paths of the players. As we can see, England is clearly the primary migration destination of our participants, with more than half of the Portuguese punk migrants settling here, a phenomenon related to the attraction of this country to subcultural movements, often rooted in music.6 Figure 1: Countries chosen as migration destination by interviewees (N=38)

Source: KISMIF Project

Among the many reasons that led respondents to migrate, we highlight the fact that these are individuals whose biographical trajectories intersect with punk (and post-punk) and with a search for a life alternative, in most

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cases clashing with the conservative and provincial nature of Portuguese society that often stigmatizes those who adopted unconventional aesthetics and behaviour. For many respondents, Portugal was a country that offered them little or nothing to occupy their time, generating moments of strong frustration. The migration option, therefore, seemed ‘a breath of fresh air’, bringing about a set of new possibilities. Many of those interviewed concluded that Portugal was no place for them. They tended to see the country as too small and limited, some making it known that they often felt rejected by the country and/or city where they lived. In contrast, destinations such as the UK, and, to a lesser extent, nations such as the Netherlands, the US and others, stood out, perceived as ‘worlds of opportunity’ and, simultaneously, a primary punk locus. It was here where everything happened; not in Portugal. The connection to punk permitted entry into a network of like-minded and like-spirited individuals, allowing the respondents to create support networks and acquire knowledge that would assist them in leaving Portugal and settle in their new destination. With punk came a sense of urgency, a desire to find satisfaction and a give-it-a-go attitude that encouraged respondents to make decisions, to seek and – above all, create new opportunities for themselves (McKay 1998). More specifically, the spirit of initiative, the proactive attitude and the search for freedom, a space for expression and individual achievement, as promoted by punk, eventually contributed to their opting to leave the country. At the same time, with the migration of young people, those left behind are often left with the desire to do the same, especially when similar sentiments of not belonging in Portugal, of feeling the country does not offer what they desire, exists. Thus, one may venture to speak of migration as being ‘contagious’ in the way that some of the respondents described their membership networks in Portugal as getting smaller, with many of their friends already having opted to leave the country. Furthermore, some of the respondents who did migrate already had bands or were in the process of forming them, thus the choice to move abroad was also seen as an opportunity that committed them to pursuing a career in music. In addition to these push/pull migration dynamics, there were also those whose family origins were linked to Portuguese emigration, with some having had migrant parents and thus having been child migrants themselves. For these interviewees, the lack of identification with Portugal was made even more salient. Having spent their childhood and/or adolescence outside the country, some described their ties to Portugal as being very fragile, reporting that their processes of (re)integration into Portuguese society had been unsuccessful. Resulting from this, the desire of wanting to pursue further migration, in the case of these individuals, was kept alive. What was cited as the main reason for migrating, however, was that of the lack of economic conditions in Portugal, namely being unable to find



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a proper job and a fitting salary. In addition to being a conservative and closed country, Portugal was mentioned as not being very favourable in terms of job opportunities. Some of our respondents cited having no work or having lost their job as primary reasons for leaving Portugal, opting instead to seek out new opportunities in other geographical contexts. Even if they initially started out with unattractive jobs in their host countries, they saw working menial jobs there as a better option than staying in Portugal and doing nothing. In other cases, despite the stressful nature of some jobs taken up by our respondents in their respective countries of destination, these were at least well paid, especially in comparison to wages one might receive for working the same job in Portugal. For many, moving abroad also meant the realization of a dream and desire to discover new worlds and new cultures. In fact, these dreams and desires intersected with what was previously noted about Portugal – of it being viewed as a country that is too small – feed the desire to explore other contexts and search out opportunities elsewhere. For these individuals, the British capital, with more people, more venues and more concerts, became the primary destination, especially for those who had always possessed a liking for the British music scene and felt the desire to be a part of it (Gilroy 1993; Huq 2006; Kellner 1995; Mitchell 1996).

‘Beginning to see the light’: Openness, hybridity and the willingness to break boundaries As we have seen, the punk culture calls for a global community. Being global – that is, referring constantly to the structure and to the core of the international movement – implies that, locally, likeminded people ‘dream’ about the same version of ‘globality’. The case of Coimbra is quite sui generis in this regard, because it favoured biographical trajectories linked to various artistic expressions – music, literature, the fine arts and rock. In the 1980s, Coimbra was a city marked by musical and artistic diversity. Many bands took their first steps there. What they had in common was the will to participate in something different, regardless of their duration. Indeed, several respondents reported a scene strongly marked by heterogeneity and the mixture of styles, in contrast to what was happening in other Portuguese cities, for example Porto, known for its more homogeneous environment. In these early days, projects such as Objectos Perdidos and É Mas Foi-se were particularly important. Objectos Perdidos [Lost Objects] (1985–9) was a cultural intervention association and a multimedia group that promoted shows characterized by combining music with video and performance (Bourbonese 2009). The group went on to perform in such cities as Bonn, Berlin, Belgrade, Madrid, Porto, Lisbon and, of course, Coimbra (Martins 2013). É Mas Foi-se

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[It is but it’s gone] (1987–91), considered one of the most creative bands of the late 1980s/early 1990s in Coimbra, was a key player in the city’s early years of punk. The band was an example of the music mixtures that characterized the city, crossing influences from rock, punk, heavy metal, rap and funk with some ‘provincialism’ (Cardoso n.d.; Martins 2013). Live they would interact intensively with the public, often even carrying out theatrical performances on stage. These projects sowed the seeds of change and of what was to come. Regev’s (2013) work is particularly important here, having proposed an approach to pop rock as providing the possibility of cultural proximity in a global context given that the expressive elements of different cultures use their singularities in a very similar way under a musical banner. This seems a very promising route to help ground explanations for some of the trajectories of certain bands and musicians from Coimbra (see Guerra 2015). During this era, it was the band Tédio Boys who were the first real embodiment of the opportunity to break with the routines of the city from a musical and playful point of view (Alcaire 2005; Martins 2013).7 The band’s will to change was materialized in the ‘embrace’ of the American dream, whereby they shed the closed-off nature of Portugal, having gone on to perform in the US in emblematic spaces of the American underground and punk scene. Their three US tours provided them with an outlet, giving them a way out of the doldrums and entry into ‘a land of rock ‘n’ roll’. They were the first Portuguese punk band to tour in the US, giving more than 200 concerts, and on one of their tours they were invited by Joey Ramone of the Ramones to play at his birthday party – seen as the high point of celebration and affirmation of the band’s identity. Another band calling themselves 77 8 also had an important role in the artistic and musical panorama of Coimbra at the time. Having a sound that mixed several trends, it also contributed to broadening horizons, even among some of our study respondents, as the following citation attests: It was from 77 that I had the first contact with all the references of avant-garde, such as John Cage, Stockhausen, Brian Eno, that is, not only people connected to punk, but also linked to krautrock, pop music and background music. (Pedro Chau) As previously discussed, Coimbra, despite containing an alternative spirit, had a stark social structure that supported hierarchies and different social positions which would eventually lead to the most ‘irreverent’ actors suffering stigma. Influenced by a rock and punk culture, frustrated with Coimbra and Portugal and fascinated by what was happening in cities like London and New York, individuals such as Afonso Pinto, Pedro Chau and Victor Torpedo of The Parkinsons decided to go to England to counter a trend that they did not identify with in Coimbra and to search for themselves as punks in the punk haven that is London.



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Victor [Torpedo] was already talking about going to London and getting a job and I was a little influenced by him in that respect because I was frustrated with Coimbra and Portugal. […] You kind of end up looking for the places and the subculture and where to fit in, and we didn’t have them here. And because we were influenced by all that punk subculture that came from London and New York, and since Afonso [Pinto] lived there [in London]. … […] Yes, it was the music [the main reason to move to London]. We didn’t have the best expectations when we went; our idea was to make some money and eventually go to the United States. (Pedro Chau) [I went in] 2000. My head wasn’t here [in Coimbra], it never was. It’s very hard, I was living under terrible stress and I felt asphyxiated. I like to see things. I think it’s the same problem as always with close friends, they need to go out, to see things. (Victor Torpedo)

‘Reasons to resist’ and ‘down with the Old World’ Our interviewees described England as being a country with a much more open culture and a lot less stigmatizing in comparison to Portugal. Emphasized was England’s musical past and, above all, London’s. Pedro Chau pointed out that ‘rock history is much older in London, whereas, in Portugal, rock appeared in the 1980s … that is, it had started in 1960s, but nowhere near as explosively as in the 1980s’. London in comparison, he continued, ‘already had a lot more culture and for a much longer period of time’. Furthermore, Pedro Chau describes being dazzled by London, a place where he could come into contact with his music idols and ideals: Going to London was like a child arriving in Disneyland (…). Being fascinated with albums, the record shops, the daily concerts of the bands you only heard of vaguely in Portugal, seeing them play and then having a drink at the pub around the corner. (Pedro Chau) As argued by Hudson (2006), the relationship between music and place is not a direct one. It is mediated by social processes which are inscribed in that relationship, and that make local music susceptible to the influence of national and global phenomena. It is interesting to note that the interest in London and the UK is based on music, demonstrating the possibilities that music offers in identitary reconstruction, as well as providing a reason for migration to take place. These actors, therefore, use music, not only to find a place in a certain social context, but also to pre-conceive the knowledge and utopia of other people and places (Martinello and Lafleur

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2008; Pais et al. 2004). DeNora (2000) has developed paradigmatic research in this respect, showing the importance of music in the structuring of daily life and emotions, observing how social actors describe themselves – both their personalities and their ways of being – through their musical ‘voices’, serving as a reference to their social life. In the case of this group of actors who would come to form The Parkinsons in London, this is particularly relevant. Music is a consciousness of their life options in terms of work, friendships, neighbourhood and leisure, thus the reason behind their choice of London as their common destination. Despite the acts of mobility for the reasons given, the lives of our interviewees while in the UK were not easy. For one thing, the United Kingdom was described as possessing a different culture, with different habits and a distinct social and symbolic matrix of domination. Moreover, London is a very expensive city, which can make the initial process of searching for a job all the more difficult for newcomers. At first, our interviewees relied on friends, particularly in terms of a home life. However, these were precarious situations, as described by Afonso Pinto concerning himself and his friends trying to get an apartment: In the beginning it was horrible (…). The guy was in the living room and rented us two rooms. It was him in the living room, Pedro Chau and Carlos in a room, me and Victor Torpedo in the other. Sharing a bed and all! Finding a space for rehearsal was also described in a rather gloomy light. In the words of Afonso Pinto, ‘spaces were always tight, expensive and transitional’. To add to this, the interviewees mentioned that the strong competition in the London music scene meant that they had to find other forms of employment in order to survive, taking away from their ultimate musical goals and affecting their lives in such a way in that the weekend was often the only possible time to get some rest and have fun. In the words of Pedro Chau: ‘You live for the weekend in London; it’s a very stressful professional life. It’s scary there, really. It’s all about capitalism, screaming and making money’. In this context, our interviewees were forced to find employment quickly, working in the most diverse activities to maintain their dream, as was the case with Victor Torpedo: ‘I did almost everything […] Worked in a clothes shop, in warehouses, distribution, drove for a while, did construction work for a long time, but it was all great, all for the love of music’. In this process of identitary reconstruction that took place in London, for the members of The Parkinsons, being in ‘their subculture capital’ was important (Thornton 1995). It was activated by Victor Torpedo and his friends, both in an objectified fashion (hairdos, clothes, music taste, etc.) and in an incorporated manner (language style, implicit knowledge, ways of dancing, sociabilities, etc.) (Calado and Pinheiro 2002). As time went by,



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the adaptation to this new world started to be felt. As Afonso Pinto told us: ‘It was a matter of time before I became involved in London’s nightlife, going out every night, […] I started to meet people, and getting involved with all sorts and kinds’. It was due to their behaviour, their euphoria and their irreverence that this group later earned their ‘party animal’ reputations. Together, with the same visual look (jeans and leather jacket), this group of friends organized their week as neatly as Afonso Pinto described: On Mondays we did Trash, which was more indie, but had all the girls; on Tuesdays it was Club Kitten, which was organized by a Portuguese guy. On Wednesday it was Kitsch Bitch, which was more punk rock and glam; on Thursday it was the The Wag, sixties and garage; on Friday we went to Jet, Black and Bleached, which had all the punk rock stuff. On Saturday it was Elephant’s Head, rockabilly. The group would slowly become integrated in London culture and its nightlife, earning ever more friends and a certain status within the London punk scene. Due to that status, The Parkinsons would be able to play their first gig. In fact, their first show was not an easy task in itself. As we have seen before, London is described as the epicentre of music creation on a worldwide scale and with this comes the problem of tremendous competition. To add to this, our actors were not equipped with the essential elements for self-promoting: they did not have, for instance, a demo tape allowing them to be easily recognized. The great subcultural capital of The Parkinsons’ identitary renegotiation in London – which granted them initial hype – was embedded in a very strong investment in social and relational capital, as well as a search for authenticity. The hybridity of music styles led to a new perspective; thus, from a local identity new identities of music on a global and local scale were built (Bennett 2001; Hudson 2006). The Parkinsons were a throwback to the ‘77 punk’ in a way, but they were also more than that: they represented hedonism, energy, partying, raw sound, celebration, pushing boundaries, scandal and nudity. After their first concert, the band played all sorts of venues in London, some of which very notable in the city: the St Moritz Club, Verve, The 100 Club, Rock & Bus, the Boston Arms, the Dirty Water Club, the Dublin Castle, the Hope and Anchor and the Brixton Academy. They also ended up playing major festivals such as the Reading Festival, Leeds Festival, T in the Park, among others. Whilst still only recently famous, the band would reach the US (Aston 2002). Attaining fame in London was an extremely rapid and intense process, one which not even the members of the band thought possible. Having been a project that grew fast, and lived in a rushed intensity, our actors had no time to reflect on the choices they made and, as a result, certain opportunities were missed which could have taken the band on a

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different path of success. Their fame as ‘party animals’, which had given them a reputation in the London scene, would also eventually make them lose certain chances. Victor Torpedo revealed that The Parkinsons were very close to signing a contract with Mute Records, but, due to their reputation and their excesses being out of control, that contract never saw the light of day. The desire of labels to sign the band eventually gave way, as the bands negative image spread rapidly. It was, above all, the violence that often took place at their concerts and the various problems the band tended to create at their gigs that shunned labels from signing them. At the same time, Victor Torpedo explained that several other English bands came along with a similar style to that of The Parkinsons, resulting in their loss of relevance in the English music panorama. Here, the loss of fluidity of the networks and movements of identitary reconstruction in contemporaneous society can be seen in all its speed and volatility, as notably diagnosed by Jameson (2002). Nearly half-a-decade into the bands existence, several misunderstandings and fights arose between members of the band, as interests began to clash. Among these was the wish to build a family by some of the members – something that weakened the group in terms of their habitual nightlife. For some members, it became clear that maintaining the nightlife, a work life, an artistic life and a family life was not sustainable. The band’s concerts became less frequent, and in 2005 the band ceased to exist, having reunited seven years later, but now based in Portugal.

‘Back to life’, back to Coimbra to ‘meet my tribe’ In this final section, we examine the reasons for either remaining outside of Portugal or returning to the home country, aiming to determine the impact that migrant trajectories had in the identity reconstruction processes of the actors involved, again giving particular emphasis to the members of The Parkinsons. Here we also provide an opportunity to rethink the theoretical questions that have guided this chapter, showing the importance of discussing the case of Coimbra in the transglobal sounds approach we are here developing. According to our thirty-eight interviewees, there were multiple reasons to return to the home country that can be categorized according to the following topics: weather issues and disaffection with the ‘climate’ outside Portugal; willingness to change and do something more constructive in the ‘homeland’; the fatigue of a stressful life; lack of a more familiar environment and a smaller context; difficulties in negotiating relationships; and issues concerning isolation. The overwhelming factor given, however, concerned the absence of prospects in music; they were required to take very demanding everyday jobs and found themselves disconnected from



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their music in order to survive in the ‘urban jungle’. Thus, the main reason why many had migrated was eventually replaced by other responsibilities. Under this scenario, the reason for being abroad no longer made sense. The main reasons for not returning, on the other hand, were related to the fact that Portugal is facing an economic crisis, with weak employment, artistic and musical opportunities, as well as the fact that some of the interviewees had built families in the host country. These issues are connected to the importance of music in a migration context in so far as they invite us to rethink critical issues, such as the relationships between space and culture, the local and the global, the arts and everyday life and globalization and human action (Faudree 2015; Krüger and Trandafoiu 2013). Among those in The Parkinsons, only one member has remained in London, Afonso Pinto. For the rest, the return to Coimbra was inevitable. It was lack of a perspective of life, because I was always working in places that did not satisfy me; I felt I was there just to work to earn money to spend at the weekend and to support myself. (Pedro Chau) I never thought I’d come back to Portugal, as it was already out of my universe. It was because of family issues … health. That’s why I could no longer stay there in London. But it really was not by my desire … (Victor Torpedo) Ultimately, The Parkinsons’ experience points to the idea that not everything was impossible in their attempt at living out the punk dream. Still, at the same time, their experiences allowed the members of the band to gain essential capital for new projects. The tours in the United States and the concerts of The Parkinsons with Suicide showed that [band members learnt a lot from The Parkinsons experience]. After that I was also always arranging things somehow related to music that would give me some sustainability. (Victor Torpedo) Cohen’s (1991) work is relevant here because it highlights the importance of the local context in sociological interpretation. This context induces a stable and fixed territory, setting up spaces and collective identities. The speeches produced by our actors are strongly associated with places and connected to the social construction of music. The music itself becomes a crucial resource in the local (re)construction of immigrant identities (Fradique 2003; Hudson 2006). Individually, the experience in London brought our interviewees new knowledge and musical tastes, as well as an interest in other arts, such as cinema, fine arts and literature9 (Crane 2002). It was also an experience that contributed to personal growth, raising their

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self-esteem and confidence in themselves as human beings and as artistic beings. Currently they all participate in musical projects, including The Parkinsons.

Conclusion As Bennett (2011: 30) writes: […] debate continues as to the nature of the local in a world where popular music, style and other cultural commodities associated with youth circulate in a global flow, empirical studies of local youth cultures have opened up some important new areas of concern around the interface of global culture with young people located in specific cities and regions around the world. That said, mobility and (de)territorialization marks much of the musical expression of the actors analyzed in this chapter. Our approach here sought to demonstrate the importance of migrant trajectories of a wide range of individuals that either are or were members of the Portuguese punk scene, and then focusing more exclusively on the members of the emblematic Portuguese punk bands The Parkinsons. Falling in line with post-subcultural theories, the personal paths scrutinized demonstrated how important migration movements are in the living experience of concrete musical scenes. Let us look at The Parkinsons’ case study: as we have seen, the bands existence was determined by the time band members spent in London. At the same time, it was their stay in the UK that allowed the musical and artistic trajectories of the band members, within a certain musical and artistic hybridity, as well as social and personal hybridity. These are facets of intense identity reconstruction, focusing on the fragment, in the rejection of big narratives and in the pulverization of old structures. In a very informative way, it seems impossible not to speak here of neo-tribes, in the sense of new sociability and groups, triggering new social and musical horizons. Reflexive modernity partially releases individuals from structural constraints, namely being confined to the area of Coimbra as the only sphere of action. The structural constraints persist, but there are resources and capital lessening their effects – including the possibility of low cost travel to England and technological developments that enable recordings in the domestic sphere. Post-colonial studies, within which part of the approaches adopted here examines how the relationship between music and space is inscribed, also allow us to interpret the musical productions of Coimbra, and particularly



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the punk of The Parkinsons, through logics of fusion and creolization, marking a breach with the notions of cultural purity. Here we come to the concept of diaspora, implying not only the maintenance of ties to the country of origin, but also the possibility of establishing mergers with the culture of the host country, thus developing new cultures and identities. In this respect, The Parkinsons managed a break with a hegemonic vision of groups and subcultures, that is they constructed hybrid and plural identities, serving to prove that rock music contains, in itself, a global cultural component with which contemporary popular music styles, both local and national, are constructed. In short, the migrant experience permitted the possibility of the project’s implementation and the fulfillment of the member’s own punk musical and artistic experiences. The return to their origins, on the other hand, is very different, since it implies a reconstruction of an experience no longer global in nature, but surely guided by a degree of glocalism. The current solo project of Victor Torpedo, now living in Portugal, rightly entitled ‘Karaoke – Meet my Tribe’, is an example of a glocalism of this nature, given that it is indeed an artistic reply to a diaspora experience and to the chance to contact with other cultures and (sub)cultures.

Acknowledgements We wish to thank Afonso Pinto, Chris Low, Pedro Chau and Victor Torpedo (members of The Parkinsons), as well as Fernando Pinto [owner of Elevator Music Records, former owner of the now defunct Tune Inn Club in New Haven, Connecticut (USA) and the person responsible for the USA tours and albums of the Tedio Boys] for their help developing this research.

Notes  1 The title was inspired by the discography of The Parkinsons (2002) and the last solo work of Victor Torpedo (2013), guitarist of The Parkinsons, 77, Blood Safari, The Tédio Boys and Subway Riders, among others. Furthermore, all the other titles and subtitles used in this chapter are drawn from the records of The Parkinsons.  2 Coimbra is a Portuguese medium-sized city, located in the center of the country. The city is home to the oldest university in Portugal and one of the oldest worldwide, recognized as World Heritage by UNESCO in 2013. The city is involved in a fairly traditional academic environment which is closely related with the centrality of the university and its institutions that still dominates the local society. It is precisely this kind of traditional academic environment that,

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 3 Born out of the ashes of the legendary Coimbra punk band Tédio Boys, The Parkinsons are a punk rock band with its origins in Coimbra, but formed in London in 2000. Having achieved some success in the UK and in the US, by 2004, between CDs, EPs and singles they had amassed eleven phonographic records, having also participated in various compilations. After an eight year hiatus from recording, they rejoined once again in 2012 to release a CD of rarities and old demo versions. In 2014 they once again rejoined this time to play concerts (Lopes 2006). See http://theparkinsons.bandcamp.com/  4 Although our case study focuses on The Parkinsons, we must highlight that we are actually talking about musicians connected to a considerable number of other bands, all connected to Coimbra, namely: 77, Blood Safari, Tiguana Bibles, Johnny Throttle, King Salami, Bunny Ranch (Cardoso n.d.; Martins 2013).  5 This study was made possible with funding by FEDER through the COMPETE Operational Program from the Foundation for Science and Technology. For more information, see: www.punk.pt/en/.  6 The 217 interviews emerges from research on Portuguese punk carried out by the authors since 2013. These actors were interviewed according to their past or present connection with punk. Their connection with punk happens primarily through music because they are either members of bands, have their own microrecord labels, are musical promoters or are simply fans and music lovers.  7 Tédio Boys [Boredom Boys] (1989–2000) is the first punk band hailing from Coimbra to attain international success. Having started out playing on the streets of Coimbra, their sound quickly spread outside the borders of the city and eventually outside of Portugal, going on to achieve success in the US. They released four albums, the last three by the American label Elevator Music. After their demise, the Tédio Boys would go on to form a number of other bands, namely: d3ö, WrayGunn, Bunnyranch and The Parkinsons. The impact of the Tédio Boys was felt in several domains, ranging from aesthetics (the Edwardian style of clothing combined with leather jackets, creepers and hairdos) to music (incorporation of rockabilly and psychobilly in their songwriting). They have been defined as one of the first bands to truly place great importance on the visual aspects of punk (Alcaire 2005; Ferreira 2013; Lopes 2014).  8 Although they lasted only a short time (1999–2005), 77 achieved some recognition in concerts given in the New York area, especially at the famous CBGB. In 2005, they released their only record entitled Revolution Rock on the Elevator Records label (Bourbonese 2009b; Martins 2013).  9 We point out the arts project Sardine & Toblerone, created by Victor Torpedo while in London, which he now continues on with at a distance. The project is the union of two artists, a Portuguese (Sardine) and Swiss (Toblerone), that focuses on the plastic exploration of crucial rock moments. The duo describe their practice as Conceptual Art Brut, the equivalent of punk music. They have participated in numerous solo exhibitions in the UK, Italy, Portugal and other countries. They were part of the ‘Travelling Light’ exhibitions at the



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53th Venice Biennale (2009) and of Victor Torpedo’s solo show, ‘We Love 77’, which debuted in February 2010 in a space converted especially for the exhibition in Islington (London), with contributions from Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex, Don Letts, and close to 2,000 visitors. See http://www. themonkeyinthebox.com/

References Alcaire, R. (2005), Filhos do tédio, Coimbra: Pé de Página. Anwar, M. (1976), Between Two Cultures, London: Community Relations Council. Aston, M. (2002), ‘The Parkinsons A Long Way to Nowhere’, Q, March 2002. Bennett, A. (2001), Cultures of Popular Music, Buckingham: Open University Press. Bennett, A. and R. A. Peterson (eds) (2004), Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A. (2011), ‘The Continuing Importance of the “Cultural” in the Study of Youth’. Youth Studies Australia 30 (3): 27–33. Bourbonese (2009), ‘Objectos Perdidos’, Under Review. Available online: http:// underrrreview.blogspot.pt/2009/10/objectos-perdidos.html (accessed 15 February 2015). Brah, A. (2004), ‘Diasporic Spatiality, Difference and the Question of Identity’, in G. Titley (ed.), Resituating Culture, 31–9, Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Calado, N. and R. Pinheiro (2002), ‘The Parkinsons. A valsa dos rebeldes’, Mondo Bizarre, 10. Cardoso, S. (n.d.), ÉMASFOI-SE. JHAERGIO. Available online: http://jhaergio.web. interacesso.pt/1_index/b_centro_destaque5.html (accessed 15 February 2015). Castells, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge, Blackwell. Cohen, S. (1991), Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Crane, D. (2002), ‘Culture and Globalization – Theoretical Models and Emerging Trends’, in D. Crane, K. Kawasaki and K. Kawashima (eds), Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization, 1–25, New York: Routledge. DeNora, T. (2000), Music in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Faudree, P. (2015), ‘Singing for the Dead, On and Off Line: Diversity, Migration, and Scale in Mexican Muertos Music’. Language & Communication 44: 31–43. Featherstone, M. (1995), Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity, London: Sage. Ferreira, R. (2013), ‘O estranho mundo bizarro dos Tédio Boys’, in R. Alcaire and R. Lacerda, Filhos do Tédio [Documentary], Lux Records/ Sony Music. Fradique, T. (2003), Fixar o movimento: representações da música rap em Portugal, Lisbon: Dom Quixote. Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso.

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Guerra, P. (2013), ‘Punk, ação e contradição em Portugal. Uma aproximação às culturas juvenis contemporâneas’. Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais 102/103: 111–34. Guerra, P. (2014), ‘Punk, Expectations, Breaches and Metamorphoses: Portugal, 1977–2012’, Critical Arts 28 (1): 111–22. Guerra, P. (2015), ‘Keep it Rocking: The Social Space of Portuguese Alternative Rock (1980–2010)’, Journal of Sociology, online. Guerra, P. and A. Bennett (2015), ‘Never Mind the Pistols? The Legacy and Authenticity of the Sex Pistols in Portugal’. Popular Music and Society 38 (4): 500–21. Hall, S. and T. Jefferson (1993), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain, London: Routledge. Hebdige, D. (1979), Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen. Hodkinson, P. (2002), Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture, Oxford: Berg. Hudson, R. (2006), ‘Regions and Place: Music, Identity and Place’, Progress in Human Geography 30: 626–34. Huq, R. (2006), Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth, and Identity in a Postcolonial World, London: Routledge. Jameson, F. (2002), A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present, London: Verso. Kellner, D. (1995), Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics, London: Routledge. Krüger, S. and R. Trandafoiu (eds) (2013), The Globalization of Musics in Transit: Music Migration and Tourism, London: Routledge. Lopes, M. (2014), ‘Tédio Boys: uma vida no fio da navalha’, Y – Suplemento do Jornal Público, 10 January. Martins, P. A. (2013), A garagem onde nasci, MA Thesis, Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, Coimbra. McKay, G. (1998), DIY Culture: Party & Protest in Nineties Britain, London: Verso. Mendonça, L. M. (2002), ‘The Local and the Global in Popular Music – the Brazilian Music Industry, Local Culture and Public Policies’, in D. Crane, K. Kawasaki and K. Kawashima (eds), Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization, 105–17, New York: Routledge. Mitchell, T. (1996), Popular Music and Local Identity: Rock, Pop and Rap in Europe and Oceania, Leicester: Leicester University Press. Muggleton, D. and R. Weinzierl (2003), ‘What is “Post-subcultural Studies” Anyway?’, in D. Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds), The Post-subcultures Reader, 3–23, Oxford: Berg. Pais, J. M., J. P. Brito and M. V. Carvalho (2004), Sonoridades Luso-AfroBrasileiras, Lisbon: Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. Redhead, S. (1995), Unpopular Cultures: The Birth of Law and Popular Culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Regev, M. (2013), Pop-rock Music. Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism in Late Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Shank, B. (1994), Dissonant Identities: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Scene in Austin Texas, London: Wesleyan University Press. Simões, S. (2009), ‘D3O Exposed: o mais recente trabalho da banda em discurso



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directo’. Rua de Baixo. Available online: http://www.ruadebaixo.com/ d3o-exposed.html (accessed 15 February 2015). Singh. A. (2000), ‘Live, Streaming Subculture’. Springerin 3 (17). Stahl, G. (1999), ‘Still “Winning Space?”: Updating Subcultural Theory’. Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies, 1–17. Stokes, M. (ed.) (1994), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg. Thornton, S. (1995), Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge: Polity. Watson, J. (ed.) (1977), Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain, Oxford: Blackwell.

Films Filhos do Tédio (2013), [Documentary] Dir. Alcaire, R. and R. Lacerda Lux Records/Sony Music. Rockumentário (2006), [Documentary] Dir. Castiço, S. Author Edition.

Discography The Parkinsons (2002), Long Way to Nowhere. Fierce Panda. [Album]. The Parkinsons (2002), Live the Dream – The Second Fierce Panda Sampler. Fierce Panda, ‘Nothing to Lose’. [Compilation appearance]. The Parkinsons (2004), Reason to Resist. Curfew Records. [Album]. The Parkinsons (2004), New Wave. Curfew Records. [Single]. The Parkinsons (2005), Down to the old World. Rastilho Records (Compilation album). The Parkinsons (2012), Back To Life. Garagem. [Album]. The Parkinsons (2012), Good Reality. Garagem. [Single]. The Parkinsons (2012), City of Nothing. Garagem. [Single]. Victor Torpedo (2013), Karaoke – Meet my Tribe. Author Edition. [Album].

PART TWO

Hybridism and aesthetic creativity

CHAPTER THREE

‘More than pets of multiculturalism’: Diasporic hybridity in Icelandic popular music – the case of Retro Stefson Gestur Guðmundsson and Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen

It’s only my second day at Airwaves and already I have some solid advice. Icelanders: do not attempt to replicate the music of the African diaspora, especially reggae and hip-hop. You will fail. Miserably and laughably. Be yourselves. That is the way to make the best music. MICHAEL AZERRAD, 2ND ICELAND AIRWAVES REPORT, 1 NOVEMBER 2013

Introduction For more than two decades, a succession of Icelandic indie artists has raised a genuine interest in the country’s musical landscape from abroad. This started with The Sugarcubes and Björk, who around the turn of the millennium were followed by Sigur Rós and later by artists such as múm, GusGus, Emilíana Torrini and most recently by Of Monsters and Men. We

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find it likely that the success of so many artists from such a small country is not accidental; something that can be explained as the effect of a remarkable cultural production that is not confined to the artists, but instead belongs to a broader scene of youth cultural creativity that deserves scrutiny. With this chapter, the acculturation of different imported musical elements into an extremely vital and creative scene in Iceland will be explored from Gilroy’s (1993a, 1993b) perspective of hybridity, where a one-dimensional explanation of the term is rejected in favour of multifarious interactions and constructs and where two or even more cultural entities feed of and influence each other. The analysis is based on twenty-five years of accumulated research into popular music in Iceland by the authors, where participant observations and interviews have been combined with observations on performances and products. Moreover, long-term historical developments are also scrutinized, centring on social and cultural progressions within the scope of Icelandic music scenes. Here we will focus on the re-interpretations and innovations of each new generation and their attempts to liberate themselves from modes of thought and cultural expressions of older generations. A central hypothesis is that every generation has stood on the shoulders of previous ones in repeated attempts to relate international influences to Icelandic cultural heritage and social situations. Through processes of hybridity, each generation has fashioned a response to different waves of globalization. After establishing a theoretical approach we will proceed with a short description of the Icelandic cultural environment since the Second World War, looking at some of the musical hybridization waves that have hit Icelandic shores. Special attention will be given to current trends, focusing on Retro Stefson, a band that has thrown itself into present global streams, treading a unique indie-rock path informed by an effortless hybridity of seemingly disparate intercultural elements.

Theoretical approach Identity is a key concept of this investigation, not all embracing, but an appropriate key to the theoretical space we here investigate. Our use of the concept acknowledges its roots in the ‘idem’ notion of the continuous self, pertinent to individuals and communities, as well as the critical decentring of the self, as subject to external conditions, to a largely unconscious inner life and to a language that forms identity (Hall 1991). Social psychologists like G. H. Mead (1934) pointed out that the self is formed in interaction with the other, the significant other and the generalized other, and during the last half-century this insight has been adapted to the situation of different ethnic groups who have confronted each other through immigration. Here



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the oppressed citizens of the colonies have moved to the lands of the former colonial powers where they are placed at the bottom of the social hierarchy, under the native underclass. This recurrent pattern has spurred theorists like Stuart Hall and Edward Said to reconsider concepts like identity. Hall (1991) argued that ‘English identity’ could not be understood without the relation to the colonies and, later, to immigrants. He pointed out that English identity work had excluded this ‘otherness’, just as the self of all individuals represses early traumas to the unconscious realm. In the understanding of a critical analyst, this repression shapes a strong and unreflective part of the identity. Edward Said (1978) analysed how this discontent was translated into something tolerable, through the construction of romantic myths of ‘the native’, ‘the Orient’ and other mythic versions of The Other. His theory of Orientalism provided a powerful vaccination against essentialist approaches in studies in culture and identity. In youth studies, the history of British youth cultures had been analyzed and idolized by Cohen (1972), Clarke et al. (1976) and Hebdige (1979). On his part, Hebdige (1979: 29) argued that British youth culture, from the 1950s onward, should be ‘reinterpreted as a succession of differential responses to the black immigrant presence in Britain’. The author showed in his analysis that the threat of these cultures was dealt with by the cultural appropriation of musical styles like soul, ska, reggae and various other style elements. This appropriation of the culture of ‘the other’, however, was a response to cultural changes, broader than immigration, not least the late modern dissolution of British working class culture and of a stable world of values, norms and cultural meanings. The Birmingham School1 theorized these vast cultural changes, primarily observing the dissolution of the life world of the working class and, thereby, its basis for resistance (Clarke et al. 1976). This was equally analyzed in greater detail in Germany, where a new epoch of modernization was identified, characterized, not only by dissolution of culture and the loss of a stable life world, but also as an epoch of new cultural chances, especially utilized by the young generation who responded to the changes with a series of cultural search processes (Ziehe and Stubenrauch 1981). Cultural theorist Paul Gilroy (1993a) turned his attention away from the ‘male, white working class response’ emphasized by the older generation of the Birmingham School. He looked at the immigrant cultures themselves and dug into the cultural expressions of youth of Caribbean and African background. He characterized the cross-references and common references of cultures from these different locations as a diaspora of the Black Atlantic cultures who have not only been preserving their African cultural roots, but have developed hybrid cultures composed of the old colonial power and the former colonies, cultural impulses that travel back and forth over the oceans. He emphasized that this Black Atlantic culture negated the Western rationalist tradition, where even the Marxists had

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celebrated the liberating potentials of labour, while the Black Atlantic culture negated it as toil and slavery and sought humanity in the sensuality of body, music, etc. Gilroy thus skipped the Gramscian emphasis on the political and cultural hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the resistance of the working class which had penetrated the central works of the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (Clarke et al. 1976). Instead, Gilroy (1993a) carried Stuart Hall’s transcendence of the distinction between producer and consumer of culture and Said’s vaccination against essentialisms into the realms of youth culture and popular music. Gilroy, in his study on the Black Atlantic (1993a), as well as in his later study Darker than Blue (2010), shows that the development of a ‘black identity’ has been strongly linked to the music culture of black slaves in the US and their descendants. He exemplifies this in a thorough review of the pioneering work of W. E. B. Du Bois (1903, 1928), who saw the meeting of African-rooted music of the slaves with the European tradition not as: […] the fusion of two purified essences but rather a meeting of two heterogeneous multiplicities that in yielding themselves up to each other create something durable and entirely appropriate to troubled anticolonial times. (Gilroy 1993a: 144) As seen here, navigating in the space opened by the concept of identity requires more concepts, such as style, cultural expressions and cultural search processes. Furthermore, it encourages researchers to look for young people’s search for authenticity in other cultures, without closing their eyes to the search for authenticity in their own cultural heritage. Some theorists have suggested that identity should no longer be conceived of as a holistic unity, but rather as fragmented. Studies of youth cultures of the last decades suggest instead that such fragments tend to melt into each other and create the potential for unexpected mixtures and shortcuts. The concept of hybridity, therefore, is to be favoured over the concept of fragmentation. As Gilroy (1993b) brings forth, hybridity is not a cocktail of two essential ingredients, but the creative meeting of two (or more) cultures that already consist of hybrid elements.

Iceland: A special case of the youth cultural turn from the Cold War and Imperialism After the Second World War, Icelanders voted to terminate their union with Denmark, abolishing the monarchy and establishing an independent republic state.2 At the same time, Iceland went on to prosper economically,



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possessing good access to US and European markets, this while aided by the presence of NATO and American Forces on the island. Although the political majority supported the presence of the NATO alliance and US troops on the island, a substantial minority campaigned against the American NATO base. Both camps, however, swore to the identity of this new republic based on the language and the literary heritage of the nation. During this time period, young Icelanders started to consume American popular culture via movies and music, developing a social distance from older generations (Guðmundsson 2003). As in other Western countries, young people were increasingly growing up with the feeling that their parents were living a ‘false’ and ‘phony’ life as represented by the literary hero of the 1950s Holden Caulfield, the fictional teenage protagonist and narrator of J. D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Young people were losing their faith in the culture of the older generation which, in many ways, led to a search for authenticity. As elsewhere, Icelandic youth embraced rock music in the late 1950s. The access to this music was limited by import restriction and conservative cultural policy. Knowledge of youth culture, hailing primarily from the US, was largely filtered through the American NATO base in Keflavik and by the travel of young people to other countries. The young generation was primarily practicing imitation through haircuts, clothing and gestures, imitating what their parents feared: American youth. At that time in the US, young, white Americans were embracing ‘the other’, via the incarnation of black youth, by copying their dance styles and modelling their own voices after black rhythm and blues singers, as well as exploring forbidden sensual and sexual body language through imitation. Iceland had no history of third world colonialism and pretty much no historical past affiliated to black people.3 The ‘excluded other’ was the ‘carefree’ or even ‘immoral’ white youth of US mass culture – Marlon Brando, James Dean, Elvis Presley among others. Icelandic youth copied these icons and only gradually did they discover that some of their idols were black. Such was the case in early 1957 when the movie ‘Rock Rock Rock!’ (1956) featuring Chuck Berry was shown in Icelandic cinemas. As Icelandic youth learned more about US youth culture, a fascination with black idols became a feature of core rock ‘n’ rollers, who believed that Iceland’s first rock ‘n’ roll singer had a black father, this owing to his name – that of Siggi Johnnie – his ability to sing like Louis Armstrong and Little Richard, and his facial features that could be interpreted as Negroid. The fact of the matter, however, is that Siggi Johnnie’s foreign roots and his name Johnnie came from his grandparents in Jutland, Denmark (Guðmundsson 1993, 1999). Unlike in the UK, where youth were responding to the physical presence of immigrants in their cultural expressions (Hebdige 1979), in Iceland that was certainly not the case. Icelandic youth were responding to the

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cultural presence of an American hybrid youth culture by constructing new significant others, taking from the troubled Holden Caulfield/James Dean personas and the physicality and expressiveness of Chuck Berry and Little Richard. Amateur bands exemplified these cultural figures on stage and young people in youth spaces, such as dance halls and soda bars, did likewise. Although the blackness of the ‘authentic other’ was toned down in the periods of soft pop rock and Merseybeat of the early 1960s, new elements of youth authenticity were introduced by the popularity of The Beatles. Imitation was not enough anymore; authentic artistic expression was demanded, opening up to influences from blues and jazz, not only to the musical expressions of these genres, but also the implied ideology of authenticity, combining the classical aesthetic notion of the authentic artist with an essentialist conception of cultural roots (Grossberg 1992; Fornäs 1995). The question of whether the dance hall influences of the music of The Beatles and The Kinks were either authentic or commercial (Frith and Horne 1987), however, brought a new topic of debate to the table. The locus of authenticity thus changed with the creation of original compositions becoming the aim of performers. The artists, nontheless, held different opinions on the language to be used in Icelandic rock. One of two main positions was that artists could claim authentic roots only through lyrics that were anchored in the Icelandic language and its poetic traditions, while the opposite position stuck to the notion that authentic popular music was foreign, preferably American and preferably black, and sung in English. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the latter position had more success among Icelandic youth and only a handful of songs in Icelandic were seen as authentic (e.g. Dátar: ‘Gvendur á eyrinni’; Flowers: ‘Slappaðu af’). Repeated attempts at the Icelandic language finally resulted in success around 1975 when four major artists (Megas, Magnús Eiríksson, Þorsteinn Eggertsson and Stuðmenn) showed four different ways of using the Icelandic language – they all married a youthful-bohemian language with the rock hybrids of bodily-sensual, sorrowful and cheerful elements. Thus, since 1975, the statement ‘we cannot sing rock in Icelandic’ has been invalid, for various artists have tried and succeeded to marry the Icelandic language with more experimental music.4 This short account indicates how Icelandic rock artists in the first decades of rock music presence were concocting their own forms of music hybridities. The rock artists had to do without the presence of black immigrants, instead absorbing hybrid sounds already made in other countries and infusing them with elements of their own cultural heritage. In their Icelandic lyrics they mixed youth slang with older literary expressions in a way that corresponded to the imported musical strands and rejuvenated the language.



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Going global: Icelandic music joins the international scene Around 1980, a new generation declared, with the style and energy of punk, that the rock of the dinosaurs was dead. What they would not say aloud, however, was that they had built on earlier decades’ localization of rock. An innovative use of Icelandic was part of the fun, as the punks moved away from poetic gibberish to the language of the streets. When critics interpreted the lyrics of Purrkur Pillnikk’s song ‘Útilokaður’ (Excluded), claiming that it was about social exclusion and alienation, lyricist and singer Einar Örn (later of The Sugarcubes) jokingly responded: ‘No, it is about an incident when I had lost the key to my apartment’. Punk faded out but it had fostered several artists who were ready to pair the spirit of punk with new impulses. In 1986, some of the more prominent artists left the gloomy landscape of post-punk to mix guitar-rock, experimentation and playful irony together, forming The Sugarcubes. They had no fans outside the hardcore Icelandic underground and sold only 200 copies of their first single ‘Ammæli’. However, when they re-released it in the UK, in October 1987, with English lyrics and with the title ‘Birthday’, The Sugarcubes adorned the front pages of Melody Maker and NME in the same week, seeing the track making a huge impact in British indie circles. Renowned British radio presenter John Peel, an unparalleled music tastemaker for decades, put ‘Birthday’ at the top of his influential Festive Fifties list. The Sugarcubes adapted to international standards by shifting the language from Icelandic to English, but in concerts they often sang in Icelandic (‘A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ammmmææli’ sounded better in Björk’s voice than ‘ah-uh-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah – biiiirthday’). The Sugarcubes issued their second LP in both Icelandic and English (Illur Arfur/Here Today, Tomorrow Next Week!) but, during the next few years, Björk would train herself to sing English, acquired the help of friends (not least the poet and writer Sjón) to write lyrics in English that would be fitting for her voice and that expressed feelings she wanted to express. Earlier artists who tried to reach an English-speaking audience seemed to have ‘lost their voice’ when they switched from Icelandic to English. Björk, on the other hand, joined the company of Marlene Dietrich and other stars who ‘found their voice in a foreign language’ (Guðmundsson 1999). In the late 1990s, the post-rock band Sigur Rós found their own solution to the language problem. They invented their own language, Hopelandic (named after the band’s first album, Von, meaning hope), described by the band as: ‘a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument’.5 The ‘language’, a big part of the band’s overall aesthetics, has even been tackled by academics (see Mitchell 2009). Sigur Rós have sung in Icelandic, Hopelandic and English throughout their career, but their

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most recent albums, Valtari (2012) and Kveikur (2013), are exclusively in Icelandic and Hopelandic, a sign of the band’s strong international stature. Both albums were well received and according to reviews and fan talk on Internet sites, the perceived Icelandic exoticism of the band is considered by many to be an asset rather than a hindrance. Björk and Sigur Rós spearheaded the growing export of Icelandic indie rock that has involved several music acts in the twenty-first century. An explosion of sorts took place at the start of the millennium following Sigur Rós’s international success, which was ignited by the band’s legendary performance at The Reykjavik Free Church at The Iceland Airwaves Festival in the autumn of 2000. The noughties ushered in all sorts of user-friendly technology in terms of music making, distribution and communication, allowing groups and artists to be better suited in the promotion of their music overseas. This evolution had a major impact on the progression and general visibility of ambitious Icelandic artists. This is evident in the case of the experimental, electronica band múm and the techno group GusGus, both of which operate almost exclusively abroad rather than in Iceland, but whose members still live in their native country. Some of the new indie bands and artists have followed the example of Björk, starting out by singing in Icelandic and gradually moving over to English. There is, however, a major exception to this rule, which is that of the English-singing indie-folk group Of Monsters and Men. Their debut album, My Head Is an Animal, entered the American Billboard 200 at number 6 in April 2012, having sold over a million copies in the US alone. No Icelandic artist, including Bjork and Sigur Rós, has ever seen such swift success. The band has been touring the world since their 2012 release and their music, a catchy folk-pop sound, has been featured in advertisements, television shows and in movies. Of Monsters and Men has sung in English right from the start and some fans have little knowledge about the band’s place of origin (Már 2012). The same applies to múm. The two bands have garnished enough international clout to the point that their origins are seldom called into question. An important element of these band’s successes, therefore, can be traced back to the punk period, when small audiences were very open towards many different approaches to punk and new wave, and, as a result, diversity became a virtue. Instead of following in the footsteps of Björk, Sigur Rós or other successful acts, new Icelandic bands are now trying out different genres and new paths.

A breeding ground for multicultural music Between 1998 and 2008 the proportion of immigrants in Iceland grew from two to eight per cent, with seventy per cent of immigrants coming from



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Eastern European countries or the Nordic countries, and the other thirty per cent from East Asia, Africa and America (Statistics Iceland 2009). Research has shown that most of the new adult immigrants live quite separate from the native population, with this being the case of children in elementary school as well (Magnúsdóttir 2010; Guðmundsson 2013). Youth and young adults, on the other hand, tend to socialize outside their own ethnic group, with other immigrants, with the native population and with the numerous ‘global tourists’ who visit Iceland, many of which end up spending their time and participating in the vibrant and cosmopolitan hipster scene of 101 Reykjavik in the old city-centre of the Icelandic capital (Guðmundsson 2013). Possessing numerous cafés and music venues, 101 Reykjavik is the central arena for coming to terms with the present wave of globalization in Iceland, where, again, music is at the very centre. Here, music diversity sees a breeding ground – there is a lot of experimentation, with individuals coming from all over the world seeking inspiration. Unknown and wellknown artists from various countries have visited Iceland, some have come to make music with native musicians; some even settled in Iceland.6 Beyond the visiting population, however, the offspring of Icelandic immigrants have increasingly participated in the musical scene found at 101 Reykjavik. These artists play all kinds of music, and their cultural roots are, more often than not, at the epicentre of their music styles. Many make 101 Reykjavik their musical laboratory, mixing styles and genres and refusing to fall into categories defined by others. This exact sentiment was expressed by the most prominent Icelandic immigrant artist today, Unnsteinn Manuel Stefánsson of the band Retro Stefson who, upon reflecting on the challenges his band faces – as a band that unites varies cultural backgrounds – made it known that what is most important is that the band escape being pigeonholed as what he terms ‘pets of multiculturalism’.7

Retro Stefson: History, musical context and the embracing of Angolan/Portuguese roots Childhood friends formed Retro Stefson in 2006 in Reykjavik. The band comprised six members at the beginning, all born around 1990, among them the brothers Unnsteinn Manuel Stefánsson8 (lead vocal and guitar, and bonafide leader of the group) and Logi Pedro Stefánsson (bass). The brothers spent the first few years of their lives in Portugal, living with their Icelandic father and Angolan mother, the latter of which moved to Portugal at the age of ten to serve as a nanny with a ‘retornado’ family.9 The family moved to Iceland when the brothers were three and five years of age. The band’s birthplace, Austurbæjarskóli (Eastside Primary School), is situated in the old town of Reykjavik and links to the fertile 101

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Reykjavik area. The line-up of Retro Stefson has been remarkably stable, today consisting of the seven childhood friends and an eighth member, the band’s producer/keyboardist, who became a member in 2012 (Þrastardóttir 2012).10 The band quickly earned a reputation as a prodigious live act, playing sprightly and joyous indie rock with a stage presence to match. In the summer of 2008, Retro Stefson recorded its first album, Montaña, containing an eclectic mix of musical styles: a colourful platter laid with indie pop/rock and heaped with bossa nova, disco, jazz and whatever else a creative teenager, who still doesn’t know or recognize the aesthetic rules of pop music making, sees fit to play around with. Retro Stefson’s music tapped into a certain evolvement in Icelandic indie rock that began to take place around 2005. In a way their sound derived from well known Icelandic indie/underground/avant-garde bands such as Sigur Rós and múm, as well as the lesser known Slowblow, a local band that, in the mid-1990s, had laid out the template for the kind of music Retro Stefson would aspire to emulate. While certain attitudes from these influential bands were inherited, the texture of the music that Retro Stefson began producing was quite different. Notably absent, for example, was the often studied seriousness and reserved demeanour of the aforementioned bands. While those musical acts were introverted, Retro Stefson and other artists who they often shared stages with (e.g. FM Belfast, Sprengjuhöllin and Jeff Who?) were extroverted. Sigur Rós, for example, had considerable qualms, especially at the beginning, with the commercialism surrounding the pop and rock industry, but this aspect is of relatively little concern to Retro’s generation (the band’s name is often abbreviated as such). Having said that, in embracing these factors, Retro never downgraded their act or sold themselves short. Instead, it was a part of the package. The order of the day was campy fun and catchy tunes grounded in the indie-rocker’s outlook. The trademark of Retro Stefson was dance-friendly, jovial indie music and the brother’s roots were an intrinsic part of the package, addressed as such on their debut album Montaña. The album’s title is one of its markers, but the same goes for song titles like ‘Salvatore’, ‘Papa Paulo III’ and ‘Senseni’. On the issue of ethnic roots and the band’s music, Unnsteinn stated: To be honest, there was never a set plan to work consciously with these roots, but the music in our home was always very mixed, more than in the typical Icelandic household. It was more Portuguese in that way, and we listened to Brazilian music, music from Cape Verde and Portuguese music along with Icelandic music. On Montaña, we worked on bossa nova beats and textures and were influenced by Manu Chao for instance. But we were just trying out a lot of things when we were young. We formed reggae bands, blues bands, hip-hop bands. It was not



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just me and Logi. But the two of us, we knew these Portuguese/African rhythms before we started to learn instruments because of the music in our household. When I started to learn the guitar, the teacher said: ‘You play with an African style’ because I always used my thumb. The band went further down this road on its well-received sophomore album, Kimbabwe (2010), the title referencing a make-believe country dreamed up by the younger brother, Logi. It is a more confident and refined album than its predecessor, but just as varied, displaying a courageous hybrid of musical styles – sometimes within the same song. Earlier that same year the group opened up for the Malian duo Amadou and Mariam at the Reykjavik Arts Festival (Fréttablaðið 2010). Undoubtedly, it is tempting to assume that the organizers felt that Retro Stefson were the ‘right’ or ‘authentic’ choice to be the opening act because of the brothers’ origins, emphasizing the notion of the ‘authentic other’.11 On Kimbabwe, the brothers acknowledge their roots more directly. The album cover is like a thinly disguised homage to Paul Gilroy’s theory on the Black Atlantic. A picture of the band members adorns the cover, where they are clad like castaways on the African Atlantic shores, wearing striped retro swimsuits while standing on colourful rafts, drifting on an artificial sea made of blue coloured cardboard. The surrealistic scene is capped with Unnsteinn towering over the rest; with arms wide open like a godly king. Ethnic roots are addressed more soberly in the album’s music itself, but with the same directness found in the group’s first album. Nowhere is this as clear as in ‘Mama Angola’ and ‘Kimba’, songs that are imbued with African rhythms. The songs recall the experimentations with African sounds of such New York bands as the Talking Heads and Vampire Weekend, a connection that makes for an interesting derivative multicultural mix (i.e. young Icelandic musicians of African descent, working with African influences that are possibly gained in part from white New Yorkers). The subject matter of songs equally embodied Africanness. An example is the Portuguese football legend Eusébio who is paid homage to in a song bearing his name.12 Unnsteinn described how the band worked on the album: We worked very consciously with our roots on Kimbabwe, unlike Montaña. My mother and father helped us to connect emotionally with Angola and that came out on the album. We were listening to Afrobeat a lot and were striving for a harder edged sound. I was taken by the politics and identity struggles that Fela Kuti and other fellow Africans were steeped into. I was also very keen on African bands that sounded very African, the music recorded in cheap mobile studios and sounding very gritty and raw. The initial idea was to make a very raw album in that vein, but then I just wasn’t happy with the results so we took

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another route altogether. The African elements are there, but not as prominent as we intended them to be. With full wind in their sails, the band began exploring new shores and, in April 2011, they signed a contract with Vertigo-Berlin/Universal. The band set up base in Berlin to make touring abroad easier, initially living there for six months. According to Unnsteinn, the time away from Iceland was peaceful and the period was put to good use as the songs for the third album were written in the German city (Westphal 2013). That third album, simply called Retro Stefson, was released in the autumn of 2012 in Iceland and in March 2013 in the UK. The band’s third album, however, moves away from the jaunty sound of the first two. The change was somewhat significant with dance/house music being was the point of departure, but the organic feel of the first two albums were nonetheless there, with the album striking a perfect balance between machine and men (Unnsteinn and Logi DJ regularly in Iceland, playing electronic dance music almost exclusively). The jumps and jitters of youth was now surpassed by a more streamlined and sophisticated performance, the sound of a band maturing. Obvious indications to the brother’s roots were also more or less abandoned on this third album. African beats were instead subtly woven into the album’s electronic tapestry, which also contains a 1980s throwback feel and paid homage to computer games from that era. There have been other Icelandic acts in recent years that have basked in musical and ethnical hybridity but none of them have had such an impact. The clearest distinction between these acts and Retro is that Retro has attained mainstream popularity of sorts; having become a successful live band that gets played on national radio. Other acts, on the other hand, have mostly stayed on the musical margins. Still, a good example of another hybrid group is the multicultural hip-hop troupe Subterranean, one of the first ever Icelandic hip-hop groups. Members of Subterranean hail from Sweden, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Iceland. This multicultural make-up, however, does not inform the troupe’s music in any significant way, opting instead to focus almost solely on creating American-sounding hip-hop. Another artist, Lay Low, was born in London to a Sri Lankan father and Icelandic mother but has never had any urge to use that ancestry creatively. Her ties to that region are also wholly different than in the case of the Retro Stefson brothers, as she moved to Iceland when she was three-years-old. Lay Low’s London-based father moved as a toddler to Britain as well, and is more British than Sri-Lankan (‘Engin skandalastelpa’, Blaðið, 2007). Some other musicians are also more direct in their display of hybrid cultural roots. The enfant terrible of Icelandic outsider music, the ‘Indian Princess’ Leoncie uses Indian imagery in her music very deliberately. Yakutian singer Kjuregej, who has lived in Iceland since the early 70s,



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released an album in 2012 where she sings Yakutian, Russian and Icelandic songs. The album is like a textbook example of Gilroy’s hybridity theories, a creative meeting of a few disparate elements where it is unclear where one begins and the other ends. Kjuregej sings Icelandic folk songs with a distinctive accent, and the Yakutian and Russian material is accompanied by Icelandic folk-players, making for a bundled-up delivery where Kjuregej, subconsciously or not, strives to be all of these things at once. Gilroy’s theme of double (triple?) consciousness applies well here, where the ‘relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency [is] absolutely transformed’ and the structure of the nation state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity are transcended (Gilroy 1993a: 19). Unnsteinn has a reputation for being vocal about cultural and political issues and especially about those that concern race. He expressed his concern with ‘hipster racism’, a term coined in 2007 by Carmen Van Kerckhove, defined as ‘ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another person’s race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning “ironic” nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy’ (Lim 2012). Unnsteinn states: Everyone is so liberal and PC nowadays that exaggerated remarks about one’s race are pure irony but, nonetheless, the minority is still being put in its place. There’s no one trying to hurt or suppress, this is just deeply ingrained in the system. In every city we go to people say to us: ‘You don’t look very Icelandic at all’. And it just gets tiresome to squeeze out a fake laugh so often because, at the same time, you don’t want to offend anyone. Unnsteinn says that in many respects, the brothers were lucky in terms of upbringing and location, which somewhat shielded them and gave them liberty to be who they were: The 101 neighbourhood is fairly liberal, as was our school. We had a sheltered upbringing in that respect. When we go to the suburbs, we sometimes meet kids that look up to us, the brothers. And I remember seeing Úlfur Chaka [a half Icelandic, half Afro-American indie rock musician] around as a kid, so I knew that this ‘could be done’. As is clear from Unnsteinn’s view on ‘hipster racism’, he is aware of and informed about his band’s status as a multicultural entity. The band is contributing towards a multicultural Iceland and transmitting it everywhere it goes in a committed and honest way. Iceland is a small nation and relatively homogenous, and Retro Stefson is, in many ways, an isolated case. Although they thrive in an open and vibrant downtown scene, no Icelandic band is addressing immigrant roots in the way Retro have done

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it. All of the other examples mentioned are secluded cases as well, from different generations and times and with different musical emphasis. An exploration of why some of them adhere to their ethno-cultural roots and some do not is a question worthy of further scrutiny. The disparity of these groups and artists, and, in most cases, lack of a conscious use of their roots in their music, shows that the case of Retro Stefson is quite unique. It should be noted that Retro’s work with their roots, however, has always been subtle. It has never come off as some kind of calculated play with cultural politics, and the Angolan/Portuguese roots in the music are rarely discussed in interviews, although the brothers do discuss their upbringing and cultural heritage freely in non-musical terms. When asked what his main musical drive is, Unnsteinn had this to say: I have always been very interested in mixing up styles as a thing in itself. That’s why I, for instance, put the metal guitar into the opening song of Kimbabwe, to see how far one can go in these matters and still make it sound natural. Sometimes I’m saddened by the fact that people from different music worlds don’t try to assimilate more, learn from each other and use different elements to make a stronger whole.13

Concluding discussion The story told here about important developments in Icelandic popular music can be summed up in terms of three waves of globalization that have taken place since the Second World War. In times of restriction of imports and mobility, an international youth culture formed the first wave and, at its core, was the cultural breakdown of race segregation in the US and the migration from former European colonies. Icelandic youth were at the receiving end of such youth movements, creating a new, active hybrid culture within local contexts. The second wave followed the end of the Cold War and the massification of globalized trade, media and mobility. Here Icelandic popular music initiated activity at the producing end. We are now in the middle of a third wave where migration is penetrating social and cultural experiences, taking place even in the most distant northern Icelandic island. Different parts of the world meet and mix in physical presence more than people would have imagined possible a few decades ago. The cultural production of Retro Stefson is an apt example of the intensified hybridization of this third wave. The younger generation went on identity searches, which often took place in an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983) composed of globalized youth who shared a common language in popular music. Waves of such hybridization eventually produced ‘Icelandic rock’ that became just as



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natural a part of the national culture as the cherished literary heritage. The punk wave questioned ‘Icelandic rock’ as well as other aspects of heritage, but learned from the inroads of punk rock was the fact that there is no need to duplicate. Resultingly, several bands set out to find their own personal brand of punk, evolving to other styles and genres that would place Iceland on the popular music world map. For the first time since the Vikings of the ninth and tenth centuries, Iceland has had substantial immigration since the 1990s, with the proportion of immigrants rising to nine per cent of the population in the early 2000s. Most of these immigrants are still a silent workforce in the fishing industry, construction, health care and services, but the centre of Reykjavik is increasingly populated by migrants and travelling musicians. Here, at 101 Reykjavik, different tribes have made Reykjavik one of the hubs of the international hipster culture where musical creativity is of utmost importance. Twenty years ago two brothers came from Portugal, with their Angolan mother and Icelandic father, and stumbled into this concoction. Here, music took its position on equal ground with other cultural artifacts, and became a cornerstone of communication with those they grew up with – their eventual band mates. As they learned the latest international music trends and ensconced themselves into both contemporary and older Icelandic music, at the same time, they also brought forward the musical heritage they had taken from the Lusophone world14 inherited from their mother’s ethnic background. As indicated above, there have been other artists in Iceland working with musical hybridizations, drawn partly from their roots originating from different parts of the world. As detailed in this chapter, however, Retro Stefson’s musical work surpasses most. The band’s excursions into the rhythms of the African diaspora and accompanying symbolism have come to give the band’s sound a deep ethnic resonance. Still, the band’s authenticity does not lie in their African roots, but rather in their ability to develop a hybridity that combines their personal histories and their own artistic ambitions. As Gilroy pointed out, hybridity is not simply a question of mixing ingredients from different cultures into a common melting pot. It is a question of elaborating constitutive and valuable experiences, taking silenced and suppressed experiences and placing them out in the open, making them a part of a reflexive endeavour. At the beginning of the post-war journey of Icelandic youth cultures, young individuals identified their hidden and suppressed longings with a distant authentic other – the American, and later British, fun-seeking youth (who were identified with different constructions of ‘the other’). In our late modern globalized world, encounters in the flesh or in virtual space have moved such distant identity figures closer to youthful search processes, and Retro Stefson have, with their reflexive hybridization, suggested a new step for the bubbling music scene of Iceland.

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Lastly, reflecting on Michael Azerrad’s remarks at the beginning of this chapter, the case of Retro Stefson debunks the suggestion made in this quote. By infusing their music with the sounds found in Africa and in the African diaspora, these Icelanders are indeed being themselves and succeeding at it. Instead of being miserable and laughable, Retro Stefson is laughing for all the right reasons and doing what they can to leave nobody miserable.

Notes  1 The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham 1964–2002 is often referred to as the Birmingham School. Stuart Hall was director in 1968–79. It fostered scholars like Paul Willis, Dick Hebdige, Angela MacRobbie and Paul Gilroy. Its approach was radical, with room for nuances and differences, and it made a lasting impact on youth studies and cultural studies of media, music and everyday life. For many, the most important influence of CCCS has been its ‘emphasis upon the relationship between social structure and culture in youth cultural formation and, particularly, the ways in which individual biographies intertwine with, and between, the two’ (Shildrick and MacDonald 2006).  2 On 31 December 1943, the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union, an act that recognized Iceland as a fully sovereign state – freely associated to Denmark in a personal union with the Danish, expired after twenty-five years of existence. On 17 June of the following year, Iceland became a republic.  3 The only exception is that of the son of a black slave from the Caribbean who came to Iceland at the beginning of the nineteenth century, married and had children (Pálsson 2014).  4 The same has happened to Icelandic hip-hop in the last fifteen years. Up until the year 2000, rap artists rapped mainly in English, this until the trailblazing hip-hop group XXX Rottweilerhundar changed the popularity of language choice among artists from English to Icelandic with their eponymous debut album. Rappers who use English have been frowned upon since this shift took place.  5 Quote taken from Sigur Rós’s official webpage, http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/ band/faq.php  6 The most recent and famous example is John Grant who moved permanently to Iceland in 2012.  7 All citations provided by Unnsteinn Manuel Stefánsson were taken from two interviews carried out by the authors, one on 25 August 2013 and a second on 9 March 2014. The interviews were carried out in Icelandic. All quotes are translated from Icelandic to English by the authors.  8 From hereon referred to as ‘Unnsteinn’. In Iceland, people’s first names are used predominantly, regardless of social rank.



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 9 Retornado is the Portuguese term used to define Portuguese individuals who lived in the former Portuguese colonies and returned to Portugal after decolonization. 10 This stability recalls some of rock’s greatest bands like U2, R.E.M., among others, where lengthy, successful careers were forged with the aid of a deep friendships established long before the bands took flight. Unnsteinn attributes the good working relationships in Retro Stefson to the fact that the members met in kindergarten and also to the positive and engaging atmosphere at Austurbæjarskóli, and above all, its musical teachings (Thoroddsen 2008). 11 More likely than not, the band was simply booked because it was a) popular and b) a lively stage act. Still the musical similarities factor can’t be ignored. 12 Eusébio was born in Mozambique in 1942 and brought to Portugal to play professional football in 1960, at a time when Mozambique was a Portuguese colony. 13 During the editing stage of this chapter, a new album entitled Scandinavian Pain, was announced by Retro Stefson, set to be released in 2016. 14 Lusophone world refers to the countries and diasporic communites where Portuguese is spoken.

References Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Azerrad, M. (2013), ‘Northern Music, Northern Lights’, The Reykjavik Grapevine – Iceland Airwaves Journal, 1 November. Available online: http://www. airwaves.grapevine.is/grapevine-airwaves-2013/northern-music-northern-lights (accessed 20 February 2014). Clarke, J., S. Hall, T. Jefferson and B. Roberts(1976), ‘Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A Theoretical Overview’, in S. Hall and T. Jefferson (eds), Resistance through Rituals. Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain, London: Hutchinson. Cohen, P. (1972), ‘Subcultural Conflict and Working Class Community’, in Working Papers in Cultural Studies (issue 2), Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: University of Birmingham. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903), The Souls of Black Folk, Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1928), Dark Princess, New York: Harcourt Brace and Co. ‘Eighteen seconds before sunrise’ (an official Sigur Rós page, www.sigur-ros. co.uk). ‘Frequently asked questions’ in the ‘About’ section. Available online: http//www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/faq.php (accessed 15 February 2014). ‘Engin skandalastelpa’ [‘Not a scandalous girl’] (2007), Blaðið, 3 February: 34. Fornäs, J. (1995), Cultural Theory and Late Modernity, London: Sage. Frith, S. and H. Horne, (1987), Art into Pop, London: Routledge. Gilroy, P. (1993a), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso.

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Gilroy, P. (1993b), ‘Between Afro-centrism and Eurocentrism: Youth Culture and the Problem of Hybridity’. Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 7 (2): 2–12. Gilroy, P. (2010), Darker than Blue. On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grossberg, L. (1992), We Gotta get out of this Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture, New York: Routledge. Guðmundsson, G. (1993), ‘Icelandic Rock Music as a Synthesis of International Trends and National Cultural Inheritance’. Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 1 (2): 48–63. Guðmundsson, G. (1999), ‘To find your Voice in a Foreign Language – Authenticity and Reflexivity in the Anglocentric World of Rock’. Young, Nordic Journal of Youth Research 7 (2): 43–61. Guðmundsson, G. (2003), ‘Cultural Policy in Iceland’, in P. Duelund (ed.), The Nordic Cultural Model, Aarhus: Klim. Guðmundsson, G. (2013), ’Innflytjendur í íslenskum framhaldsskólum’ [Immigrants in upper secondary education in Iceland]. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun: Sérrit 2013 – Rannsóknir og skólastarf. Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands. Available online: http://netla.hi.is/ serrit/2013/rannsoknir_og_skolastarf/003.pdf. (accessed 15 April 2015). Hall, S. (1991), ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. D. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education. Hebdige, D. (1979), Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen. ‘Klárar stúdentinn á miðjum Evróputúr FM Belfast’ [‘Finishes college in the middle of FM Belfast’s European tour’] (2010), Fréttablaðið, 29 April: 70. Lim, T. (2012), ‘A Historical Guide to Hipster Racism’, in Racialicious – The Intersection of Race and Pop Culture, 2 May (blog). Available online: http:// www.racialicious.com/2012/05/02/a-historical-guide-to-hipster-racism/ (accessed 15 February 2014). Magnúsdóttir, N. M. (2010), Allir vilja eignast íslenskar vinir’. Hverjar eru helstu hindranir á vegi erlendra grunn- og framhaldsskólanemenda í íslensku skólakerfi? [‘Everybody wants to have Icelandic friends’. Which are the main obstacles on the educational road of immigrant pupils in primary and secondary education?]. Available online: http://skemman.is/stream/ get/1946/4576/12730/1/N%C3%ADna_V_master_fixed.pdf (accessed 15 April 2015). Már, H. (2012), ‘Ótrúlegur árangur Of Monsters and Men’ [‘Of Monsters and Men’s Unbelievable Success’], Morgunblaðið (online television edition), 5 June. Available online: http://www.mbl.is/frettir/sjonvarp/83214/ (accessed 18 February 2014). Mead, G.H. (1934), Mind, Self and Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mitchell, T. (2009), ‘Sigur Rós’s Heima: An Icelandic Psychogeography’. Transforming Cultures eJournal 4 (1): 172–98. Pálsson, G. (2014), Hans Jónatan, maðurinn sem stal sjálfum sér [Hans Jónatan, the Man Who Stole Himself], Reykjavík: Forlagið. Said, E. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books. Salinger, J. D. (1951), The Catcher in the Rye, New York: Viking Penguin.



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Shildrick, T. A. and R. MacDonald (2006). ‘In Defence of Subculture: Young People, Leisure and Social Divisions’. Journal of Youth Studies 9 (2), 125–40. Statistical Iceland (2009), Immigrants and Persons with Foreign Background 1996–2008. Hagtíðindi Statistical Series 94:1. Reykjavík: Statistical Iceland. Stefánsson, U. M., Authors interviews, August 2013 and March 2014. Thoroddsen, A. E. (2008), ‘Litríkur hræringur’ [‘A colourful blend’], Morgunblaðið, 1 November: 46. Van Kerckhove, C. (2007), ‘The 10 Biggest Race and Pop Culture Trends of 2006: Part 1 of 3’, in Racialicious – the Intersection of Race and Pop Culture, 15 January (blog). Available online: http://www.racialicious.com/2007/01/15/ the-10-biggest-race-and-pop-culture-trends-of-2006-part-1-of-3/ (accessed 15 February 2014). Westphal, P. (2013). ‘Berlin was peace and quiet for us’, Nothing but Hope and Passion, 4 June (e-magazine). Available online: http://www.nbhap.com/music/ interviews/interview-retro-stefson/ (accessed 15 February 2014). Ziehe, T. and H. Stubenrauch (1981), Plädoyer für ungewöhnliches Lernen. Ideen zur Jugendsituation, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt. Þrastardóttir, M.L. (2012), ‘Retro Stefson og Hermigervill í eina sæng’ [‘Retro Stefson and Hermigervill join forces’], Fréttatíminn, 28–30 December: 54.

CHAPTER FOUR

Popular music and generational dynamics of immigrationin ‘postcolonial Finland’ – the case of Ourvision Singing Contest 2009 Antti-Ville Kärjä

Introduction The outcome of the third Ourvision Singing Contest (OSC) in 2009 was controversial. After being launched two years earlier by Caisa, the International Cultural Centre of the City of Helsinki as a singing competition originally for people of recent immigrant background, the controversy with the 2009 contest resulted from apparent tensions with respect to the generational dynamics of migration, as the winner was a vocal quartet representing the well established Roma minority in Finland. In the following OSCs that took place in 2011 and 2013, all Finns were permitted to take part in the competition. In 2015, the competition format was replaced by a series of club nights and workshops, culminating in a concert on 9 October 2015. Characterized as ‘a multicultural singing competition’, organised ‘especially for immigrants, people of immigrant origins and foreigners living in Finland’ (OSC 2011a, 2011b), OSC raises questions about the role of different musical practices in relation to generations of immigration in contemporary Finland. I here address these very questions by focusing on the 2009 Ourvision Singing Contest in particular. In more detail, I

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will concentrate on the relationship between generational differences and musical repertoires, asking how are generations of immigration unified by musical genres, and what are their implications in terms of national traditions and belonging? Of crucial importance here are the musical constructions of so-called hyphenated identities associated with migrants and their descendants. My examination rests primarily on ethnographic research material produced during the competition. I observed the different stages of the competition systematically from 30 January to 25 April 2009, having also conducted sixteen interviews with the ten finalists, four judges and the producer of the event (interviewed twice) between 20 March and 12 June 2009. Due to the controversies surrounding the competition, I treat the interviewees as anonymous.

Postcolonial sounds and national genres Since its inception, Ourvision has been situated within the dynamics of and debates on multiculturalism in twenty-first century Finland. At issue is multiculturalism in its ‘narrow’ form, whereby attention is paid primarily to immigration and the ‘ethno-religious mix’ it introduces, instead of addressing all forms of cultural difference (Modood 2007: 2–8). This implicates the further discussion on postcolonial theorization, bringing to the fore the ways in which the consequences of European colonialism have affected contemporary Finland and continue to do so. Following Simon Featherstone (2005: 7), there are three ‘core topics’ to be engaged with: ‘questions of nationhood, cultural identity and hybridity; the effects of and responses to diaspora; a questioning of inherited, colonial-influenced historical narratives and essentialist descriptions of race’. Furthermore, the ambiguity of nationhood is intimately connected to questions of hyphenated identities, as any combination of national epithets casts both under suspicion. For instance, in the 2009 OSC there were six contestants with dual national identifications, along with mixed groups, consisting of Columbian-Gambian-Finnish and Chilean-Columbian-Venezuelan-Finnish lineups. These different versions of Finnishness can be juxtaposed with music historiography or other authoritative sources where the essential qualities of national music are discerned. Regarding the diasporic experiences resulting from migration, it is not just verbal labelling that is of interest, but the sonorous, visual and corporeal presence – and sometimes absence – of the multicultural or postcolonial subject. This entails subscribing to a methodology that builds on the inextricability of different symbolic forms and their material conditions. Ethnomusicological models of ‘music-culture’ offer an influential point of departure in this respect, emphasizing the need to pay attention



Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration 75

to the ways in which sounds, concepts and practices are interrelated (Merriam 1964; Titon 2009). These approaches can be meaningfully complemented by theories on musical genres, whereby the importance of different sets of conventions is stressed. According to Simon Frith (1996: 94), for instance, genre as an analytical tool facilitates the scrutiny of intersections between musical sounds, forms of behaviour, media practices and value judgements. When it comes to defining ‘Finnish music’ substantially rather than geographically, music historiography constitutes a powerful practice of legitimation that operates in the sphere of concepts, value judgements and moral propositions, holding a fervent, authoritative power in the debates over what is ‘real’ or ‘good’ national music. With respect to the idea of Finnish popular music, however, it has been suggested that the uniquely national styles of the twentieth century ‘arose from the merging of the three “parent traditions” of art music, folk music and Afro-American music’ (Jalkanen 1996: 206). In this postulation, both art and folk music refer mainly to German-Russian influences, augmented by national romanticism in the late nineteenth century in particular. ‘Afro-American music’, in turn, as ‘the leading influence on popular music … throughout the 20th century’, acquired its fascination from its non-Europan approach with ‘polyrhythmics …, expressive use of the voice …, improvisation and an emotional intensity coupled with high volume’ (Jalkanen 1996: 209–10). Thus a pivotal analytical procedure is formed by juxtaposing and comparing this idea of parent traditions with the ways in which the OSC 2009 performances were classified, both in terms of geopolitical locality and musical genres.

The genre palette of OSC 2009 The Ourvision Singing Contest 2009 was conducted in three phases. The first round tryouts were organized between 30 January and 27 February. In the tryouts, contestants were divided into five groups on the basis of their geopolitical self-identification: ‘Afrovision’, ‘Asiavision’, ‘Americavision’, ‘Middle-eastvision’ and ‘Europevision’. In the tryouts, there were a total number of fifty-three acts of which twenty-five were awarded a place in the semifinals. For the Grande Finale on 25 April, two representatives from each geographical ‘vision’ were selected. In the tryouts, each contestant performed only one song, whereas in the semifinals and the Grande Finale they performed two songs each. To classify the tryout performances in terms of musical genres is to invite ambiguity into play, given that explicit generic labels were seldom used. Often, when performing cover versions, the name of the original artist was revealed which facilitates pigeon-holing to some degree. In these cases, I

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have used various non-academic online sources as a consensual reference point when determining the genre, though this has resulted in a considerable overlap, especially between the genres of ‘pop’, ‘soul’ and ‘R&B’. Furthermore, the categorization of some of the Asia- and Middle-eastvision performances, in particular, rests on my personal generic competence and ethnomusicological training. As a consequence, the ‘genre palette’ of OSC 2009 tryouts (Table 1) is primarily suggestive and subject to some degree of contestation. The palette includes all genre labels used in the competition and there are more genres represented than the number of individual performances. For example, Terence Nkoko’s rendition of Josh Groban’s hit You Raise Me Up in Afrovision is classified both as easy listening and pop, and Annabelle Natri’s cover of Celine Dion’s Because You Loved Me in Asiavision as pop, R&B and soul. In turn, the two Chinese ‘C-pop’ songs performed in Asiavision, Jing Li’s ‘Praise of Mother’s Love’ and Yu-Yang Bai’s ‘Sad Song’ (FN 2009: 5–6; actual song titles undisclosed), are listed both as ‘pop’ and ‘other’ (although musically there was hardly anything ‘other’ about them). Table 1: The ‘genre palette’ of the 2009 Ourvision Singing Contest tryouts  -vision

pop

soul

R&B

rap

Africa

6

5

3

Asia

9

1

1

America

1

1

Middle-East

4

1

Europe

5

2

3

Total

25

8

7

4

%

33

11

9

5

salsa

rock

easy*

other

 the ‘other’ genres/labels

1

2

1

1

(Afrobeat/‘mbira-pop’; folk rock)

1

2

5

(Bollywood pop-folk; Philippine; C-pop)

5

(son; calypso; reggae; nueva canción; samba)

5

(Persian; Egyptian; country pop; Kurdish; raï) (rhythm’n’blues; folk pop; Bulgarian folk)

3

1

3

4

3

5

4

20

4

7

5

26

* ‘easy listening’ and other forms of ‘middle-of-the-road’ entertainment music, including Finnish iskelmä (‘hit song’ or Schlager)

These caveats notwithstanding, the palette serves to point towards the general identity politics of music in the competition. It is particularly noteworthy that English-language pop as well as rap emerge as literally international genres, and Latin and Middle-Eastern styles as being fixed exclusively in their respective regions. It is instructive to note here as well that the Asiavision rap act was performed in Finnish, as were parts of the Americavision MCing, constituting the only ‘non-European’ Finnishlanguage performances in the whole competition. In the words of one of the judges:



Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration 77

It’s really noticable, the influence of American music; it’s that R&B wailing from Asia to Africa …  Rap and the like, they’re really spread all over. … But then of course there’s these isolated cases, there’s, for instance, Indian classical singing, so that’s quite clearly localizable then. (Translated from vernacular Finnish, as are all subsequent interview quotes, unless noted otherwise. Translations are mine.) The relative weight of the pop-soul-R&B compound went down from the original fifty-three per cent to one-quarter in the semifinals, and to one-sixth by the final. In contrast, the significance of the ‘other’ types of music increased from one-quarter to one-third in the semifinals, maintaining the same value in the final. The absolute number of various forms of ‘easy listening’ entertainment music remained virtually constant throughout the competition meaning that their percentual share eventually quadrupled. Regarding the overlapping pop, soul and R&B, it is furthermore conspicuous that the majority of performances where the two latter genre labels were operationalized, were heard and seen in the Afrovision tryout session. The links and associations between soul/R&B and black cultural identity were thus reinforced. It is also notable, in this respect, that in Europevision, contemporary R&B was competing with more ‘classic’ R&B in the form of Krissa Skodra’s Fever and Javier Perez’s Stand by Me. While these examples may be dismissed as isolated anomalies, they can also be taken as an indication of the generational dynamics involved. In other words, in the course of time, forms of ‘black music’ may become constituents of predominantly ‘white’ European identity. This, in fact, supports Jalkanen’s (1996) argument concerning the position of ‘Afro-American music’ as one parent tradition of Finnish popular music. The importance of blackness as a cultural identity formation for popular music in Finland, as well as Finnish popular music, is yet even more complicated. Alongside the ‘black roots’ of Finnish popular music in general, there has been momentous collaboration between influential Finnish popular musicians and their West-African counterparts since the 1970s (see Thiam 1999). All of these instances are implicated in the dynamics of appropriation and recognition, albeit differently in terms of mediation. This is to emphasize that, in Jalkanen’s (1996) formulation, one of the parent traditions is ‘Afro-American’ and not ‘African music’. The implication of this is that as Africa and America were treated in OSC 2009 as separate categories, equally their status in relation to the parent traditions of Finnish popular music becomes contested. This is the case especially when at issue are those African styles and practices that have not been traversed through the US entertainment industry. Furthermore, with pronounced significance in relation to generational dynamics, questions about ‘black music’ and black cultural identity in

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Finland are intricately interwoven with the presence of the Somali minority group in the country. The arrival of Somali refugees since the early 1990s constitutes a particularly significant phase of socio-cultural transformation, both in terms of visual ethnicity (blackness) and religious otherness (Islam). In the case of the OSC 2009, however, there were no representatives of Somalia. According to the producer of the event, there were some Somali contestants in the pre-elimination rounds, but ‘they were not convincing enough’. The question and status of Somali music in Finland provides grounds for re-examining the ways in which so-called black music is related to the national imaginary. Here, Paul Gilroy’s (1993) notion of ‘the Black Atlantic’ is a pivotal point of reference, as it centres on the historical processes through which African expressions, identity, and, indeed, subjects, have become ‘the internal other’ of what is thought of as Western civilization. To illustrate this historical condition, Gilroy coins the term ‘Black Atlantic’, which rests crucially on the Middle Passage and the triangular trade route between Western Africa, the Americas and Western Europe. With respect to the ‘general’ US-centred historiography of popular music, the Black Atlantic holds a significant interpretive potential, and when considered in relation to non-Anglophone contexts, Gilroy’s claim of the irrevocable connection between black identity and certain ‘roots’ (and routes) ideology is potent. Regarding twenty-first century Finland, and especially the precariousness of the Somali minority, one might question the applicability of ‘the Black Atlantic’. The fact remains that, for Somali immigrants, there never was a Middle Passage; rather, many of them entered Finland through the Soviet Union, possessing a skin colour that connected them with one of the alleged parent traditions of Finnish popular music. Thus, one might be inclined to develop a distinctive cultural policy that rests on the idea of the ‘Black Baltic Sea’, whereby the region’s ethnic dynamics are addressed. This does not entail dismissing the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and global racism, but instead considering its inheritances in diverse contemporary spatio-temporal cultural loci with their idiosyncratic racial and diasporic tensions, as well as unanticipated cultural affinities and allegiances. The ‘Black Baltic Sea’, therefore, would constitute an interdiasporic contact zone that urges paying attention to the multiplicity of black histories (see Lucious 2005: 122–5, 137–8; Smyth 2014: 390). The ways in which Somali cultural practices participate in the construction of the Black Baltic Sea remain obscure on the basis of OSC 2009, but there are more recent examples of the changes taking place. For example, rapper Kani Kullervo (Abdikani Hussein) has been noted as the first rap musician in Finland of Somali background and the only Finnish Muslim rapper to date (Kolu 2014).



Popular music and generational dynamics of immigration 79

R&B wailing meets multi-music-cultural arrangements With respect to generational dynamics, the genre cluster of contemporary pop, R&B and soul was particularly prevalent within the ranks of those performers who were introduced explicitly as representatives of two nationalities (see Table 2). There were six such contenders, five of whom were female. However, it was the sole male contestant in this group that diverged from the pop/R&B/soul supremacy, opting for a rap performance. This participant was also the only one who performed original material, whereas the others rendered cover versions of well-known artists’ songs. The rapper’s performance proved to be most successful inasmuch as this group is concerned. Noah Kin, the Nigerian-Finnish rapper in question, entered the final and, in the end, was awarded the prize for the best original song. Table 2: OSC 2009 contenders with explicit hyphenated national identities and their musical genres (and explicated covered artists) -Finnish

try-outs

semifinals

Emilia Heinonen

Sambian-

soul (Erykah Badu)

soul (Duffy, Marvin Gaye)

Miriam Mekhane

Algerian-

R&B/soul (Alicia Keys)

Noah Kin

Nigerian-

rap

Filipino-

pop (Celine Dion)

Laila El Mahgary

Egyptian-

pop (Robbie Williams)

‘oriental/western mix’ (Dalida)

Sara Ben Ammar

Tunisian-

pop (Celine Dion)

pop/R&B (Leona Lewis, Amel Bent)

final

Afrovision

rap

rap

Asiavision Annabelle Natri Middle-eastvision

Explicit dual identification by the contestants on the basis of nationalities was not the only marker that brought out the generational dynamics of migration. The use of language and, more specifically, fluency in Finnish was another indication of this. In addition to the above six, there was a further half-a-dozen performers suggesting the presence of ‘hyphenated Finnishness’, yet with some differences. For instance, Ella FagerlundEvangelista of Grupo Kaney and Jeison Ylinen of the rap trio Flowtastic responded to the host’s questions with perfect vernacular Finnish, as did the rapper MC Xstin. Furthermore, the duet Anna and Alexandra as well as Olga Obolonskaja of the group Orliantama, all representing Russia in the competition, spoke Finnish as natives do. And so did Anna Dantchev, who, in response to the host’s remark about her representing Bulgaria,

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said ‘I come from Ostrobothnia [in western Finland] but my father comes from Bulgaria’ (FN 2009: 26). Concerning the parlance of the rock band Fortunia’s vocalist-keyboardist Vasilina Egorova, however, there were some minor irregularities in her use of the Finnish language. Within this group of six contenders, songs oriented towards mainstream pop were less successful. Anna and Alexandra, with their rendition of Carole King’s folk/soft rock classic ‘You’ve Got a Friend’, did not manage to go through to the semifinals, nor did Orliantama with their version of Alla Pugacheva’s hit ‘Million Roses’ that contained Finnish-Russian verbal content. Also within this group, original material was favoured over covers. Grupo Kaney’s salsa, Flowtastic’s and MC Xstin’s rap and Fortunia’s ballad-inflicted rock (in Finnish) were all of the contenders’ own making and secured a place in the semifinals – Grupo Kaney and MC Xstin making it all the way to the Grande Finale. On the other hand, Dantchev, with her group Bottle Consort, expressed originality in a different guise by performing ‘a Bulgarian folk song in a multi-music-cultural arrangement’ (FN 2009: 27). Originality, whether in the form of new compositions or novel arrangements, is a central component of the discourse of authenticity that has dominated the field of popular music for decades (Shuker 2002: 20–1). In relation to the genre palette of OSC 2009, the distinction established in the late 1960s between ‘authentic’ rock and ‘commercial’ pop is a pivotal one, especially as it invests the latter with assumptions about diluted and conservative artistic value. Importantly, this distinction is also gendered, attributing rock with male qualities and pop with female traits, thus carrying the implication that female expression would somehow be less authentic by definition. For a female musician, therefore, to be authentic has often meant resorting to either a folk-inflicted singer–songwriter tradition or movements associated with feminism and lesbian activism (Whiteley 2000). The relatively poor success of the pop-oriented female contenders with dual national epithets in OSC 2009 attests to the prevalence of the discourse of male-centred authenticity. Of particular importance here is also the position of the generic labels pop, R&B and soul, and their connection to a competing discourse that builds on the notion of ‘pop diva’. Within this discourse, emphasis is placed on ‘a female character that empowers both the performer and the female listener’ through her artistic and economic independence (Zemke and Televave 2011: 21). Of the covered artists mentioned in Table 1, Celine Dion and Amel Bent represent the ‘Prima Divas’ of popular music, celebrated for their wide vocal ranges in particular. In turn, Alicia Keys, Leona Lewis and Eruka Badu personify the ‘Madonna’ strand, where the diva figure is invested with innovativeness. Lastly, Duffy’s profile as a singer/songwriter connects her with the ‘Lilith’ divas who epitomize ‘the empowered yet occasionally fragile modern woman’ – an idea that can also be associated with Dalida (see Lister 2001: 3–8).



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The presence of Badu, Keys and Lewis accrues additional significance when considered against the backdrop of the figure of the ‘queen’ that may be taken as a subcategory of the diva, particularly in the context of R&B, soul and hip-hop. The ‘queen’ is a model for ‘unconventional black women’ and ‘an affirmative representation that stands outside the mainstream and does not abide by the controls of hegemonic masculinity’ (Zemke and Televave 2011: 22). In the context of migration, it has been pointed out that the empowering potential of such a figure for young women, in particular, may be substantial, as it offers a platform for reconceptualizations over gender and ethnicity (Zemke and Televave 2011: 27–8). Of the female contenders with hyphenated identities in OSC 2009, only Sambian-Finnish Emilia Heinonen fits in with this framework unmitigatedly; yet the reliance of North-African-Finnish contestants on an R&B repertoire indicates that the racial politics and gender egalitarianism of the genre also attracts others beyond black ethnic minorities. Indeed, one should not underestimate the importance of ‘a perceived alignment with African-American stories of struggle, deviance and poverty’ that R&B, among other black genres, provides (see Zemke and Televave 2011: 22). In OSC 2009, the discourse of female empowerment was nevertheless subordinate to the discourse of authenticity and originality. To a significant extent, this may be taken as a direct result of the multiculturalist policy behind the competition. A clear indication of this is that in the rules of the competition it is maintained that while the singers may choose the language freely, the organizers ‘encourage singing in one’s home language’ (OSC 2009a). Furthermore, the judges interviewed all expressed their preference towards contestants’ ‘own’ music. The chair of the jury, for instance, stated the following in relation to Ebunoluwa Kivinen, a Nigerian-born finalist: I would’ve wanted [to award] the Nigerian, but then I didn’t dare [to push it] … But it got to me that there was no award for the Nigerian … There was a lot of praise [when] she was on her own; but when she started to sing some global hit, a Yankee pop tune, it wasn’t like it was hers … I hoped there would be these boldly … one’s own ethnic [songs]; that’s not worth losing at any cost. Also the other judges wondered whether Kivinen’s choices in terms of musical styles were, in the words of one of the judges, ‘the hottest of the hot at this moment’. Similar concerns were expressed about the selections of the other female finalist, Indian-born Anusha Iyer: When she sang it in Indian, it was much better, she sang India’s own … That’s her magic, to keep the Indian thing with her … It is better that there is Bollywood than a Hollywood; that’s keeping the magic there.

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In the semifinal, one of her songs was like, ‘why did you pick that one?’ … She should’ve stayed with the … wonderful [laughs] Indian. She was totally incredible. Incredible voice, with that traditional Indian music. She also sang some English-language pop, but I absolutely liked that traditional Indian and Bollywood stuff more. In the semifinals Iyer started by performing a ‘pop-folk’ Bollywood song, followed by a cover of Alanis Morissette’s Ironic. Incidentally, based on her vocals and attitude that ‘have given vivid expression to the passion and frustration of fin-de-siècle feminists everywhere’ (Lister 2001: 6), Morissette is yet another female artist associated with diva qualities. While none of the above commentary by the members of the OSC 2009 jury deals explicitly with the female contenders with hyphenated identities (cf. Table 2 above), the implications are clear: to rely on established hits of urban contemporary music was deemed less valuable than performances of original compositions or music conventionally associated with the regions represented by the performers. The odds against the young female contenders representing Asia the or Middle-East, however, were multiplied further, as alongside gender and the preferred genre, their regions did not fit in neatly with the canonized parent traditions of Finnish popular music.

Intersections of originality, ethnicity and language in rap Alongside the broad pop/soul/R&B formation, rap was the other musical genre that evidenced a dispersion through the different geographical regions in OSC 2009. This notwithstanding, in quantitative terms, the difference between these two categories was apparent, as the number of pop/ soul/R&B labellings is tenfold in comparison to rap classifications. This, of course, results from the combination of three labels, but even with respect to individual labels, pop performances were six times as many as rap performances, just as soul and R&B were performed both twice as often. Coming back to issues of originality, the contrasts between rap and the cluster of pop/soul/R&B were even more arresting. There were fourteen individual rap performances in the competition and all of them were original works. Conversely, out of the fifty-five pop/soul/R&B enactments there was only one piece with a similar status of novelty; this was brought forth by Mac (surname undisclosed) from Nigeria and it was characterized by him as a love song ‘just for the ladies’, written two weeks before and classifiable as African soul (or possibly the name of the song; FN 2009:



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1). Furthermore, in contrast to the lament over the female ‘R&B wailers’ not performing their ‘own’ music, the judges expressed no such sentiments towards the OSC 2009 rappers. Instead, in the case of MC Xstin who represented India, members of the jury emphasized the relevance of his social consciousness: Let’s say rap and that stuff; there’s great commentary that has come from there that really has value. Like on immigration, but with a positive stance. It was great how they performed that kind of stuff, and the lad from India too … This was all about these young people, about the lives of these young men in Finland with good, brilliant insights and everything else, meaning they’ve got themselves into this (Finnish) culture. … Someone here can be from India but still can sing and write texts about Finland and for Finns, but from a different angle. My jaw dropped when this guy of Indian background comes and goes on with a little bit of Helsinki slang and that kind of Finnish urban style. So you really see that … immigrants from that age group, they’ve integrated a lot, and urban music like this, like hip hop, I think it nicely unites all the young people now; Finns and the second generation [of people with immigrant background] … There’s not yet been that kind of rapper, with a foreign background, whereas in Sweden there’s a lot of them. Maybe there’d be a demand in that in the scene in Finland. In retrospect, it would be easy to support the jurors’ excitement and anticipation by noting that, roughly a year later, a new phase of ascendancy in Finnish rap was evident. As opposed to the alleged ‘comedy rap’ phase in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as to the ‘authentic’ second generation in the early noughties, the current third generation can be characterized as a phase of rap becoming mainstream, on one hand, and the expressive medium of various minorities, on the other. To equate rap with the voices of the underprivileged is by no means a new phenomenon. This equation can be taken as a fundamental ideological undercurrent of the genre; in the historiographical accounts of rap music and hip-hop culture it is stressed repeatedly how they ‘rose out of, and [were] directly determined by, the experience of African-American New Yorkers living amid [doubly oppressive] economic and political changes’ in the 1970s (Borthwick and Moy 2004: 163). This connects rap to questions about the weight of ethnicity and language, as, through the emphasis of African-American origins, both blackness and (vernacular) English language become highlighted as yardsticks for measuring the credibility of any rap performance. The obvious risk here is to treat rap and hip-hop fundamentally as essentialized, endemic forms of African-American cultural expression, which would then lead to considering any ‘other’ form of rap

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as a mere appropriation, and to downplaying the historical Latin American influences in the formative stages of the genre (Mitchell 2001a). The global diffusion of rap suggests incontestably that there are also other forces at play beyond the plain appropriation of, or even affinity to, AfricanAmerican identity. While it is equally undeniable that the reception of rap in its ‘new’ contexts has followed a pattern of imitation or adoption leading to inflection or adaptation, and eventually to hybridization and indigenization (Borthwick and Moy 2004; Mitchell 2001b), it has proven to be a highly accessible form of expression. This obviously involves an ideological component that builds on allegiances with the ‘original’ oppressive conditions in New York’s South Bronx, replete with unemployment, cutbacks in social welfare and structural racism. At OSC 2009, MC Xstin’s first number, entitled Ennakkoluuloja (‘Prejudices’), clearly signalled this in its verbal references to racism and the rise of anti-immigration populism in the party politics at that time. In more general terms, the ideological component of rap nevertheless expands beyond singular political commentary and encompasses various forms of resistance. Most often, these become associated with youth protest and the demands of ethnic minorities, but it is also imperative to ‘recogni[ze] hip-hop vernacular expression as an indigenous form of cultural expression’ to begin with, and particularly in the multiethnic migrant diasporic contexts (Mitchell 2001a: 8–10). Rap’s identity politics and the emphasis on its fundamental blackness accrue different, and to some extent greater manifested significance, in the case of Noah Kin, the Nigerian-Finnish rapper at OSC 2009. This is where the questions about racialization of genres become obfuscated with commercial interests and linguistic choices. For Kin, to rap in Finnish would not have been a problem, but he quite consciously had chosen to perform in English, not only because of reasons pertaining to his own musical tastes, but also his hopes of reaching a wider audience: [Antti-Ville Kärjä (AVK):] … English and Finnish, could you say that they’re both your native languages? [Noah Kin (NK):] Well yeah actually, because dad talks to me in English and then mom talks in Finnish … [AVK:] Do you rap entirely only in English? [NK:] … well I’ve done just one piece in Finnish and that was a request for a birthday … [AVK:] But is there any particular reason for choosing English? [NK:] Well it’s just that I’ve listened to English-language music more, and then I just haven’t practiced doing this in Finnish; it just didn’t work out very well afterwards. … [AVK:] Can you specify yet more carefully your musical plans? [NK:] Well for the most part I’ve thought about continuing in Finland for a while, but really my music would get a much better [audience] in



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England [or] a more English-speaking country … here there are many who ask many times what does this mean, in this song, and … Despite Kin’s personal choices and self-perceived competence, his activity as a rap artist is conditioned by genre conventions. Thus, a question emerges about the habituality of associating the very few prominent Finnish artists with African lineage with English-language hip-hop culture in particular, despite their fluency in Finnish. In 2011, a feature article on ‘rappers of immigrant background’ was released in a tabloid focusing on urban culture. Kin was one of the three MCs introduced, and the discussion whirled repeatedly around the choice of language. ‘The rap phrase “shiieet” emerges from Ekow’s mouth’, opens the article, ‘amidst a thick Tampere [regional] dialect’. Later in the article the decision to rap in English is connected to questions about reaching a broader international audience. At the same time, however, it is mentioned that two pale-skinned Finnish rappers performing in English were greeted with some suspicion within the scene back in the early part of the noughties (Jansson 2011). It is, therefore, apparent that the generic conventions of rap play a crucial part in conditioning the ways in which ethnicity and language become intertwined. In more or less the last five years, changes have taken place; alongside the aforementioned Somali-Finnish rapper Kani Kullervo (Abdikani Hussein) there are now also other ‘Afro-Finnish’ rappers who rhyme to their beats in fluent vernacular Finnish. Yet these artists are frequently asked about their choice of language, as if the colour of skin alone is the determining factor. It appears that, for white Finnish rappers, the Finnish language guarantees authenticity. Blacks, on the other hand, should stick to English in order to maintain ‘street cred’ – or commercial viability. To these fixations, Kani Kullervo’s response is: ‘Who’s going to listen to me in English? Finnish is my mother tongue that I speak every day and all the time. I can communicate much better in Finnish. … If I rapped in English, people would come and say to me why do you try to be so black?’ (cited in Kolu 2014: 13).

You cannot beat a hit song – on the marketplace The generational dynamics of immigration and the generic conventions of music were also at the core of the controversy over the final results of OSC 2009. Regarding the former, the eligibility of the Roma contenders was contested by some of the finalists. One of them was particularly irate about the outcome and pointed to what he considered as a contradiction between the OSC rules and the immigration-related background of the winners, the vocal group Suoralähetys:

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If we follow Ourvision’s rules, so the rules said you have to be foreig[n] or one of your parents have to be [of] foreig[n] background; that’s the rules. But this band call[ed] Suoralähetys, [they] are Finnish; okay we call it in Finnish terms, mustalaisia [‘gypsies’]; okay? … So, those mustalaisia have been living in this country five hundred years, maybe [more]. So for me they [were] born here, they grew up here, so they are Finnish. And I am sure about that everyone in this band Suoralähetys have parents who [are] Finnish citizen[s] … So it means that they don’t have [the] right to participate [in] Ourvision. (Interview in English.) Indeed, there was some ambiguity between the complete rules of the competition and their summary as published on the OSC website. In the former, there were no explicit requirements mentioned regarding participants’ background (OSC 2009a), whereas in the latter the very first item concerned this issue: ‘Ourvision is a singing contest for people who live in Finland but are originally from outside Finland, as well as for those persons whose other parent or both parents are originally from elsewhere than Finland’ (OSC 2009b; my translation from Finnish). Thus, the unhappiness of some was understandable and even justifiable. Also another finalist expressed her surprise about the rulings: Who is an immigrant and so on … I myself was surprised, I didn’t know that this new clause had come, that minority groups may participate too … and I still don’t know if minority group then also means that the deaf can take part in Ourvision, [or] how extensive is the possibility of minority groups to participate in the competition … I haven’t seen the whole clause myself anywhere or anything, but there are all sorts of terms, and then, how they’re defined, is pretty diverse and broad. The generational dynamics of immigration were also recognized by the members of the winning group. The spokesperson for the quartet explained how the Finnish Roma have a dual identity and how the majority of them enjoy ‘sausage … and sauna and beer and all that, just like all other Finns’. According to him, ‘it’s our appearance which reveals our ethnic background, but otherwise everything else is really quite Finnish then … since we’ve been here over five hundred years’. Yet he also remarked how this temporal dimension is central for understanding the relationship between ‘immigrants’ and ‘minorities’: In one school, there was this ad on the wall, already years ago … it read that [the OSC competition] was meant for immigrants. I always left it at that, but … there is again an ad about this competition, and so I phoned [a member in the group] and … he jumps on that right away and said that he was going to phone them [the organizers]; I



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say that ‘oh really, we’re not going to go there, are we? It’s a competition meant for immigrants.’ … Then [he] phoned them and … asked if we had the possibility to participate … [They] said ‘sounds great, put an application in’ … even though we’re not immigrants, we are a minority and so on. Then, after a couple of days, [they] let us know that ‘yeah you can take part; we’re now also including minorities in the competition.’ Through these categorizations, OSC is inextricably implicated in processes of inclusion and exclusion that prevail in society and are particularly pronounced when ethnic differences are at issue. Before the Grande Finale, the producer emphasized the inclusive aim of the event: ‘I was really content and happy that I took them along … It also gives a nice image to other minorities’. He also stressed that while one Finnish man had accused the organizers of discrimination, the competition in fact was open to everybody, apart from the fact that the main performer could not be a representative of the mainstream ‘original’ Finnish population. Yet in the end, these noble goals and ideas of affirmative action did not reach all participants clearly, as the above responses attest. Alongside the demographic shifts that determine the import of ‘immigrants’ at a given point of time, one cannot overlook the weight of genre conventions. Coincidence or not, the fact remains that the first prize was given to the only group in the competition who adhered to Finnishlanguage iskelmä (‘Schlager’ or ‘hit song’) music. This type of easy listening or middle-of-the-road entertainment music has been regarded as one of the quintessentially Finnish forms of popular music since the 1930s, and there have also been several prominent Roma iskelmä artists in the country since the 1960s (see Jalkanen 1996: 222–8). As well, there were also other instances of easy listening in the competition, including a waltz representing Lithuania but sung in Russian, Mediterranean standards such as Nel blu dipinto di blu (a.k.a. Volare) and Besame mucho, and a Russian-Finnish version of Million alykh roz/ Miljoona ruusua (‘Million Roses’). Yet it was the iskelmä of the Roma group Suoralähetys that was connected to archetypal Finnishness by the judges. According to one of them, Suoralähetys ‘is the kind [of band] that sits really well with the Finnish iskelmä music world, but, then again, it is as Finnish as music can be’. One judge particularly echoed this, noting that ‘they have the biggest chance to make it in the Finnish scene [as] they sang the right kind of traditional Finnish iskelmä’. The band too was cognisant of the importance of the genre: At some point we had an idea that we’ll go there with Roma music … But then we … thought about it a bit further; will the Finnish people like it? Does it have a future? Anyway iskelmä somehow comes out of

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us easier, so we followed the line that it’s gotta be a little bit more based on iskelmä. The remark on musing over things to come, especially if ‘future’ is equated with ‘success’, brings in a discursive dimension that is linked to business interests. One of the jurors, in fact, raised this issue and the reciprocal value of publicity by noting that ‘I don’t know how political that decision was from the record company’s stance, but perhaps this band has the best chance of getting on radio playlists. Through Suoralähetys, Ourvision can also get a lot of publicity’. Business incentives are thus also closely linked to questions about authenticity. In this case, at issue are also links between authenticity, originality and exoticist tendencies. This, once again, ties the discussion to racial politics of music. Moreover, within the sphere of popular music, the discourse of authenticity is deeply implicated in issues about blackness as cultural identity. According to Gilroy (1993: 99), it is precisely the racial politics of authenticity that matter here: ‘Authenticity enhances the appeal of selected cultural commodities and has become an important element in the mechanism of the mode of racialization necessary to making non-European and non-American musics acceptable items in an expanded pop market’, particularly within the ‘selective endorsements’ of World Music and ‘in the mass marketing of successive black folk-cultural forms to white audiences’. In OSC 2009, the exoticist authenticating tendencies were overwhelmed by the final outcome. At issue here is the commercial value of ‘other’ identities in the musical marketplace of Finland. In the 2009 competition, the countries represented most were Nigeria, the Philippines and Russia, each with four acts; China and Cuba followed with three representatives. None of the representatives of China went on to the semifinals, while only one representing the Philippines and Russia, respectively, advanced. In contrast, all ‘Cubans’ made their way to the next round, and the two ‘Nigerians’ did the same, going all the way to the final. In the final, Asia was represented by artists associated with India, while the Middle East’s representatives were ‘Moroccan’. On the basis of the geographical dispersion in the different phases of the competition, the poor success of representatives of Eastern Asia appeared striking; out of the total of ten contestants, only two entered the semifinals and neither one of them was awarded a place in the final. The same applied also to the singers with links to former socialist countries in Europe, the number of performances reducing from seven in the tryouts to two in the semifinals and zero in the final. Moreover, the six representatives of the Mashriq region, i.e. the narrowly understood Middle East that ranges from Egypt to Iran, were also missing from the final. In the semifinals the region was advanced by singers representing Egypt and Kurdistan.



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The modest success of all these contestants might give grounds for a closer examination in terms of critique of Orientalism (see Thiam 1999) or in relation to what political historians Harle and Moisio (2000) have called ‘a national identity project based on a suspicion towards the East’. Yet the equation is more complicated, as, on one hand, this would be tantamount to a direct mistrust towards the judges of the competition and thus by extension towards the broader community of music professionals in Finland; on the other, though, the criteria of evaluation in the competition – vocal quality and technique, stage charisma, star potential and professionalism – it leaves considerable room for socio-culturally conditioned interpretations. On the basis of these remarks, Ourvision Singing Contest is directly linked to business cycles of music – to what music industry executives estimate ‘sells’ at a given time. A general assumption is that it often takes some time for musical trends emanating ‘elsewhere’ to become accepted ‘here’. Against this backdrop, the distance of ‘eastern’ music from the top places of the 2009 Ourvision Singing Contest is hardly a surprise, serving to reinforce the status of Finland as a ‘western’ society. There is undoubtedly a market for various forms of ‘eastern’ popular music in ‘multicultural Finland’, but on the basis of OSC 2009, music from these parts of the world is less popular than, for instance, Spanish-language salsa, not to mention English-language rap or contemporary R&B. In the contest, Maghreb (North-African) musical practices were nevertheless present in the form of raï, a genre that is associated most usually with Algerian post-independence secular youth culture – though the OSC 2009 raï group Didi Blanco represented Morocco. To date, it appears that Didi Blanco is the sole raï group in Finland, and one might be tempted to ask just how long it will take for suomiraï to emerge as a distinct subgenre and to be recognized historiographically? For rock, reggae, soul and, to some extent, rap, this has already happened.

Conclusion One is once more reminded of the alleged parent traditions of Finnish popular music and the absence of, for instance, Arabic influences therewithin – unless as markers of rather stereotypical musical Orientalism. In other words, at issue are the identity politics of popular music in Finland, especially in relation to conceptualizations of ethnicity and their valorization in economic terms in particular. In the case of a competition such as OSC, this is further linked to questions about the historical – and generational – position of different genres in the musical national imaginary. Thus, to the extent to which the final result is determined by market value rather than aesthetic or

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expressive quality, the genres with a solid consumer base – such as iskelmä – triumph over any niche market types of music. This idea was explicitly expressed by one of the finalists who maintained that it was not meaningful to have genres, instead of performers, competing against each other. The case of 2009 Ourvision Singing Contest also attested to the precarious nature of multiculturalist policies. In particular, if and when surrounded by financial interests, they cannot be separated from ideas about economic viability. These ideas, in turn, are implicated in both historical and contemporary conceptualizations of nationally significant traditions and genres, and carry different meanings for different migrant generations. On one hand, the multiculturalist policies and goals of OSC may be at odds with alleged parent traditions of Finnish popular music, while on the other, these traditions may put a substantial amount of pressure on the policies and goals in question. What OSC 2009 unequivocally demonstrates is that even the most egalitarian and inclusive intentions may backfire, especially if they are not communicated clearly. Ourvision Singing Contest 2009 evinces also that the discourses of authenticity, empowerment and exoticism are inextricably intertwined. This poses a challenge to any straight-forward multiculturalist policy, as it suggests a need to reconceptualize national belonging not only in relation to ‘ethnic’ forms of cultural expression but also to those that are associated with mainstream popular culture. In other words, why is it so hard to think about ‘R&B wailing’ as people’s own music even though those who perform it clearly attach to it affectively and emotionally? But maybe the most crucial issue concerns the prevalence and assumed importance to frame all this in national terms; could it be that our visions of the future might be brighter if the national epithets were forsaken, in favour of less ideologically loaded designations of social and cultural belonging?

References Borthwick, S. and Moy, R. (2004), Popular Music Genres, New York: Routledge. Featherstone, S. (2005), Postcolonial Cultures, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. FN (2009), Field notes by the author, from 31 January to 3 June 2009. Frith, S. (1996), Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Harle, V. and Moisio, S. (2000), Missä on Suomi? Kansallisen identiteettipolitiikan historia ja geopolitiikka, Tampere: Vastapaino. Jalkanen, P. (1996), ‘Popular Music’, in K. Aho, P. Jalkanen, E. Salmenhaara and K. Virtamo, Finnish Music, 206–38, Helsinki: Otava.



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Jansson, P. (2011), ‘Suomi on myöhässä’. City-lehti 23: 32–3. Kolu, E. (2014), ‘Afrosuomalaisen sukupolven ääni’, Pakolainen 3: 11–13. Lister, L. (2001), ‘Divafication: The Deification of Modern Female Pop Stars’. Popular Music and Society 25 (3–4): 1–10. Lucious, B. S. (2005), ‘In the Black Pacific: Testimonies of Vietnamese Afro-Amerasian Displacements’, in R. G. Lee and W. W. Anderson (eds), Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas, 122–55, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Merriam, A. P. (1964), The Anthropology of Music, Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Mitchell, T. (2001a), ‘Introduction: Another Root – Hip-Hop outside the USA’, in T. Mitchell (ed.), Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 1–38, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Mitchell, T. (2001b), ‘Fightin’ da Faida: The Italian Posses and Hip-Hop in Italy’, in T. Mitchell (ed.), Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 194–221, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Modood, T. (2007), Multiculturalism: A Civic Idea, Cambridge: Polity. OSC (2009a), Ourvision 2009 Singing Contest: Ourvision 2009 säännöt, unpublished pdf-file (accessed 19 March 2009). OSC (2009b), ‘Kilpailun säännöt’, Ourvision 2009. Available online: http://www. ourvision.fi/?page_id=35 (accessed 15 October 2009). OSC (2011a), ‘Historia’, Ourvision Singing Contest. Available online: http://www. ourvision.fi/?page_id=16 (accessed 24 March 2013). OSC (2011b), ‘Tietoja’, Ourvision Singing Contest – Facebook. Available online: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ourvision-Singing-Contest/215299678480549 ?id=215299678480549&sk=info (accessed 24 March 2014). Shuker, R. (2002), Popular Music: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge. Smyth, H. (2014), ‘The Black Atlantic Meets the Black Pacific: Multimodality in Kamau Brathwaite and Wayde Compton’. Callaloo 37 (2): 389–403. Thiam, Riitta (1999), ‘Orientalismikriittinen ja postkolonialistinen näkökulma suomalaiseen musiikkiin’, Musiikki 4: 391–415. Titon, J. T. (2009), ‘Music Culture as a World of Music’, in J. T. Titon (gen. ed.), Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples, Shorter Version, 3rd edn, 1–34, Belmont: Schirmer Cengage Learning. Whiteley, S. (2000), Women and Popular Music: Sexuality, Identity and Subjectivity, London: Routledge. Zemke, K. and Televave, S. S. (2011), ‘Pasifika R&B Divas: Gender, Culture and Identity in Pacific Pop Music’, in G. Keam and T. Mitchell (eds), Home, Land and Sea: Situating Music in Aotearoa New Zealand, 21–30, North Shore: Pearson.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nanyin and the Singaporean culture: The creation of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore and intergenerational contrasts Kaori Fushiki

Introduction Nanyin is a form of musical performing arts recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2009. Besides being performed in the Fujian Province of China, where it was created and developed, today it is also widely performed in Hong Kong, the Guandong Province of China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. In Singapore, nanyin has a history of over 120 years. Having maintained popularity among migrants from China throughout the first half of the twentieth-century, its popularity started to decline in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, nanyin was reinvented by Teng Mah Seng, chairman of the nanyin Siong Leng Musical Association via his creations of musical pieces and his curation of a liyuanxi (liyuan opera theatre)1 for the International Nanyin Symposium and Concert that took place in 1977. Teng Mah Seng’s reinvention of nanyin also went on to boost its recovery and popularity in the Fujian Province, in Taiwan and in the Philippines, after the era of the Chinese Cultural Revolution period. After the death of Teng Mah Seng in 1992, the Siong Leng

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Musical Association, the longest surviving and most prominent nanyin association in Singapore, would go on to face grave financial difficulties. In addition, because of conflicting views over ‘tradition’, the association split into two distinct organizations. While the splinter group named itself the Traditional Southern Fujian Music Society, Siong Leng retained the original name. Although the new Siong Leng Association struggled to continue its activities throughout the 1990s and 2000s, in 2013 it was given a substantial grant by the National Arts Council of Singapore (NAC) building on two previous (minor) awards given by the same institution in 2009 and 2011. The NAC award has since led to the association changing its music and performance styles, having modernized its public image and developed new methods of passing on this cultural heritage to new generations. Escalating from its previous stance, as a more traditional association, more deeply concerned with dialect and first generation migrant groups in Singapore, the association is now in an ongoing process of transforming itself into a professional performing arts group/company more concerned with younger generations. Furthermore, as a recipient of the NAC grant, Siong Leng has an obligation to perform at national events and contribute towards the national culture of Singapore. There are many ‘traditional’ and ‘ethnic’ performing art forms in Singapore, of which nanyin is just one more. Very much like nanyin, many of these art forms have their own histories developed locally by migrant communities. Many, however, are declining in popularity due to community composition, with older generations being replaced by younger ones not interested in keeping traditional/ethnic artistic practices. Nanyin, on the other hand, has proven to be different when it comes to its popularity, this mainly due to Singapore’s cultural policy that has recognized nanyin as an important cultural component of the multiracial country that it is – a part of Singaporean heritage. Thus, while older generations who possessed strong relationships with nanyin struggled in the past to pass on the traditional art form to younger generations, presently Singapore’s cultural policy has started to promote nanyin, recognizing it as a tool for ‘preserving memories’ and as a part of Singapore’s intangible cultural heritage in constructing ‘memories for tomorrow’ (Tao 2014). In this article, the Siong Leng Musical Association’s new approaches toward the production and presentation of nanyin will be analysed. Taking an historical approach, I first set out to find the ‘roots’ and memories of the association, leading up to the present process of creating a ‘new’ canon of Singapore nanyin that sets itself apart from nanyin in other regions, especially in Fujian, where it was founded. Second, utilizing narratives collected through in-depth interviews carried out with key members and leaders of Siong Leng, debate will centre on the struggles



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possessed by the association prior to 2013 in developing activities with the much reduced amount of funding available to the organization. This will be contrasted with the associations new post-2013 era, centring attention on how NAC-provided funding has influenced the activities and new performances of Siong Leng, and what role this has played in relation to attracting younger generations to the musical art form of nanyin. The data presented in this article results from my field research conducted from 2010 to 2013 in Singapore. Beyond, having carried out interviews with leaders of the Siong Leng Musical Association, my fieldwork also consisted of participating in the learning of nanyin at Siong Leng and carrying out archival research at universities in Singapore and at the Siong Leng Association. Additionally, I also carried out interviews with members of the splinter group, the Traditional Southern Fujian Music Society. In total, interviews with twenty individuals were carried out.2 From this collected data, this article will thus show the varying approaches to new creativity within nanyin music, as well as the multilayered and highly complex identities (that pit tradition against newness) that the people related to the music possess.

Nanyin, an introduction The literature on the history of nanyin is extensive (see for example Chen 2008; Chou 2002; Huang 2010; Lay 1998; Liu and Wang 1989; Liu 2011; Shen 1986; van der Loon 1992; Wang 2009; Yang 2004; Zhen 2009). The art form finds its roots in China during the Wudai Shiguo (Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms) era (907–979), with its musical style being formed during the Song Dynasty (960–1279) and further developed during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) (Yang 2004). During the Song Dynasty, Taizu, the founding emperor of Song Dynasty (r. 960–976), named Meng Chang as the King Langjundashen3 and initiated his patronage as the patron deity of nanyin. Nanyin associations worship him to this day. Presently, nanyin is played around the southeastern coastal area of China, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. The people who usually play nanyin in these regions, however, have called the art form by different names. For example, up until the International Nanyin Symposium and Concert of 1977, nanyue was the name applied in Xiamen (Fujian, China), Taiwan and in some other places in Southeast Asia. After the International Nanyin Symposium and Concert of 1977, nanyue was replaced with the name nanguan in these parts of the world. The description of nanyin, as an UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity art form, states the following: ‘The slow, simple and elegant

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melodies are performed on distinctive instruments such as a bamboo flute called the dongxiao and a crooked-neck lute played horizontally called the pipa, as well as more common wind, string and percussion instruments’ (UNESCO Culture Sector 2003). The nanyin pipa has a very classical playing style, struck horizontally, with vocalists sometimes playing it between their singing parts. Depending on the music genres, there are two specific types of nanyin ensembles, shangsiguan and xiasiguan. The shangsiguan4 has a sophisticated sound and is usually played in chamber music. In a xiasiguan ensemble,5 on the other hand, other more loudly sounding instruments and percussions are added. Xiasiguan is more commonly used for outside performances and rituals. Nanyin also has three categories of music: zhi, pu and qu. Zhi (also commonly known as zhitou) is a genre that suites vocals, but, in the present day, it is more commonly played as instrumental music without vocals. Pu is a genre of instrumental music without lyrics. The notation for this genre is written only in the pipa tablature known as gongchepu. The third category, qu, is a genre of vocal music also known as sanqu. Many pieces in this genre are accompanied by shansiguan.6 The language used for nanyin is Minnanyu, better known as Hokkien in Southeast Asia. As the pronunciation of Minnanyu tends to vary from one place to the next, this is problematic when it’s being sung. Indifferent of obstacles, however, nanyin sets out to accompany some operas as well as puppet theatre productions, as is the case with liyuanxi7 and budaixi.8

How nanyin came to Singapore: A brief history In 2011, the Sheng Hong Art Institute in Singapore established a nanyin course in the form of a series of cultural seminars aimed at community elders. Although the programme stopped temporarily in 2013, the Sheng Hong Art Institute’s course served to show the art form’s target demographic group – that of young people – a bit of what exactly nanyin is. The fact of the matter is that elders enjoy nanyin, but it has been very rare for young people to want to play it. One of the reasons for this lack of popularity is owed to Singapore’s Bilingualism Policy that demands English be learnt. Many young people are now bilingual because of the education system of the ultra-meritocratic society of Singapore, implying that most young people now speak English along with at least one of the other three official mother tongues (Malay, Mandarin or Tamil). Furthermore, because of the ‘Speak Mandarin’ policy of the 1980s, many dialects have almost been lost in daily life. As a result, many young people can no longer communicate in the dialects of their ancestors. Less than a century ago, however, dialectbased musical/theatrical performances were quite popular in Singapore,



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among them nanyin, this up until they started losing popularity towards the end of the 1960s. The people who first brought nanyin to Singapore in the late nineteenthcentury came primarily from the southern Chinese cities of Jinjian, Xiamen and Quanzhou. These migrants would gather in their houses, often located above their own shops, to learn about nanyin and to talk about their businesses. It was at these gathering where nanyin was first played in the name of conviviality among friends. The first nanyin association was established in the 1920’s, calling itself the Hengyunge Association. It was established as a male amateur musicians’ association. Like a clan association or tongxiang association (association for the people of the same village), the Hengyunge Association had the role of helping members stay connected to their roots via nanyin, as well as helping their ‘homeland’. Many (non-music) associations set up at the time, in fact, maintained political and social involvement in homeland affairs. They were, however, forbidden by the British colonial government from carrying out activities due to the fact that homeland political activities were most often aimed at supporting the anti-Japanese resistance movement in China.9 Because of this, the Hengyunge Association changed its name to the Yunlu Nanyin Association in 1937, becoming the Siong Leng Music Association in 1941. Although the activities of Siong Leng stopped during World War II, the association restarted its activities afterwards, going on to give numerous performances in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. The Siong Leng Music Association played its music at temple events and rituals, private events, clan association activities and would sometimes perform at national events such as the celebration processions for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in Singapore. The association also scored music for movies and television programmes, even entering a televised traditional music contest in the mid-1950s. During this time period, nanyin in Singapore became extremely popular reaching a level of popularity that would never be replicated again. Throughout the 1960s, however, nanyin’s fame gradually fell, a pattern that would continue on into the 1970s. It was not until the reinvention of nanyin under the driving force of Siong Leng’s Chairmen, Teng Mah Seng, that things once again started changing (Liu 2011; Lay 1998; Huang 2010).

The roots of memories and making a ‘new’ canon of Singaporean nanyin: Teng Mah Seng’s nanyin reinvention Up until 1978, Teng Mah Seng had been a musician and lyricist of the Siong Leng Music Association. That year, however, he became the association’s

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chairman, having as his central aim the reinvention/reconstruction of the association’s activities.10 He accomplished this by finding more platforms to play nanyin and disseminate the musical art form. He also set out to make nanyin more attractive to a younger generation, aiming to recruit and train young people. With the goal of bringing ‘new blood’ to the association, he started recruiting new members through already existing members as well as their acquaintances and families. Outside the association contacts, he also advertised in a community newspaper, calling for new members and students to join. Although this campaign did bring some new members, it was stopped shortly thereafter due to the imbalance of individual talents being recruited. As a result of this, Teng Mah Seng went on to expand Siong Leng beyond its association format, turning it into an educational organization as well, basing the teachings on nanyin oral traditions. Teng Mah Seng, therefore, established Siong Leng not only for musical performance purposes, but also for reasons of preservation of nanyin culture, aiming to pass it on to future generations. When Teng Mah Seng took over the leadership of Siong Leng, the association was still being housed in association members’ shop houses. The construction of a new clubhouse shortly after, however, also helped to expand the organization. As well, previous to this reincarnation, Siong Leng was also what is termed a guanhe organization, a traditional style of nanyin association, characterized as being closed off from society. Before the Teng Mah Seng era of Siong Leng, the traditional ways of the association meant that the elders would gather to enjoy their music with tea or kopi at their shop houses. Their children and grandchildren were introduced to nanyin when they’d return home from school at the end of the day. Wang Pheck Geok (also known as Wang Biyu and Celestina Wang),11 the current vice chairman of Siong Leng and actress by profession, and Suzan Koh, a professional singer, were two of those children. Wang Pheck Geok was first asked by her mother to play the nanyin pipa in the modern Chinese Orchestra and was later invited by a shop owner to join an elders’ meeting. As a result, she became a member of Siong Leng at a young age. For the children and grandchildren of Siong Leng members, it was common to be invited to join shop house meetings while growing up, where they were taught about liyuanxi, often done within the atmosphere of nanyin.12 Teng Mah Seng also tried to revive nanyin through the accompaniment of a liyuanxi theatre. He not only revived a traditional piece of liyuanxi, but he also created new pieces. He trained Wang Pheck Geok and Suzan Koh to perform a very traditional piece known as Tang San Ngo Niu, and created a new style of liyuanxi reverting to modern themes. He also produced a typical zhongyuanjie (The Hungry Ghost Festival) performance called ‘Mulianjiumu’. Innovative themes and directions transformed Siong



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Leng’s performances to the point that they no longer looked like liyuanxi, but the accompanying music was always in the nanyin style. In 1977, Teng Mah Seng organized the First Symposium of the Southeast Asian Nanyin Group held in Singapore. The symposium welcomed many associations from the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, as well as from Quanzhou and Xiamen in China, places where nanyin had been deeply damaged by the Chinese Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. The event would go on to become the International Nanyin Symposium and Concert to be held annually and occurring in different international locations, having as its aim the making of connections between nanyin associations in different parts of the ‘nanyin world’. Moreover, in 1983, the Siong Leng Musical Association participated in the 37th Llangollen International Eisteddfod in Wales with the aim of introducing nanyin to the world. In the category of solo folk song, female vocalist Ong Guat Hwa won third prize with a new piece of nanyin called ‘Reminiscence’ whose lyrics were written by Teng Mah Seng. As well, an instrumental ensemble in the folk ensemble category took fourth prize with a traditional pu piece called ‘Trotting horse’. With these prizes, Siong Leng and Teng Mah Seng had succeeded in taking the first steps in making nanyin music known globally. The Symposium of the Southeast Asian Nanyin Group would go on to become the world’s first international all-exclusive nanyin concert. At this event, many nanyin associations from Southeast Asia played the traditional long pieces,13 with some concerts lasting up to five hours. Because of this, some participants advocated for new pieces to be created to last only seven to ten minutes and proposed to use this rule for all future international concerts.14 Following this proposal, Teng Mah Seng started to make new qu vocal music15 with the composer Zhuo Shen Xiang.16 Teng Mah Seng improved the lyrics and changed the traditional popular nanyin themes, doing away with issues of relationships among lovers and gender-related issues that dealt with women’s heartache and pain, concentrating instead on topics dealing with departure, feelings of sorrow, imagining the homeland, the blessing of Singapore,17 among others. Thus, while Teng Mah Seng was seeing his homeland from the outside during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he also believed that nanyin should reflect the social landscape of the era in Singapore.18 In addition, he revised the dou (pronunciation) of nanyin to overcome the many variations of pronunciation of Minnanyu.19 According to Zhou (2002: 10–13), there are five kinds of pronunciation in Minnanyu: Wendouyin, Baidouyin, Xundouyin, Sudouyin and Baizaozidedouyin. Usually, Baidouyin and Wendouyin are used for nanyin. Because members of Siong Leng were always told that the usual pronunciation is Wudou, which is the pronunciation used in the daily lives of the common people

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in Quanzhou, it would be better to think of Wudou as being the same as Baidouyin, in Zhou’s theory. Teng Mah Seng, however, changed the pronunciation used by his members from Wudou to Wendou, the pronunciation of educated people, scholars, officers and upper statesmen. Originally, the music style of Siong Leng was that of the style originating from Xiamen, this because many of the members came from Xiamen and Jinmen in China. Nevertheless, as Wang Pheck Geok pointed out: ‘the association’s style gradually changed to the Quanzhou style, because of the origins of new members and because many invited teachers were coming from Quanzhou’ (Interview, 1 February 2013). Between Xiamen and Quanzhou, the pronunciation of the Minnan and music are also different. Even for songs with the same titles, the pronunciation of the lyrics and the music style are completely different. Moreover, Teng Mah Seng tried new combinations of qupai (qu tunes/ fixed melodies) in new pieces with the composer Zhuo Shen Xiang. Fixed melodies were put at the beginning and the end of a piece, with new melodies placed in between by the composer. The length of the middle part depended on the length of the lyrics. Despite some of Teng’s lyrics being variants of others and having similar melodies, he wrote more than three hundred pieces in his lifetime.20 In addition, he published his pieces in three volumes and also edited a new anthology of nanyin pieces to make it easy for nanyin beginners to learn. He also translated nanyin notation from gongchepu tablature to ganpu21 and baloque notation, having written the pieces with a piano accompaniment for an easy introduction to nanyin.

The decline and the hope for the next generation: Challenges since the 1990s and the funds of the NAC In 1992, Teng Mah Seng passed away. Prior to his passing away, however, Teng Mah Seng had appointed Wang Pheck Geok as vice-chairwoman and artistic director of Siong Leng. Teng Mah Seng’s young son, Teng Hong Hai, took over as chairman of the association. Not approving of the association’s young leadership and modern ideologies, a group of elders in the association broke away and created their own nanyin association, the Traditional Southern Fujian Music Society. Unsurprisingly this association’s aim was to retain nanyin’s purist tradition without seeing any change take place. Teng Hong Hai and Wang Pheck Geok’s Siong Leng, however, was becoming increasingly innovative, something some elders could not understand or accept.



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Moreover, even though the elderly Teng Mah Seng had appointed Wang Pheck Geok, it was quite difficult for many association elders to accept a young female vice-chairwoman. Wang Pheck Geok, herself, could not understand why Teng Mah Seng had chosen her to succeed him as the association’s artistic director. She was twenty-six years old at the time of her appointment. She thought she was too young to be his successor, and recognized that her gender would not be accepted by the elders in the association. Thus she became worried about the management of the organization and of possible resulting incidents. ‘Unfortunately, all my fears came true, and the elders, who had supported Teng (Mah Seng), left the association’, Wang Pheck Geok noted (Interview, 21 August 2012). With only a few individuals supporting her after the death of Teng Mah Seng, the association would encounter some difficulties in continuing its activities. As a result of this, since 1994, there have been two major nanyin associations in Singapore, both of which still continue with their activities to this day.

Funds for education: Development of nanyin learning program in schools22 After the passing away of individual financial sponsors, who had also been good friends with Teng Mah Seng, most of the descendants of these individuals were no longer so keen on sponsoring nanyin and the Siong Leng Musical Association. In an attempt to lessen increasing financial difficulties, Siong Leng would attempt to win over funding from the NAC, submitting applications various times throughout the 1990s, all of which were refused. Siong Leng, however, did receive assistance from the Singapore Chinese Orchestra throughout this decade, with the purpose of allowing members to continue attending the International Nanyin Symposium and Concerts. As well, in the latter half of the 1990s, Siong Leng also started offering teaching programmes and carrying out other collaborative activities alongside the Singapore Chinese Orchestra. In 2000, with the support of the Singaporean government’s Ministry of Education, Siong Leng also re-started teaching in schools. At first the association opted to introduce the modern Chinese orchestra to the students because Siong Leng’s directors thought nanyin would not attract young people with its soft sounds and slow tempo. However, with Siong Leng holding joint occasional concerts and workshops with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in schools, often using Western musical instruments, when the directors of Siong Leng found talented children in the school programmes, they would introduced nanyin to them. The teaching of nanyin would, therefore, slowly but surely start growing. These educational programmes, however, came to a stop when the education funding provided by the Ministry of Education of Singapore

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came to an end. This discontinuation of financial support was due to problems concerning proper sound systems in schools. Schools prepared big halls for the nanyin programme, but with the sound of nanyin being quite soft it was often impossible to reach the students without a good sound system, something Ministry of Education’s financial support could not be applied to. This made it quite difficult to attract students to nanyin. For this reason, the decision was made by Siong Leng’s directorship to give up the school teaching programme all together.

Funding for artistic activities and artistic professionalization within the frameworks of Singapore23 Beyond the school programmes, in 2000 Siong Leng initiated a teacher invitation programme through its connection with the Quanzhou Art Institute in Quanzhou, China. Siong Leng first started by inviting five young professional artists to participate in a residential teaching programme.24 Prior to this happening, however, the Singapore Cultural Policy had gone under revision, drastically changing many of its rules and regulations. Under the idea of a creative industry, the concept of the arts would drastically change. Under this new conceptualization of the arts, it was ruled that people could no longer earn a living from government funds. In the case of Siong Leng, while funds for amateur musical activities had increased, funds were cut for professionals.25 Although an ‘amateur’ musician’s association, these cuts were deemed unsatisfactory, for Quanzhou’s professional artists and teachers could not be defined and treated as such. Thus, in the words of Wang Pheck Geok: ‘[The invitation programme] was not so successful. The ‘artist’ from Quanzhou is not dedicated to teaching; they are too businesslike and too ‘artsy’. Consequently, teachers from Quanzhou avoided joining artistic performances on stage and showed disinterest in other forms of participation.’ In 2009, instead of inviting teachers to come to Singapore from Quanzhou, Siong Leng started another educational programme, sending young people to Shishi (a city in the region of Quanzhou) for one month where the association had found a qualified teacher to host them. This initiative became very successful. The young people who were sent by Siong Leng stayed at their teacher’s home where they were taught the sense of nanyin in their daily lives and in their surroundings. They learnt more about traditional pieces through gongchepu and oral tradition.26 This initiative was followed by Siong Leng starting another invitation programme aimed at teachers from Shishi to come to Singapore to create performances.



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Moreover, Siong Leng also embraced new challenges for ‘artistic’ performances, making changes to their dissemination goals. In 2006, the association had a chance to participate in Huayi (Chinese Festival of Arts). Launched in 2003 and held at the Singapore Public Hall’s Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, Huayi is one of the annual arts festivals in Singapore to celebrate the nation’s multicultural heritage. At this festival, Siong Leng met festival director Johnny Lau and, through him, conceived a new idea for their future. They invited him to work with Siong Leng to create performances of ‘Singaporean’ performing arts through nanyin. Soul Journey (2008) and Cicada Zen (2012) were two pieces that derived from this partnership.27 These two performances were a composite of nanyin which also included a variety of music styles, acting, dance, stage design, lighting, video effects and other kinds of art forms. The stage started with a tea drinking session/ceremony at the entrance to the hall, and with a well-constructed plan that included the audience becoming a part of the performance led by the performers. Besides these performances, Siong Leng held other activities (e.g. ‘Nanyin Banquet’ to celebrate the anniversary of patron deity Master Lang Jun) with the aim of attracting more sponsors.28 Through these events and training programmes for young people, Siong Leng thus shifted from being an ‘amateur’ to a ‘professional’ performing arts group. By 2006, the organization had changed its management concept and started employing permanent and part-time staff. In 2009, it was approved for funding from the NAC for the first time, receiving support for projects over a five-year period. And in 2011, the association further received a two-year ‘seed grant’ for traditional arts, leading to the reception of its most significant three-year grant from the NAC in 2013. With these funds, Siong Leng started the next line of activities: to educate and provide instruction on nanyin culture, and to start a traditional nanyin school that aims to attract individuals outside the Chinese community as well. Through its experiences since 2000, Siong Leng has thus recognized that, to continue nanyin, a good teaching structure and a professional management system are needed. In Southeast Asia and China, many musical associations do not have teaching and management models or experience of innovative creations – only Siong Leng has garnished such experiences. By professionalizing their association, however, Siong Leng has met other problems. With the increased awareness given to ‘heritage’ in Singapore, nanyin has gained attention as a traditional art form and as an intangible heritage that is part of the collective memory of the migrants. In exchange for funds, Siong Leng has been given the responsibility of participating in national events. For example, in 2013 Siong Leng performed at the Art Science Museum, at the Cultural Heritage Festival, the Singapore Night Festival and the Wan Qing Culturefest. As a representative of a Singaporean ethno-cultural community, Siong Leng also participated in the 25th Masan International Theatre Festival

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in Korea, the ASEAN Cultural Heritage Festival 2013 in Vietnam and joined the collaborative dance collective ‘Mau: J-ASEAN Dance Collaboration’ sponsored by the Japanese governmental institution The Japan Foundation. Although Siong Leng has continued to organize it’s own ‘traditional’ activities, both nationally and internationally (e.g. the 10th International Nanyin Symposium in Quanzhou, the ‘Multisensory Liyuan Banquet’, and the nanyin performance at Thian Hock Keng Temple, all of which also held in 2013), most activities have been overtaken by other duties required of the association. Given this situation, Siong Leng often gives free-admission performances in public spaces as a way of sharing with a larger audience. It is always better to see and hear nanyin being performed in libraries and museums, but sometimes the performers have had to perform in shopping malls, for example, in front of noisy crowds, who are not necessarily interested in nanyin. Furthermore, Siong Leng has had to provide musicians with alternative musical instruments to carry out collaborative works. Working with other music genres where non-nanyin musical instruments are involved, nanyin musicians adapt, at times relinquishing the quieter nanyin sound, all in the name of Singaporean interculturality. Lastly, Siong Leng has had to change its customary membership and performance systems since becoming a professional association. As part of an association of amateur musicians, all members of Siong Leng pay an annual membership fee. In relation to the musician professionalization, based on levels of musicianship, some musicians have become professionals in the association. The majority, however, are still learning as students.

Conclusion When nanyin was proposed as Intangible Cultural Heritage, key to the description of the art form was it’s geographical dispersion from the Fujian Province to other parts of Asia. The description read: ‘Nanyin is a musical performing art central to the culture of the people of Minnan in southern Fujian Province along China’s south-eastern coast, and to Minnan populations overseas’. (UNESCO Culture Sector 2003). Nanyin is thus a performing art (re-)created by migrants, not specific to one place, but instead wherever mobile individuals have taken the art form. Away from Fujian, the Chinese preserved nanyin as their own music, in their own places. With the coming together of people under the flagship of nanyin, the art form maintained its purity, tied to its origins in China, often done so in gatherings that led to the first association a century ago.



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In Singapore, nanyin was developed uniquely, with many (re-)creations taking place, along with new liyuanxi being assembled as well. The nation of Singapore became a spatio-temporal node for the intangible cultural heritage that is nanyin. From the historical view, nanyin was thus handed down as moorings of the people who moved from their hometowns in China to Singapore. When nanyin popularity declined in the 1960s, through the talent of Teng Mah Seng, new songs emerged, possessing lyrics that reflected a sense of a new time and place. Singaporean nanyin emerged in people’s homes, as one of the grassroots activities to nestle close to the people’s minds and hopes. The Siong Leng Musical Association was developed to give grounding to the art form away from its origins. Tradition was to be maintained, but at the same time tradition entered centre stage, posing the question: what is tradition in the hands of new generations far from the time and space of its creation? Teng Mah Seng challenged this very question with his desire of wanting to bring newness to nanyin in order to attract the descendants of those who had limited nanyin to their homes. His progressive endeavours, such as placing a twenty-six-year-old woman in the role of artistic director, divided modernist and traditionalist, creating an inter-generational rift that would see the creation of a breakaway association. Teng Mah Seng’s vision, however, was not one of disrespecting the past, but rather one of creating conditions that would guarantee nanyin a bright future, bringing it to a wider audience and bringing it greater recognition. By placing the association in the hands of his son, Teng Hong Hai, and Wang Pheck Geok, Teng Mah Seng was clearly making a divide and creating a new era. No longer would the descendants of nanyin practitioners learn from the elders during nanyin gatherings like Wang Pheck Geok and Suzan Koh did. Instead conditions were established to pass on the traditions via proper schooling of nanyin. Music evolution is not a new science (Bannan 2012; Gautam 1989). In diasporic settings, such evolution can take place from one generation to the next, this owing to the presence of other cultures and, above all, the dominant culture (Zheng 2010). At a time when a growing disinterest towards nanyin was occurring, Teng Mah Seng’s vision brought it back by aiming the art form at the next generation. Having received the necessary funding from NAC, Singaporean nanyin became unique given that it was being supported to be a part of Singapore culture, having to abide by certain expectations from Singaporean government such as giving concerts in places not common to nanyin. In exchange, to teach the uniqueness of nanyin, Siong Leng published educational manuals and books used in workshops and in the various courses. The Siong Leng also edged away from tradition, allowing certain music pieces to use other Chinese musical instruments not used for nanyin. With other pieces, Siong Leng went even further, allowing them to become fused with Western music permitting them to be played with piano, accompanied

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with Indian music with tabla,29 with Malay music utilizing the kompang (a small hand-held frame drum), all with the intention of representing the multiracial country that is Singapore. Unsurprisingly, these changes drove many elders to separate from the association, often referring to these musical amalgamations as blasphemous.30 At the same time, however, NAC funding gave many young people the chance to learn Quanzhou style nanyin, getting it taught to them under the onus of old traditional ways framed within the conventions of oral traditions. The uniquely innovative Singaporean pieces along with the traditional pieces played in Quanzhou style, have thus come to compose the main repertoire of the Siong Leng Musical Association with both commonly being played in performances. This considered, ‘nanyin in Singapore’ doesn’t only mean ‘uniquely Singaporean nanyin’. Approaches that were started by Teng Mah Seng have not only pursued innovative creativity and productions, but changed people’s views of nanyin across nations, borders and associations, getting them to enjoy a ‘new’ nanyin. Nanyin has thus been woven as a kind of public memory through dialogue, traditional customs and history, being presented as a performing art of the public memory. As Angelita Teo (2014), festival director of the 2013 Singapore Heritage Fest and director of the National Museum of Singapore, put forth: ‘Heritage is not simply about the past, it is about what is important to us today and what we need to hold on to for our future’. Nanyin is a ‘memory bank of yesterday’, and its activities, history and works tell us the ‘people’s stories’ and their ‘shared culture, memories, and spaces’. Hence, ‘nanyin in Singapore’ are ‘collective memories of tomorrow, for Singaporeans, having been created as an intangible cultural heritage in Singapore, aided by a mixture of tradition and non-conformity.

Notes  1 Liyuanxi is a regional opera tradition originating in Quanzhou, Fujian, China. Its scripts have been traced back to the mid-sixteenth century, and some of its tunes dating back even earlier, making it one of China’s most long-established drama traditions.  2 The languages utilized in all interviews were Hokkien, Quanzhou Hokkien and Mandarin, all with the exception of a series of interviews carried out with one interviewee in which English was the language utilized. Given the difficulty in citing directly as well as the loss of meaning in translation from the three oriental languages to English, the only direct citations presented in this article derives from the English-speaking interviews.  3 The name langjundashen is taken from langjunyue, related to the legendary



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roots of the music, originating with the emperors Meng Chang (reign 934–965) of Later Shu Kingdom (one of the Wudai Shiguo Ten Kingdoms).  4 Musical instruments for shangsiguan are the nanyin pipa (nanpi), dongxiao, sanxian, erxian and paiban.  5 Musical instruments for xiasiguan are aizi (xiaosuona, also known as nanai), shuangling, sibao, xiangzhan and jiaoluo.  6 There is yet another understanding of zhi, pu and qu. According to Yang’s (2004) analysis, nanyin’s categories should be thought of as qu (including zhi), ju (liyuanxi) and pu. Usually, nanyin is characterized as three categories of ‘music’, but ju has an important role for nanyin, thus it should be included as one of the categories. As for zhi, the author analyses its construction and script composition in a set of pieces, having reached the conclusion that zhi is a well-constructed textbook for the learners of nanyin by qu pieces.  7 The music for liyuanxi belongs to lianquti (linking tune style), with the lyrics having a Quanzhou accent. The musical ensembles are led by xiao, pipa, xian and nangu (yajiaogu, foot-press drums). Although there are three styles of liyuanxi, shanlu, xianan, and xiaoliyuan, mostly xiaoliyuan is played in Singapore.  8 These theatrical performances have recently become rare in Singapore, but such theatrical performances, especially liyuanxi, have had an important role in Singaporean nanyin since World War II.  9 In the late 1930s, many clan associations in Singapore helped their hometowns and the anti-Japanese resistance movement in China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (the incident or battle that caused the Second Sino-Japanese War which set off World War II). 10 Teng Mah Seng was a businessman in Singapore. He was born in Jinjiang, China in 1916 and moved to Singapore at the age of eighteen. His reinvention of nanyin led to the revival of the musical art form, and his endeavours, such as having created the Nanyin Dahuichang (The International Nanyin Symposium and Concert), lead to a strong overseas/global network of nanyin associations in several countries. 11 Wang Pheck Geok is her name in Singaporean Hokkien. In Mandarin, the pronunciation for the same Chinese character of her name becomes Wang Biyu. As well, many Chinese in Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan use their English names, which in this case, is Celestina Wang. 12 Some of the young individuals who joined the association in the 1990s have gone on to have their own children, who are now also in Siong Leng. The goal of having young people who play nanyin has thus continued on, with some of the younger individuals bringing their friends as well. 13 According to a custom among nanyin associations, there are two kinds of open/exchange performances between associations. The friendly ones are called baiguan, while the competitive ones are called pinguan. In baiguan, players can select their musical pieces freely, but in pinguan, competitors usually play five well-known zhitou (a genre of nanyin, also called zhi. This genre is instrumental and is formed ‘in suite’, with forty-eight kinds of suites

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in existence) when competing in their playing technique (Yang 2004). In the case of this symposium, it is not known which style of exchange performances were selected. 14 Unfortunately, only Teng Mah Seng went on to make new pieces, with no one else following his example. 15 According to Masuyama (1985), although Siong Leng was active in the reinvention of vocal music, the association maintained older or traditional styles in the instrumental pieces, more so than other groups in China. 16 Zhuo Shen Xiang was born in Fujian, China, and learned nanyin in Xiamen from the famous nanyin musician, Ji Jian Mu, through traditional means of learning nanyin (Yang 2004). At the age of twenty, he moved to Singapore and became a composer and pipa player in Siong Leng. 17 Some pieces were written specifically about the Nation of Singapore or to celebrate something particular about Singapore. A piece written for the Celebration of Singapore entitled ‘Dongfanghuayuan Xinjiapo’, for example, is usually sung by young children accompanied by a piano. 18 Teng Mah Seng’s consciousness was particularly evident in luò yè shēng gēn (Paraphrase of a Chinese proverb, meaning: assimilating into foreign countries, assimilating into foreign cultures). Although he longed for his homeland and made music from his homeland, according to Wang Pheck Geok ‘he still believed that nanyin should represent time and place, as in modern Singaporean nanyin’ (Interview, 1 February 2013). 19 Depending on the area in Fujian, the pronunciation is also different depending on what part of Fujian one is in. 20 Many of his pieces are not confirmed by teachers from Shishi or Quanzhou who have trained young people in Siong Leng. It is also rare to hear his pieces in international concerts. According to Wang Pheck Geok, the reason for this is not related to the characteristics of his music, but more likely because of his personality (Interview, 1 February 2013). 21 Ganpu is a notation system using Arabic numbers. 22 The information presented in this sub-section was gathered via interviews with Wang Pheck Geok carried out on the following dates: 21 August 2012, 24 August 2013 and 3 September 2013. 23 This sub-section is based on various interviews and casual conversations with Wang Pheck Geok from 2011 to 2013. 24 According to Wang Pheck Geok, Teng Mah Seng believed that complete ownership of a building would mean that Siong Leng would not need to borrow any money from the banks. In order to make this come to fruition, upon acquiring its own building, Siong Leng used the upstairs space for residential teaching programmes and loaned out the ground floor to a German restaurant in order to earn some income and sustain their activities (Interview, 21 August 2012). 25 In relation to Singapore Cultural Policy changes and changes to the conceptualization of the arts, see Lee (2002, 2009) and Chong (2011).



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26 Through this programme, it was recognized by the association that learning songs through gongchepu was key for understanding nanyin. Without learning it, it was felt that they couldn’t deeply feel the nanyin yunwei (the sense of nanyin), for feelings sensed through nanyin rhythm and tempo are perceived to be included in the songs. The students’ programme played an important role in helping students learn jinru nanyin (the concept of deeply ensconcing oneself in the study of nanyin). 27 Currently, Johnny is a key person for Siong Leng’s artistic performance. 28 In 2013, besides NAC grants, Siong Leng had four main sponsors. 29 Many Indian people in Singapore have their origins in the southern part of India. Because of this, it is more suitable to use the mridangam of Carnatic music instead of the tabla of Hindustani music. 30 Even the Traditional Southern Fujian Music Society established by elders, however, also tried new challenges to corroborate with young choreographers in order to continue with nanyin and their association. One of the examples was the dance performance Happy Together that took place in 2012.

References Bannan, N. (ed.) (2012), Music, Language, and Human Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chen, Y. T. (2008), Nan Yin Beiji: Quanzhou Xian Guan Lang Jun Ji de Diao Cha yu Yan jiu, Beijing: Wenhua Yishu Chuban She. Chong, T. (2011), The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance, 30, Routledge: Routledge Curzon Contemporary Southeast Asia Series. Chou, C. (2002), ‘Learning Processes in the Nanguan Music of Taiwan’. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 11 (2): 81–124. Gautam, M. R. (1989), Evolution of rāga and tāla in Indian music, New Dehli: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers. Huang, X. (2010), Xinjiapo Nanyin Chutan. Singapore: Chinese Opera Institute. Masuyama, K. (1985), ‘Nankyoku ni tsuite’, in Teng, Mah Seng and Zhuo Shen Xiang (eds), Nanguan Jing Hua Da Quan Xia Ji, 46–9, Singapore: Singapore Siong Leng Musical Association. Lay, W. W. (1998), Xinjiapo de Fujian Nanyin, BA thesis, Department of Chinese Studies, National University of Singapore. Lee, T. S. (2002), ‘Chinese Street Opera Performance and the Shaping of Cultural Aesthetics in Contemporary Singapore’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 34: 139–61. Lee, T. S. (2009), Chinese Street Opera in Singapore, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Liu, C. S. and Y. H. Wang (1989), Fujian Nanyin Chutan, Fuzhou, Fujian: Fujian Renmin Chuban She. Liu, X. Z. (ed.) (2011), Ji Zhe Yong Ye Siong Leng Qi Shi, Singapore: Singapore Siong Leng Musical Association.

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Loon, P. van der (1992), The Classical Theatre and Art Song of South Fukien: A Study of Three Ming Anthologies, Taipei: SMC Publishing. Shen, D. (1986), Nanyin Yinyue Tizi ji Lishi Chutan, Taipei: The University Press, National University of Taiwan. Tao, A. (2014), ‘Foreword’, Singapore Heritage Fest 2013: Memories for Tomorrow. Available online: http://www.heritagefest.org.sg/SHFPortal/About/ WhatisSHF (accessed 24 February 2014). UNESCO Culture Sector (2003), Nanyin, Intangible Heritage 2003 Convention. Available online: http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/RL/00199 Wang, S. (2009), Quanzhou Nanyin, Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chuban She. Yang, G. X. (2004), Taiwan no Nanguan: Nanguan ongaku ni okeru engekisei to ongaku shūdan, Tokyo: Haku tei sha. Zheng, S. (2010), Claiming Diaspora: Music, Transnationalism, and Cultural Politics in Asian/Chinese America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zhou, Z. J. (2002), Nanyin Zi Yun, Fuzhou: Haixia Wenyi Chuban She.

PART THREE

Identity politics and negotiations

CHAPTER SIX

Protest rap and young Afro-descendants in Portugal1 Ricardo Campos, Pedro Nunes and José Alberto Simões

Introduction The following chapter aims to present the case of protest rap produced by young Afro-descendants in Portugal as an extremely relevant cultural and symbolic production in the construction of a common identity, combining issues of ethnicity and class. In other words, the forms of protest rap produced since the decade of 1990 by young members of the African communities living in a situation of clear social exclusion, geographic peripheralization and symbolic marginalization have, throughout the years, conquered a place both as a unique and resilient musical product and as a powerful identity mark that narrates a post-colonial Portuguese context which is characterized by the significant number of African immigration registered since the second half of the 1970s. The authors have been studying rap and hip-hop culture, both individually and collectively, for over a decade now.2 The empirical material collected, fieldwork experience obtained and the theoretical debates developed over the years give them a comprehensive and diachronic perspective on this subject. The present chapter is divided into three parts. It opens with a brief theoretical approach to the relationship between music and identity, namely in terms of ethnic-related issues. This is followed by a description of the migratory waves that gave rise to the consolidation of strongly ethnicized geographical areas and to the establishment of ‘Black communities’ formed by different generations (from the immigration pioneers to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren). In the third section, based

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on empirical material collected over the years, the chapter will present the specific case of rap music produced by these communities’ younger generation.

Music and identity(ies) Questions of identity in connection with musical products and their audiences have been a theme of discussion over the last three decades in several scientific fields such as ethnomusicology, sociology, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies. Albeit with different perspectives on the subject, they all start with a similar question: how do certain sounds, practices and musical categories reflect and represent individual or collective identities, whether by reference to certain social, ethnic, gender or age groups? What, for example, do we mean when we refer to certain musical categorizations such as celtic music, gay-disco, teenybop or ‘black’ music? In a complex social world where identities are increasingly fragmented and fluid and where musical practices are themselves flexible and cross different social groups, which features enable us to link those musical genres and practices to certain identities (gender, class, national or ethnic)? Insofar as the stability and coherence of social identities is arguable, such a relationship can obviously be the subject of scrutiny and contestation by anyone who studies music – especially in the field of so-called popular music – as a cultural expression (Negus 1996a). To begin with, a doubt arises in terms of the individual and the idea according to which a set of essentialist features that allegedly constitute his/her identity can be reflected and expressed through certain cultural practices such as those of music production and reception. As several authors have argued (Hall 1991, 1992; Friedman 1994; Hannerz 1996), identity possesses a processual nature. This mobile and malleable identity must be viewed through the prism of the multiple forms adopted by popular culture within a global context of mobile commodities and images, information and meanings. Circulation of these elements at the global scale gives individuals access to a whole range of goods which they can use to shape their identity, thus contributing to the formation of new constellations of identities that are far more complex than the traditional categories of gender, identity, social class, ethnicity or ‘race’ (Hall 1991). This argument clashes with the emergence of the ‘policies of identity’ and the resulting claims of cultural essentialism which only make sense as abstract constructs (Frith 1996). Therefore, the argument that Afro-American music (an arbitrary categorization to begin with) can



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only be appreciated by members of that community, for example, or that the globalization of local musical expressions is a form of cultural genocide, results in the kind of over-generalization which can hardly be validated at the level of everyday life experience (Frith 1996). Moreover, according to Frith, the question is not so much how a given musical text or performance reflects a particular personal identity, but how the former creates and enables an experience whose meaning is established solely by reference to a subjective and collective identity. Our experience of music, whether as producers or as listeners, is better understood as that process of self-identification in which music becomes crucial to identity because it affords us a perception of ourselves and of others: a subjective, but also a collective perception (Frith 1996). This kind of identity is not given, but is rather negotiated between social groups sharing a common territory (Baily 1994). For Stokes, ‘music is socially significant because it supplies the means by which people recognize identities and places, as well as the lines that divide them’ (Stokes 1994: 5). In fact, the musical experience enables not just the recognition, but often the transcendence of those borderlines. Music isn’t merely a marker of social spaces, but an instrument for their transformation and for helping to overcome the limitations of our place in the world, thus becoming a means for tracing trajectories rather than erecting frontiers along that space. Following from this premise, it will make absolute sense to transpose the same line of argument to one of the essential features of the common rhetoric about popular music: its alleged relationship with space, whether it refers to a given place, neighbourhood, a community, a city, a nation or something more diffuse such as a diaspora. For ethnomusicology, music combines locally rooted experiences and identities. While we should not lose sight of this dimension of locally rooted musical experience as the special context of a given culture, the fact is that this relationship becomes considerably more problematic when we take into account the massification and globalization of popular music. To what extent can musical genres and practices circulating at a global scale in mass media be circumscribed to specific cultures and geographical areas? Furthermore, how is it possible to conceptualize geographical space as the primary referent of a given musical culture without it being the result of an ideological and symbolic construction? First and foremost we must consider the association of music to a given space as the fruit of a discursive construction, especially when it reaches us through non-scientific, common sense discourse conveyed by media and political rhetoric. We can find an example of this on the typical rhetoric of cultural globalization, in which we mostly find an attempt to impose the hegemonic dominance of a particular model in the guise of a ‘global universal’ (Hall 1991). In the case of music, for example, we have fallacious categories such as ‘international repertoire’ and ‘world

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music’ (Negus 1996b).3 The first of these, widely used in the phonographic industry lexicon, is actually an euphemistic way of labelling music recorded and published by anglophile musicians and, thus, sung in the English language. The second category, invented in the 1980s by a group of executives from the major multinational music labels, is used generically to indicate all musical styles and genres that fall outside of the AngloSaxon universe, not making any kind of distinction among them (Negus 1996; Frith 2000). Examples such as these abound in the media and music industry in the most varied contexts. Very often, they also serve a political and ideological agenda, associated to certain values that are held crucial for the affirmation of certain musical practices, such as the notion of ‘authenticity’.4 A debate that has been on the agenda of cultural, media and popular music studies refers to the, not always clarifying, opposition between local and global within musical production and reception (Langlois 1996; Bennett 2000; Bennett and Peterson 2004; Kahn-Harris 2000; Wittman 2011). The central issue in this debate is understanding how a given musical and performing expression that originally derives from a particular geographical and socio-cultural context, reflecting the experience of certain groups’ everyday life and values, is appropriated at the global scale to become a reference for people in many different settings, especially given that, although they share some similarities amongst them, those settings differ substantially from the original context of production. Against the simplistic argument that this amounts to a form of cultural imperialism, in which locally emerging musical styles are only turned global through the influence and power of anglophile mass media and the phonographic industry, some authors claim that, in fact, those musical acts and texts are appropriated and gain new meanings due to an active reception by local cultures and communities. Authors such as Lull (1995) have observed that, more than a form of cultural imperialism, we are in the presence of a cultural re-territorialization, seen as an active cultural filtering and synthesis process rather than a passive act of cultural assimilation. Various studies support this view of musical production as a local resource built on global style and repertoires (Wallis and Malm 1984; Finnegan 1989; Cohen 1991; Regev 1996; Bennett 2000). But just as we can contest the idea that identities have a fixed and structured nature, proposing instead their malleability and constant transformation, we can also question notions of origin and localness as fixed entities with which groups of people establish structured and permanent relationships. The idea of an acquired correspondence between the place where musical expressions occur and the identities built around them is contested by Bennett (2000) for whom the setting can only be understood as an (abstract) space of confrontation between ideas and discourses, where identity relations that are not necessarily convergent are projected:



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[…] by conceptualizing the ‘local’ not as a definitive space but rather as a series of discourses, which envolves ways of picturing the local and one’s relation to it, it becomes possible to see the local as a contested space, as a place that is both real and […] fictionalized. (Bennett 2000: 63) This approach to the local as a discursive construct that can be disputed by different groups and subcultures becomes particularly significant in the context of the migratory fluxes that characterize contemporary societies (Slobin 1992). According to Slobin, the relocation of vast migratory communities in new regions of Western countries leads to the creation of ‘supercultures’ that are defined not just by a physical relation to the hosting location, but also by the adoption of an alternative social environment which blends the culture of the hosting community with the traditional culture brought by the migrant groups. Music becomes an important means through which these supercultures define themselves and relate to other new social contexts imposed by geographical mobility (ibid.; Baily 1994). This debate brings us to the last point worth considering in the study of music and identities: the importance of music for the study of migrant communities. Since the last decade of the past century there has been an increasing acknowledgement that artistic forms of expression such as music, dance or cinema are crucial not only because they reflect, but also because they inform the behaviour of migrants within hosting communities (Baily and Collyer 2006). When addressing this issue a few obvious lines of enquiry are raised: the first of these concerns the role of cultural production, including music, in the transformation and enrichment of local cultures through a process of miscegenation, fusion and creation (ibid.; Martiniello and Lafleur 2008).5 A second line of enquiry inverts the relation of forces previously described, by placing its emphasis on the hosting community’s ethnic and racial dominance over ethnic minorities. Historical examples in the field of popular music, like the incorporation of genres such as jazz or blues in north-American mainstream culture, support this argument (Martiniello and Lafleur 2008; Cashmore 1997). The most recent tendency, however, points towards finding a more detached balance between these two extremes, considering that the culture in countries with a significant presence of migrant and exiled communities must be viewed as a multi-space process, involving the migrant communities’ country of origin as much as the hosting community (Martinello and Lafleur 2008). Music will always be a battlefield between dominant and minority groups, and the result of this confrontation will forever remain uncertain, since it depends on a variety of factors involved. This uncertainty is also manifest in the uses of music: the same music can be enjoyed simply as an entertainment in the country of origin, while in the hosting country it can play a role in the formation of an identity among migrant communities and their descendants born in the hosting country (ibid.). Other authors,

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arguing that the relationship between music and migrant communities is a complex one, propose a set of contextual factors to explain it: type of migration, spatial and cultural proximity between countries of origin and destination, characteristics of the musical culture in question, changes and continuities chosen by the migrant communities in question, audiences, among others (Baily and Collyer 2006). For the purposes of this chapter, we are furthermore interested in discussing the alleged connection between certain musical practices and styles labelled as ‘black’ (or African) and specific ethnical groups (namely African or afro-descendant groups). Thus, the term ‘black music’6 refers to an array of styles which despite accepting a certain degree of multiethnic and transnational features, have a distinctly original ethnic imprint associated with the so-called ‘black’ communities. That is the case of widely popularized musical styles such as the blues, jazz, funk, rap or soul, amongst others. In the first important academic study on the music industry, Frith (1981) proposes a definition of black music based on a few essentialist attributes (contradicting later formulations on the subject), such as relying more on performativity than composition; with a stronger emphasis on rhythm and melody rather than theme and harmony; and being a musical form that due to its immediacy, improvisation and spontaneous character, on the one hand has the ability to express feelings more directly, and on the other appeals to body movement (Frith 1981). This supposed essence has always attracted white audiences, as well as influencing generations of white musicians who subsequently developed new musical styles and repertoires based on that influence, but where the original meaning was gradually diluted as they became increasingly popularized (ibid.).7 This approach has become dated. Several authors, including Frith himself, have made a critical revision of such an essentialist definition of Black music (Tagg 1989; Negus 1996; Frith 1996). Not only is it untenable from a musicological point of view, as demonstrated by Tagg in his criticism of the musicological arguments used to define this musical category (syncopated rhythms, improvisation and the so-called blue notes are not exclusively used in black music), but sociologically it is also questionable, since as we have already shown, it is hard to establish a correlation between specific identity traits that are permanently being reconfigured – and which are themselves the result of a rhetorical discourse built around certain cultural practices – and certain musical practices. According to Gilroy, essentialist conceptions of black culture (including music obviously) are motivated either by a romanticized view stemming from a dominant white culture, or by political agendas intent on asserting a black ‘nationalism’ or separatism spearheaded by black authors (Gilroy 1993). Gilroy instead suggests a more relativist approach based on the study of the Black Atlantic diaspora, marked by a set of experiences that estrange it from its original African identity, in which processes of mobility and mediation generate identities and practices that



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are permanently reconstructed (ibid.). Thus, what we understand as black identity cannot simply amount either to a social and political category, or to a diffuse construction, but to the result of practical activity: language, gestures, body language and desires (Gilroy 1990). This plasticity of black identity becomes all the more inescapable as the musical styles and practices that we hold as defining that identity have spread to the point where today they have been assimilated by a common global popular culture. The artistic traditions conveyed by those musical styles and traditions are transformed when they become visible outside of their creative place of origin, thus causing the emergence of different formulae for expressing said identities, in turn reflected both in the organization of sounds, as in the choice of repertoire, genre or style, and even the language and semantic contents of song lyrics. In fact, Gilroy claims that those styles and practices cease to belong exclusively to the Black Atlantic and their role in the constitution of identities, and must be equated with situations of co-existence between blacks and other intersecting ethnic communities and diasporas, generating new cultural hybrids (Mercer, 1994). The case of rap remains an eloquent example of the arguments exposed above.

Migrations and Afro-descendants in Portugal The presence of African populations in Portuguese territory dates back to the fifteenth century, a circumstance that is linked to the history of the maritime discoveries and subsequent establishment of a Portuguese imperial domain.8 We should, however, focus on more recent developments, namely in the twentieth century and the drastic socio-political mutations witnessed during this period. Portugal perpetuated its claim to African colonies9 well into the decade of 1970, a situation that was reversed after a revolution that came to be known as the ‘carnation revolution’.10 The fall of the dictatorship brought about by the revolution was accompanied by a somewhat turbulent decolonization process which naturally altered the framework for relations between Portugal and its former colonial territories in Africa. The Lusophone African populations’ social construction of images and representations is still deeply marked by this historical memory. This long history of submission and colonial occupation is equally present in the selfrepresentation and identity built by the African immigrant or descendant. As far as the immigration from Lusophone African countries is concerned, a number of authors have divided the twentieth century into three distinct periods (Vasconcelos 2012; Machado 2009; Pires 2010). The first stage comprises the labour migration during the 1960 decade, still under colonial rule. This migratory wave, mostly from Cape Verde, was marked by an influx into the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), mostly absorbed by the

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demand for a labour force in construction. The beginning of a second stage can be traced to the decolonization period, after the 1974 revolution. This was an unstable and very peculiar period due to the political shifts taking place. Thus, we see a massive influx of the so-called returnees; families of people of Portuguese origin living in the former colonies. The near five hundred thousand returnees that entered Portugal were a group comprised of a large number of ‘white’ colonials, technical and administrative personnel, who since the 1940s had been migrating mainly to Angola and Mozambique. Approximately forty per cent of this community had been born in Africa, both of Portuguese ascendance or other (African, Asian, etc.). The last great migratory wave, which included many of those who now fit into the category of ‘young Afro-descendants’, started at the end of the 1980s. While the circulation of people had previously been politically motivated in connection to the independence of former colonies, this new stage was marked by a migration that was essentially economically driven.11 This was a labour migration that had been boosted by a period of strong economic growth witnessed in Portugal after its admission into the European Economic Community (1986). This period of considerable prosperity actually brought about the arrival not only of immigrants from the PALOP12 countries (particularly from Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea-Bissau), but also from Brazil, though on a smaller scale, from countries like Ukraine and Romania. Throughout this last stage, the proportional weight of the African migrant community has decreased due to the growth of other migrant communities, mainly the Brazilian, which in the decade of 2000 had the strongest representation. Currently, the population of African origin, as well as its descendants, constitutes a relevant segment of the population living in Portugal, especially when considering certain geographical districts within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). For the present discussion, it is important that we focus on this last stage of African migration in greater detail, insofar as those who currently make up what is commonly referred to as the ‘second generation’ are essentially a result of this last migratory wave. Machado (1999) speaks of ‘immigration regions’ rather than country of immigration, since the levels of attraction and reception vary considerably within the same country. The LMA has been a particularly attractive region during this period, followed at a distance by the Oporto Metropolitan Area (OMA) and the Algarve region. In the LMA, immigrants of African origin initially settled in improvised or clandestine neighbourhoods scattered throughout different suburban areas, constituting what is commonly described as ‘shanty towns or slums’.13 These fluxes were supported by family and ethnic solidarity networks, with the resulting effect of creating ethnic enclaves or ghettoes, some of which were strongly marked by the predominance of populations with a common national origin. These neighbourhoods were typically defined by precarious housing conditions



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and lack of basic sanitation. Added to the poor living conditions, these populations presented a host of socio-economic and cultural characteristics that cast them onto the fringes of social exclusion. The vast majority of these immigrants possessed low educational levels and were employed as unskilled labour, mostly as construction workers (men) or domestic workers (women). Not surprisingly, from very early on these neighbourhoods started being perceived as problematic and dangerous in the eyes of the media and the pubic powers. The notion of ethnic and social ghettos became a kind of identity mark for many of the youths who were born and raised in those areas, faced not only with precarious living conditions, but also having to carry the burden of a social label placed on them by the hosting country. As a solution to what came to be perceived as a social problem during the decade of 1990 the Portuguese state, supported by the European Union, initiated the so-called PER (Special Program of Relocation). This programme envisaged the eradication of slums before 2000. Despite having partially achieved its goal, the programme failed to abolish this kind of neighbourhood completely, and until very recently it could still be found in the LMA. On the other hand, the relocation programme did not solve the ‘ethnic ghetto’ effect that besieged some of these neighbourhoods. The social housing projects built to replace the old shanty towns remained located in peripheral areas, consisting in cheaply constructed, poor-quality housing blocs surrounded by unkempt public spaces and in many cases still marked by a phenomenon of ‘ethnicization’ that alternated between ethnical homogenization or the concentration of different ethnic minorities (African, gypsy, etc.) The problem of young African immigrant descendants has been treated as a phenomenon of the increasingly multicultural post-colonial framework. Phenomena such as globalization, the intensification of translocal networks, increased mobility of people and goods, have made it increasingly difficult to equate the relationship between territory, culture and ethnic group (Hannerz 1996; Appadurai 2004). Ethnic identities have thus ceased to be considered as given facts, instead becoming a source of doubt, ambiguity, negotiation and symbolic conflict; this fact is all the more obvious amongst young immigrant descendants living in the hosting countries. Several studies on ‘black youths’ (immigrants and immigrant descendants) conducted over the last decades in the Portuguese territory reveal just how problematic identity issues can be in a context where multiple, and often conflicting, cultural references converge (Machado 1999; Rosales et al. 2009; Martins 2009). In such cases, the symbolic space of reference is transcultural and marked by various cultural fluxes, and by hybrid and miscegenated references (which also mix in with products and references circulating globally). This does not prevent the development in such settings of certain ‘identity politics’ (Perry 2008) that seek to rehabilitate an ethnic and cultural identity

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which is strongly stigmatized by the hosting communities. Within this framework, we find different examples of such cultural promotion initiatives, namely by means of certain hybrid cultural forms of expression that either evoke ancestral practices (batuque, mornas, etc.) or reveal creative forms of appropriation and reinvention of global references (hip-hop) as well as new artistic manifestations (kuduru, etc.).

Black protest rap The origins of the so-called hip-hop culture14 date back to the beginning of the 1970s, in the city of New York, more specifically in the South Bronx (Rose 1994; Perkins 1996; Bennett 2000). Despite its concrete geographical and historical origin, hip-hop outgrew the local sphere and endured over time. The commercialization of some of its strains (particularly rap music) certainly played a decisive role in the globalization of hip-hop, but also gave rise to an internal debate regarding its authenticity (Stapleton 1998; Bennett 2000; Forman 2002; Clay 2003). Although the presence of hip-hop culture may be relatively recent in Portugal,15 we may identify different stages of development, characterized not only by obvious external influences, particularly from the USA, but also by the social and political context of the country and the development of a music industry (both nationally and internationally) around rap (Simões 2010). The first stage starts in the early 1980s with the first contacts with hip-hop and extends until the beginning of the 1990s, with the development of hip-hop as a ‘movement’ and the emergence of the first generation of MCs, DJs and graffiti writers. At the beginning of the 1990s, a few organized activities and specific dissemination channels start to emerge on a regular basis. Apart from certain media dissemination, hip-hop has been always characterized by the creation of less visible circuits, also known as ‘underground’. The second stage continues the institutionalization process of the ‘movement’ started earlier and it’s characterized by considerable media exposure of rap music, a fact not completely at odds with the social and political context lived in the country at that period. From 1994 onwards begins what has been considered a period of wide exposure through the media of national hip-hop (mainly of rap music),16 which would essentially continue until 1996. The third corresponds, on the one hand, to a return to ‘invisibility’ and, on the other hand, to the development of important underground structures. In the years that followed this vast exposure, hip-hop lost some of its public visibility. Between 1996 and 1998, the emerging structures and practices basically become more specialized and directed at the underground circuits. After the experience with the major



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music labels (which many consider a failure), musicians tend to manage their own careers, turning to independent production (Fradique 2003). From 1998, the national hip-hop scene starts to be reconfigured. At the musical level this period is marked by the recording of mixtapes as well as professional, industrially produced, author’s editions. This period also saw the emergence of MCs and DJs from other regions in the country, some of whom were the first generation of practitioners. Finally, a fourth stage, which begins in early 2000, with the establishment of rap as a segment of the independent music market, and the growth (with considerable changes) of graffiti and breakdance, which essentially continues until present day. This is also the moment when rap regains media attention, breaking out from the obscurity in which it had been enveloped. The year of 2001 is also a turning point in musical publishing: not only do some author’s editions manage to be distributed by major labels, but other professional independent labels also emerge at this time. The following years essentially continue the trend: institutional activity and support keeps in pace with the events promoted within the field, just as the commercial industry and media exposure run side by side with the activity of the underground circuit. While this double standard attests on the one hand to the internal growth of this field (the increasing number of performers and fans, as well as of events and their spreading out throughout the country), on the other hand it confirms its own heterogeneity, thus serving also to explain the relative dispersion (and fragmenting) that we can currently see occurring in the field. Among the existing rap genres, ‘protest’ rap, also known as underground, political, combat or intervention rap has assumed a particularly relevant place in the Portuguese context (Simões, Nunes and Campos 2005; Campos and Simões 2014).17 While not being an exclusively black music, this genre is closely linked to Black communities, also being one of the genres with greater impact historically, though not from its commercial or media success, but rather from its ability to conquer large numbers of followers (amongst both music performers and consumers) and because it institutes a category with a specific symbolic value. It’s the music of diaspora. Every African lives in a diaspora […] the musical part itself comes from the Afro-American networks […] and the political message starts with the people who are on the Diasporas […]. (Young black MC) The symbolic significance of black youth rap in Portugal is closely connected with the importance that African communities have gained in the last four decades, namely in the major urban centres of Lisbon and Oporto. We define black youth rap as a musical genre which is usually created by Afro-descendant youth and, in most cases, has an important

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ideological and identity function, defining a political agenda based on issues of stigmatization, ethnic and class discrimination (Campos and Simões 2014; Simões 2013). This is basically an amateur or semi-amateur18 musical genre produced with scarce means and being totally dependent on small locally based circuits. Therefore, this is a product that seldom reaches wide dissemination and is usually ignored by the music industry and the media. It is not strange, for that reason, that particular strategies of communication, circulation and consumption have been developed for its musical products in order to maintain its existence and cultural consistence. From its origins, it is common to find a rhetorical edifice pointing to ethnic and classist issues in the protest rap produced by youths who feel in some way excluded from Portuguese society and part of the underprivileged classes. Those rappers who identify themselves with intervention or politicized rap tend to rebel against the instituted powers and the diffuse notion of a dominant society comprised of the majority white population. I would like to see … I would like to know that tomorrow my son will not be subjected to this system, know what I’m saying? – this capitalist shit, this racist shit, and this classist shit […] he won’t be the same nigger, the same poor dude, the same guy who busts ass at McDonald’s, or the yard, or the car factory […] I thirst for change, and I think that the people seek out my CD are those who want to change something; the rest will only be able to relate to it up to a point. (Young Black MC) One of this musical format’s main features is the narrative, and often autobiographical, nature of the lyrics, which relate everyday life in the neighbourhood, and the problems faced by its population (police violence, discrimination, poverty, etc.). Despite the obvious connection to the local space of the neighbourhood, there are also bonds between rappers from different districts of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. This relationship is explained by the strong sense of unity in the experience of common problems and situations, which triggers a kind of collective solidarity19 around something that is acknowledged as a unique musical (and cultural) movement. For rap in general, and for its black variant in particular, the street serves a double function: a concrete one and a metaphorical one. This is especially clear in the Portuguese case. On the one hand, most of rap’s more basic phenomena take place in the informal setting of the street or the neighbourhood (beatboxing,20 rhyming, jamming,21 etc.). It is therefore a distinctly localized activity, linked with the collective space of the neighbourhood and its inhabitants. In a more metaphorical sense, the street (and the neighbourhood) evokes the daily experiences narrated in the lyrics found in this kind of rap (Forman 2002). The street, therefore, is also a symbolic space standing for the harshness of everyday life in



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these stigmatized neighbourhoods (poverty, police violence, ghettoization, ethnical exclusion, etc.).22 The dissemination of a narrative with collective features strengthens bonds of identity across a generation that shares a common experience and faces the same problems. Thus, most of these MCs feel imbued with a political mission to alert and raise awareness amongst their companions, turning rap into an instrument of empowerment serving ethnic (and class) identity policies. Music awakens people, that’s what it does in the first place […] I really dig jumping from music to that kind of stuff, you know, going down to the town hall, visiting the hoods – I go around all the hoods – I really dig visiting schools ’n stuff. We have a hip-hop class here […] we do workshops, and it’s like, the first half hour we always have a debate on some issue. You say ‘O.K., today we’re going to talk about education’. It’s all just kids you know, from like 14, 15, 16, to 20, 22. […] And it’s an open conversation, each one will say what education means to them, and then we conduct the debate: so do you think you get a multicultural education? – ‘no, ’cause in school I don’t learn about my country’s history, or my origins’ – that kind of stuff, see? and they talk. Then after that first bit, which can go on for an hour, I say ‘now each of you will write down a topic, a lyric, a music, about this subject – but just about this subject, we don’t do freestyle, or whatever, it has to be about that subject only. Each day we have a subject. Then at the end we record mixtapes, and then we go around, put it out on the street. […] Those debates are about ‘bringing awareness into music, and bringing music into awareness’ (Young black MC) Yeah, taking them out from there, taking out all the negative vibes around them and putting them into music. After the music, showing them other things, giving them awareness – and getting them to spread that awareness to others. […] most of them in our workshops can sing. And then others will come in … this one dude arrives, and he’s just good for nothin’. Now he’s always jamming ’n stuff. There’s another one who didn’t know how to rhyme, but now he’s always putting words down about all this stuff we talk about … this is work, it’s not like showbiz – getting a kid in here today and putting out an MC tomorrow morning, y’know? But they’re waking up, see, and now he’s someone who’ll stop to read a book, or who can talk about stuff ‘cause he’s heard about it, and it turns out he always thought about that stuff but he never had no one to talk about it […] – They begin to change, with music and everything that comes with it they are transformed. [...] rap is music, but for us it also has an economic, cultural and political side. It’s a political instrument, and it’s a cultural form of expression, but then it also plays

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an economical role; you can’t be free if you still depend on an economical structure where you have no power. (Young Black MC) This style of rap is deemed to harbour the original legacy of hip-hop culture, and is therefore linked with this culture’s more authentic or genuine feature. The producers and fans of this sub-genre, who assume hip-hop ethnicization, emerge as the guardians of historical legacy, as the representatives of a past which mythicizes the idea of ‘blackness’ and the image of an original ‘Africanism’. Given its more narrow, ethnicist and classist character, this kind of speech is believed to comprise a rhetoric of awareness and action, whose targets are the people who can relate to the experiences it communicates, and therefore not meant for the general public or the ‘dominant society’. The Hip-hop here was born with the second generation African community, and it shares common features with all the other countries where hip-hop emerged … it helps you to channel your rebellion, to speak up about certain issues, about how you feel, about what you go through in your everyday life in the hood; about your roots, your family … the stuff you come across. (Young white DJ ) Particularly relevant within Portuguese hip-hop culture is a subgenre of black underground rap known as ‘Creole rap’, mostly connected to the largest immigrant community in Portugal, the Cape Verdean population. The ethnic identity is reflected in the (partial or exclusive) use of Creole as their singing language. Sharing a common dialect strengthens their ethnic and cultural identity, enabling a form of communication that is at the same time restricted (only understood by Creole speakers) and widespread, insofar as many Creole products have a global circulation thus existing within a broader translocal space. This aspect is currently enhanced by the use of digital broadcasting networks and media, which, albeit not as evident amongst socio-economically underprivileged segments of the population, is nevertheless still significant (Campos and Simões 2011, 2014).

Conclusion We have shown that the experience of most Afro-descendants living in Portugal is marked by situations of social and ethnic exclusion inasmuch as these communities accumulate a series of potentially stigmatizing traits (low education levels, unqualified jobs, ethnic and residential ghettoization, etc.). The kind of cultural identity that is formed in suburban ethnic boroughs reflects not only an experience of exclusion, but also the ethnic and cultural ambivalences deriving from living in a ‘borderline’ territory (between



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ancestral tradition and the land they were born in). In Portuguese society, skin colour is still a strong identity marker, associated with notions of otherness and foreignness. These prejudices are aggravated by a collective imagery still containing remnants of the colonial past and ethnic hierarchy that defined how the Europeans related with Africans from the former colonies. Anyone who has a typically African phenotype, regardless of their nationality, is symbolically represented as being ‘African’, even if they were actually born in Portugal. These kinds of situations find an echo in many cultural forms of expression created by young afro-descendants, bearing considerably on their public manifestations. This is not an exclusively Portuguese phenomenon (Huq 2003; Best and Kellner 2001; Simões 2010). As far as rap is concerned, there seems to be a common trait to many local trends: the fact that this musical style becomes a means of expression for the more vulnerable and stigmatized social groups, namely the ethnic minorities. Underground, political or intervention rap has remained a relevant musical genre until today, continuing to play an essential identity and symbolic role for many groups of young people. In the particular case presented here, we have shown how these elements work at the local level, in a very precise geographical territory, as instruments of social and cultural empowerment for young people caught between various constellations of disadvantage (Bendit 2011). We have argued that through these artistic works, youths learn first of all to develop mechanisms for reversing stigma and challenging dominant representations about their native communities and their neighbourhood; secondly, it helps them to make their own agenda and to participate in the architecture of a public sphere of communication that eludes mainstream circuits; thirdly, it gives them a civic and political role, and finally it provides them with unique artistic and intellectual skills.

Notes  1 This work was supported by national funds (FCT/MEC) through Centro Interdisciplinar de Ciências Sociais CICS.NOVA (UID/SOC/04647/2013) and post-doctoral research grant (SFRH/BPD/99671/2014)  2 The first research project began in 2001, and focused on an analysis of hip-hop culture in the Lisbon Metropolitan area (Simões, Nunes and Campos 2005). Two other projects would later be carried out, one by Campos (2010) on graffiti and street art in Lisbon, and another by Simões on the appropriation of digital media and the Internet by practitioners of the hip-hop culture (Simões 2010). More recently, Campos and Simões took part in an international project on inclusion and digital participation, giving them the

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chance to study the specific case of (protest and political) black rap in greater detail (Campos and Simões 2011, 2014). All of these projects were essentially qualitative, with a strong ethnographic basis.  3 In contrast, according to Negus, regional repertoire refers to artists directed to certain audiences that are circumscribed to a given region (Latin America, Southeast Asia), and domestic repertoire is exclusively directed to a national territory. Neither of them occupies top priority in the publishing, distribution and promotion strategies of phonographic labels (Negus 1996b: 183).  4 A clear example of this is fado music and its connection with specific historical districts of Lisbon (mainly Alfama and Mouraria), which results in the same mystifying notion that identifies the place of origin with the idea of an authentic style, free of the influences and constraints of cultural globalization and massification. As a musical genre that has been widely disseminated, not just nationally, but also throughout the Portuguese diaspora and integrated in the commercial circuits of world music, it nevertheless requires that construction of origin, whether connected to the aforementioned specific historical districts or the city of Lisbon itself, in order to gain legitimacy and recognition as a secular musical (and cultural) form.  5 According to Cohen (1997), the innovative role of migrant groups has been underestimated in the academic investigations due to their somewhat inflexible views on the authenticity of these cultures, only considering developments occurring in the country of origin as authentic representations of migrant groups (Cohen 1997, quoted in Baily and Collyer 2006: 171).  6 The quotation marks are used here to signal that it is understood to be a rhetorical construction.  7 The co-opting of black artists’ music by the phonographic industry has been studied, amongst others, by Chapple and Garofalo (1977) and Cashmore (1997).  8 At a given point, Africans represented as much as 10 per cent of the Lisbon population.  9 This refers to the colonial territories of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Principe and Guinea-Bissau. 10 On 25 April 1974. 11 Even though we cannot ignore or minimize the fact that some of these countries, like Angola or Mozambique, underwent a period of civil war that lasted decades and caused the migration of many communities. 12 PALOP is a Portuguese acronym that stands for Portuguese speaking African countries. 13 These neighbourhoods were not exclusive to these immigrants, given that slums existed since the 1960s, many of them resulting from internal migration flows from rural to urban areas. 14 What has been conventionally termed hip-hop culture comprises three different facets, which in turn congregate four major activities: graffiti (the visual element); rap (musical element) – which includes MCing (an activity



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performed by the MC – master of ceremonies, rapper or rap singer) – and DJing (the activity performed by the DJ) – and finally breakdance (gestural element). 15 In Portugal the first insights into this emerging phenomenon appeared in the late 1990s as a consequence of the increasing visibility of rap music in the media. 16 In 1994 the multinational label Sony Music released the rap album entitled Rapublica. This was a huge event and is considered a landmark in the story of Portuguese hip-hop, transforming Portuguese rap into a music product (Fradique 2003). 17 In symbolic terms, this style is opposed to mainstream or commercial rap, a musical category with negative connotations for those who define themselves as representatives of genuine rap (implying more politicized rap). 18 This does not preclude the existence of a few cases of relative commercial success, usually when some of these rappers achieve some degree of prominence outside of this strict circuit. 19 Nevertheless, episodes of rivalry amongst neighbourhoods or metropolitan areas are also known, especially during rap’s early period, when there was a clash between Tagus’s north and south bank areas (Fradique 2013) 20 An element of rap consisting in the vocal production of beats (which set the music’s rhythm) and mostly associated with improvisation. 21 Jam sessions are gatherings between several rappers and DJs resulting in a session of improvisation. The circumstances and places where they take place are variable, although the street and other public spaces are the most common. 22 Despite the obvious relevance of territory and of the neighbourhood’s symbolic space, however, more recent studies (Campos and Simões 2014; Simões 2010) have pointed out the growing importance of the role played by digital media in the production and circulation of rap’s more alternative and less commercial strains. The Internet thus seems to provide a means with considerable impact on how ‘black rap’ is produced and consumed.

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Bennett, A. and R. Peterson (eds) (2004), Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Best, S. and D. Kellner (2001), ‘Rap, Revolta negra e diferenciação racial’. Revista Comunicação e Linguagens 30: 201–24. Campos, R. (2010), Porque pintamos a cidade? Uma abordagem etnográfica ao graffiti urbano. Lisbon: Fim de Século Campos, R. and J. Simões (2011), ‘Participação e inclusão digital nas margens: uma abordagem exploratória das práticas culturais de jovens afro-descendentes. O caso do rap negro’. Media & Jornalismo 19: 117–33. Campos, R. and J. Simões, (2014), ‘Digital Participation at the Margins: Online Circuits of Rap Music by Portuguese Afro-descendant Youth’. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 21 (1): 87–106. Cashmore, E. (1997), The Black Culture Industry. London: Routledge. Cidra, R. (2002), ‘Ser Real: o rap na construção de identidades na área metropolitana de Lisboa’. Ethnologia 12–14: 189–222. Clay, A. (2003), ‘Keepin’ It Real. Black Youth, Hip-Hop Culture, and Black Identity’. American Behavioral Scientist 46 (10): 1346–58. Cohen, R. (1997), Global Diasporas, London: UCL Press. Cohen, S. (1991), Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Finnegan, R. (1989), The Hidden Musicians: Music Making in an English Town, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forman, M. (2002), The ‘Hood Comes First. Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Fradique, T. (2003), Fixar o Movimento: Representações da Música Rap em Portugal, Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote. Friedman, J. (1994), Cultural Identity & Global Process, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Frith, S. (1981), Sound Effects: Youth. Leisure and the Politics of Rock, New York: Pantheon. Frith, S. (1996), ‘Music and Identity’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, 108–27, London: Sage. Frith, S. (2000), ‘The Discourse of World Music’, in G. Born and D. Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and its Others, 305–23, Berkeley: University of California Press. Gilroy, P. (1990), ‘Sounds Authentic: Black Music, Ethnicity and the Challenge of a Changing same’. Black Music Research Journal 10 (2): 128–31. Gilroy, P. (1993), The Black Atlantic, Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso. Hall, S. (1991), ‘Old and New Identities: Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World System, 41–68, London: MacMillan. Hall, S. (1992), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’ in S. Hall and T. McGrew (eds), Modernity and its Futures, 274–316, Cambridge: Polity. Hannerz, U. (1996), Transnational Connections – Culture, People, Places, London and New York: Routledge. Huq, R. (2003), ‘Global Youth Cultures in Localized Spaces: The Case of the UK New Asian Dance Music and French Rap’, in D. Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds), The Post-Subcultures Reader, 195–208, New York: Berg.



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Kahn-Harris, K. (2000), ‘Roots?: The Relationship Between the Global and the Local Within the Global Extreme Metal Scene’. Popular Music 19 (1): 13–30. Langlois, T. (1996), ‘The Local and the Global in North-African Popular Music’. Popular Music 15 (3): 259–73. Lull, J. (1995), Media, Communication, Culture: a Global Approach, Cambridge: Polity. Machado, F. (1999) ‘Imigrantes e estrutura social’. Sociologia Problemas e Práticas, 29: 51–76 Machado, F. L. (2009), ‘Quarenta anos de imigração africana: Um balanço’. Ler História, 56: 135–65. Martiniello, M. and J-M. Lafleur, (2008), ‘Ethnic Minorities’ Cultural and Artistic Practices as Forms of Political Expression: A Review of the Literature and a Theoretical Discussion on Music’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (8): 1191–215. Martins, P. (2009), ‘Cabo-Verdeanos em Lisboa: manifestações expressivas e reconstrução identitária’. Horizontes Antropológicos 31: 241–62. Mercer, K. (1994), Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies, London: Routledge. Negus, K. (1996a), Popular Music in Theory, Cambridge: Polity. Negus, K. (1996b), ‘Globalization and the Music of the Public Spheres’, in S. Braman and A. Sreberni-Mohammadi (eds), Globalization, Communication and Transnational Civil Society, 179–95, New Jersey: Hampton Press. Perkins, W. (ed.) (1996), Droppin’ Science. Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Perry, B. (2008), ‘Identity Politics’, in R. Schraefer (ed.) Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society, 676–8, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Pires, R. P. (2010), Portugal: Atlas das migrações internacionais, Lisbon: Tinta-da-China. Regev, M. (1996), ’Musica Mizrakhit, Israeli Rock and National Culture in Israel’. Popular Music 15 (3): 275–84. Rosales, M. et al. (2009), Crescer fora de água? Expressividades, posicionamentos e negociações identitárias de jovens de origem africana na região metropolitana de Lisboa, Lisbon: ACIDI. Rose, T. (1994), Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, London: Wesleyan University Press. Simões, J. (2010), Entre a rua e a internet. Um estudo sobre o hip-hop português, Lisbon: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais. Simões, J., P. Nunes and R. Campos (2005), ‘Entre subculturas e neo-tribos: propostas de análise dos circuitos culturais juvenis. O caso da música rap e do hip-hop’. Fórum Sociológico 13/14: 171–89. Simões, J. A. (2013), ‘Entre percursos e discursos identitários: etnicidade, classe e género na cultura hip-hop’, Revista Estudos Feministas, vol. 21, nº 1, pp. 107–28. Slobin, M. (1992), ‘Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach’. Ethnomusicology, 36 (1): 1–87. Stapleton, K. (1998), ‘From the Margins to Mainstream: The Political Power of Hip-hop’. Media, Culture & Society 20: 219–34.

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Stokes, M. (1994), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg. Straw, W. (1991), ‘Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. Cultural Studies 5 (3): 368–88. Tagg. P. (1989), ‘Open-Letter: “Black Music”, “Afro-American Music” and “European Music”’. Popular Music 8 (3): 285–98. Vasconcelos, J. (2012), ‘Africanos e Afrodescendentes no Portugal Contemporâneo: Redefinindo práticas, projetos e identidades’. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos, 24. Available online: http://cea.revues.org/627 (accessed 3 February 2013). Wallis, R. and K. Malm (1984), Big Sounds From Small Peoples, New York: Pendragon. Wittman, F. (2011), ‘The Global–local Nexus: Popular Music Studies and the Case of Rastafari Culture in West Africa’. Critical Arts 25 (2): 150–74

CHAPTER SEVEN

Music: A tool for sociopolitical participation among descendants of immigrants in Buenos Aires and Bilbao? Natália Gavazzo, Sónia Pereira and Ana Estevens

Introduction This article departs from the idea that art is an important vehicle of social transformation that can trigger critical questioning and shifts in social and power relations, anticipating and reflecting substantial changes in society (Marcuse 2007: 10). We propose that music can be a key element in such processes, particularly when we talk about immigration, public space or ‘integration’ (Turino 1993). Music-making and listening, in the context of immigration, is used both to recreate the culture of the past, to remind the migrant of the place where she/he came from and to affirm her/his ethnic identity in societies where they are or feel marginalized (Martiniello and Lafleur 2008: 1198), but can also, and often does, include the creation of new musical forms which constitutes a reaction to the new place of settlement and corresponds to a re-creation of identities (Baily and Collier 2006: 174; Turino 1993: 3). This is especially evident in second or third generations, born and/or brought up in the new place (Baily and Collier 2006: 174). However, music is not only ‘culture’ and/or art, but is also used as a means of political expression (Martiniello and Lafleur 2008: 1191). Indeed, in the context of immigration, music can

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also be looked at from a point of view which considers its political significance as an expression of cultural activism, contestation and resistance. Departing from this framework, we wish to discuss and explore how music-making, performance and consumption take shape within urban dynamics influenced by migration processes. We are particularly interested in examining music-making and its (differentiated) performances in public spaces as a form of political expression, which reflects power relations and creates spaces for political claims, resistance and alternative ideologies, which gives visibility to issues pertaining to young first-generation migrants as well as descendents of migrants. We propose an understanding of contemporary political concerns about real processes of integration through the analysis of musical acts in the context of urban immigration. For this discussion, we draw on the case of young Bolivian immigrants/descendants of immigrants in two distinct cities. One in the ‘Global North’: Bilbao, located in the Basque Country, Spain, and one in the ‘Global South’: Buenos Aires, Argentina, both important destinations of Bolivian immigration. The interest of exploring musical practices among groups with the same national origin but in different places of settlement has already been highlighted by other authors (Baily 1999). The form and the distance of migration matters beyond common national origins and we bring this to light in our analysis also. Some questions to explore are: How does spatial mobility affect migrants’ cultural and everyday practices? How is music used as an instrument that both highlights and contests practices of integration in local urban contexts and transnationally? How is music transformed and recreated in destination places in order to incorporate the socio-urban challenges of the several marginalized and stigmatized ‘ethnic neighbourhoods’? Which mechanisms, in the domain of music, are found to contest and resist exclusionary practices? Can the music of migrants and migrants’ descendants play an active role in the processes of socio-spatial innovation, understood as a process that contributes to changes in power relations and promotes social justice (Moulaert et al. 2005; MacCallum et al. 2009)? This chapter proposes two main arguments in regard to this: i) that music-making and listening in contexts of immigration serves to remember and to re-live the place of origin and affirms the migrants’ ‘original’ ethnic identities through the re-enactment of memories and identity; and ii) that the (re)creation of new music styles and performance could be seen as the result of experiences faced in the ‘new’ place (or immigration context). Both arguments serve to highlight the idea that music could be defined as a means of participation among second-generation immigrants. Data used in this analysis includes, on the one hand, semi-structured interviews conducted with three Bolivian music groups in Bilbao1 (involving contacts with seven musicians), attending music concerts where Bolivians played, and also a celebration of St. Cecilia organized by Bolivian musicians in Bilbao. On the other hand, we analysed diverse material from long-term

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ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Buenos Aires, specially semi-structured interviews with two very different young Bolivian musicians, and observations of several events in which musical practices are the centre of attention (from the Inti Raymi – or Andean New Year – to the parade called ‘Bolivian integration in Argentina’ or the celebration of the Immigrant Day).

Theoretical framework: Immigrants, art and music in urban contexts Much has been written about the relationship between artistic practices and integration, establishing, at the same time, a connection with larger socio-territorial innovation processes (Markusen 2006; Pratt 2008; André and Carmo 2010; Klein and Harrisson 2011). In the context of contemporary cities, the arts have played a key role in deepening processes of social cohesion. Public art, for example, has been considered especially relevant for the promotion of individual and collective self-esteem, to the (re)construction of local and social identities and to strengthening the sense of belonging – a crucial condition of urban social cohesion (Miles 1997). The arts enhance and allow the search for a future outside the more traditional routes (Panelli 2004), resonant movements that bring to light mechanisms that are otherwise relegated to invisibility within processes of urban development (Ruby 2002; Smiers 2005). Artistic creation can be one way of finding new answers and highlighting essential elements for better urban development. Moreover, artistic activities can also become a means to counter or reverse the reproduction of inequality and disadvantage, by constituting a stimulus to increasing personal and collective confidence, collective learning and critical thinking and contributing towards the elimination of the negative connotations associated with certain communities and places (André and Abreu 2006, 2009). Regarding the context of immigration, in particular, artistic creation plays a central role considering its unique ability to (re)construct collective memories and identities and to facilitate the communication of deep values and feelings (Smiers 2005; Turino 1993). It is especially relevant for the promotion of individual and collective self-esteem and to the (re)construction of the place of destination. In the words of one Bolivian musician: After arriving here we started making [music] motivated by the people, because of the demand, because many people that come here they love their own music, and to listen here to the themes that we have always liked [from Bolivia]… it does not matter where the music is from [in Bolivia] but if it is ‘national’ you receive it with all your heart. (Román in Bilbao)

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In the urban contexts, where immigrants reside, their artistic production has the potential to help build bridges and to facilitate encounters between different populations sharing the same urban space. Popular arts can thus become a means of communication and dialogue between different individuals and groups sharing the same city or neighbourhood (Martiniello 2014: 6). At the same time, it contributes towards raising a positive recognition of the ‘other’, at least in regard to cultural and artistic practices brought with ‘them’ from their places of origin. This potential for dialogue and positive recognition has indeed taken shape in local ‘integration’ policies based on approaches of ‘intercultural cities’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’, as has been the case in Bilbao, as will become evident. When we talk about music the relationship is more intense and its examples are abundant. Indeed, music is a largely shared process between the artist and the audience which contributes towards generating collective feelings, emotions and identities. As Lee Rubin (2005: 172) puts it: ‘… music gives a huge amount of power to the audience, often blurring the lines between performer and artist to a degree that is unique (and likely to remain unique unless people find a literary or painterly equivalent of singing in the shower)’. Music, along with language or writing, constitutes an important pillar of migrant communities and a representative and structural component of their cultural identities. Martin Stokes (2003) notes, for example, that building relationships through music stimulates stronger flows between origin and destination countries. Migrants bring with them their cultural heritage and, sometimes, it is through that which they (re)construct their bases in the new place. For Cantador (1999), music can constitute a reinvention and a re-appropriation of the places of origin. However, music can go beyond searching for reference spaces in the new places (Barbosa 2011; Turino 1993). The critique of the established system, understood as repressive or segregated, is another of the most discussed aspects. Hip-hop or Rap, for example, are music styles that often appear as forms of contestation, struggle or resistance. This way music plays a key role towards emancipation and citizenship (Barbosa 2011; Fradique 2003; Kunin 2009). Importantly, the politics of rap music also involves a contestation over public space, ‘… it is not just what one says, it is where one can say it, how others react to what one says, and whether one has the means with which to command public space’ (Rose 1991: 276–7). Social practices include a complex network of symbols that are recognized by the members of the collective and that, over time, are regarded as specific to certain social subjects. These cultural symbols are manifested in the popular arts in the forms of poetry, music and traditional dances, as well as various aspects of the arts and industries which complement the traditional imagery of the group (Güemes 2013). Migrants’ music groups use the native language as an expression form that reveals some notable features: self-representation, referential, identity, brand of difference and,

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once again, memory. When we hear a certain sound, we associate it to a particular musical style or to certain social, economic and ethnic features. Immediately we make a mental reconstruction of the human or of the festive landscape in which it is produced. Thus, the use of the native language also reproduces the image of a particular socio-cultural group. At the same time, the use of sounds based on traditional musical roots or rhythms of their country of origin is one way to show specific identities. Against the backdrop of this theoretical framework, we will seek to examine in subsequent sections the construction of memory and contestation through the ways in which music operates daily as an industrial practice, aesthetic practice and social practice (Lee Rubin 2005: 168) in the lives of migrants and their descendants in two urban settings: Bilbao and Buenos Aires.

Cities and their immigrants: Bolivian immigrants in Bilbao and Buenos Aires and city-level ‘integration’ policies It is important to build comparisons between cities that receive migratory flows from the same origin because while the differences show the particularities of the local contexts in shaping the life of immigrants and their families, the commonalities help to think about the best policies for their integration from a wider point of view. In this chapter we look at the experiences of Bolivians living in Buenos Aires and Bilbao. Despite the fact that both Argentina and Spain are significant destinations for Bolivian immigrants, at the same time migration histories and experiences differ and city-level approaches to immigration are also distinct. In Spain, a rather open discourse focuses on intercultural urban policies, which contrasts with Argentina’s uneasy attitude towards immigrants from its neighbouring countries.

Bolivian immigration in Bilbao In the context of Europe, Spain is considered a ‘new immigration country’, whose immigration flows experienced an important acceleration in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Between 2000 and 2009 the foreignborn population in the country rose from 1.5 million to 6.5 million (OECD 2011). This strong increase was mostly linked to high labour market demand generated by economic growth (between the mid-1990s and 2007) that was accompanied by a shrinking native working population (Arango

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2013: 3). In tune with the overall context, Bolivian migration in Spain is a relatively recent phenomenon that took shape mostly throughout the 2000s. The number of Bolivians registered in their respective municipality of residency in Spain (corresponding to the compulsory empadronamiento [local population registration] regardless of residency status) grew from 13,517 in January 2002 to 242,496 in January 2006 (Parella and Cavalcanti 2009). Bolivian immigration to Spain is notable for its large proportion of females (of 242,496 Bolivians empadronados [registered in the respective municipality of residency] in Spain, for example in January 2008, 56 per cent were women [Parella and Cavalcanti 2009]), as well as for a strong presence of Cochabambinos2 (Gadea et al. 2009: 39). Irregularity is pointed by Tapia Ladino (2010: 110) as another distinctive feature of Bolivian migration in Spain. In 2013, data from Bolivian consulates in Spain indicated the presence of 190,000 Bolivian nationals in the country, the largest in Europe.3 The migratory processes that have put Spain on the map of Bolivian international migration are interconnected with changes taking place in other destinations of Bolivian migration such as Argentina and the United States (Hinojosa 2008; Tapia Ladino 2010: 115). At the same time, the start of the 2000s constituted a very unfavourable context in Bolivia itself, with strong social unrest and instability that brought to a halt the aspirations of qualified segments of the population and of small proprietors, leading to emigration (Tapia Ladino 2010: 115). In the Comunidad Autonoma del País Vasco (Euskadi), 428 Bolivian nationals were registered in 2003, in data from INE published by the Immigration Observatory (Ikuspegi). The majority (66 per cent) were women. By 2012, the number had risen to 11,718 consequently turning this group into the third-largest foreign nationality in this autonomous community (after Moroccans and Romanians). The majority of these still consisted of women (61 per cent), albeit revealing an increased presence of men. The majority of Bolivians (82 per cent) reside in the province of Bizkaia (whose capital is Bilbao), where they find themselves as the second-largest foreign group (after Romanians). The highest concentrations of Bolivians are found in the municipalities of Bilbao and Getxo (together corresponding to 49 per cent of Bolivians in Euskadi) but without specific concentrations configuring visible ‘ethnic neighbourhoods’. The highest percentage, by far, of immigrants in Greater Bilbao is found in San Francisco, an inner-city neighbourhood (nearly 28 per cent in 2007) (Leonardo et al. 2008) but these immigrants are from different origins. The majority of Bolivians in Euskadi have found employment mostly in low-skilled occupations (51.2 per cent) and in the services sector (81.3 per cent) (EPIE,4 2011) In the same survey it was found that a large proportion of Bolivians (41.4 per cent, the largest share after ‘other Africans’, except Senegalese and Maghrebi) reported feeling social rejection because of their foreign origins,

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race or religion (EPIE 2011: 44). They were also affected in high proportions by family separation (22 per cent) and loneliness/sadness (30 per cent) (EPIE 2011: 44). Some of the children that came with their parents during the boom years of Bolivian migration to Spain are now adolescents and young people coming to terms with the cultural references of their parents in parallel with the processes of inclusion in the context of settlement. However, this appears to be a marginal but growing group, which would require a closer look in the years to come. The same survey mentioned above indicated that, in 2010, nearly 20 per cent of Bolivians were aged 0–16 and 17.2 per cent aged 16–24. Schooling is compulsory in Spain between ages six to sixteen. In the group aged sixteen and above 21.7 per cent are in education. The most important problem facing those in education (mostly for those older than sixteen) is failure at school (nearly 30 per cent). The overall approach to the integration of immigrants in Spain has favoured the ‘principle of interculturality’, despite a certain underlying tone of ‘assimilationism’ (Leonardo et al. 2008: 12). Indeed, Arango (2013: 3) argues that the strong increase in the immigrant population of Spain was not accompanied by significant anxiety or backlash by the ‘native’ population and was met with calm, quiet reception. At the local level in the Basque Country the ‘intercultural’ approach has been largely promoted through city-level policies and initiatives. The two municipalities of Getxo and Bilbao have been active promoters of ‘intercultural’ policies in response to increased diversity generated through migration. The two are founding members of the Spanish Network of Intercultural Cities5 and Bilbao is also a member of the European Network of Intercultural Cities.6 As part of this approach Bilbao participates in the Intercultural Cities programme (a joint initiative between the Council of Europe and the European Commission) and has gone through an Intercultural City Index analysis (Intercultural Cities 2013).7 This provides the policy framework for initiatives taking place at the local level which provide opportunities for immigrant musicians to give live performances and to gain visibility in a public space, even though this occurs under the organization and discipline provided by local authorities for that purpose (see for example Knauer 2008 and her reflection on the spatial configurations of Afro-Cuban expression in New York through rumba music and dance, particularly regarding local disciplining approaches). Examples are: i) Festival ‘Gentes del Mundo’ (World People), which has existed since 2006 and is a project which raises social awareness, aiming to promote cultural knowledge and interactions between the Basque society and the immigrant groups settled in Bilbao; and ii) Getxo Folk, which had its 29th edition in 2013 and annually provides a series of concerts with local and foreign musicians, which in 2012 included a group of Bolivian musicians called ‘Suyana’; and a series

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of locally based fiestas and fiestas interculturales (for example: the Fiesta de la Interculturalidad de Durango). In addition, there are also initiatives of Bolivians themselves, taking place with local support. On 4 August 2013 a series of Bolivian associations with support from the consulate also promoted the participation of Bolivians in Bilbao in the World Meeting of 100 per cent Bolivian Morenada,8 with the aim of achieving a Guinness Record and was a manifestation for world peace and for the respect of Bolivian culture. This event took place in a central public space in Bilbao (El Arenal).

Bolivian immigration in Buenos Aires Within Latin America, Argentina is a special case when it comes to immigration. As Jorge Balán (1982) affirms, in the Southern Cone it is possible to recognize a migratory system in which Argentina could be defined as ‘receptive’ in relation to its neighbouring nations. Immigrants from all over the world have participated in the development and growth of the Argentinean nation since its birth, both as a labour force for the agricultural sector and also – at least for the liberal elites – as a force to ‘civilize’ the native population. Bureaucrats and intellectuals who promoted immigration from Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century thought that European immigrants were going to ‘whiten’ the local population, although the populations they received fell short of these expectations. Although seen as key to modernization and as an important part of the national imagination, many of them suffered high levels of discrimination. In the twenty-first century, Argentina is still perceived and imagined as a ‘nation of immigration’ but now immigrants come from other Latin America countries (reaching almost 70 per cent of the foreign-born population) and are perceived as a ‘browning’ factor. According to the 2010 Census, Bolivian immigrants constitute the second-largest immigrant community in Argentina (with more than 330,000) and are outnumbered only by Paraguayans (with over 550,000). It is estimated that almost 75 per cent of Bolivian emigrants have settled in Argentina. This migration flow can be characterized as having had several different stages. Prior to the 1960s, the migration was concentrated in the border area, supplying labour to sugar and tobacco producers. Subsequently, this immigrant population ‘spread’ throughout the country, labouring in, for example, grape agriculture in Mendoza and for other fruit and vegetable producers in more southerly cities. The growing demand for workers in the construction sector and textile industry in Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires also impacted the growth of this population in those areas. From the 1980s onwards, the migration from Bolivia to Buenos Aires has been a constant and increasing phenomenon;

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in 2010, 55 per cent of Bolivian immigrants in Argentina lived in Buenos Aires (Census data). According to Sassone (2009), it is possible to define ‘Bolivian neighbourhoods’ as ethnic enclaves because they have particular patterns of urban settlement. In enclave areas, this community organizes a wide variety of spaces for meetings, exchanging and remembering such as ferias, religious festivities, national acts and cultural events.9 As Grimson (1999) points out, these events participate in the ethnicization of the nation, meaning that the community defines itself not as a national minority but ‘as an ethnic or cultural minority defined in national terms’. (Grimson 1999: 177). In Grimson’s words, it can be argued that Bolivians display in Buenos Aires a cultural nationalism that works not only to bring migrants from different backgrounds together but also to relate to the greater society that receives them. In addition, ethnic enclaves form economic enclaves, mainly in the textile and construction industries and in small-scale agriculture (Benencia and Karasik 1995). Pereyra (2001) says that, although it is not the largest national immigrant group in Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires, it is the most visible because of many factors such as their migration southward towards the Capital, their importance in construction and domestic work, and certain characteristics of phenotype. The government and the media described in the 1990s a ‘torrent of immigration from nearby countries’ as causing ‘an explosion in unemployment and crime’ (Grimson 2005: 25). The worsening human rights situation for immigrants brought to light deep discriminatory tendencies among the population and a lack of political protection for migrants (see Oteiza et al. 1997). Again, as demographic data disproved any connection between the growth of the immigrant population and crime or unemployment,10 the ‘official discourse’ can be defined as the result of the need to find a scapegoat for the country’s worsening economic and social crises. In 2001 and 2002, Argentina’s reigning economic, political and cultural model fell into definitive crisis, as did the congruent national narrative about the place of immigrants from neighbouring countries.11 New political alliances between Néstor and Cristina Kirchner and other presidents in the region created a new consciousness of ‘Latin-Americanness’. In 2003, after twenty years of parliamentary debate, a new migratory law – that declares migration a ‘human right’ – was approved (Giustiniani 2004). However, this was only formally implemented in 2009 and many state agencies remain poorly informed of its mandates. Simultaneously, the process of regional integration entered a new phase of consolidation. Within MERCOSUR, steps have been taken to facilitate the free movement of people and Bolivians are one of the main beneficiaries of the regularization programmes implemented in the last decade. Yet, limitations to free and fluid movement still remain (Cernadas 2006).

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In this context Bolivians began to gain access to ‘central’ spaces in which visibility could mean something positive and reinforcing (Gavazzo and Tapia Morales 2014). In 2010, for instance, hundreds of Bolivian migrants and their Argentine-born children marched during the bicentennial ‘Parade of Collectivities’, occupying a more central space in comparison with other more ‘traditional’ immigrant communities like the Italians. Since 2009, Bolivians have had their own folkloric parade at the microcentre of Buenos Aires called ‘Bolivian Integration to Argentina’, in which the second generation has a starring role. These spaces allowed them to recount their histories from their own points of view and express their own cultures, customs and convictions beyond their neighbourhoods (op.cit. 2014). Although the change has not occurred without conflict, conquering these spaces has meant winning a symbolic battle against the negative stereotypes that sustained the stigmas which had been attached to them in the 90s and earlier. If one understands, like Taylor (1992: 36), that the projection of an inferior or demeaning image on another is also a form of oppression, not least because it can be internalized, gaining public space visibility and recognition is arguably an important step towards emancipation and citizenship in the broadest sense. Renato Rosaldo coined the term ‘cultural citizenship’ precisely to refer to ‘… the everyday cultural practices through which Latinas/os claim space and their right to be full members of society [in the US]’.12 Whether in the Flores Cemetery on the Day of the Dead, when Bolivians bring offerings and remember their dead with music, or in the Indoamericano or Avellaneda parks where they play soccer and enjoy typical foods, Bolivians today constitute one of the large groups recognized as part of Argentina’s contemporary melting pot. This emphasis on pluricultural patrimony also promotes identity rights, the right to be who you are without fear of being repressed or excluded, in short: the right to have rights. The Secretary of National Culture (an entity that answers directly to the Presidency and has funded the folkloric parade which, for the last four years, has proceeded down the central Avenue 9 de Julio) declared, ‘One sees the way the Bolivians participate and integrate, and thinks, “If the great challenge of Argentina at its Centenary was to integrate the European migration, which it did, then the great challenge of the Bicentenary is to integrate the Latin American and Bolivian migration, [and] of course to remind ourselves of our true South American belonging”’.13 That their culture parades down Avenue 9 de Julio, past the iconic obelisk, through Plaza de Mayo and by the national cathedral and Presidential Palace (Casa Rosada), in front of thousands of astonished porteños and tourists who still sometimes ignore and stigmatize them, allows us to think that it is possible to break negative stereotypes through public exhibition of positive characteristics, and creatively fighting against xenophobia (Gavazzo and Tapia Morales 2014). Despite the differences found in both contexts, in terms of immigration histories as well as national and local frameworks, attitudes and discourses

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towards immigration and Bolivian immigrants in particular, in both cases Bolivians’ music and other cultural performances have been gaining visibility and recognition in the public sphere. These music-making performances are not only brought in from the place of origin but also respond to the articulation of identities and claims in the new context.

Bolivian musicians in Bilbao and Buenos Aires: Between memory and contestation In Buenos Aires the Bolivian community is characterized by a high level of solidarity and dense social networks (Gavazzo 2012). Within this organizational frame, a particular set of institutions dedicated exclusively to cultural activities (artistic and recreational practices) offer a particular place to the sons and daughters of Bolivian migrants. We take what Yudice (2000) says about the role of ‘the cultural’ in social movements’ negotiations in transnational and globalized contexts. Culture can be defined in an anthropological sense as everyday practices and institutions that formally or informally contribute, through symbolic representation or re-elaboration of material structures, to the creation of meaning and simultaneously to the configuration of beliefs, values, ideas and social arrangements (Yudice 2000: 93). Furthermore, globalization highlights the value of culture, not only for consolidating certain national identities or for ‘gatekeeping’ a social position, but also as a main resource for economic and social development. In the case of our study, many Bolivians use cultural practices as both the means to remember and re-create the place of origin in the new context and a tool for fighting against discrimination. The first is more salient in the case of Bilbao and the latter increasingly powerful in the context of Buenos Aires (although the first is still very important). Those migrants dedicate a big part of their spare time to what could be called cultural activism (Gavazzo 2002) or ‘cultural citizenship’, understood as ‘… the simultaneous claim to one’s cultural difference and to the right to be a first-class citizen. Rather than accepting the dominant ideology that posits difference as a stigma or a sign of inferiority, cultural citizenship asserts that even in contexts of inequality people have a right to their distinctive heritage’ (Renato Rosaldo).14 Those kinds of activities are carried on not only by first generation migrants that had participated in the promotion of artistic activities such as dance and music, in the country of origin, but also by young migrants and Argentine-born sons and daughters without previous experience of participation in those practices. These activities are focused on the preservation and promotion of what is considered a common ‘cultural patrimony’, offering a space for the reaffirmation of an otherwise unknown or stigmatized identity in the migratory context (Gavazzo 2002).

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Thus, those activists aim to ‘integrate’ through the preservation of what is considered a shared and recognized ‘national culture’, by showing some of its main aspects among both their countrymen and their families and also among the host country’s ‘natives’. In both Buenos Aires and Bilbao we observed a number of events – such as weddings, religious celebrations, family gatherings, balls, civic festivities, among others – that constitute privileged spaces for cultural reproduction and identification. Cultural practices – music, dance, theatre, poetry, visual art and films, among others – are at the core of such events and become tools for constructing a unified identity that could gather all of the ‘internal others’ and also for obtaining social recognition from the reception society (Gavazzo 2002). The strategies displayed by cultural activists permit the Bolivians and their descendants to imagine themselves as cohesive communities, developing stronger solidarity bonds and a greater sense of belonging, even among migrants that otherwise would be considered as rivals. Román in Bilbao mentioned, for example: There [in Bolivia] you have three social classes: cambas, chapacos y collas. And always from each place you have their own [music] themes but now that we are here we are one thing since you can no longer say: ‘you are a Cochabambino’, you are abroad, you are Bolivian. At the same time, they are allowed to rethink their national origin and negotiate their identity in the new context by also showing themselves as part of the history, economy, society, culture and politics of the reception country (Grimson 1999: 188). In Bilbao, for example, it is with great pride that some of the Bolivian musicians mention that they record Basque traditional music with Bolivian ‘wind’ instruments or that they participated in a local Christmas advertisement with other local and foreign musicians. In this context, the interaction of Bolivian musical practices with local musicians and festivities has been strongly encouraged by the ‘intercultural’ approach in the local policy framework. The same occurs in Buenos Aires in the context of festivals such as the Immigrant Day or massive parades – such as the Bolivian Integration or the National Bicentenary – in which Argentina’s immigration background is re-created with an important participation of the Bolivian community. This participation includes mainly music and dance practices that constitute – as in Bilbao – a reason ‘to be proud’ of having Bolivian origins. However, one should question whether immigrants’ ‘integration’ can be achieved only through ‘cultural promotion’ (Caggiano 2004; Gavazzo 2006, 2008). Indeed, the intersections between the cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of immigrants’ processes of integration are complex and not necessarily coincident. Sometimes it is possible for migrants and descendants to participate in cultural festivals but not to organize a protest

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because their rights – work, education or health – are being violated. To answer this, it is interesting to examine some of the musical practices that have emerged particularly from the cultural activist movement in Buenos Aires, in which a mixture of cultural and political aims can be observed. Despite their leaders and members defining their activities as ‘merely cultural’ they could be seen as collective cultural initiatives that promote the defence of a specific set of rights. In Bilbao, musicians have been shy to recognize the political dimensions of their acts but they are not absent either, as we shall see. First it is important to mention that there are plenty of folkloric dance ballets – and the music bands that accompany them – at the Bolivian associations that exist in Bilbao and Buenos Aires. In Argentina, these constitute important spaces for identity construction among young Bolivians and Argentine-born descendants, in which ‘tradition, customs and tastes are linked forming a weft in which identities are woven’ and where ‘that double-belonging of local Argentina and foreign Bolivian cultures are experienced’ (Olivera 2009: 110). In many ways, dance groups help to build a sense of ‘we-ness’ that interacts within the migrants communities. Thus it is possible to see – as Olivera highlights – that they function as a space for young people to ‘work together’ in order ‘to change what we do not agree with’. As Simbiosis Cultural mentions in a collective document: ‘we want to achieve a present when we could all recognize ourselves through experiences and personal relationships, to establish bonds that give us the strength to show our identity and to be proud of being Bolivians’.15 To summarize, folkloric dance groups and the music bands that accompany them help to establish fraternal links and friendship and – despite their Argentine origin – to ‘integrate’ into their parents’ community in their need to jointly ‘struggle’ for the recognition of the stigmatized cultural identity that is considered ‘common’ (Gavazzo 2012). These experiences aim to amplify personal capacities ‘as actors of change’ – both for individuals and for the groups – through public activities. Many of these groups work in a network that connects several organizations in the occasions of festivities, protests and demonstrations (Olivera 2009; Gavazzo 2012). Secondly, we observe an increasing emergence of groups that are dedicated to music and dance expressions linked to the quechua or aymara ancestry (Gavazzo 2012). In another interesting study, Mardones (2010: 11) states that ‘in an indigenous vindication context in the Latin American region, persons in Argentina that self-identify with the aymara ethnicity start to become starring actors in establishing the recognition of indigenous peoples into the state and social agenda in the country’. Although the indigenous heritage is part of the Bolivian national identity there is a high level of racism against the actual indigenous populations, both in legal and cultural terms. Indeed, as Tucker (2010: 141–2) acknowledges, until recently, Andean cultural practices were identified as something for and

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done by non-whites and relegated to the margins of public life. In Bilbao, the Bolivian music groups interviewed all included themes in quechua, which is in itself a recognition of this indigenous musical patrimony, shared and made visible in the context of migration. According to one of the musicians interviewed, this option acknowledges the origin of many migrants from Santa Cruz. By contrast, there is little aymara presence in Bilbao and therefore musicians consider that their audience would not be receptive to songs in this language. Mardones (2010) highlights the role of Sikuris music bands in Buenos Aires, which were mainly formed by quechua-aymara communities ‘that maintain Andean forms or relate to the material world, to society, to nature and to the supernatural world. Through the interpretation of ancient music, they aim to transmit and re-signify values from their communities of origin’. Therefore, they ‘play a fundamental role’ as they are ‘true urban Andean communities that interact as particular entities generating a wide range of reciprocate favours that feed the vitalization of the Andeanity in the city’ (Mardones 2010: 47). According to this author (ibid.), although there are no spiritual or political leaders born in Buenos Aires, not even from the second-generation, there are bandleaders well known as musicians and as researchers of original Andean music and identity. In Bilbao, two musicians (one of them a professional musician in Bolivia) had had a previous music project specifically of Andean music and this was a highly valued and award winning experience: in Rolando G.’s words, a way of sharing in Europe their music from the ‘Andes’. The group’s (Pro Andino) award in a local music festival was felt as a due recognition of the value of Andean music in Europe, generating important feelings of self-worth (also Turino 1993). At the same time, these groups, particularly in Buenos Aires, are charged with a strong political sense linked to the reconstruction of values and traditions of the indigenous people (Mardones 2010; Gavazzo 2012). Because of this, they appeal not only to the most important aymara activists but also to a non-Andean universe increasingly committed to and seduced by this space. This interaction generates a rich intercultural dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous actors in Buenos Aires. Therefore, they have been participating in several events of Bolivian and other Latin American communities that seek to discover and rethink the ‘indigenous question’ in broader terms. They even have their own events like the Inti Raymi – Andean New Year – or the Mathapi; a Sikuris band meeting that has been taking place for several years. Relating to this, Mardones (2010) developed a survey which shows that 81 per cent of participants are Argentine-born. This could mean, as Mardones points out, the Bolivian community is building a discourse based on an ethnic origin that may not have been developed before migrating to Argentina. This discourse, profusely promoted by youngsters, many of which are descendants of immigrants, may be a continuation of the political, social

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or cultural activism of their parents. In other cases, it is a radicalization of that. A third option is a reaction to the apparent ‘ethnic apathy’ of their families. In all cases, Sikuri players display a wide range of cultural-political activities of re-ethnification through festive, ritual and artistic uses that push a process to re-build and signify their original identity. Fostered by the arrival of migrants from neighbouring countries, in the past decades there was a shift in the national immigration discourse that allows a current valorization of the formerly denied indigenous cultural heritage, related to communitarian demands of territory and social recognition. In Bilbao, there is evidence of Bolivian political agendas being publicly voiced by musicians, for example, regarding Bolivian environmental concerns and the need to protect natural resources (interview with one Bolivian group in Bilbao). In another group, the issue of ‘immigration’ has been made more present through the use of Manu Chao’s themes such as ‘Clandestino’ and ‘El desaparecido’. This music reflects the ‘migration experience’ more than any sense of ‘being Bolivian’ or ‘indigenous question’ related to the country of origin. Immigrants from diverse backgrounds can easily identify with the themes played, building new bridges beyond Bolivians or Latin American migrants. One musician in this group mentions this dialogue at the level of the musical performance, illustrating how new musical forms accompany the re-creation of identities in the new contexts, in intersection with the migration experience itself (Baily and Collier 2006; Turino 1993): […] we have introduced the Jambé, an African instrument, played by a Basque, the drums are played by a Brazilian – and one Brazilian playing a chacarera is not the same as playing a samba – there is where we want to find new rhythms with SF. (Rolando G. in Bilbao) For the Bolivian community in Buenos Aires, hip-hop and political rap are also gaining relevance among second-generation Latin American migrants. A considerable amount of young people in Bolivia ‘mix hip-hop and ancient rhythms in order to build a discourse about the aymara and Bolivian identity, to criticise the discrimination suffered, and to ‘awake’ consciousness or educate other youngsters’ (Kunin 2009: 149). The current Bolivian scenario is characterized by public expressions of (beforehand repressed) pride of ‘being aymara’ in what she defines as ‘Evo-mania’ (Kunin 2009). This implies that rappers participate in local, national and international negotiations that reflect upon their identity building. The movement emerged in El Alto, a city near La Paz suburbs where 75 per cent of the population is under forty years old, making it the youngest Bolivian city. Here, hip-hop expanded rapidly after 2003 in order to change the stereotype of ‘being just gangster, drug addicts, criminal, young rappers’. As a consequence of transnational networks, this growing rap and hip-hop movement has its followers not only among young Bolivians

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but also among second-generation migrants in Buenos Aires (Gavazzo 2012). We find an important transnational dimension in all music-making found amongst immigrants in the two contexts. Román, in Bilbao, clearly refers to the influence of the music that is ‘being played in Bolivia’: ‘People go there [to Bolivia] on holidays and return with “lots of stuff”, they say: “look, these songs are being played there [in Bolivia], play it here!”’ Although it are still incipient, there is a considerable number of rappers, break-dancers, DJs and graffiti artists in the city that follow some of the ‘vindictive slogans’ of the Bolivian movement. For instance, the twenty-seven-year-old rapper Blanco Loco, born in La Paz but emigrated at the age of sixteen, has been performing for many years and is very well known particularly in the Bolivian neighbourhood (Floresta) in Buenos Aires. He uses his rap ‘to tell my story, how I suffered when I arrived alone to this country’ and ‘because I am proud to be Bolivian’, the reason why he has a big tattoo on his back with the national coat of arms. Rap has a ‘cathartic function’ for discriminated young people (Kunin 2009). In addition, Blanco Loco and others also perform at many protests: for example in 2008, when hundreds of Bolivian migrants mobilized at the Bolivian Embassy – in the city’s downtown – demanding the right to vote abroad. Nevertheless, unlike other music movements, ‘rappers cannot develop a high degree of cohesion’, therefore they experience ‘problems to negotiate with the media, political parties or NGOs’ (Kunin 2009: 153).

Final remarks The analysis conducted here shows both similarities and differences in how Bolivians in Buenos Aires and Bilbao adopt musical practices. It is evident that diverse music (and also dance) expressions are being adopted by Bolivians in both locations but also within them. This is particularly notorious in the context of Buenos Aires where there has been a longer and larger presence of Bolivians. Sikuris bands orient their claims to nationstates and, as a result, opposed what could be defined as ‘Creole’ elements, such as folkloric dance and music that – in their opinion – has been used to promote the nationalist discourse that has denied and dominated indigenous people (Gavazzo 2012). However, both kinds of artistic expressions share festivals and other events. Bolivians, largely first-generation migrants in Bilbao, and mostly descendants of immigrants in Buenos Aires, are highly heterogeneous as there are different types of youth that have different forms of expression and different ideologies and agendas. However, it is evident that all of them share the aim of exhibiting to ‘others’ the rich culture they inherited from their migrant parents and country of origin through events,

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activities and celebrations that are centred around music and dance. These processes are placed and intersect with the reconstruction of memories and the enactment of contestation. ‘Pure’ Bolivian music, traditional and contemporary, as well as new music forms are being created or appropriated in the new contexts. These processes are not consensual and are indeed open to contestation within ‘Bolivian’ communities themselves. For example, first-generation migrant parents often denigrate some of the artistic expressions of second-generation youngsters based on the argument that ‘they do not know the original practice’ or ‘they want to change the essence of our culture’. Following Infantino (2008: 1), ‘art constitute a device to generate new forms of communitarian belonging, participation and organization in contexts of exclusion. Fundamentally, it is useful to promote changes in children’s and youngsters’ present allowing the development of their creative and autonomic capacities of building bonds of belonging’. In immigration contexts affected by other political developments, involving ‘an inequality without precedents and the dissolution of the upper mobility paradigm’ (Infantino 2008: 2), there are diverse strategies for those youngsters that inhabit this particular historic time and place, something that is challenging the frequent totalizing views of youth.

Notes  1 One of the groups had musicians from other origins as well.  2 People from the city of Cochabamba, located in the centre of Bolivia.  3 http://www.embajadadebolivia.es/octubre%202013/La%20emigraci%C3% B3n%20boliviana%20en%20Europa.pdf (accessed 11 November 2013).  4 Immigrant population survey in Euskadi (Basque Country Autonomous Community).  5 http://www.upf.edu/gritim-reci/ (accessed 20 January 2016).  6 http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/culture/Cities/Default_en.asp (accessed 10 October 2015).  7 http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/culture/Cities/Index/Bilbao_en.pdf (accessed 10 October 2015).  8 One of the most famous Bolivian folkloric dances that represents the use of African slaves for the mining work in the Andean region. It is performed at the most massive cultural events of the country such as the Carnival of Oruro, the Fiesta del Gran Poder or the Entrada Universitaria in La Paz, Bolivia.  9 The most famous is the Barrio General San Martín Charrúa in the Capital area of Buenos Aires where Bolivian migrants organize the Fiesta de la Virgen de Copacabana, patron of the nation, every October since the 1970s. See Lamounier 1990.

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10 Between 1991 and 2001 the representation of population of immigrants from countries of the regions increased just from 2.6 per cent to 2.9 per cent of the overall population in Argentina. 11 As Grimson points out, it was announced an exodus of the immigrants to their home countries which showed clearly that these people had been the cause of unemployment, which was one of the worst in national history. Grimson, op.cit., 2005. 12 http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/enc09-academic-texts/item/681cultural-citizenship (accessed 22 October 2015). 13 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlIg5PVLcEg (accessed 22 October 2015). 14 http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/enc09-academic-texts/item/681cultural-citizenship (accessed 22 October 2015). 15 http://simbiosiscultural.com/ (accessed 22 October 2015).

References ACOBE (2007), Situación General de los bolivianos en España. Un análisis cualitativo para obtener el perfil del colectivo boliviano con relación a las características del proceso migratorio, Madrid/ La Paz, ACOBE. André, I. and A. Abreu (2006), ‘Dimensões e Espaços da Inovação Social’. Finisterra XLI (81): 121–41. André, I. and A. Abreu (2009), ‘Social Creativity and Post-Rural Places: The Case of Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal’. Canadian Journal of Regional Science/Revue canadienne des sciences régionales 32 (1): 101–14. André I., A. Abreu and A. Carmo (2013), ‘Social Innovation through the Arts in Rural Areas: The Case of Montemor-o-Novo’ in F. Moulaert et al. (eds), International Handbook on Social Innovation. Social Innovation: Collective Action, Social Learning and Transdisciplinary Research, 242–57, Aldershot and Brookfield: Edward Elgar. André, I. and A. Carmo (2010), ‘Régions et villes socialement créatives: étude appliquée à la péninsule ibérique’. Innovations 33 (3): 65–84. Arango, J. (2013), Exceptional in Europe? Spain’s Experience of Immigration and Integration. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Baily, J. (1999), ‘Music and Refugee Lives: Afghans in Eastern Iran and California’. Forced Migration Review 6: 10–13. Baily, J. and M. Collyer (2006), ‘Introduction: Music and Migration’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32 (2): 167–82. Balán, J. (1982), Poblaciones en movimiento, Bélgica: Editorial de la UNESCO. Benencia, R. and G. Karasik (1995), Inmigración limítrofe: los bolivianos en Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires: CEAL. Caggiano, S. (2004), El Centro de Estudiantes Bolivianos de La Plata, paper presented at Congreso Argentino de Antropología Social, Villa Giardino, Córdoba. Carstensen-Egwuom, I. (2011), ‘Representing an “Authentic Ethnic Identity”:

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Experiences of Sub-Saharan African Musicians in an Eastern German City’. Music and Arts in Action 3 (1): 116–35. Ceriani Cernadas, P. (2006), El reconocimiento de los derechos de los y las migrantes en el contexto de consolidación del Conosur. Los casos de Argentina y el Mercosur – Work submitted in the 52nd Americanist Congress, Sevilla, Spain. Gadea, E., R. Benencia and G. Quaranta (2009), ‘Bolivianos en Argentina y en España. De la migración tradicional a las nuevas rutas’. AREAS – Revista Internacional de Ciencias Sociales 28: 31–43. Gavazzo, N. (2002), La Diablada de Oruro en Buenos Aires. Cultura, identidad e integración en la inmigración boliviana, Tesis de Licenciatura en Ciencias Antropológicas, Mimeo. Buenos Aires: UBA. Gavazzo, N. (2006), Immigrants in the Imagination of the Nation. Latin Americans in Argentina in the early 21st Century, Dissertation submitted for the MA Degree in Area Studies (Latin America), University of London, School of Advanced Studies, Institute for the Study of the Americas, London. Gavazzo, N. (2008), Formas de organización y participación social de los migrantes latinoamericanos en Argentina. Aportes del enfoque de las estructuras de oportunidades políticas, paper presented at XIX Congreso Argentino de Antropología Social, Universidad de Misiones, Posadas. Gavazzo, N. (2012), Hijos de bolivianos y paraguayos en el área metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Identificaciones y participación, entre la discriminación y el reconocimiento. Tesis doctoral. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Giustiniani, R. (2004), Migración: un derecho humano. La Ley de Migraciones Nro. 25.871, Buenos Aires: Prometeo libros. Grimson, A. (1999), Relatos de la diferencia y la igualdad. Los bolivianos en Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires: EUDEBA. Grimson, A. (2005), ‘Ethnic (In)Visibility in Neoliberal Argentina’ in NACLA Report on Race, Part 2, New York. Güemes, Alfonso M. (2013), ‘Música e identidad sociocultural. Aproximación antropológica’. Tecsistecatl-Revista electrónica de ciencias sociales 5 (15). Hinojosa, Alfonso R. (2008), ‘España en el itinerario de Bolivia. Migración transnacional, género y familia en Cochabamba’, in S. Novick (comp.) Las migraciones en América Latina, Buenos Aires: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales – CLACSO. Available online: http://www.espacestemps.net/ document282.html (last accessed 20 March 2014). Infantino, J. (2008), ‘El arte como herramienta de intervención social entre jóvenes en la ciudad de Buenos Aires. La experiencia de ‘Circo Social del Sur’’, Medio Ambiente y Urbanización, 69: Niños, niñas y jóvenes como agentes de cambio, 35–54, Instituto Internacional de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo, IIED. América Latina, Buenos Aires. Jelin, E. and A. Grimson (2006), ‘Introducción’, in A. Grimson and E. Jelin (comp.), Migraciones Regionales hacia la Argentina. Diferencia, Desigualdad y Derechos, Buenos Aires: Prometeo libros. Knauer, L. M. (2008), ‘The Politics of Afrocuban Cultural Expression in New York City’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (8): 1257–81. Kunin, J. (2009), ‘Rap político en el altiplano boliviano: (Re)Construcción de

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identidades juveniles y de ciudadanía afirmativa a través de negociaciones en un mundo globalizado’, Temas de patrimonio cultural, 24, Buenos Aires Boliviana. Migración, construcciones identitarias y memoria. 1era. Edición. Buenos Aires: Comisión para la Preservación del Patrimonio Histórico Cultural de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Lamounier, I. (1990), Festividad de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana, Buenos Aires: CEMLA. Lee Rubin, R. (2005), ‘“Working Man’s Ph.D.”: The Music of Working Class Studies’, in J. Russo and S. L. Linkon (eds), New Working-Class Studies, 166–85, Ithaca and London: ILR/Cornell University Press. Leonardo, J., M. L. Setién, A. Ibarrola, E. Ruiz Vieytez and T. Vicente (2008), Bilbao – City Report, GEITONIES – Generating Interethnic Tolerance and Neighbourhood Integration in European Urban Spaces. Mardones, P. (2010), Volveré y seré millones. Migración y etnogénesis Aymara en Buenos Aires. Tesis de Maestría. Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, Argentina. Martiniello, M. and J-M. Lafleur (2008), ‘Ethnic Minorities’Cultural Practices as Forms of Political Expression’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (8): 1191–335. Miles, M. (1997), Arts, Space and the City: Public Art and Urban Futures, London: Routledge. OECD (2011), International Migration Outlook 2011. Country Note: Spain, Paris: OECD. Olivera, C. (2009), ‘¿Bailando por un sueño? Espacio de construcción de identidades’, Temas de patrimonio cultural, 24: Buenos Aires Boliviana. Migración, construcciones identitarias y memoria. 1era. Edición. Buenos Aires: Comisión para la Preservación del Patrimonio Histórico Cultural de la Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina. Oteiza E., S. Novick and R. Aruj, (1997), Inmigración y Discriminación. Políticas y discursos, Buenos Aires: Grupo Editor Universitario. Parella, S. and L. Cavalcanti (2009), Dinámicas familiares transnacionales y migración femenina: el caso de las migrantes bolivianas en España, paper presented at LIII Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Ciudad de México. Pereyra, B. (2001), Organizaciones de Inmigrantes de Países Vecinos en la Construcción de Ciudadanía. Tesis de Maestría en Políticas Sociales. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, UBA, Buenos Aires. Rose, T. (2001), ‘Fear of a Black Planet: Rap Music and Black Cultural Politics in the 1990s’. The Journal of Negro Education 60 (3), Socialization Forces Affecting the Education of African American Youth in the 1990s, 276–90. Ruby, C. (2002), ‘L’art public dans la ville’, EspacesTemps.net, Dans l’air, 01.05.2002. Available online: http://www.espacestemps.net/articles/ art-public-dans-la-ville/ Sassone, S. (2009). ‘Breve geografía histórica de la migración boliviana en la Argentina’. Buenos Aires boliviana. Migración, construcciones identitarias y memoria. Temas de Patrimonio Cultural 24: 389–402. Schiller, N. G. and A. Caglar (2009), ‘Towards a Comparative Theory of Locality in Migration Studies: Migrant Incorporation and City Scale’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 35 (2): 177–202.

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Smiers, J. (2005), Arts Under Pressure, Promoting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalization, London: Zed Books. Stokes, M. (1994), ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music’, in M. Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg. Stokes, M. (2003), ‘Musical Nationalism and Transnacionalism in the “New Global Order”’. Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia 13: 163–80. Tapia Ladino, M. (2010), ‘Inmigración boliviana en España: Un caso para la comprensión de la migración internacional con perspectiva de género’. Tinkazos: Investigaciones y Ensayos 28: 109–27. Taylor, C. (1992), ‘The Politics of Recognition’ in A. Gutmann (ed.), Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, 25–73, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Tucker, J. (2010), ‘Mediating Sentiment and Shaping Publixs: Recording Practice and the Articulation of Social Change in Andean Lima’. Popular Music and Society 33 (2): 141–62. Turino, T. (1993), Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press Books. Yúdice, G. (2000), ‘Redes de gestión social y cultural en tiempos de globalización’ in D. Mato, X. Agudo, I. García (coords), América Latina en tiempo de globalización II, CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales. Available online: http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros

CHAPTER EIGHT

‘Ich fühle mich Deutsch’: Migrant descendants’ performance of integration through the Hamburg HipHop Academy Emily Joy Rothchild

Introduction Ich fühle mich Deutsch [I feel German], proclaimed Jennifer, a nineteenyear-old Ghanaian-German dancer at the Hamburg HipHop Academy, a city-sponsored project that integrates migrant descendants into German society by teaching hip-hop skills alongside social values.1 Jennifer’s words frame a monologue for the 2013 Tanztheaterproduktion (dance theatre production) DISTORTION, which examines migrant descendants’ places in Germany and provokes audiences to contemplate the new faces of the nation. Described by the Academy as a perfect symbiosis of hip-hop and contemporary dance – a bridging of musical genres – DISTORTION seeks to disrupt the boundaries of German national identity. Building from Homi Bhabha 1990’s concept of narrating the nation, this article shows how Academy Ensemble members draw on traditions of the mythic German Vaterland (fatherland) but disrupt its linearity and homogeneity: their chorales sung in close formation break into hip-hop dance, a dirndl appears with an African apron. The Ensemble births a post-multi-kulti (post-multi-cultural) national image, i.e. their own imagined community, one united through broken borders, global and multi-lingual.2 Youth redefine in-group/out-group designations; the out-group consists of the intolerant. Nonetheless, the backdrop of their

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community is a German one, and I examine on- and off-stage negotiations of dual and hybrid national identities. Society has granted these youth hyphenated labels: Turkish- or Ghanaian-German, for example, rather than simply German. Youth performances become acts of counterbalancing migration backgrounds with proofs of ‘Germanness’ – a concept they define by language and home rather than by ethnicity. Ensemble members perform macro-political integration – claiming their place in mainstream society. They attempt to bridge with ethnic Germans but is mainstream society willing to listen? Can youth try on non-hyphenated personas to discover where, when and with whom they feel complete? James Clifford (1992: 108) asks: ‘how are national, ethnic, community “insides” and “outsides” maintained, policed, subverted, crossed – by distinct historical subjects, for their own ends, with different degrees of power and freedom?’ Ensemble members attempt to usurp the ‘passive’ model of citizenship that Germany historically has possessed – one in which ‘state action’ determines citizenship (Turner 1990: 207). They proclaim belonging, actively dreaming of a model of social citizenship without in- or out-groups. Still, youth face a society that has not yet clearly articulated a place for them. Most migrant youth do not have a genealogical claim to the country’s past – a key aspect of its national identity – but many were born in Germany and speak German fluently. Through Tanztheaterproduktionen, migrant descendants reach out to the audience but attendees must accept these youth as belonging to the nation-state. Based on participant observation in Academy NewStyle and Gesang (singing) courses, attendance at Academy shows and twenty-nine interviews I completed during 2010–14 with present and former Academy students, trainers, parents and administrators, in addition to city integration workers and underground hip-hop community members, this article focuses on one-to-two-hour-long, digitally-recorded testimonies of four Ensemble members: the aforementioned Jennifer, Turkish-German NewStyle dancer and trainer Can (24), Ghanaian-German NewStyle dancer and trainer Franklyn (24), and Southeast Asian-German Level 3 Intensive/ ShowGruppe NewStyle dancer Maria (15).3 The Ensemble performs macro-political integration in DISTORTION through a post-multi-kulti narration of the nation. Their imagined vision of ‘Germany’ shifts from a visually, linguistically and culturally homogeneous idea of the nation to a complex pastiche of difference based on contemporary migrant experience and heritage. Facing a national audience perplexed by ‘cultural difference’ and consumed with Islamophobia, however, until adequate bridging occurs between migrant youth and ‘ethnic Germans’, the realization of their community remains imagined.



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Labelling difference: Migration backgrounds Founded in 2007 in Billstedt, a district with 51 per cent of residents having migration backgrounds (‘Regionalergebnisse’ 2011), the Hamburg HipHop Academy offers a place for youth to feel zu Hause (at home) while transmitting shared social values of discipline, punctuality and professionalism through NewStyle dancing, breakdancing, graffiti art, beatboxing, producing, rapping, DJing and singing courses. The Academy targets youth with a Migrationshintergrund (migration background) who comprise 80 per cent of participants (‘Kanzlerin’ 2010). Within Hamburg, projects aim to integrate Gastarbeiter (guest-worker) descendants, the majority of whom are Turkish and culturally Muslim.4 The past fifty years of migration from Eastern Europe, Western Africa, Vietnam and the Middle East have transformed the social fabric of Germany further. Children with a Migrationshintergrund now account for 35 per cent of children under age six (Gernhardt, Rübeling and Keller 2014: 154); 29.2 per cent of Hamburgers have a Migrationshintergrund (‘Regionalergebnisse’ 2011). Although the German government defines residents with migration backgrounds as migrants and their children who arrived after 1950, because most living migrants arrived after then, Migrationshintergrund acts as a catch-all label for anyone with a migration history (‘Bevölkerung’ 2009). Migration signals in-between travel and the word serves as a linguistic reminder of the country’s exclusivity. Academy students learn primarily from ‘ethnic German’ professional hip-hop artists. ‘German ethnic’ and ‘ethnic German’ are complicated terms. The term ‘ethnicity connotes a sense of peoplehood based upon shared customs, language, and (sometimes) religion’. Resulting from a ‘belief in common descent’, ethnicity ‘tends to be self-ascribed and embraced as a positive collective identity’ (Chin and Fehrenbach 2009: 4). I use the term ‘ethnic German’ with caution and as a descriptor of shared cultural customs rather than biological provenance.

Grounds for social integration Ensemble members’ international performances enhance Hamburg’s image as a global-oriented city that encourages freedom and coexistence. With 1.8 million residents and a 5 million person metropolitan region, Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city. Its port opened on the Elbe River in 1189 and, since that time, Hamburg has been a locus for Northern European trade (Rothchild 2015: 98). With the events that took place on 9/11 in the US, unfavourable fame was brought to Hamburg, as three of the airplane’s hijackers were from

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a local Salafist cell.5 This connection to these acts of terrorism, however, fortified Hamburg’s commitment to better integrating migrant youth. Ten per cent of Hamburg’s population is Muslim. Of these 180,000 residents, 50,000 consider themselves to be Alevi (‘Religionsgemeinschaften’ 2012).6 Since the 1980s, hip-hop has been an outlet particularly for TurkishGerman youth to express discontent with their liminal status as Gastarbeiter progeny.7 Until 2000, one’s access to citizenship was restricted unless one had ethnic German origins, but with reform it became easier to gain citizenship (Göktürk, Gramling and Kaes 2007: 151–2). Nonetheless, upon their twenty-third birthdays, migrant descendants must decide whether to keep German citizenship or claim allegiance to a ‘homeland’ some have never visited. Social integration programmes like the Academy attempt to offer youth a sense of belonging to Germany. The United Nations defines social integration as ‘a dynamic and principled process where all members participate in dialogue to achieve and maintain peaceful social relations’ (‘PeaceDialogue’ 2005). Lucía López-Rodríguez et al. (2014: 35) note that with social integration, migrants (ideally) can retain some of their home culture; whereas, assimilation means the migrant must give up his/her cultural traditions to fit into the host society. Still, the social integration ‘many Germans on both the right and the left’ desire for migrants is not integration but assimilation: the full absorption of German social norms with the abandonment of cultural practices from one’s home country. As Rita Chin and Heide Fehrenbach (2009: 12) write: The integration of Turks requires relinquishing cultural particularities and pathologies that they [German society members] associate with Islam, such as the wearing of headscarves or the perpetuation of gender inequality (through arranged marriages, domestic violence, and ‘honor killings’). Islam, these Germans fear, encourages Turks to live in a Parallelgesellschaft [parallel society] with its own rules, values, and institutions that isolate them from mainstream society. Nationwide, Islamophobia has grown concomitant to a decreasing German ethnic population. Germany (pop. 82 million) is home to 3.2 million Turkish-Germans, part of 4 million ‘ethnic Muslims’. Negative feelings towards Germany’s Muslim population spiked in 2010 when Thilo Sarrazin’s book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Does Away with Itself) perpetuated fears of ‘Islamisation’ and, as Klaus Bade (2013: 13) explains, reinforced the xenophobic narrative of a German ‘new collective identity’. The success of this publication points to the misunderstanding that integration is a one-way process. Social integration, however, ought to be double-sided, with migrants adopting German cultural practices and Germans becoming more open to the transformation of their nation-state through the migrant presence. A 2009 Bertelsmann Stiftung survey showed



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that 69 per cent of migrants feel comfortable in Germany, while 58 per cent feel part of the nation-state (‘Zuwanderer’ 2009). In late 2014 and early 2015, Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident) sponsored protests against the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe that reached unprecedented levels of 25,000 participants. With renewed Islamophobia in the wake of the Islamic State’s (IS) atrocities and associated increasing numbers of asylum-seekers from Syria, distrust towards migrant populations and refugees rose (Smale 2014). The ‘moral panic’ some Germans feel reflects Appadurai’s (2006) theory of ‘majoritarianism’. Majority in-groups seek to distance themselves from minority out-groups to foster a sense of ‘us’. They worry that if they do not unite, the minority out-group could become the majority. This is especially pertinent given Germany’s low birth rate. If migrants and refugees continue to enter the country, some citizens worry ‘ethnic Muslims’ could become a larger, more dominant force in the nation-state (Rothchild 2015: 96). To foster a cohesive nation-state, bridging must abound. Bridging social capital constitutes collective benefits of trust, cooperation and reciprocity that arise from social networks formed from heterogeneous socio-economic groups, heritages, religions or neighbourhoods. Indicating a willingness to engage, bridging enables migrants and ethnic Germans to benefit from each others’ advice, ideas, and networks. Through bridging, people access previously unknown or unreachable spaces, geographically in the neighbourhood, nation-state, continent or world, or metaphorically at the university, in the boardroom or Parliament. As Fukuyama (2002: 30–3) highlights, bridging increases people’s ‘radii of trust’, meaning people form trustworthy relationships with diverse people; in everyday encounters, they are more willing to give people unlike themselves the benefit of the doubt.

Deutsche Kulturpolitik: Bridging through hip-hop Since 2010’s Islamophobia resurgence, Kulturpolitik (cultural policy) programmes promoting multiculturalism and integration have become necessary. On 9 December 2010, Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the Academy to launch a public awareness campaign proclaiming integration is working (‘Kanzlerin’ 2010). Hamburg’s Bureau for Culture, Sport and Media, or Kulturbehörde (culture bureau), also has sought solutions for macro-political integration by sponsoring Kulturpolitik programmes that foster intercultural and international exchange. The Academy joined these initiatives and provides instruction for youth through a global art form (hip-hop) and organizes international tours and exchanges. In cooperation

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with Hamburg city officials, the Academy sent youth as cultural ambassadors to Shanghai (2010), Mumbai (2012), Moscow (2012) and Marseille (2013). The Kulturbehörde’s intercultural exchange sector funds migrant cultural projects to maintain the ‘cultural diversity’ of Hamburg, to help Hamburgers experience the city’s ‘cultural richness’ and to grant migrants a public platform through which they can share their ‘cultural identities.’ The Kulturbehörde intends projects to foster networks and to strengthen mutual dialogues among people with differing cultural backgrounds (‘Förderrichtlinie’ 2013). To gain an audience, the Academy recognized that ‘just hip-hop’ does not sell and without an audience, bridges (even mental ones) cannot form between migrant descendants and ethnic Germans. If the bridge were to be one-way, with the migrant youth assimilating into the host society, they might perform Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), for example. To offer an art form representative of them, however, hip-hop works as the central medium, as it is malleable and can reflect performers of any culture. In line with Kulturbehörde funding guidelines that favour projects bridging genres, the Academy produces Tanztheaterproduktionen. Though this is not ‘original’ hip-hop – a sociomusical movement built among bonded, inner-city youth – it is a hybrid product and hybridity is essential to hip-hop worldwide. Hip-hop in DISTORTION appears as a bridgeable art form: part social commentary, modern dance and hip-hop.

Micro-political integration into the academy: Mastery of social norms In DISTORTION, youth imagine a new community on stage, one without borders and filled with tolerance, but are they proclaiming their or the institution’s desires? The community they conceptualize is based on values the Academy, the site of micro-political integration and discipline, imparted to them. Micro-political integration happens during everyday practices; one must build a relationship with the institution and learn its social norms and values. The focus of micro-political integration is ideology, the individual and his/her relationship to the internal working dynamics of an organization. Academy instructors inscribe students’ bodies and minds with shared values to counteract ‘inherited’ cultural traits. One must master discipline, punctuality, professionalism and tolerance before advancing within the institution’s pyramidal structure and reaching the Ensemble, a paid group of rappers, dancers, graffiti artists and beatboxers (see Figure 1).



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Figure 1: Representation of the Academy’s organizational structure

Ensemble 12 Students (aged 18+) For-profit Tanztheaterproduktionen Paid Engagements, International Tours Mastered Micro-Political Integration, Performed Macro-Political Integration



Level 3 22–24 Students Intensiv/ShowGruppe/Master Class Further Professionalization, Proven Discipline Increased Engagements, International Exchanges



Level 2 50–60 Students Qualification Necessary Trains at Billstedt Kulturpalast Professionalization, Targeted Intensive Trainings



Level 1 500 Youth No Qualification 35 Sites Citywide Neighbourhood Youth Centres, Schools

Source: ‘HipHop’ 2013; Can 20138

Can emphasized how cultural differences need to be overcome for micropolitical integration to succeed: There are people from the Philippines, for example, where in their culture it is polite to always be late and these people come to the HipHop Academy always too late, but through the dance, through the culture, through individual conversations, they also learn to be on time. In this sense, the Academy attempts to counteract what trainers perceive to be culturally based habits, which could impede macro-political integration. Born to a German mother and Turkish father, Can believes that with this form of micro-political integration, the Academy produces a new generation – raised with shared values, motivation and willpower – who

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are macro-politically integrated, feel they belong and can reach the highest ranks of society.

Macro-political integration: Belonging, education and language Macro-political integration is a two-way process that concerns all Germans. The subject is ‘the institution rather than its members, or even the composite acts of the national government rather than its specific institutions’ (Erickson et al. 2002: 8). How citizens react to and engage with government policy matters (ibid.). In a 2011 Eurobarometer report, European Union migrants and citizens described ‘integrated’ migrants as fluent in the lingua franca, educated, employed and observant of social norms (‘Migrant Integration’ 2011: 49–77). After achieving these things, belonging to the German national group still requires acceptance from ethnic Germans. Macro-political integration considers questions like: who belongs to the German nation-state and what factors contribute to one’s belonging? Etienne Wenger (1998) outlines three ‘modes of belonging’ in a community of practice that apply to youths’ attempts to engage in the Academy and within Germany. To belong, one should engage in ‘mutual processes of negotiation of meaning’, imagine one’s future, past and self within a community, and align one’s practices and efforts to belong to ‘broader structures’ and add to joint enterprises (ibid.: 173–4). Imagination is key: youth must be able to picture themselves within Germany now and in the future. Overall, macro-political integration requires bridging relationships but should allow for the retention of youths’ pasts, granting them room to practice multiple citizenships through language, heart and home. Feeling like one belongs and can contribute to an organization, school, workplace or to society’s structure often begins with obtaining the traits the Eurobarometer report lists are necessary for macro-political integration-like speaking fluent German. Citizens, migrants and politicians recognize migrants must master German to macro-politically integrate and migrants often begin training at government integration language and cultural courses. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1963 [1830–5]: 446, 556, from Linke 2002: 293) exemplifies the cultural meaning many Germans give to their language. One finds worldviews in language, ‘the formative organ of thought’. These perspectives, ‘deep in the organic tissues of ingrown languages’, can influence a nation’s character. Regarding Humboldt’s synopsis, Uli Linke (2002: 295) suggests that as the ‘carrier of the spiritual heritage of the people’, the German language takes on the ‘character’ of an imagined national community. The



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question is: if one cannot speak German perfectly, can one fully belong to the nation? Language contributes to projections of citizenship and many migrant descendants identify as German partly because it is their dominant language and has shaped their worldviews. Unfortunately speaking good German alone does not render societal acceptance. Youth recount being told: ‘But you speak good German’, despite their lifelong residence in the nation-state. Jennifer attributes the question to racial profiling and low expectations for migrant fluency. Exclamations of surprise at migrant language competency creep into textbooks from government integration language courses: L: Hello! I am Lars from Multicultural Radio. And what’s your name? A: Ali L: Where are you from, Ali? A: From Turkey. L: But you speak good German! (Niebisch et al. 2009: 13). This dialogue is ludicrous not only because the radio host Lars expresses surprise that a Turkish-German could speak well, but because he judges the speaker’s ability from so few words. When considering national identity, language is a defining factor for Germans. Still, many youth claim allegiance to Muttersprachen (mother tongues) as well, a factor contributing to their personally chosen hybrid identities. If youth are to integrate and remain connected to their home cultures rather than assimilate, Muttersprache retention is appropriate. Anderson (2006: 154) opines, ‘through that language, encountered at mother’s knee and parted with only at the grave, pasts are restored, fellowships are imagined, and futures dreamed’. In the textual tapestry of home, one hears Muttersprachen at birth. While some Academy students speak Muttersprachen plus German, migrant descendants who consider German to be their first or best language often had teachers outside their families, whether friends or day-care providers. They envision their ‘fellowships’, ‘futures’ and goals through German and it is in this language that they feel zu Hause. Within DISTORTION, youths’ good German proves macropolitical integration as the absence of migrant descendants’ Muttersprachen validates youths’ increasing Germanness.

Proving macro-political integration, belonging and Germanness through DISTORTION DISTORTION addresses proofs of Germanness and self-promotion head-on through tongue-in-cheek costume choices and monologues about being

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German. The show aims for performers to ‘distinguish themselves through their close links of biography, dance expression and artistic abstraction and bridge the gap between high culture and subculture’. Choreographer Constanza Macras is a Berlin-based, Argentinian choreographer whose energy-laden works are known for having socially critical commentaries (‘DISTORTION’ 2013). She worked with Ensemble members for five weeks before premiering the show on 14–16 February 2013 at Kampnagel, a former factory (c. 1865) turned performing venue that co-produced the seventy-minute production. Each night’s 767 seats sold out and per the Kulturbehörde’s requirements, funded shows must play five times in Hamburg, which extended the show’s potential to provoke prolonged dialogue (‘Förderrichtlinie’ 2013: 1–2). Proving and performing macro-political integration through a theatre piece is tricky. How can one be sure the audience will understand the message and that the Tanztheaterproduktion will make an impact? Pre- or post-concert meet and greets, lectures or round table discussions between audience members and performers, and a printed program with a director’s or artist’s note would be beneficial. So far, the Academy has not used these methods to foster dialogue. Academy artistic director Axel shared in an email that Macras attempted to ‘distort’ hip-hop, using its ‘source material’ but uniquely filtering it to produce a ‘new and fresh’ product. Kampnagel’s promotional materials explained that Macras understood youth performers to be ‘messengers of their own histories, which they transport in the universal language of dance’. Still, personal histories were limited to short monologues meant to prove Germanness, or to interpretative dance sans explanation. Can dance act as a comprehensible ‘universal language?’ Because audience members receive no written programme or spoken introduction, they self-interpret whatever messages they find through the performances.

DISTORTION’s Opening Franklyn opened DISTORTION alone, ‘legs apart, arms folded, black, threatening’ (Schreiber 2013). Dressed in a green jacket, green and red checked, button-down, long-sleeved un-tucked shirt with a black bow tie and light grey jeans, Franklyn exuded the image of urban hipster meeting Hochkultur. Due to a 10-minute delay, critic Falk Schreiber described Franklyn’s endless standing on stage as funny, because Franklyn assumed a ‘threatening, pseudo-cool pose’, and with each passing second his ‘threat’ decreased, an unintended impact but what would be an ideal reflection of Hamburgers’ views of migrants (ibid.). With increased exposure to and mutual understanding of people different from oneself, fear can evaporate.



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By beginning to build relationships with one another, bridges between ethnic Germans and migrant descendants can form and ‘extend’ people’s radii of trust (Fukuyama 2002). In DISTORTION, youth provide proofs and performances of Germanness through (German) words, actions and fashion. The show’s narrative and the youths’ narration of their nation come across most clearly in collective song and dance numbers. Following Franklyn’s opening dance improvisation, the show continues with group dance sequences featuring distorted hip-hop moves set to a fusion of musical styles. Schreiber (2013) shared how electronic sounds met live violin music with pulsating beats, driving the dancers’ ‘wavelike’ motions as they melt into distorted movements. The dancers present b-boy floor moves: flares, headspins and windmills (ibid.). Melodic and visual confusion abound and then ‘looped’ snippets of German text sound: ‘Meaning! Content! I was born here / I have a German passport / although I do not look German’ (ibid.). With these words, the theme of national identity comes to the fore. Later, youth provide a visually and musically evocative display of national identity – one steeped in German tradition but released from exclusivity by the youths’ diverse backgrounds. Dirndl-clad Jennifer with a West-African print apron, flanked by a half-German/half-Ghanaian Lederhosen (leather pants)-wearing colleague and an ethnic German man dressed in half a teddy bear costume, sing the post-war, anti-nationalist ‘Kinderhymne’ (Children’s Hymn, 1950) by Bertolt Brecht, music by Hanns Eisler. The lyrics regale a post-war (West) Germany, replacing the nineteenth-century cry for German unity: ‘Germany, Germany, above all, above all in the world’ with ‘And not over and not under other peoples will we be’. Brecht’s text aligns with a post-multi-kulti stance: a Germany incorporating people from all countries, none better, over or under another. On the day of DISTORTION’s premiere, Macras responded to this scene: ‘Don’t always expect something exotic from people who look different from you. They are not exotic, they are like you’. Macras shared that DISTORTION was the first production she had done with an entirely German cast and that although ethnic Germans might not consider all these youth to be German, she attempted to address this daily struggle – ‘the atmosphere of their lives’ (‘Kulturtipp’ 2013). The show beckons audience members to think of migrant youth as fellow citizens rather than as ‘others.’ Further into the work, the entire Ensemble sings shoulder-to-shoulder in three rows. Franklyn shared that the group stood and sang close to one another to resemble a German choir because even though they were not all ‘really German’, they were all born in Germany, integrated and had received the ‘stiffness’ of Germanness from the ‘cradle’. The formation signalled their shared sense of German tradition and unity. The ‘choral’ performance begins poignantly with Brecht/Eisler’s ‘Und ich werde nicht mehr sehen’

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(And I will not see anymore), a song speaking of not seeing one’s (German) homeland again. Henry Purcell’s more humourous round ‘Tis woman makes us love’ follows. Both pieces sound formal with the latter being Baroque, but the lyrics feature either double meanings or humour. Purcell’s tune dismantled into hip-hop dancing – the new art form breaking from the old. The reverence towards the Vaterland appears tongue-in-cheek, casting doubt on the exclusivity of German Hochkultur but also the solemnity of the youths’ feelings towards the nation-state despite their proclamations of Germanness. In a bridging gesture, performers urge ethnic Germans to regard them as German but as non-nationalistic, post-war Germans – a hybrid identity in the making. Wenger (1998: 149) describes this kind of ‘identity in practice’ as ‘a relation between the local and the global’ through which one defines oneself ‘by negotiating local ways of belonging to broader constellations’ and ‘manifesting wider styles and discourses’.

Imagined Germany Citizens build conceptions of the nation and national identity over generations. Bhabha (1990: 1) suggests, ‘nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye’. A narration of the nation, while romantic either in its remembrances of the past or in its idealistic hopes for the future, remains a powerful device, ‘an idea whose cultural compulsion lies in the impossible unity of the nation as a symbolic force’ (ibid.). In DISTORTION, the Ensemble presents its own nation, an imagined community – one drawing on the traditions of a mythic German Vaterland and the ghosts of their unique heritages. Their dreams still must grapple with mastering shared norms to reach the top. They must confront the challenges of the present. Bhabha (1994: 6) describes: The imaginary of spatial distance – to live somehow beyond the border of our times – throws into relief the temporal, social differences that interrupt our collusive sense of cultural contemporaneity. The present can no longer be simply envisaged as a break or a bonding with the past and the future, no longer a synchronic presence: our proximate selfpresence, our public images, comes to be revealed for its discontinuities, its inequalities, its minorities. The Ensemble presents a post-multi-kulti nation in DISTORTION, yet the one they build is contingent on the past and present, and though they long for a new future, racial and gender politics muddy the road there. The evolution sequence epitomizes the youths’ plea for something greater, whether acknowledgement of sameness on the deepest human



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level, or recognition that people with diverse histories and skin colours must and will be part of the country’s evolution. Rapper A-Jay sets up the scene with a monologue ending in his stripping to German flag boxer shorts to the delight of catcalls and whistles. His toned body contrasts his thin, pale German colleague who strips too. The moment shows that the ‘non-German-looking man’, who has a German mother and a West Africa father, has Germany closest to his skin. This exhibition leads to the evolution scene during which the Ensemble clad in black underwear forms a straight line from shortest to tallest, representing the growth of humans. Moments later, the troupe breaks into a line dance featuring hand clapping and leg slapping, characteristic of African-American stepping. The scene stresses the equality of bodies and that ethnic Germans cannot expect migrants to become entirely new people upon arrival. Instead, one acquires traits of the receiving society while maintaining cultural traditions of the old. Franklyn believes the evolution scene shows that all have evolved, regardless of skin colour – we are one and the same – and in this context: German. The evolution scene stands for the development of our nation. It is important that we all must pull together in the same direction for the future so we can continue to develop further and the individual steps we have made in the piece should reflect this. It is difficult to differentiate in DISTORTION how much Macras versus the youth determined content. Macras chose to dress Jennifer in a dirndl, which outwardly gives evidence of her Germanness’ but Jennifer chose to wear an apron made from a West African print over the dirndl ‘simply to hold on to my roots, to show them’. Through this representation of roots blending with the present, Jennifer embodied an integrated, multi-kulti, hybrid German – one who may not ‘look’ stereotypically German with blonde hair and blue eyes, but one who can wear traditional clothes plus add her heritage. Her colleague’s performed ‘proof’ of Germanness in DISTORTION also came through singing of the Vaterland and through adoption of Lederhosen.

Constructions of race through cultural difference Tension between migrants and ethnic Germans persists in part because macro society does not perceive people without German heritage as German and migrant descendants accordingly must adopt the justification position, as to why ethnic Germans should view them as German. Furthermore, it

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can be challenging for minority out-groups to self-represent their communities productively when the host society regards their attempts as defensive or aggressive (Schiffer 2008: 436; Rothchild 2015: 102). Jennifer finds double-sided integration to be difficult when one ‘does not have the colour [race of the majority population]’. She explained that if one arrives in a new place and is too ‘conspicuous’, one might yearn for acceptance, but if the host society does not respect the migrant from the beginning, one cannot integrate. As Aihwa Ong (1999: 113) explains, for many migrants and their descendants, ‘citizenship becomes an issue of handling the diverse rules, or “governmentality”, of host societies where they may be economically correct in terms of human capital, but culturally incorrect in terms of ethnicity’. Migrants might provide labour or investment capital yet still not receive full acceptance because they have a different ethnicity than the in-group. Building on this theme, Ensemble members danced while Jennifer’s electronically distorted voice recounted how, when she was younger, children taunted her and threw stones at her because of her dark skin. Jennifer remained with her friends who had migration backgrounds but her mother encouraged her to bridge with Germans to improve her language skills (Riesterer 2013). The word Rasse (race) ‘has virtually disappeared from the German lexicon and public discourse since 1945’, albeit ideologies have remained that ‘look an awful lot like racism’ (Chin and Fehrenbach 2009: 3). Annita Kalpaka and Nora Räthzel (1991:151, via Mandel 2002: 373) explain that Germans oftentimes avoid linking xenophobia with racism because doing so would minimize the Nazi atrocities against the Jews. Therefore, public discussions of ‘cultural difference’ have replaced debates on race, though the motives and meanings behind the ‘dialogues’ are strikingly similar (Chin 2009). Ong (1999: 20, 23) shares that ‘schemes of ethnic and racial differentiation that define individuals as “Chinese”, “Muslims”, and so on both discipline and normalize their subjectivities as particular kinds of citizens, regardless of their mobility’. Escaping these ‘imposed identities’ is virtually impossible. Several hip-hoppers with African or Asian heritages were frustrated with being asked about their origins because of their physical appearance. More ‘German-looking’ migrant descendants did not share these experiences. Due to problems with racism, Maria is unsure whether she wants to remain in Germany. Teenagers often call her ‘Chinese’ despite her having a different ethnicity; this makes her uncomfortable. Maria’s experience emphasizes a daily struggle with racial confrontations that complicate non-Caucasian migrant descendants’ sense of belonging in Germany. As Ong (1999: 57) notes: ‘Racial discourses not only shape the internal divisions of imagined communities, as [Benedict] Anderson claims, but are also employed, for both oppressive and emancipatory purposes, in inscribing and managing social divisions in transnational space’.



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Performing multiple, hybrid identities Migrant youth sample many identities in their lives. In addition to their sought after ‘glocal’ identities, youth constructions of identity fit with Wenger’s (1998) model of identity being a ‘negotiated experience’, arising through ‘community membership’, happening on a ‘learning trajectory’ and constituting a ‘nexus of multimembership’ through which people define themselves by merging and negotiating their multiple memberships. Migrant youth formation of one or more identities is a complex process because many ethnic Germans reify and reduce them to the category ‘other’ (ibid. 149). Bhabha (1994: 321) addresses ‘the liminality of migrant experience’, how often migrants are caught in the ‘in-between’ space of ‘homeland’ and ‘home’, a hybrid cultural position from which migrants break boundaries or produce new creations like DISTORTION. Pertaining to migrant descendants, the connection to homeland is often farther removed. What remains from a larger societal perspective, as the students recount in their stories of strangers’ wonderment over their German language competency, is the embedded notion of difference – one of double-sided stereotypes that DISTORTION tries to confront head-on. Bhabha (1994: 321) suggests: The migrant culture of the ‘in-between’, the minority position, dramatizes the activity of culture’s untranslatability; and in so doing, it moves the question of culture’s appropriation beyond the assimilationist’s dream, or the racist’s nightmare, of a ‘full transmissal of subject-matter’; and towards an encounter with the ambivalent process of splitting and hybridity that marks the identification with culture’s difference. Hybrid, split or dual identities abound among migrants yet Naika Foroutan (2009) stresses the struggle for migrant youth to embrace personally selected hybrid identities and present themselves as nuanced figures. Media sources, politicians and too often mainstream society reify youths’ Muslim identity – privileging Islam as their primary group identification whether or not youth chose it.9 Foroutan (2009: 30–1) argues: While our [‘ethnic Muslims’] hybrid identity puts us in a position to feel as if our multiple homes can be a resource … we wonder … about the violent effects of themes that with their discursive power reduce everything to a homogenization of identity. As migrants acquire more education, have successful careers, and become fluent in German, ‘the defense mechanisms in the majority society proliferate; they try to strengthen their [ethnic Germans’] identity by marking us [“ethnic Muslims”] as “Other”’ (ibid.). Majority society gifts ‘ethnic Muslims’ several imposed identities – all in contradistinction to ‘true’ ‘German’ identities.

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By presenting daily dilemmas and youth affirmations of national identity, Macras provides a mirror image for people who constantly ask ‘foreigners’: ‘Where do you really come from? Where exactly do you come from?’ Jennifer explains she was born in Germany, she is from Hamburg, and her heritage is German. Ong (1999: 92) shares that this form of questioning is not limited to migrants in Germany: Nonwhite residents and immigrants in the West are accustomed to being asked, Where are you from? or on extreme occasions being told ‘to go home’ because they do not match the ideal image of, for instance, an American citizen. The point is not that money cannot buy everything, but that accumulation of symbolic capital can only go so far in converting prestige and honor into social capital that will increase access to institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition in particular cultural economies. In other words, although Ensemble youth try to bridge with Germans and achieve financial and artistic success, negative associations with ‘cultural difference’ constrain their progress. While migrant descendants claim multiple affinities and sample many identities daily and through performance, DISTORTION focuses on feeling Deutsch. Unified proclamations of Germanness through German song and monologues come across more clearly on stage than countless anecdotes referencing people’s (true) hybrid pasts. When youth profess Germanness auf Deutsch, even when they project less nationalistic longings, audiences can understand their message because youth are claiming Germanness through the beloved German language. Though society gives youth dual, hyphenated identities, they still want youth to appear assimilated – a catch-22 situation. An assimilated society features a sameness that starts with language and ends with feeling pride and belonging to a nation-state – whereas marking difference signals hybridity and potential disloyalty. Migrant descendants must be careful about which identities they sample if they want to bridge with the cultural mainstream. Bhabha (1994: 3) explains: ‘the social articulation of difference, from the minority perspective, is a complex, on-going negotiation that seeks to authorize cultural hybridities that emerge in moments of historical transformation’. Proving national identity through language competence or declarations of national feeling is limited primarily to non-ethnic Germans. German ethnic sentiments of national identity remain locked in the past. Particularly since the 1980s, the: German inclination to define a new, democratic national identity in terms of ‘collective guilt’ and a ‘community of fate’ reinscribed an ethnically exclusive notion of belonging. Only those who could claim a



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genealogical connection to the perpetrators fit within this conception of German identity. (Chin and Fehrenbach 2009: 22–3) As a result, German attempts to practice democratic ideals and make up for its Nazi period ‘inadvertently became a tool for re-constituting a homogeneous German nation’ (ibid.). Because most migrant youth cannot claim a genealogical link to the Nazi past and because that past remains forged to German identity through classroom history lessons, war memorials and foreign stereotypes of Germans, migrants’ claims of Germanness perplex some ethnic Germans yet they scorn migrants who cling to their heritages. Even today, some young ethnic Germans find grasping a firm national identity is anti-social and cling to local identities like being a Hamburger or Bavarian. Overall, DISTORTION disrupts boundaries of German identity. Though at a glance, the show seems to mirror migrant descendants’ lives, it reflects German majority culture as well. The show addresses the need for ethnic Germans to recognize migrant descendants as German regardless of skin colour or national heritage. Jennifer agrees, sharing the point is to relegate the word (im)migration to the past because many migrant descendants speak German, have German passports, were born, live and attend school in Germany, and will evermore see themselves as German. DISTORTION provides a performance of macro-political integration and belonging and tests the boundaries of what being ‘German’ means, expanding the meaning beyond a genealogical connection to the Nazis.

Conclusion: Building bridges for macro-political integration through DISTORTION Whether a Tanztheaterproduktion works for macro-political integration is a question warranting more questions. For whom does a production function? For the youth performers of Germanness trying to find acceptance in the nation-state? For the politicians or the audience in need of receiving bricks to build social bridges? DISTORTION played for three sold-out nights in Hamburg and will reach thousands of people, transmitting a message of an imagined, united Germany launched from the post-multi-kulti present. Miller and Yudice (2002: 27) write in their work on cultural policy, ‘alongside the drive to discipline the citizen, is the disposition to showcase and market the citizen’. By transmitting ethics to youth, the Academy presents ‘ideal’, integrated citizens with a global reach through shows that could incite feelings of social unity and instigate empathy from audience members who witness youth ‘transformations’. Youth affirmations of Germanness show they feel socially integrated yet are frustrated

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by the need to prove belonging. The other essential component of macropolitical integration is the host society’s acceptance of migrants. Audiences attending DISTORTION hear countless testimonies but are they in need of learning? What impact then do audience members have on societal views towards migrants on the subway? Attendees’ greatest chance to increase ethnic Germans’ ‘radii of trust’ is through open dialogue with neighbours, co-workers, family and friends about the Tanztheaterproduktion they attended. In terms of German acceptance of migrants, recent nationwide studies offer insight. On 30 November 2014, German newsweekly Der Spiegel proclaimed ‘the definition of national identity has changed fundamentally’. The publication summarized findings of the Deutschland postmigrantisch (Germany post-migrant) study, which Foroutan and the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research conducted. Over two years, researchers asked 80–100 questions about national identity to 8,270 people. The results claim the majority of Germans do not define Germanness exclusively by descent; 96.8 per cent of respondents thought a German is one who speaks German, 78.9 per cent added one must possess a German passport, 37 per cent said one must have German ancestors. Unfortunately, Islamophobia permeated the results: 37.8 per cent claimed headscarf-wearers cannot be German, although 70 per cent of female ‘ethnic Muslims’ in Germany do not veil, and among migrant descendants, levels continue to decline (‘Umfrage’ 2014; Foroutan 2009). Der Spiegel’s article concluded by asking readers to answer the underlying question of Foroutan’s study: ‘When is one German? What is the deciding criterion to be German?’ The online poll’s answers aligned with what Foroutan’s results showed, limiting respondents’ thinking and not including ideas of belonging. Der Spiegel’s results from 29,921 respondents, tallied on 15 December 2014, were startlingly different from the Deutschland postmigrantisch study: A German is one who speaks German. (9,954, 33.27%) A German is one who has a German passport. (7,099, 23.73%) A German is one who has German forefathers. (12,868, 43.01%) While Foroutan’s study asked respondents more questions and likely allowed them to identify Germanness in multiple ways, Der Spiegel’s results show the battle migrants face in having ethnic Germans accept them as authentically German (‘Umfrage’ 2014). German macro-societal perceptions of migrants’ macro-political integration remain complicated. Coverage of IS, Hamburg jihadists, Pegida and refugees floods the airways. Protesters march to the slogan ‘we are the people’ (Hebel et al. 2014). One wonders, if they are the people, then who are the migrant youth born and raised in Germany? Despite facing



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a society not always welcome to migrants, migrants’ desire to embrace a German identity is significant because it signals acculturation, belonging and (from their end) successful macro-political integration. Nevertheless, as youth face daily discrimination, they know their assigned identities remain multiple. The time when they can present themselves as ‘true’ ‘Germans’ has not arrived, yet as the new generation ages, boundaries of definition, the in-group’s rules and identity markers can change. In another generation 50 per cent of children could have partial or full non-ethnic German heritage. With migrant youth as a larger percentage of the adult population, they too will imagine, write and express their belonging in the nation-state and decide what being German means. Nevertheless, as DISTORTION demonstrates, performers still must convince audiences of their ‘‘Germanness’ and belonging’ (Rothchild 2015: 104). These youth proclaim: ‘ich fühle mich Deutsch’. To help integration work, German politicians, media players, and citizens should view these youth as ‘equal Germans’ as well (ibid.). After all, these young people are home.

Notes  1 The use of interviewees’ real names, pseudonyms and other identifying information matches their preferences.  2 Benedict Anderson (2006) is known for his concept of the ‘imagined community’. He surmised that the nation does not actually constitute a ‘real’ community. Instead, the ‘imagined community’ arose from ‘print capitalism’. My construction of the Academy’s imagined community utilizes Anderson’s terminology but examines imagination as a ‘mode of belonging’ in a community of practice (Wenger 1998).  3 Interviewee ages are as of 2013, the year these interviews took place.  4 Gastarbeiter were temporary labourers the former West Germany recruited from 1955–73; they were not immigrants that the government thought would remain in the nation-state.  5 Salafists belong to a revisionist Muslim movement that believes strict adherence to an imagined religious and social life akin to what the earliest generations of Muslims practiced will guarantee success and salvation.  6 Alevi is the term used for a large number of heterodox Muslim Shi’a communities with different characteristics. Alevis are known to constitute the largest religious minority in Turkey.  7 For discussion on the emergence of rap in Germany, see Elflein 1998 and Pennay 2001.  8 Course totals reflect February–August 2014 offerings.  9 This is an example of ‘identity as negotiated experience’ though ‘ethnic Muslims’ have very little say in the negotiation (Wenger 1998: 149).

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Göktürk, D., D. Gramling and A. Kaes (2007), Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955–2005, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hebel, C., B. Knaack and C. Sydow (2014), ‘Pegida-Faktencheck: Die Angstbürger’, Spiegel Online, 12 December. Available online: http://www. spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/pegida-die-thesen-im-faktencheck-a-1008098. html (accessed 17 December 2014). ‘HipHop Academy Hamburg: Lokal – Global: Zwischen Jugendkultur und Hochkultur’ (2013), HipHop Academy Hamburg, Brochure. Humboldt, W. (1963 [1830–5]), ‘Ueber die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts’, in Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie, vol. III, 368–756, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Kalpaka, A. and N. Räthzel (1991), ‘A Note on Ausländerfeindlichkeit’. Race and Class 31: 149–52. ‘Kanzlerin besucht Sprachkurs und HipHop-Academy’ (2010), Hamburger Morgenpost, 9 December. Available online: http://www.mopo.de/ news/merkel-in-hamburg-kanzlerin-besucht-sprachkurs-und-hiphopacademy,5066732,6710538.html (accessed 10 November 2014). ‘Kulturtipp: Constanza Macras goes HipHop. UA Distortion – Verzerrungen auf Kampnagel in Hamburg’ (2013), Interview with Constanza Macras and led by Katja Weise, Deutschlandradio Kultur, 14 February: 1–3. Linke, U. (2002), ‘Die Sprache als Körper: Linguistischer Nationalismus und deutsche Sprachpolitik’, in T. Hauschild and B. Warneken (eds), Inspecting Germany: Internationale Deutschland-Ethnographie der Gegenwart, 290–317, Münster: LIT Verlag. López-Rodríguez, L., M. Navas, I. Cuadrado, D. Coutant and S. Worchel (2014), ‘The Majority’s Perceptions about Adaptation to the Host Society of Different Immigrant Groups: The Distinct Role of Warmth and Threat’, International Journal of Intercultural Relations 40: 34–48. Mandel, R. (2002), ‘Die ethnische Zwangsjacke: Der Platz der Türken in Deutschland’, in T. Hauschild and B. Warneken (eds), Inspecting Germany: Internationale Deutschland-Ethnographie der Gegenwart, 362–77. Münster: LIT Verlag. Miller, T. and G. Yudice (2002), Cultural Policy, London: Sage. Niebisch, D. et al. (2009), Schritte plus 1: Kursbuch + Arbeitsbuch, Niveau A1/1. Deutsch als Fremdsprache, Ismaning, Germany: Hueber Verlag. Ong, A. (1999), Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ‘PeaceDialogue’ (2005), UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: Division for Social Policy and Development. Available online: http://www.un.org/esa/ socdev/sib/peacedialogue/soc_integration.htm (accessed 20 December 2014). Pennay, M. (2001), ‘Rap in Germany: The Birth of a Genre’, in T. Mitchell (ed.), Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, 111–33, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. ‘Regionalergebnisse – Stand 29.06.2011’ (2011), Der Norden zählt. Available online: http://www.statistik-nord.de/fileadmin/regional/regional.php (accessed 23–24 October 2013). ‘Religionsgemeinschaften: Hamburg unterzeichnet Staatsvertrag mit Muslimen

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und Aleviten’ (2013), Spiegel Online, 13 November. Available online: http:// www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/hamburg-unterzeichnet-staatsvertrag-mitmuslimen-und-aleviten-a-867032.html (accessed 29 October 2013). Riesterer, A-K. (2013), ‘Verzerrter HipHop auf Kampnagel’, Mittendrin, 19 February. Available online: http://hh-mittendrin.de/2013/02/verzerrter-hiphopauf-kampnagel/ (accessed 11 December 2014). Rothchild, E. J. (2015), ‘After the Hamburg Cell: the Integration Debate and Turkish-German Representation in Post 9-11 Media and Politics’, in I. Sirkeci, D. Elçin and G. Şeker (eds), Politics and Law in Turkish Migration, 93–104, London: Transnational Press. Schiffer, S. (2008), ‘Islam in German Media’, in Ala Al-Harmarneh and Jörn Thielmann (eds), Islam and Muslims in Germany, 423-440, Leiden and Boston: Brill. Schreiber, F. (2013), ‘Ich bin deutsch’, Nachtkritik.de, 14 February. Available online: http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=arti cle&id=7749%3Adistortion-nconstanza-macras-&catid=206%3Akampnagelhamburg&Itemid=40 (accessed 17 February 2014). Smale, A. (2014), ‘In German City Rich With History and Tragedy, Tide Rises Against Immigration’, The New York Times, 7 December. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/world/in-german-city-rich-with-historyand-tragedy-tide-rises-against-immigration.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Ho mepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_ r=1 (accessed 7 December 2014). Stiekele, A. (2013), ‘Getanzte Lebensentwürfe’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 16 February. Available online: http://www.abendblatt.de/kultur-live/ article113678788/Getanzte-Lebensentwuerfe.html (accessed 27 February 2014). Turner, B. S. (1990), ‘Outline of a Theory of Citizenship’. Sociology 24: 189–217. ‘Umfrage zu Einwanderung: Deutsch ist, wer deutsch spricht’ (2014), Spiegel Online, 30 November. Available online: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/wann-sind-einwanderer-deutsche-laut-umfrage-soll-spracheentscheiden-a-1005767.html (accessed 11 December 2014). Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ‘Zuwanderer identifizieren sich mit Deutschland’ (2009), Bertelsmann-Stiftung. Available online: http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/cps/rde/xchg/bst/hs.xsl/ nachrichten_96355.htm (accessed 1 May 2014).

PART FOUR

Connecting sounds and ancestral homelands

CHAPTER NINE

‘Portugal dos Xutos’: Portuguese music in the lives of ‘returned’ descendants of Portuguese emigrants from Canada João Sardinha

Introduction Within migration literature, the topic of return migration, as pertinent to the descendants of the migrants,1 has, in recent years, come to garnish greater attention in the social sciences. A few notable studies on the return2 of this population to their ancestral homelands have included the return of Greek descendants from the United States and Germany (Christou 2006; Christou and King 2006, 2010; King and Christou 2008); British-Caribbeans back to the Caribbean (Potter, Conway and Phillips 2005; Potter and Phillips 2006, 2008; Reynolds 2008); Brazilian Nikkeijin migrant descendants (Japanese-Brazilians) back to Japan (Tsuda 2001, 2003, 2004); Italian migrant descendants from Switzerland back to Italy (Wessendorf 2007); as well as the return from Franca and Canada to Portugal (Sardinha 2011a, 2011c, 2014). While the ancestral return of what Wessendorf (2007) calls ‘roots migrants’ or what King and Christou (2008) coin ‘counter-diasporic returnees’ has looked at such topics as return motivations, identity negotiations and transnational practices, looking at these issues on a macro scale, what is yet to be scrutinized are cultural specificities that may drive a return plan. In other words, worthy of scrutiny is the question: what processes may contribute to maintaining and (re-)constructing cultural elements specific to the ancestral country of origin that may be key factors in encouraging or constructing a return mobility plan?

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In analysing shifting cultural practices and perceptions of home among migrants and their descendants in the diaspora (Klimt 2000, 2006/07), it is common for academic studies to focus on such factors as citizenship and electoral behaviour, language (bilingual education), religion, gastronomy, family rituals (weddings, funerals, etc.), traditional festivities, the importance or attention given to the national (‘home’) issues such as history, politics, sports or media. Keeping tabs or maintaining interests in these issues surely draws the migrant or migrant descendant closer to ancestry, but is it enough to motivate a return to the land of (ancestral) origin? Aiming to demonstrate that the answer to this question can be yes, this article adds one more variable to the above list, setting out to analyse constructions of transnational belonging and cultural proximity to ethnic origins through music. To demonstrate this, I rely on a group of Portuguese migrant descendants from Canada who have returned to take up residency in Portugal. This examination delves into the voices of these descendant returnees, analysing narratives that reflect on the impact and importance of Portuguese music as a variable of cultural proximity, identification and belonging before the return was accomplished. The analysis thus delves into memories of growing up, of childhood years, of later adolescence, as well as adulthood, having participants recount encounters and experiences with the cultural component under question – that of music. As individuals who ‘return’ to their ancestral homeland, one of the common reasons for doing so is that of wanting to be closer to roots and cultural authenticity. Before an actual ‘return’ takes place, it is common to witness these migrant descendants becoming acquainted with Portuguese culture and Portugal itself. They will often ensconce themselves in the ‘Portuguese world’ provided to them by their family and/or community, through their own searches and interests, as well as though short visits to the homeland. Delving into one’s ethnic roots with regularity often implies engaging in transnational ways of being and belonging to the ancestral homeland. Keeping in mind that ethno-cultural affiliation is an integral part of identity formation, an ethno-cultural component such as ethnic music can be a pillar of identity constructions as well as an avenue of transnational connections. It is in these points where this research therein lies. With this article, I here attempt to outline the role of Portuguese music when it comes to strengthening attachment to ancestral roots, negotiating personal identities and feelings of belonging, and how this creates greater proximity to Portugal and ‘being Portuguese’, often to the extent of playing a role within a broader spectrum of identification and belonging that may serve as a motivator for wanting to pursue a return to the land of ancestry. With the aim of scrutinizing these issues, this article draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out longitudinally from 2008 to 2015 in



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continental Portugal alongside twenty returnees.3 From these twenty interviews, however, the narratives of six interviewees have been carefully selected for analysis in this chapter.

Theorizing cultural transnationality and its application to the Portuguese in Canada The connection between the descendants of immigrants and their transnational ties to their ancestral homeland is an issue that has come to garnish greater research attention in recent years (Levitt and Waters 2002). Much of the literature, however, draws particular attention to the impact of transnationalism on integration processes in the parental country of immigration or ‘host society’ (see, for example, Haller and Landolt 2005; Levitt and Waters 2002). Within this scope, of particular importance are the interrelations between society-at-large and the migrant community, often acknowledging the creation of a ‘third space’ (Bhabha 1994) where identity and belonging are scrutinized, and where individuals often grapple to define who they are, where they are, often realizing that they are something altogether new, composed of the two cultural worlds delved with and within. Resulting from highly transnational everyday lives during childhood and adolescence, however, descendants may particularly strengthen their attachment to their diasporic roots and ancestry when negotiating personal identities and feelings of belonging, this often to the point of forming closer bonds with the ancestral homeland and its culture than that of the country and culture lived in. To ensconce oneself into one’s ethnicity at a distance requires proximity to cultural elements that, in today’s globalized world, may be closer than one might think. When it comes to identifying such cultural elements, Slobin (1994: 245) places music at the centre of diasporic experiences, which, according to the author, is a variable that gets to ‘the heart of what it means to live a multifocal life’. In the diasporic setting, diasporic community members rely on past and present social and cultural experiences and their structures of feelings, memories, imaginations and acts as a way preserving a collective identity. Probing meanings and implications of diasporic conditions of migrants as well as their descendants, matched up with their permeability towards cultural elements and habits of the immigration setting, brings about identification bipolarization (Zheng 2010). As pointed out by Vertovec and Cohen (1999), diasporas have evolved within the frameworks of international migrations, globalization and transnationalism, conveying cultural, social, political and economic processes of ‘multilocality’, ‘global identities’ and ‘transnationalism’. In a world characterized by global flows of social and cultural phenomena, therefore, diasporas capture the fluidity,

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intermixing and hybrid nature of identification and sense of belonging, processes that are constantly (re)producing themselves through transformation and difference (Hall 1990). The image of migrants living simultaneously in two worlds is the central thread in the debate on transnationalism (cf. Glick Schiller et al. 1992; Basch, Glick Schiller and Szanton Blanc 1994; Faist 2000; Kivisto 2001; Glick Schiller 2004; among others). The development of research on migrant transnationalism argues that nation-states are ever-growing, overlapping, delimiting societies, with national boundaries being blurred by migration practices. Adding to this logic, transnationalism can also be a mode of cultural production, performance and consumption, as well as an acquired taste in aesthetics and styles manifested in the hybridity, syncretism (Joseph and Fink 1999) and translational nature of present-day diasporic expressive cultural practices (Zheng 2010). Historically, migrations have shown that migrants take with them their homeland culture and do their best to re-create it in the new setting. Previous to the time when modern technologies has allowed migrants greater regular access to the culture of the territory left behind, the accompaniment and updating of that culture were great challenges to migrants in the diasporic setting. Cultural production, performance and consumption were a reference of an antiquated time and space – a time when the first-generation emigrant left his/her homeland. Any transmission, production or performance to future generations would, therefore, also be time-/space-specific. In the case of Portuguese emigration, the (re)conceptualization of diaspora in the age of globalization appeals to new dynamics of belonging, ethnicity and identity. Since the 1980s, the dominant discourse and policies on the part of the Portuguese state toward the Portuguese abroad has become increasingly tied to the conception of the homeland as ‘an imagined community of descent’ transcending national boundaries (Horta 2002; Rocha-Trindade 1999). As a result, special rights, privileges and the creation of institutional channels for the full participation of Portuguese emigrants and their descendants in Portuguese society have strengthened the cultural and ethnic bonds between Portugal and its various diasporic communities. Drawing from this, the Portuguese state has invested in the diaspora, making funds available for cultural programmes and Portuguese language learning, along with providing public television and programming targeting Portuguese diasporic communities (RTPi).4 Beyond the initiatives of the Portuguese state, under Canada’s Multicultural Directorate, established in 1976, immigrant associations in Canada have been able to apply for and receive financial support. Such support has been forthcoming in a number of areas of social and cultural intervention, among them the organization of festivals, conferences, publications, language programmes, etc. (Artibise 1990). Since the 1970s, other sources of support for immigrant organizations from Canadian federal government agencies



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have also become available, among them Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Multiculturalism Program of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, as well as Heritage Canada. Beyond the national level, at the provincial level, provinces have also proclaimed policies of multiculturalism that often involve financial support for ethno-cultural organizations and their initiatives. With resources and financial assistance made available from both sending and receiving contexts, associations have thus had greater means to keep cultural heritage alive. Culturally, this has included greater investments in establishing schools and language classes, folkdance and music groups, sports clubs, festivals, among others. Many of the key initiatives, in fact, have been aimed at the offspring of immigrants. Beyond community projects, another mechanism for the strengthening of transnational ties has been the relative ease and affordability of air travel, increasing the frequency of family visits and holidays to the home country. Moreover, greater choice and immediacy of contacting family members and emphasizing cultural elements has been facilitated by improved telecommunication systems and other electronic forms of communication. Diaspora, in this case, is a pivotal branch in a network society where the logic of information flows prevails (Castells 2000). Through such communication means, networks are strengthened, permitting a multiplicity of ties that transcend borders, bringing the diaspora closer to the homeland and vice versa. For Portuguese emigrant descendants in Canada, this favours connectivity on a constant basis to Portugal and Portuguese symbols at any given time of day. Such organic links to Portugal, from the perspective of diaspora, may drive the very desire for a reterritorialization (Malkki 1992), serving to define the desire to live out a counter-diasporic experience (Christou 2006).

Music as a bond to Portugal: Analysing home, community, technology and return visits The next sections will observe homeland and ethno-cultural contacts brought through dealings in what I identify as four key environmental settings: the domestic/parental milieu, the ethnic community in the diaspora, technology and short holiday visits. Through narrative analysis, I look at the role of Portuguese music, scrutinizing how this cultural variable built increased awareness of ‘Portugueseness’ among my participants, at certain stages of their lives, to the point of being a motivating factor in their decision to move to Portugal to be ensconced in their ancestral homeland culture. Slobin (1993) describes diasporic interculture as one kind of ‘transnational music-cultural flow’, arguing that music in the diaspora is most

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often manifested in intricate relationships with the homeland, with complex internal structures and dynamic individual networks. Within this context, the spaces of interest cultivation constructed within such structures and networks, as it is pertinent to music at an individual level, are here at the heart of the analysis.

Music in the family environment In the case of the Portuguese diaspora in Canada, research has shown that family bonds are utilized as a social resource by individuals in the construction of ethnic identity and belonging (Noivo 1997). Family narratives which promote the ideology of return and a strong diasporic identity, together with transnational family bonds and activities, represent important forms of social capital which are utilized within family/kinship networks serving to re-affirm the offspring’s membership and belonging to the Portuguese ethnic identity (cf. Reynolds 2008 on the Caribbean diaspora). If it is the desire of the parents to maintain a strong attachment to Portugal, perhaps given the ultimate goal of returning home, it is important that all attempts be made to instil this philosophy on the offspring through such means as the maintenance of ethnic practices, construction of a sense of nostalgia and reminiscences of home (sense of saudade)5 and family (cultural) closeness. Much of this is evident in the narratives collected from those interviewed for this research, with dialogues often accentuating the parental influence and being surrounded by Portuguese cultural elements in the household in which ancestral homeland music was often mentioned as a cornerstone of cultural transmissions. To exemplify this, I draw on the words of Marta6 (born 1979). An extreme case when it comes to deepening oneself into one’s ‘Portugueseness’ via ethnic music, Marta explained the impact her parents had on her musical tastes growing up, to the point that she herself started singing Portuguese music professionally. You know how sometimes you hear musicians and musical people in general say things like: ‘my parents had music playing throughout the house all the time so I grew up listening and being inspired by this type of music or by this band or by that artist …?’ Well that’s me. My father especially … he owned the record player, the cassette player, the CD player. He would always have fado, folklore and pimba music7 playing. My mother was right into it as well. It was all stuff from their past when they lived in Portugal. When we got RTPi in our house, we wouldn’t miss a musical variety show or any programme with music, for example. The thing with television though is that we often got to see things live or at least at the same time they were shown in Portugal. So if all of the sudden there’s a new Mariza album,8 we also know. It wasn’t like



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that when I was a child. I was raised on this. Those cassettes – Amália (Rodrigues), Rodrigo, Carlos do Carmo9 – I remember them as a child, being played, and I ate them up. They are the reason why I got hooked on Portuguese music and especially on fado. Although this quote details how first-generation parents keep Portuguese culture alive in the household, we also see two different versions of transmitting Portuguese culture. On the one hand, we see a version that reflects ‘the Portugal’ known to Marta’s parents before they emigrated to Canada, with music of their past. On the other, how the current version of Portugal was maintained through television programming, brought in to their living room as it happened. Within the family unit, having resources available to transmit what the parents hoped would be a mutual love for an ethnocultural act or component was key. The role of cassettes at a very early age, and later satellite television, fed the parental desire to maintain ‘all things Portuguese’ in the house right from an early age,10 leading to an intergenerational shared taste in Portuguese music. Under this scenario, however, it should be pointed out that Marta’s profound love for Portuguese music is one best described as a unique situation. In migrant contexts, growing up in their parents’ emigration country children are often defined by bicultural and pluralistic life patterns, resulting from a bi-socialization process involving two spheres: the ‘internal’ – the ethnic socio-cultural space lived primarily within the family unit and ethnic community – and the ‘external’ – the space outside of the former (Gokalp 1988), where finding a place of best fit often turns into ‘cultural wars’ (Nunes 1995). This can be particularly strenuous on family relationships given that parents tend to maintain closer cultural ties to their country of origin, ties the children generally do not share given that they do not live the occurrences of the everyday in that country (Portugal), something that can be said the opposite of in the case of the familial country of immigration (Canada). As I have written elsewhere (Sardinha 2014), it is often more common for the second generation to abandon ‘being Portuguese’ and ‘become Canadian’ as a way of demonstrating that they do not identify with the culture of their parents. Moving away from the ethnic heritage altogether (by assimilating into Canadian society) would thus imply shunning Portuguese music, most often witnessing the young individual opting instead for Western, Anglophone music. In Marta’s case, within the family structure, right from a young age, a cultural divide was non-existent,11 something that happened subconsciously, through the everyday music playing habits of her parents at home. At the opposite end of this, however, is Pedro (born 1980): Having my parents play Portuguese music was like a nightmare for me. We used to have really big fights in the car especially over who would

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control the tape deck. The thing is when you’re young, you don’t want to be caught listening to that sort of thing. Listening to your parent’s Portuguese folklore music will not make you cool around your friends. When you get older, that stuff from your youth gets into your subconscious and it’s like you end up having an appreciation for it later on in life. For the migrant offspring, identity formation will become a resource to be moulded in accordance with what is needed to better one’s inclusion. Pang (2000) utilizes the phrase ‘ethnicity as a weapon’ in describing ethnic identity’s elastic nature in the way that principal agents are frequently enmeshed in constant negotiations with themselves and the majority group(s) of a given society. In response to the general forces of society-atlarge, ethnic minority individuals will often alter their own ethnic identity or adapt elements of the larger group in order to ‘fit in’. Such was the case of Pedro who neglected the Portuguese music his parents enjoyed in order to be accepted by his non-Portuguese peers. Also exposed in Pedro’s statement are the divergent lifestyles of ‘old world’ parents and their ‘new world’ child (Tyyskä 2005) defined by musical tastes. In observing his narrative, we see how rebelling against the ‘emigrant mindset of the first generation’ can drive the offspring to want to escape the ‘parental norms’. This escapism is equally owed to an overprotective family cocoon, as it is also common for the parents to want to see the second generation stay pure to the past via its culture, in which ethnic music plays an important part.12 Defining one’s identity by turning inward into a personal world defined by one’s personal tastes in music is thus also a way of dodging parental mentalities and expected obligations of having to maintain being uniquely Portuguese. As Pedro went on to mention, however, later in life, when peer-group adaptation is not as relevant, the Portuguese music of one’s past gains respect often due to ties to memories of one’s younger days and due to the greater awareness that is then often given to one’s ancestral roots.

Music in the ‘community’ For the descendants of Portuguese immigrants, transnational ways of being and belonging (Glick Schiller 2004; Wessendorf 2007) are fortified if intense social relations are maintained with co-ethnics and if one’s ‘Portugueseness’ is regularly celebrated. Generally speaking, as the descendants of Portuguese emigrants reach adulthood, many continue to have social relations with co-ethnics, be it family, relatives or community, and will partake in Portuguese cultural activities of interest to them, thus engaging in transnational ways of being. However, only some individuals continue to engage in transnational ways of belonging given that, for many, attachment to



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Portugal becomes symbolic, framed within the milieu of multicultural Canada and the way of life ultimately defined by living in Canada. The second-generation descendants who strongly engage in transnational ways of belonging, on the other hand, are those who end up with particularly strong feelings about the ancestral homeland. Studies on Portuguese immigrants in Canada have revealed a tendency for community clustering – residence-wise, through the creation of associations, and through informal gatherings as well (see, among others, Anderson and Higgs 1976; Higgs 1982; Teixeira and da Rosa 1999). From an early age, the offspring of immigrants are raised among their Portuguese immigrant descendant peers and introduced to the ‘Portuguese community life’ constructed in Canada by the first generation. Measures are taken to ensure that the children maintain their ‘Portugueseness’ while in the diaspora, via Portuguese language learning (creation of Portuguese schools), Portuguese cultural elements (folkdance groups, music lessons, all-Portuguese soccer teams, etc.) and church activities (attending Portuguese Catholic Churches and Sunday School), all done with the intent of contributing to the maintenance of ethnic bonds and ties to the homeland. The ethnic incubator of ‘Portugueseness’, kept within diasporic circles through institutions sets out to preserve transnational belonging. I revert to Marta’s community experiences to exemplify: I was put into this (Portuguese community life) by my parents – naturally – and so […] I got into a Minho folklore dance group, it was there where I started to sing, then I got into a band that did weddings, dances on weekends, the Saint John festivities, etc… And after that I started singing fado. […] The thing is, growing up, when we weren’t participating in these organised community events and activities, we were visiting my parents’ Portuguese friends or speaking to our Portuguese neighbours, or the guy that owned the Portuguese business next door. There was no way to escape it, but I loved it all; and you know what? There was always Portuguese music everywhere. It was like the soundtrack of our lives, be it fado, popular music, whatever… I was living in Canada, but culturally, that wasn’t the case. I came to Portugal to try to succeed in fado here, but all this was very important in getting me here. Nostalgia for the homeland fostered in the Portuguese diaspora is thus crucial for the second generation’s perceptions of Portugal. Surely the parents’ longing for Portugal is a key driving force, but equally key to keeping the children surrounded by ‘Portugueseness’, as hinted at by Marta, is to divert them away from a Canadian lifestyle and non-Portuguese cultural influences, thus keeping them in a ‘Portuguese bubble’. Although diaspora may be thought of as being a socio-cultural triangulation involving the diasporic community, the host society and the land of origin (Safran

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1991), an intense experience of ethnic living reveals that, for individuals like Marta, ethno-cultural involvement strengthens ties to the ancestral homeland, in her case contributing to constructing a return desire. Furthermore, it is also key to point out that the ethnic and cultural practices that fostered ‘Portugueseness’ among my interviewees served to fuel their identification. Rita (born 1975), for example, confessed to literally doing whatever was necessary to construct a Portuguese lifestyle around her at all times: There was a group of us who were really into Portuguese music, especially new acts that emerged in the 1980’s, bands like Xutos e Pontapés, Delfins, UHF, Heróis do Mar, Rui Veloso among others. We were into being Portuguese and music was part of that. We drove from Montreal to Toronto to go see Xutos e Pontapés once; five hours there, five hours back. This was the Portugal we wanted to be a part of, a modern Portugal – Portugal dos Xutos.13 As Rita brings to our attention, one’s affiliation – even obsession – with ‘being Portuguese’, matched up against regular dealings with and within Canadian society-at-large, brings about internal conflict for many descendants who constantly negotiate who they are within the Canadian milieu. Visible aspects of these negotiations, namely through the symbolic manifestation of ethnic pride (e.g. music, clothing, language, etc.), may lead to their isolation, socially segregating themselves in the name of one commonality, their ‘Portugueseness’. Elsewhere I have argued that beyond personal daily contacts, Canada’s stance on multiculturalism – ideologically, politically and rhetorically presented as a policy that promotes and calls for ethno-cultural preservation – encourages descendants to visibly represent and manifest themselves through their ethnicity (Sardinha 2011c). Such deepening of one’s ethnic self can lead certain individuals to increase their contact with Portugal and Portuguese culture; a factor that can equally drive descendants to construct ancestral return projects, this in the name of ‘being Portuguese’ in Portugal. Summing up, the ethnic community plays a key role in maintaining ethnic identities. As argued by Clifford (1997: 289) however, specific sociospatial conditions impact on individuals and collectivities so that they are ‘selectively restructured and re-routed according to internal and external dynamics’ (italics in the original). The degree of collective solidarity, therefore, depends on interactions and the compliance of each individual to decide the degree of involvement in the diasporic setting. Of course the degree of interaction is equally determined by the availability of such dynamics. It is worth emphasizing that not all Portuguese in Canada live in regions possessing a heavy concentration of Portuguese. In discussing where they used to live in Canada, a small number of my respondents



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noted that they had come from small towns with no Portuguese associations and no access to Portuguese cultural activities. Not having a strong ethnic community and diasporic presence to rely on, these members of the second generation were left to their own devices, searching out their own versions of Portugueseness, constructing their affiliations and attachments not through local community relations, but more so through information networks of a global nature.

Portuguese music self-discoveries: The Internet and other technologies Networks do not always require physical contact, but can instead be virtual. Here, community interaction is not based on everyday face-toface relations between participating parties; rather, participants hold in their minds an idealization of their affinity within the community – where members might not know each other, yet, in the minds of each, lives the image of their communion – what Benedict Anderson (1991) calls ‘imagined communities.’ As dos Santos (2005) points out, for migrants’ offspring, an intense affiliation to Portugal and Portuguese culture instils a feeling of inherited debt – that of having to perpetuate the bonds with the community of origin. In order to maintain such bonds at a distance, technological innovation and virtual communication have greatly contributed to facilitating contact between the diaspora and the homeland. The importance of the Internet has clearly been crucial, not only in strengthening contacts among diasporic communities, but also in constructing new patterns of networks and shaping the essence of such networks. As a result, these communities are today more transnational in nature than ever before, as people, communication and images can now get there faster and cheaper. A number of recent studies have shown that, while first-generation immigrants have tended to rely mostly on satellite television and newspapers, subsequent generations have embraced the more ‘globalized’ medium of the Internet and computer-aided communication technologies (see, among others, Baldassar et al. 2007; Somerville 2008). Having knowledge of these communication media creates a particular role within transnational families for the second generation. Although, traditionally, it was the first generation who acted as ‘gatekeepers’, passing on family stories, keeping tabs on what was happening ‘back home’ as well as maintaining control over media forms in the home, with new technological and multimedia forms of ‘keeping in touch’ (e.g. the Internet, e-mail, Skype) the role of the offspring within these families sees the ‘take over’ of the gatekeeper role (Baldassar et al. 2007; Sardinha 2014) and subsequent control of their own

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information intake. The description provided by Jorge (born 1971) illustrates this point as applied to music: RTPi and other Portuguese television programs done in Canada, I used to think they were terrible – very amateur, bad Portuguese music, made it seem like Portugal was still in the dark ages. Once in a while, however, something would spark my interest; small glimpses into another Portugal, a more modern Portugal if you will. For example, I remember in the late 80s seeing videos by Delfins and Xutos e Pontapés on a local programme we had, and this one time they showed this one band playing on some sort of afternoon variety show and they were called Peste e Sida and the song was called ‘Chuta Cavalo’.14 I was blown away by that! An afternoon variety show for the family and here was this punk band talking about drug consumption. I didn’t know what the song title meant at that time – not one of those things they teach you in Portuguese school in Canada. (…) The Internet is what changed everything though. Having the opportunity to research all the things that interested me about Portugal changed my life. Being close to family and friends and/or being on par with issues that affect or are of interest to the people back in the homeland may be a priority for these descendants. Contemporary communication technologies allow migrants to easily maintain links and participate in family life from a distance. Equally, as previously mentioned, globalization has facilitated the dispersion of information around the world, at the same time that communication has become cheaper and more accessible. All this provides greater proximity and more frequent contact, even if one is far from others with similar interests. Such was the case of Fernando (born 1977): I lived in a remote part of Canada where there weren’t too many Portuguese people. I remember seeing this show on Much Music about the Portuguese modern music scene in the mid-90s. That made me want to discover more what was happening. So I started following online pages and later on, blogs. I got into it and it’s almost like you become a part of this scene yourself. Fernando’s comment resonates with Appadurai’s (1996) concept of ‘communities of sentiment’, where people who are geographically far from one another begin to think and feel things together, aided by technology and virtuality. With greater developments in technology, proximity is greater and relations are strengthened. The physical aspect of this equation, however, remains unchanged. ‘Communities of sentiment’, in this case, can be strengthened to the point of inspiring mobility in order to make physical contact become a reality on a regular basis. As Fernando went on



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to explain, ‘when I moved to Lisbon, I just wanted to take in as much live local music as possible’. In possessing knowledge of modern technologies, therefore, cybernetworking will often serve to accentuate the construction of the ‘ethnic’ component of identification, increasing the desire to be physically closer to what is already virtually close. For these individuals, the use of mobile technologies implies having easier access to their ancestral homeland music, one that is spatially, temporally and infrastructurally anchored, but now globally distributed.

Gathering music knowledge through return visits As various authors (Baldassar 2001; Christou 2006; Duval 2004; among others) have pointed out, transnational mobilities, as carried out through return visits, can be viewed as transnational exercises through which multiple social fields are constructed, linked and maintained. When these social fields are increasingly anchored in the ancestral homeland, they end up playing key roles in constructing return desires. For the second generation, frequent homecoming visits provide experiences and direct contact with a territory, a culture, a language and a people, fixed in the present time and space. For the young individuals, it is a sentiment of newness – experiencing a freedom not often possessed in the country where they reside; and discovery – bringing to life what they only hear or experience in an altered immigrant environment that, although it can be defined as a Portuguese environment (within family or community), is not the authentic geographical space of ethno-cultural rootedness. Upon holidaying in Portugal, the time spent in the ancestral homeland is often saturated by activities that shed a positive light on ‘being in Portugal’. In fact, within a family setting, it is not uncommon for parents to strategically carry out or permit activities aimed at showing the positive side of life in Portugal, keeping in mind a possible return. My interviewees thus used a series of positive phrases in their narratives when describing their visits to Portugal as children and as teenagers, namely: ‘having more freedom’, ‘having more fun (beach, sun, festivities and music)’, ‘a relaxing, laid-back lifestyle’, among others. Cultural elements were said to have been served to them in bigger proportions during this time period. The following quote from Katia (1973) illustrates this: Visits meant going to discoteques, dances, the outdoor festas, the fairs. Every summer I’d come to Portugal, there would always be the big hits of that particular summer, the popular Portuguese songs everybody would sing along to, that you’d hear being played everywhere, and you felt out of place for not knowing them when you arrived, but by the time it was

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time to go back to Canada, you knew those song inside out as well. I always felt like I wanted to be a part of that, of being among the people who knew those songs as soon as they’d come out. Of course you’d have to be in Portugal for that. But that, to me, was what Portugal was about and being Portuguese was about, keeping in mind that I was a kid. As an adult, things become a little different. From Katia’s interview extract, we here see how short moments in time spent on vacation can create an image that can be interpreted as an alleged ‘true’ Portuguese lifestyle. Katia, however, also hints at the false image received during holiday visits, images of a romanticized Portugal and of a ‘carnivalized’ society (Afonso 2005; dos Santos 2005; Sardinha 2011c) that music helps to create, drawing up an image of a carefree society one will likely be attracted to when connecting to one’s ‘Portugueseness’ in Portugal. Influences and return motivations, although persuaded by family during the descendant’s younger days of visiting Portugal, solo holiday return visits and explorations in later adolescence, where ‘other versions of Portugal’ are discovered independently, equally played key roles in fostering return desires. As Levitt (2002) found, influential factors and dimensions can shift through stages in the lifecycle, from youth to maturity, to marriage and parenthood, and so on. This is the case with Katia in contrasting the preand post-return. However, it can equally be the case in contrasting visits during the childhood years, when all activities are permitted by the parents given that in Portugal there’s no cultural threat (quite the contrary in fact) to visits in later years. Sergio (born 1979) exemplified this as follows: When you’re young, you follow your parents around when you visit Portugal. My parents never went anywhere and music wasn’t a thing around the house. I sort of fancy myself a student of pop culture if you will, and music pop culture is sort of like a hobby of mine. Portugal is very rich in that aspect, and growing up … I got interested in Portuguese music culture and society. The Portuguese revolution era is very rich as is the 80s. As I got older, I’d come to Portugal and I’d search out concerts by some of the artists from those days. Then it got to the point where I was coming to Portugal a lot until one day I moved over. Duval (2004) points out that much of the time vacationing (back home) involves conjuring up mental maps of local spaces, routes, as well as historical elements tied to the self and one’s ancestral past. Sergio’s parents were the catalysts behind this very occurrence early on in his life, geographically limiting the family visits to the village they originated from, thus limiting his music intake. In Sergio’s quote, however, we see a self-motivated and constructed return desire that, after parent-controlled visits at an early age, was shaped by music self-interest and exploration at a later age, when



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he was old enough to discover ‘his Portugal’, conjuring up a yearning for further discovery in loco, accomplished via the return he then carried out in his adult years to ultimately ensconce himself in Portuguese music as well. Holiday visits were thus highlighted as central in building respondents’ motivation for a future return due to positive past experiences and memories during time spent in the ancestral homeland. Vacation returns have a holiday and touristic element, but they are also a means of cementing cultural links and increasing socio-cultural capital. Physically entrenching oneself in the music of Portugal, even if temporary, is, therefore, very much a calling card for future mobility to the land of ancestry.

Conclusion Through the voices of Portuguese migrant descendants who have returned to Portugal, this article has examined the construction of ancestral homeland return desires and motivations as inspired by connections to homeland music. We have observed that connections – drawn from ethnic encounters and experiences, often relating to Portugueseness – are often the result of complex constructions and negotiations carried out over time, within intergenerational settings and with and in-between different spatial and cultural interactions, dually grounded in Canada and in Portugal. Such encounters, as was observed, can come in the form of active participation within family and ethnic community settings, as well as through personal contacts and interests, be they physical in nature or virtual. During their time in Canada, many were socialized within or opted for a life revolving around Portuguese culture, traditions and ethnic practices – in which homeland music was a cornerstone – some to the point of seeing themselves ‘functioning’ exclusively within an incubator of ‘all things Portuguese’ within the Portuguese diaspora, and yet others rebelling against it. From the perspective of personal worlds, dominated primarily by the home environment and, to a lesser extent, dealings with and within the ethnic community, if parental authority persists, if home life is maintained as ethnic in nature, in which homeland music is a cornerstone, and if ethnic resources exist to help maintain the descendants embedded within the ethnic culture, ties to the ancestral homeland are solidified. In the case of individuals with fewer Portuguese music resources in the diaspora, which exists above all when close proximity to a Portuguese diasporic community is non-existent, modern technologies, namely in the form of the Internet help, break down those barriers. The country where my participants grew up (Canada) is the initial setting for their sense of longing and nostalgia – saudade – for the ancestral home, stimulating, evoking and encouraging the journey of self-awakening of the

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‘ethnic self’, leading to the physical act of return to the ancestral homeland with the aim of concluding the self-defined journey. The evocation of the ‘searching-self’ does not disturb or fragment the identification process; on the contrary, it complements the location of the self as it simultaneously accentuates the land of ancestry, all that is valued about it and belonging to it, something the diasporic setting cannot accomplish despite distancecutting globalizing processes. For them, the final return is the only way to be ‘truly Portuguese’. Although various variables can go into evoking and encouraging the journey, my interviewees placed Portuguese music at the top of their lists of motivating factors. Migrants’ musical choices may pivot around certain styles of ‘world music’ whereby the music they opt to listen to holds no boundaries. They thus engage in transnational affairs of a socio-cultural nature that connect them with a constructed version of their homeland, one that is highly idealized (Krüger and Trandafoiu 2013). The translational nature of present-day diaspora’s expressive cultural practices (Zheng 2010) as manifested through music consumption and performance makes it easier to be close to a cultural practice, this to the point of being in constant contact with that practice, if one desires. That said, the fact that an individual can today receive information as it happens, even if it’s half-a-world away, allows that person to be delimited when defining his musical identity. Present-day musical transnationality, as we have seen, can therefore be key to driving a physical move to one’s ancestral origins where one can be close to one’s musical tastes and ideals, even when those tastes and ideals are created in a diasporic setting.

Notes  1 By descendants of immigrants, I am here referring to the sons and daughters of the first generation (the so-called second generation) or the 1.5 generation who immigrated with their parents as children.  2 I here take this opportunity to clarify my use of the term ‘return’. I am well aware that one cannot return to a place where one has never before lived. With the exception of those belonging to the 1.5 generation, such is the case with many of the participants in this study. Thus, my use of the term, in this context, implies return to the ancestral homeland.  3 The ethnographic data that composes this article is drawn from two project: i) the project The Return of the Portuguese Second-Generation to Portugal: Identity, Belonging and Transnational Lives, coordinated by João Sardinha, first, as part of his post-doctoral work at the University of Coimbra in Portugal (2008–9) and, second, as part of his research initiatives at the Open University in Portugal (2009–12); and ii) the project REPOR – Luso-descendant ‘Returnees’ in Portugal: Identity, Belonging



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and Transnationalism, also coordinated by João Sardinha and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) (PTDC/ ATP-GEO/4567/2012) (2013–15).  4 RTPi stands for Radio e Televisão de Portugal Internacional, the international television service of the Portuguese public broadcaster RTP.  5 Portuguese migrants’ nostalgia is best expressed by the term saudade. Often referred to as being untranslatable, it loosely implies a sense of longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost or distant. The term is often associated with fado music given that saudade is often a central theme in fado lyrics.  6 In order to maintain anonymity, all interviewees, with the exception of one, have been given pseudonyms. Marta is my only exception. The reason for opting to use Marta’s real name is owed to the fact that she has been previously identified in my documentary film Regressa Urgente (co-directed with António Saraiva). Permission to use her real name in all project outputs was given by the participant.  7 Pimba is a Portuguese term used for a type of Portuguese popular music. Pimba music is characterized as straightforward pop music with simplistic harmonies and melodies, often possessing lyrics driven by sexual metaphors or clichéd romantic stories. It is intended to be played in dancing parties and festivities.  8 Mariza is seen as the biggest name in the New Fado movement and is today Portugal’s biggest name in fado and on the World Music market.  9 Names of legendary fado singers. Amália Rodrigues, in particular, is known as the ‘Queen of Fado’. 10 It is also important to point out that, although this analysis concentrates on music, other cultural components also exist that are equally key to ethno-cultural maintenance, namely language, food, clothing, habits, among others. 11 In his research on the offspring of Portuguese emigrants in France, Pereira (2011) reveals that Portuguese football is often the only cultural bond that exists between fathers and sons. 12 Although I have relied on a male voice to give this example, it should be noted that escapism from an overprotective family cocoon is often more common among females. For more evidence on this, see Noivo (1997) and Sardinha (2011b) for the Portuguese case, and Christou and King (2011) for the Greek one. 13 Xutos e Pontapés is a Portuguese rock band that formed in 1978, four years after the Portuguese Carnations Revolution that signalled the fall of dictatorship. Xutos, as the band’s name is often abbreviated to, started off as a punk band before crossing over to the rock genre, having always sang in Portuguese. They are considered Portugal’s top rock band of all time, and are often seen as the ‘poster boys’ of post-revolution pop culture and musical modernity. 14 In Portuguese, the term cavalo is street slang for heroin, while chuta, in this sense, is the verb to inject. The term chuta cavalo thus implies the injection of heroin.

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Potter, R. and J. Phillips (2006), ‘Both Black and Symbolically White: The “Bajan-Brit” Return Migrant as Post-Colonial Hybrid’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 29 (5): 901–27. Potter, R. and J. Phillips (2008), ‘“The Past is Still Right Here in the Present”: Second-Generation Bajan-Brit Transnational Migrants’ Views on Issues Relating to Race and Colour Class’, Society and Space 26 (1): 123–45. Reynolds, T. (2008), Ties That Bind: Families, Social Capital and Caribbean Second-Generation Return Migration, Brighton: University of Sussex, Sussex Centre for Migration Research Working Paper 46. Rocha-Trindade, M-B. (1999), ‘The Portuguese Diaspora’, in C. Teixeira and V. P. da Rosa (eds), The Portuguese in Canada. Diasporic Challenges and Adjustments, 18–44, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Safran, W. (1991), ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora 1 (1): 83–99. Santos, I. dos (2005), ‘Being a Part of Several “Worlds”: Sense of Belonging and Wedding Rites among Franco-Portuguese Youth’, Narodna Umjetnost. Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research 42: 25–45. Sardinha, J. (2011a), ‘Neither Here nor There: Identity Constructions, Conceptions of ‘Home’ and the Transnational Lives of Second Generation Luso-Canadians and Luso-French in Portugal’, in F. C. Fagundes, I. M. Blair, T. Alves and T. Cid (eds), Storytelling the Portuguese Diaspora: Piecing Things Together, 153–74, New York: Peter Lang. Sardinha J. (2011b), ‘Portuguese-Canadian and Portuguese-French Secondgeneration Migrant Women Narrate “Return” to Portugal’, Ex aequo 24: 29–44. Sardinha, J. (2011c), ‘“Returned” Second-Generation Portuguese-Canadians and Portuguese-French: Return Motivations and Sense of Belonging’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 20 (2): 231–54. Sardinha, J. (2014), ‘“Even if the only thing for me to do were to milk cows”: Portuguese-Canadian Descendant Returnees Narrate Constructions of Return Desires’, Diasporas – Journal of Transnational Studies 17 (3) (Winter 2008): 316–39. Slobin, M. (1993), Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Slobin, M. (1994), ‘Music in Diaspora: The View from Euro-America’, Diaspora 3 (3): 243–51. Somerville, K. (2008), ‘Transnational Belonging among Second Generation Youth: Identity in a Globalized World’, Journal of Social Sciences Special Volume Youth and Migration 10: 23–33. Teixeira, J. C. and da Rosa, V. (eds) (1999), The Portuguese in Canada: Diasporic Challenges and Adjustment, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Tsuda, T. (2001), ‘From Ethnic Affinity to Alienation in the Global Ecumene: The Encounter between the Japanese and Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants’, Diaspora 10 (1): 53–91. Tsuda, T. (2003), Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective, New York: Columbia University Press. Tsuda, T. (2004), ‘When Home is Not the Homeland: The Case of Japanese Brazilian Ethnic Return Migration’, in F. Markowitz and A. Stefansson (eds),



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CHAPTER TEN

Drawing a homeland on the staff: Music of Turkey in Berlin Pinar Güran Aydin

Introduction This article focuses on the music production and consumption of secondand third-generation migrants from Turkey in Berlin, Germany, and how their relationship with music has shaped and continues to contribute to the construction of an imaginary homeland. The study sets out to conceptualize music as a memory mechanism, unfolding further into questions of how cultural memory is both prompted and conserved through musical practice, how listening to music from the homeland is part of the creation and re-creation of cultural memory and identity over time and lifespan and, lastly, how musical forms migrate and often become hybridized. Besides having the largest population of Turkish immigrants of any city in Europe, Berlin has also witnessed some of the most important sociopolitical events to take place in Germany in the last century, namely: the dividing of the country and the city of Berlin by the Berlin Wall followed by reunification decades later; the evolution of several subculture movements, such as punk and hip-hop and other non-mainstream, alternative groups; and thirdly, having become home to people from many different nations, making it one of the most multicultural German cities. All these factors, to one degree or another, have had an impact on the integration experiences of Turkish community members in the city. Keeping this in mind, in this article I will focus on the main music spaces of cultural memory preservation and manifestation, centring attentions on the consequences and impacts of music and memory interactions within the Turkish community with specific focus on its young people. The places

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of music I will concentrate on are music schools, türkü bars and the home environment, paying particular attention to new media technologies as utilized within the household. In focusing on places of music, I set out to provide a comprehensive picture of ethnic music contacts and attempts at preservation from the perspective of the descendants of Turkish migrants, focusing on how contacts and preservation attempts impact identity and integration. Fieldwork carried out between 2010 and 2012 constitutes the main source of data for this study.1 The qualitative component of this work consists of semi-structured, one-to-one in-depth interviews in addition to spontaneous, casual conversations carried out with informants. Moreover, the research further benefited from participant observation and document analysis. Data collected focuses on narratives collected from twenty-seven individual interviews, nine of which were carried out with women, eighteen with men. In characterizing the interviewees, seven were music teachers, three were students in music schools, three were parents of music students and fourteen were individuals with no professional or amateur relationship to music-making, but possessing some sort of relationship with Turkish music, be that relationship one of fandom or a simple listener. The interviewees were aged between nine and fiftyfive. The interviews took place in music schools, türkü bars, cafes, music studios and at participants’ houses. Turkish was the main language used in the interviews with English also used whenever the interviewee was not fluent in Turkish. My main method for meeting interviewees was one of snowball sampling. My study thus constitutes data focusing on the second and third generation’s musicking, aided by secondary data centring on sociocultural activities as applied to the lives of these individuals. Although my main target group were the children and grandchildren of those who emigrated from Turkey to Berlin, I particularly highlight the importance of the parents of some of these offspring, as key informants. Lastly, I emphasize that my use of the term ‘Turkish community’ covers all peoples who are Turkish born as well as those who share Turkish ancestry, being fully aware that there are sub-communities within this more generalized definition.

How memory, music and Turkish migrants meet Memory is indisputably one of the most important elements of our personal, internal existence, given that it becomes the core of identity. Approaching the concept of memory from a sociological point of view, Olick (2008:



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156) explains: ‘All individual remembering takes place with social materials within social contexts, and in response to social cues’. Music is one of the two components (the other being food) most often preserved in all diasporas (Daynes 2004: 25). It serves as a connection to the past, evoking things to which people are emotionally attached to, frequently providing a private and comforting zone for the migrant. In this study I present examples of how descendants of migrants from Turkey go about protecting their ancestral homeland music, often even attaching more importance to its authenticity than their counterparts back in Turkey. One of the reasons for this is music’s potential to be used as a medium to store one’s memories of the past. The work of Greve (2006) and Hemetek (2008) reveals how former migrant guest-workers in Europe have, for many years, preserved music from their countries of origin, becoming emotionally attached to it to the point of refusing to welcome new music from the countries they live in into their lives. Music is also a means to transmitting a group’s cultural memories to new generations, forming new memories in the process. Private Turkish music schools in Berlin, for example, are key places where one can observe the immigrant parents’ efforts in having their children taught about their musical heritage. These teachings act as a bridge between the cultural heritage from Turkey and the younger generations. Remembering, or the transmission of remembering, provides a connection to the homeland, becoming a form of knowledge for the immigrant, one they frequently wish to pass down to future generations in order to keep ancestral culture alive within the family setting. With this study, I examine how the older members of the migrant communities feel the need to generate this kind of cultural conservation or transmission, following what Dijck (2006: 364) refers to as the ‘intergenerational transfer of personal and collective heritage’ that forms musical memories. Ties to ethnic memory and cultural components or artefacts are often stronger in migrant communities due to one being removed from one’s own ethno-cultural environment in the homeland, and the grief that is often produced by that separation. The phenomenon of a community’s shared experience of grief over events of its past, for example, can be observed in catastrophic events like the Holocaust, terrorism, war and natural disasters (Tota 2004; Sturken 1997). Eyerman (2004: 161) states that the formation of a collective identity in direct relation to collective memory can be grounded in situations of loss, crisis and triumph. It is important to emphasize that not all migrant communities go through similar experiences; however, in the case of Turks in Germany, we are referring to individuals who left their homeland behind, perhaps not involuntarily, but often halfheartedly, frequently settling in places where they encountered unpleasant conditions and hostility.

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Turks in Germany Turkey and Germany have had solid relations since the nineteenth century, not only through historical events such as the First and Second World Wars, but through economic, social and cultural connections as well. In relation to the ties between the two countries, it is particularly important to highlight the guest worker agreements and the Turks who arrived in Germany as part of the programme.2 After World War II the West German economy developed rapidly and labour was in short supply. To address the need for workers, the government signed bilateral agreements with Italy, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia and Yugoslavia for the recruitment of workers. Turkey signed its agreement in 1961. Soon after doing so, the majority of migrant workers coming to Germany were Turkish citizens, mostly men. According to the agreement, the ‘guest’ status of the workers would be valid for a short period of two years. Later it was extended due to demand from both the Turkish and German sides. Under the Guest Worker Programme, almost four million people chose to work and reside in different cities around West Germany, the majority of them Turks. For the Turkish guest workers, the common trend was to save money that would then get invested upon returning to Turkey. They made sacrifices, from having a poor and unbalanced diet to living a socially inactive life, all in the name of accumulating as much wealth as possible. They longed for their homes and lived their lives isolated from German society. Most were only able to see their extended families and loved ones once a year, during their annual holidays. Until 1964, when Westdeutscher Rundfunk (West German Broadcasting) Cologne started broadcasting in Turkish under the name Köln Radyosu, they had no news from home other than via the limited communication maintained with their families in Turkey (AA News Agency 2001). With unemployment in Turkey and with Germany’s image as a ‘land of opportunity’, emigration became increasingly appealing. As Turkish immigrant numbers in Germany grew, it became more difficult to find a job through legal means, so people started migrating as tourists, working without a work permit and settling down illegally (Abadan-Unat 1976: 8). Most of the Turkish women who had migrated to Germany as part of the family reunification plan never entered the public sphere; they formed a community of their own and neither needed nor endeavoured to learn the language of the country to which they had migrated to. Men, although in the public sphere, experienced a similar situation to that of the women, creating small groups of their own in the factories where they worked and in the neighbourhoods where they lived (Eryılmaz 2002). They too were, and to this day still are, criticized for not learning



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German. This has always been seen as the major barrier towards integration, but to them integration was not an issue of concern. As Tan and Waldhoff (1996: 143) note: ‘Since migration had been envisaged for an interim period only, the main aim was to use the time to work and to save enough money […]’. Learning German was thus seen as unnecessary. With the Arab oil crisis in 1973, the recruitment process ended and some of the migrants left Germany. The majority of the Turkish workers, however, stayed and, as a result, family reunification increased. This was then preceded by a large increase in the Turkish migrant birth rate. All these factors combined lead to the exponential growth of the Turkish migrant community in Germany in the decades to come (White 1995).

Turkish music in Germany Alongside the resistance to shifts in the lives and daily practices of Turkish immigrants, came the efforts to preserve cultural expressions, among them music forms. The first example of music production by Turks in Germany were the gurbetçi türküs (guest worker songs). These songs were in the folk music style with lyrics often about immigration issues. Anatolian folk music,3 however, was the main genre of music played and listened to by the first Turkish migrant labourers. The workers were mostly living in big dormitories and it was here where this music would be re-created and consumed by them. Many did not have radios or any other means of listening to Turkish music, so singing and playing became a common activity. Those who had their bağlamas (the most popular and widely played long-necked lute in Turkey) would play them, often joined in by the singing of türküs (Greve 2006: 37). In its simplest form, the word türkü means folk poetry performed to a melody. Expanding on this, Jansky (1977: 57–8, as cited in Kaya 2009) describes türkü as: One of the oldest types of Turkish folk poetry that gives voice to the pleasure and affliction of the masses in great historical events; their regard and hatred for major individuals; pathetic love stories of youths in verses that captured hearts and measured with national syllable meter and by literary and melodically essential compositions. In a narrow sense, they are qualified as a historical document. It can be argued that this form of shared musical experience can be more profound in terms of bonding for immigrants than other forms of music consumption. The lyrics of the türküs mostly concerned homesickness. They were telling their stories, starting with their migration experiences,

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and singing about their daily lives through songs. As Öztürk (2001) suggests, looking at the gurbetçi türküs gives us a more intimate view of the guest workers’ experience and presenting these in a musical form permits the transmission of migrant stories to later generations. From an ethnomusicological perspective, we can say that the musical form of türkü was used in Germany the same way it was used in Turkey. The second genre that was embraced by migrants from Turkey was that of arabesk,4 especially from the 1980s onward. The songs had similar lyrics to the gurbetçi türküs: longing for home, being humiliated by the elites and not being able to adapt to the city life, were among the common topics. Stokes (1992: 142) explains that the context of arabesk song texts focuses on ‘… dense cluster of themes connected with the arabesk drama: gurbet (living alone as a stranger or foreigner, particularly as a worker), yalnızlık (loneliness), hicran, hüsran and özlem (sadness and yearning), gözyaşları (tears), sarhoşluk (drunkenness), zülm (oppression) and finally kader (fate)’. The highly welcoming attitude of the migrants in Germany towards arabesk music would thus lead to it becoming the most popular genre among the Turkish community. Like folk music, arabesk music had a wide audience. In the case of migrant children, whose parents were often filled with feelings of homesickness, growing up in the midst of these feelings and with arabesk playing in their homes, many would acquire similar senses of nostalgia and a love for the music, something that would get passed down from one generation to the next.5

Places of music Berlin is home to a dense Turkish-speaking population and the community has gradually integrated, helping to create increased diversity in the various places where Turks reside and carry out activities throughout the city. In this section, I will present examples of places where music consumption and production takes place and the impact on the descendants of Turkish migrants.

Music schools While figures are unknown, given that most are often licensed as ‘cultural associations’, there are many music schools in Berlin where people can learn the music genres and styles hailing from Turkey. According to the information shared by my participants, while the number of private tutors seems to have decreased in recent years, many schools still consider Turkish music to be of utmost importance. These schools have students from a wide age



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range, from children to adults, and the majority exclusively teach Turkish folk music styles and genres. During my visits to several Turkish music schools, it quickly came to my attention that bağlama is accepted as the traditional musical instrument of Turkey. Almost all the schools have bağlama classes, and most of the lessons and tutoring, if not dedicated to singing lessons, are dedicated to the teaching of this instrument. This was a critical discovery at the beginning of my research since the bağlama was a traditional instrument from Turkey that originally had no place in Western popular music in the classical sense. It is important to note that, as stated by music teachers commenting on the children who take bağlama lessons, in nearly every case this instrument was chosen by the parents, not the child. The music teachers argue that the reason for this is that the parents take great strides in keeping their cultural heritage alive, trying to ensure that their children learn about the culture from which they come, and of which the bağlama is symbolic. Some parents may even be a little too passionate about this cultural symbol. As Baran,6 a Kurdish guitar teacher and music practitioner from Turkey recounts in relation to one of his students: He was eleven years old and he had a great talent for music. I remember seeing him before at the music school where I work. He was taking bağlama lessons. He was very shy and nervous during my classes. Sometime later, his mom told me that they had recently separated from the boy’s father. His father had wanted him to play the bağlama and he used to tell him that if he touched the bağlama, angels would be with him, but if he touched a Western instrument (like a guitar or a piano) he would go to the devil’s side. I then understood why the boy was so nervous with the instrument, even though he was so good at it. Here we see how far a parent is willing to go to convince his child to do what he believes is right. In conjunction with this, the father also passes on his values, woven with the Turkish and Muslim identity values in which he was raised in Turkey, to his son who is being raised in Germany. This vignette also shows how music can be associated with cultural factors, belief systems and desires, sometimes in unexpected ways. The father’s wish, to keep his son away from a Western instrument, originates from several motives and leaves a serious impression on the child. The music genre taught in schools during the bağlama lessons is traditional folk music from Turkey. According to music teachers and parents, the provision of such lessons offers a bonding mechanism where, through a specific social activity (bağlama instruction), children can learn about their culture while being with other people of their ilk rather than spending time out on the streets getting into trouble and being potentially open to drugs and violence. The idea of music lessons to keep the children away from bad

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habits is a theme often referenced by my informants; for that reason, it is a key point when looking at a migrant community’s relationship with music and the passing it on to future generations. At this point, I asked Baran about the interest of the children in this music: Most of them come here because their families force them. Maybe ‘force’ is not the right word, but the families think that the children should learn to play an instrument […]. They think that it is good for their children to have a hobby, to be involved with something like sports or music, rather than staying at home. And if they choose music, they think the kid should learn to play bağlama since it is our own culture. … the kids don’t want to play at first; they find it difficult. Another thing is, you know children don’t like to stand out. When they go to school and play the bağlama … their classmates are mostly German. Bağlama doesn’t mean anything to them. This can discourage them. But sometimes their teachers at school show an interest in bağlama, so they become more enthusiastic about it. According to Baran’s observation, parents send their children to bağlama schools with mixed intentions. On the one hand, they want their children to be out in public instead of staying at home or wandering the streets. But they want to control this public space, wanting their children to be in a familiar setting, a setting that they can relate to and in which they have confidence. This is their way of protecting their children. In terms of intention, this kind of protective behaviour is no different from that of other parents who are not migrants. However, here the context of protection is interwoven with the values acquired from the migration experience. In addition to children’s ambivalent feelings towards the bağlama, the higher-level music education system in Germany neither encourages nor supports anyone wishing to make a career out of playing a Turkish musical instrument. Zeynep is a pedagogue who works with underprivileged immigrant women and their children. Her husband is a professional bağlama player and they run a Turkish music school. Zeynep spends most of her time at the school when she is not working. She complains: One of the issues I consider problematic about music education here is that there are no departments for our instruments at the conservatory. So, if you want to have a degree here in your field of music, you cannot … at the entrance exam you need to be able to play at least one instrument … but our instruments are not accepted. My husband has trained great musicians in this school for twenty years now, but they have no future here. There are no professors in German conservatoires



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to represent us … I have been fighting to introduce bağlama to UDK (Universitat der Kunste or University of the Arts) for years, but they ignore us. From this perspective, we can argue that instruments and different forms of music from Turkey are condemned to stay a part of immigrants’ nostalgia if they cannot offer a musical socialization like the other instruments and forms of music in Germany. This is the policy of the official musical institutions which creates disappointment and a feeling of ‘ill-belonging’ among migrants. Taylan and Leyla are two siblings who have been mostly brought up in Germany. Taylan is the younger brother and his sister Leyla describes her brother as ‘more German’ than herself. Leyla has a better knowledge of Turkish music; she works as a DJ and plays at parties attended by mostly Turkish-speaking party-goers. During my interview with the siblings, they also expressed their feelings in relation to bağlama lessons: Taylan: ‘Bağlama is not modern enough for a kid. Today I am almost forty years old and mature enough to enjoy bağlama, but when I was young you wouldn’t see me anywhere near a bağlama’. Leyla: ‘If kids want to learn to play the guitar, bağlama would be too old-school for them. They want to play rock music, not türkü. Today there are very popular rock bands in Turkey, like Manga, Duman, Athena, and they all come here to play concerts. So the children think that bağlama is not the only instrument of Turkey, that they can also play Turkish music with guitar, drums, bass guitar, and they want to play these. They want to have the opportunity to go beyond traditional music. But families put pressure on their children that they should learn the bağlama’. Taylan and Leyla are in their mid- and late-thirties respectively, and draw a different picture of music consumption contrary to what is perceived by the older generations. On the one hand, they emphasize that they have been brought up listening to Turkish music, and that they are familiar with different genres. On the other, they have developed a different interest in music in connection to the immigrant group to which they can relate. They partly attribute their different attitude to their mother, who migrated to Germany on her own thinking that she would have a more liberal life in Germany after her divorce in Turkey. Taylan and Leyla are thus examples of younger people with non-traditional ideas. People like these two siblings play an important role in the transformation of values. In the case of music schools, we see that music is used both as a pedagogic and a communal tool, as well as a method for channelling

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energies away from civil transgression. In March 2010, Mehmet, a social pedagogue and music teacher, organized a concert of performances by some twenty teenagers from Turkish immigrant families, aged between fourteen and seventeen, who had previously committed petty crimes. They had been taking music lessons in Turkish music schools as part of their rehabilitation. Their performance formed part of this therapy, demonstrating musical skills through a range of songs chosen from different genres: Turkish pop-arabesk music, hip-hop and the hybrid form RnBesk (essentially, rapping over traditional arabesk riffs). Having been present at this event, I observed that the audience mostly consisted of the families and friends of the performers and other teenagers who were also in rehabilitation or had been in the past. These young people were third-generation immigrants and more comfortable speaking in German than in Turkish. They were mostly using a hybrid language of their own, which was predominantly German with Turkish words and expressions. The music repertoire mainly consisted of current popular Turkish songs, arabesk music from the 80s, along with a few German rap songs sang over well-known Turkish songs. When I asked people in the audience how they knew about the current songs, they told me that they heard them on the television and radio all the time. The youth on the stage and in the audience were mostly listening to popular songs, but they still danced the traditional folk dances of Turkey to the music they heard. When asked about the dances, concert attendees pointed out how they were drawn from düğüns (Turkish wedding parties) and special dancing events held by Turkish associations called ‘halay nights’ (halay being a style of folkloric dance in Turkey) where one can learn, practice, and perform folkloric dances from Anatolia. Intriguingly, some of these dances are no longer danced in Turkey, only in the diaspora where they are no longer danced to accompanied by the original music. I found this issue of dance very striking as dance is a significant part of the musical experience and an important aspect of the cultural tradition. I posed questions on this issue to Kemal, one of the musicians playing in the orchestra at this private concert. He pointed out that, Yes, the young people here listen to arabesk music from the 80s and dance halay, but they want us to put hip-hop rhythms to traditional Anatolian songs. That is what they like, that is what they are stirred up by today. From this example, we see that there are separate social worlds for the young generation: home and the outside world. They express themselves with a hybrid musical language (or body language, when it comes to dancing). When I had the chance to talk to Mehmet before the event, he told me the following about the preferences of these teenagers:



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We don’t limit them to specific genres, but most of them are fans of arabesk music. I think it is a bit weird that a young person who is brought up in Germany is so into this music. Some of them listen to arabesk from the 70s and 80s, songs that have been forgotten in Turkey. Arabesk today is modernized in Turkey. But these kids like the old-school, depressing songs. They hear them in their homes of course. In my opinion, it would be better for them if they listened to the songs their peers here in Germany like. It would make it easier for them to adapt to life here. Hip hop is an exception in this case. They like its rhythm and they relax by releasing a lot of energy when they rap. Asil, one of the musicians at the concert, who also works as a music teacher, explained the tastes of the young people attending this event as follows: RnBesk takes the most popular features of both genres, arabesk and pop, and combines them, so it is very understandable that young people love it so much. They love hip hop because it is the best music for them to let off steam … You should see the weddings here. They get carried away with halay because it gives them the chance to dance to something that is from Turkey. Actually, rhythm is more important than music to young people. I am also a wedding musician. We use hip hop rhythms with traditional folk music so that young people can dance. These third-generation youth, therefore, enjoy a hybrid music that carries the traces of their families’ legacy, as well as current musical trends similar to their German peers.

Türkü bars Third-generation immigrants from Turkey have been constructing collective identities in connection to their homeland and traditions of the homeland through music consumption and music making. Berlin has a rich musical scene and türkü bars are inevitably a part of it. Türkü bars are places where different forms of traditional music from Turkey are performed on a regular basis. They are musical spaces that used to be common in cities where there are dense Turkish migrant populations. Today, there are a considerable number of these bars in Berlin (I have been told by my informants that there used to be more of them in the recent past, but some were shut down), perceive as locations that create a medium that permits feelings of nostalgia to be preserved through music. For most of the migrants going to these venues, sharing the emotions being spoken about in

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the traditional songs with people of the same national identity satisfies their need to feel they belong to their native ‘homeland’. Türkü bars in Berlin have usually attracted second-generation immigrants who were introduced to Turkish music at home by their families, as well as those who moved to Berlin in their adult years, meaning that they were already familiar with the music. Türkü bars started to become popular in the mid-1990s in such Turkish cities as Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. They often became the meeting point of people who migrated to the big city, especially if the place was known for playing live music from a specific region. The owners of türkü bars in Istanbul are mostly from eastern and south-eastern regions. It is often possible to see indications of where the owner is from, in fact, from the traditional interior design of these bars. Objects that reflect the region’s culture are frequently a part of the decoration. Furthermore, the waiters and most of the performers working in these bars are often from the same region as the owners as well. In order to elaborate on the subject of türkü bars in Berlin, I compare findings from a previous study conducted in Istanbul by a research team that I was a member of with my finding gathered in Berlin.7 The styles of decoration are quite similar in both cities, this along with the fact that, in both cases, the bar’s clientele are most often composed of migrants – internal in Istanbul, external in Berlin. As my interviewee Koray, who had moved from Istanbul to Berlin in 2008 to study, stated: The first time I went to a türkü bar was in Berlin. My friends from the neighbourhood invited me and I went with them. I really liked the atmosphere because it felt like I was in Turkey. Even though it’s not very often, when I feel homesick, I go to a türkü bar. The difference with türkü bars in Berlin, in comparison with Istanbul, is that there is regional and, therefore, linguistic diversity in the people and the türküs performed. There are songs in Turkish, Kurdish, Laz and other languages within the same performance. This is rare in Istanbul’s türkü bars, where the songs are mostly chosen from a certain region, reflecting the background of the owner and staff, and determining the profile of their clientele. Another interviewee, Okan, mentions this diversity in Berlin türkü bars: I like going to the türkü bars and listening to the songs and singing them. They play different songs from different regions, but to me it is all my country’s music, it doesn’t matter which region it comes from. I learn different türküs here from those I have learned from my parents at home.



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Thus, while the türkü repertoires in Istanbul bars determine their regular customers according to their regional homeland in Turkey, the bars in Berlin attract Turks in general by playing music from Turkey as a whole. Thus, the scale has moved from regional to national. Okan’s younger sister Sibel adds to her brother’s comments: ‘We go there with our friends and we sing and dance. Our parents don’t worry about us when we’re there because we’re with our people’. Türkü bars are identified as ‘safe’ spaces in an ‘unsafe’ environment, something that can equally be observed in relation to music schools, as previously discussed. This understanding of a safe/ unsafe dichotomy correlates with similar homeland/hostland or us/them dichotomies in the way that safe is being among ‘our own’, while unsafe is being with host country elements. Once again, this is another form through which memory and culture are transmitted to the next generations. Moreover, I also witnessed folkloric dancing taking place in türkü bars. The young people here were perfectly capable of dancing complicated Turkish folk dances, just as their peers at the previously discussed youth concert could dance the traditional halay. According to Zeynep, who I first met at a concert in a türkü bar, some folkloric dances that have been forgotten in Turkey are still danced in Germany without any change: ‘The young generation in Turkey are not interested in these dances because they don’t feel the need to preserve their traditions, but we do’. Other interviewees later explained to me that young people learned to dance these dances mostly at wedding parties and other festive gatherings where intergenerational contact is the norm. We thus see that türkü bars act as spaces where migrants go to listen to music from their ‘homeland’, be it to be with ‘their people’, to feel safe or to simply enjoy themselves by dancing folkloric dances. Whether these bars will continue to be around in the future is a question worthy of further scrutiny and one worthy of accompaniment with future generations. It is also key to point out that places of Turkish music are not limited to Turkish music schools or türkü bars. As mentioned, wedding parties (düğün) and other festive moments play a significant role in the transmission of music, dances and other traditions to younger generations. Concerts have equally been among the most important musical activities for young people, perceived as an opportunity for young Turks to ensconce themselves in a key Turkish cultural component. For the descendants of migrants especially, going to concerts is about more than just music consumption. My interviewees explained that going to a concert is like having your distant homeland come to you. Some went as far as saying that it often felt like they were being ‘disloyal’ if they did not go to concerts.

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The home environment and new media technologies According to Castells (2010), despite the influences of information technologies on society and their effects on the changing forms of cities, physical places will continue to play important roles in people’s everyday lives. The author advances that home villages, towns and cities will always have significant meanings for people and will never be replaced by non-places. Places are what grounds collective identifications. Once away from a certain place, a person will more likely than not, be tied to that space via memory, ancestry, culture, among other variables. Information technologies, therefore, do not help to break ties with physical places, on the contrary; the availability of technologies facilitates closeness to one’s homeland when far away from it. In migrant diasporas, they bring ethnicity and culture closer to those who are distant, thus assisting in keeping memory and ancestry alive. Music consumption is a good subject of analysis when it comes to tying technologies, homeland and any thought of a generational breaking point in today’s world. All around the world, numerous television channels dedicated to music have been established to cater to differing audience tastes. In addition, the Internet has come to allow us to watch popular television programmes online or listen to audio streams from radio stations whenever and wherever one wishes. In the case of Turks in Germany, with the surgence of Turkish media and with the popularization of satellite television in the 1990s, this followed by the Internet more or less a decade later, Turkish music now has never before seen platforms that serve to quench the musical thirsts of diaspora community members. The prolific entrance into people’s daily lives helps to form smaller and more specific Turkish-speaking communities in terms of musical tastes. Unlike the first generation, who mostly enjoyed folk music from Turkey, the offspring have come to demonstrate greater diversity in their choices of musical genres, from arabesk to rap to rock, mixing in music sang in English in addition to German. This was an expected development, similar and parallel to the music scene in Turkey. With the media boom in Turkey, coming in the form of private radio stations and music television channels like Kral TV and Number One, and with the addition of European and American television channels such as MTV, MCM and VH1, people were introduced to a variety of music styles that lead to the development of different music tastes, leading to Western music becoming more influential in Turkish music production as well. As this happened, the Turkish music audiences in Germany went through similar experiences. After thirty years of limited access to music, from the 1990s onward, Turks in Germany started having access to the same broadcasts their relatives had back in Turkey via satellite. This made a drastic difference in the diversity of music they could access.



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Furthermore, this new diversity was now in the hands of the descendants of Turkish migrants. As Sardinha (2014; see Chapter 8 of this volume) points out with the case of Portuguese immigrants in Canada, the information ‘gatekeeper’ role, once possessed by elder family members, shifts to the younger generations with the introduction of modern technologies and other media tools. This is owed to the fact that young generations acquire knowledge over modern technologies at a faster rate, while older generations will stay passive to newness. Younger generations, therefore, now have greater access to what is happening in Turkey, music-wise, while their parents either stay unaware or simply are not interested in musical newness. This is a pattern observed in the Turkish migrant community where youngsters now know what is being listened to in Turkey as it happens, thus acquiring knowledge over a modern Turkey, this while their parents stay blind to it all. When comparing first-generation immigrant lives to the collected narratives and life pattern observations of the second and third generations, I am able to see that the timing of my study coincides with an important era in which we find a generational breaking point. Looking at my older respondents’ comments – those who have teenage offspring of their own or even older sons and daughters beyond their teenage years – it is possible to observe how musical practices are among the most important shared activities within families and the Turkish community. Most younger second- and third-generation migrants expressed similar musical knowledge and tastes acquired via modern technological means, as for their parents, it’s the memories around music-oriented activities that musically tie them to Turkey. An inter-generational commonality, however, lies in the fact that these diasporics value music very deeply and attribute larger meanings to songs compared to their peers in Turkey. Migrants and their offspring make great efforts to try to protect everything that is related to Turkey, aiming to maintain the perceived authenticity of their music. Concerning a generational musical breaking point, according to most of my interviewees and observations, the younger second- and thirdgenerations’ diverging musical interests, moving in a different direction from the elder members of their families, have come to be a point of inter-generational conflict. The disagreement here arises from the attitude of the elder generations, expecting their children and grandchildren to have a similar kind of admiration for the music they themselves value and enjoy. In a way, they perceive this as a kind of loyalty and when they observe this lack of loyalty in the offspring, the offspring get perceived as a ‘lost generation’, not because of their distancing from Turkish music, but because of their distancing from traditions of Turkey, musical or otherwise. I therefore see this generational breaking point as a mutual experience: it is not only the young people opening a gap between themselves and the older generation migrants with their changing musical tastes, but, as well, parents

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contributing to creating this gap with their expectancy of traditional, cultural continuity, which mostly results from the fear of seeing the family become alienated from the familiar culture and traditions of their own past and their own memories.

Conclusion On the personal and community level, music has been an element that frequently serves to set the boundaries of migrants’ spaces. According to Stokes (1997: 3): ‘The “places” constructed through music involve notions of difference and social boundary’. At a personal level, we have seen through many of my participants that people use music as an enclave in which to take shelter from the difficulties of the outer world, providing them what emotional support they may need, often acting as a self-caring mechanism. Besides constructing differences and boundaries, as Stokes suggests, migrants and their descendants use music to present and express their social attitudes. Music from Turkey is not just music to these individuals; it also acts as a means of keeping memories alive, a nostalgic agent, an emotional shelter and a narrator of identity. As Ayda, a native of Istanbul who migrated to Germany to study for her master’s degree, made it known: I had two roommates; they were both German-Turks. We were the same age, and going to the same school studying law … But they were listening to pop music from the nineties like Of Aman Nalan, a style that has long disappeared in Turkey. I guess these songs have always been valuable for them in a way we don’t understand … That’s why they keep listening to the songs that are forgotten in Turkey. We can thus see that, for immigrant descendants, be it new music or old music, often perceived as ‘old-fashion’ or ‘forgotten’ by people in Turkey, in the diasporic setting both are perceived to be equally important to one’s ethnic identification. Through the outcome of being in a cultural cluster transcending time and space, where memory is transmitted between generations, through public and private musical activities and manifestations, we see how the Turkish immigrant descendants continue tied to the past and past generations through music. In parallel to this, we also observe this generation’s own search for identity (often taking on hyphenated contours) through new musical discoveries aided by new technologies. At a community level, the history of musical presence and the investments of having it preserved, right from the onset of Turkish migration to Germany, stands as episodes and resources that greatly contribute to



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preserving and transmitting cultural memory. Düğüns and bağlama courses have provided a space parents consider safe for their children, in which they can meet like-minded people from Turkey or with a connection to Turkey, but not Germans. As well, people would go to türkü bars to feel relief from homesickness. My respondents expressed the feeling of ‘being at home’ there, showing how these musical settings change their sense of place. At the same time, younger generations in their homes try to be in touch with the present and the future by listening to the same music as their peers in Turkey. These three settings are expression of the place in which the young want to exist. In these differing examples we see how music provides spaces or places where one can go in various directions. These created places directly affect the cultural memories formed or constructed. The experience of being a migrant has an organic relation with places in connection to the contexts of homelands and hostlands. From my interviews, we learned that most immigrant memories are directly related to these places. People give music even more importance and meaning because of its relation with place. The older generations in particular use music to imagine themselves in the place(s) they loved. Along with that, while shared experiences of musicking has helped to provide a cultural memory for this community, at the same time, musical newness brought into the community by descendant generations is determining how cultural memories are being re-shaped. Changing musical tastes and musicking activities reduces shared music listening rituals between generations, which, in turn, has an impact on the cultural memory created and transmitted by generations. The Turkish diaspora in Germany presents a good example of how memories, and the way they are formed, are ever changing and never constant. Lastly, at the current stage, we see music consumption and production habits blended with yesterday’s musical modes of experience. We can understand this to be a result of the establishment of the Turkish diaspora in Germany over time, as well as a consequence of the changing means of accessing music with the development of the Internet and the proliferation of technology. These two facts, one of them occurring slowly and naturally in time, the other more rapidly and in an artificially constructed manner, define the breaking points within generations in terms of music consumption habits and the migrants’ ever-changing music scene.

Notes  1 This data was collected for my PhD thesis entitled Music and Cultural Memory: A Case Study with the Diaspora from Turkey in Berlin carried out at the University of Exeter, UK.  2 I point out that at the time of the Guest Worker Programme, other Turks

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entered Germany without being a part of this programme, with some coming to pursue their education or livelihoods in the arts and sciences, for example.  3 Anatolian folk music originates in the different regions of Asia Minor.  4 Arabesk is a hybrid genre of Turkish and Arabic music.  5 A third genre considered very important for the German-Turk youth is hip-hop. For studies on Turkish hip-hop in Germany, see Kaya 1997; Solomon 2005, 2009; among others.  6 All participants interviewed have been given pseudonyms in order to preserve their privacy as agreed on before the interviews.  7 The project, jointly coordinated by the Istanbul Technical University and Kocaeli University in Turkey, was entitled Türkü bars in Istanbul as social and musical identity spheres, 2007–8.

References AA News Agency (2001), ‘Almanya’da Göçün 40. Yılı’ [Electronic], Available at: http://arsiv.ntvmsnbc.com/news/115944.asp (accessed 10 December 2010). Abadan-Unat, N. (1976), Turkish Workers in Europe 1960–1975: A Socioeconomic Reappraisal, Leiden: Brill. Castells, M. (2010), The Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Daynes, S. (2004), ‘The Musical Construction of the Diaspora: The Case of Reggae and Rastafari’, in S. Whiteley, A. Bennet and S. Hawkins (eds), Music, Space and Place, 25–41, London: Ashgate. Dijck, V. J. (2006), ‘Record and Hold: Popular Music Between Personal and Collective Memory’. Cultural Studies in Media Communication 23 (5): 357–74. Eryılmaz, A. (2002), ‘40 years in Germany at home abroad’, Privateview [Electronic], Available online: http://www.tusiad.us/content/uploaded/pw11At_ Home_Abroad.pdf (accessed 10 December 2010). Eyerman, R. (2004), ‘The Past in the Present: Culture and the Transmission of Memory’. Acta Sociologica 47 (2): 159–69. Greve, M. (2006), Almanya’da Hayali Türkiye’nin Müziği, İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi. Hemetek, U. (2008), ‘Preface: Music from Turkey in the Diaspora’, in U. Hemetek and H. Saglam (eds), Music from Turkey in the Diaspora, Vienna: Institut für Volksmusikforschung und Ethnomusikologie. Jansky, H. (1977), ‘Türk Halk Siiri’, trans. A. Güzel, Dünya Edebiyatindan Secmeler 1 (4): 57–8. Kaya, A. (1997), Constructing Diasporas: Turkish Hip-Hop Youth in Berlin, Doctor of Philosophy Thesis, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. Olick, J. K. (2008), ‘From Collective Memory to the Sociology of Mnemonic Practices and Products’, in A. Erll and A. Nuenning (eds), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, 151–62, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.



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Öztürk, A. O. (2001), Alamanya Türküleri: Türk göçmen edebiyatının sözlü, öncü kolu, Istanbul: Kültür Bakanligi. Sardinha, J. (2014), ‘“Even if the only thing for me to do were to milk cows”: Portuguese-Canadian Descendant Returnees Narrate Constructions of Return Desires’. Diasporas – Journal of Transnational Studies 17 (3) Winter 2008: 316–39. Solomon, T. (2005), ‘“Listening to Istanbul”: Imagining Place in Turkish Rap Music’. Studia Musicologica Norvegica 31: 46–67 Solomon, T. (2009), ‘Berlin-Frankfurt-Istanbul: Turkish Hip-Hop in Motion’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 12 (3): 305–27. Stokes, M. (1992), The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey, New York: Oxford University Press. Stokes, M. (1997), ‘Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity and Music’, in M. Stokes (ed.), Ethnicity, Identity and Music, 1–27, New York: Berg. Sturken, M. (1997), Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering, Berkeley: University of California Press. Tan, D. and H. Waldhoff (1996), ‘Turkish Everyday Culture in Germany and its Prospects’, in D. Horrocks and E. Kolinsky (eds), Turkish Culture in German Society Today, 137–56, Providence, RI: Berghahn Books. Tota, A. L. (2004), ‘Ethnographying Public Memory: The Commemorative Genre for the Victims of Terrorism in Italy’. Qualitative Research 4 (2): 131–59. White, J. (1995), ‘Turks in Germany: Overview of the Literature’, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin [Electronic], Available online: http://fp.arizona.edu/ mesassoc/Bulletin/white.htm (accessed 7 December 2010).

Conclusion: Understanding acoustic performativities, youth subjectivities and mobile identities Anastasia Christou, João Sardinha and Ricardo Campos

This collection of articles started by stating that the concept of ‘displacement’ would be a central theme of reflection, having specifically been underlined that migration would be the link between the concepts of youth and music. Mobility was approached from the perspective of geographically mobile musical genres, aiming to reveal research pertinent to young migrants and second-generation migrants. Within this context, special attention was additionally given to musical productions and dissemination originating for migrant or migrant descending youth communities. The term ‘transglobal sounds’ was thus chosen to fit the musical/migrant youth frameworks that emerge from the experience of travel, migration, displacement and transnationality. Crossing borders (geographical and symbolic) is always a remarkable experience that involves change of habits, references and landscapes. Confrontation with the ‘new’ may represent a turbulent experience, especially when it is presented with the weight of the dominant references of the host society. Such confrontations often imply an experience involving identity redefinition processes in which art and the symbolic play an important role. Traditionally, social science discourses have tended to crystallize the conception of culture and cultural identification as extensions of an ethnic community, delimited by territory in its origins, but not contained within

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it (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). The idea of a linear connection between place and culture corresponds to the myths of local and national cultures as coherent sets of meanings, and a relatively rigid articulation of attributes. This is, however, a concept that has been widely questioned, at least since the 1990s, as a result of the inevitable conclusion that the world is increasingly global. The emergence of globalization a focus of social scientific debate in the 1980s, compelled to redefine most of our assumptions about the umbilical link between territory, community and culture (Featherstone and Lash 1995; Giddens 1990). People are not set in a precise and identifiable territory. More and more people are situated in a complex and changing world, where issues of deterritorialization and hybridity arise with greater force. As many scholars have been advocating, identities and cultures cannot be overly conceptualized as spatialized entities (Appadurai 1996; Hannerz 1996; Inda and Rosaldo 2002; Marcus 1998). Hence, since the 1990s, increasing attention has been given to the idea of ‘mobility’, whether in micro or macro-social terms, as a key element for understanding contemporary society. This implies not only the mobility of people, but also of material and aesthetic goods. If theory has revised the way we consider the place/space and culture, it is also true that it has reassessed the approaches to the concept of identity. Against the essentialist idea of a crystallized identity settled around a set of lasting symbolic references, many are those who have pointed to the fragmentation and volatility of identities (Friedman 1994; Giddens 1991; Hall 1991, 1992, 1996) as a characteristic of our contemporary societies. Far from the stable landmarks of an identity primarily marked by the past and tradition, currently personal and cultural identities are composite and changeable, often associated with the construction of certain ‘lifestyles’ (Chaney 2001) defined by consumption habits and options that are a key element in the construction of identities. In any case, whether we consider an ‘essentialistic’ or more ‘contemporary’ approach to identity, the fact is that the creation and use of certain aesthetic and symbolic goods has a central role in the identity construction. If an essentialist view of culture and identity emphasizes the connection to the past and the apparent authenticity of the cultural and aesthetic assets that are passed from generation to generation, a contemporary approach highlights the fragility and variability of these links. Currently, aesthetic goods are linked to consumer choices. This is equally applied to one of the central focuses of this volume, that of music, a particularly important product for social distinction insofar as it works as a symbol of demarcation between individuals and groups (Frith 1996). Reflecting on music implies thinking of it from the point of view of mobility, for music, indifferent of genre or origin, is not limited by boundaries. Assuming that we live in an increasingly global world, this means that we must take into account the deterritorialization and displacement

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as structural factors, not only of our subjective experience, but also of our status in society. If people’s mobility has always been fundamental to the way the music circulates, surely the role of the cultural industries, media and modern technologies is paramount. It’s a matter of fact that the media assumes a central role in how certain musical genres or artists circulate internationally in today’s day in age. If this was true in the old media forms (TV, radio, newspapers, etc.) this becomes even more salient in the era of digital media (Somerville 2008). Hence, the songs that we access now have a unique nature, often associated with a subjective experience of consumption without geographical boundaries. Bailley and Collier (2006) emphasize that the relationship between music and migration is highly complex, often requiring that we consider distinct contextual elements and outcomes associated to each specific situation. According to the authors (2006: 172), these situations include: ‘the type of migration; spatial and cultural proximity of points of departure and of arrival; characteristics of the music culture under consideration; deliberate change and non-change by the migrants; the audience for music; cohesive and divisive outcomes; and possible therapeutic outcomes’. With this collection of articles, such variables have been taken into consideration however, a new angle has been added, that of youth subjectivities, associated to music acquisition, performance, preservation, transmission, politics and meanings. The triangulation between music, migration and youth has permitted discussions on complex relationships between identities, territory and culture, this from the perspective of being connected to a musical form that is disconnected from the territory it finds itself in. This collection of articles has analysed how this disconnection can be played out collectively and individually, not only in relation to the mobile individual, but the societies caught between.

Music on the move Within the paradigm of transnational approaches to migration studies, music is no less a parameter included in addressing acoustic movement, such as musical mobilities and migrating music/musicians. Situated across the spectrum of cultural geographies of diasporic life, questions to transnational, transcultural, translocal and transglobal music should engage with broader issues of space, place, borders and new modes and modalities of sociality and mobility in the intersections of socio-cultural, historical and political layers of such experiences. Inherently, there is a relationship between movement and music, and such a relationship does not unfold only in aesthetic, embodied, visual and acoustic performativities but above all it intersects with other social

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categorizations, such as gender, ethnicity, age/generation, class and race in the local and global arena. In a sense it is a manifestation of structural and agentic identity and affective experiences that such flows take shape as they cut across globalizations and networks. Music and migration are considered exemplary avenues in exploring several key methodological and conceptual pursuits that are often not available in the study of the migration phenomenon per se. For instance Kiwan and Meinhof (2011: 4) strongly suggest: First of all, it allows us to tell a different ‘story’ about south-to-north/ east-to-west migration. The vast majority of academic research on migration is socio-economic in character. Most of the time migrants are seen as a source of social, cultural and economic problems for the ‘host’ society and the migrants themselves are often portrayed as victims (whether they be political exiles, economic migrants, students or postcolonial ‘guestworkers’). Focusing on artists in general, and musicians in particular, allows us to render more visible other ‘types’ of migrant stories, which are generally more positive, or at least more multi-faceted. Migrant musicians are by definition subjective agents whose mobility, whilst often determined by difficult socio-economic or political problems at place or country of origin, is nevertheless one of agency and self-determination. Many migrant musicians are also highly educated or highly skilled, without necessarily being part of a transnational elite class, and are able to adopt various strategies which allow many of them to turn their music into a full-time profession. In her research on transnational musicians, Marie-Pierre Gilbert (2011: 92) highlights that: By following the life trajectories and networks of various North African artists principally based in the United Kingdom and in France, it becomes apparent that a common phenomenon amongst migrant musicians is that they can become trapped in a matrix which simultaneously articulates three potentially conflicting dimensions: the artists’ own musical pleasure and desires; their professional constraints and opportunities; and the social, historical and personal context of their migration experiences. However, artists have developed strategies which permit them not only to overcome such tensions arising from this matrix, but to use them as a strength. It thus becomes apparent that musical pleasures and desires can become entangled with professional constraints as much as opportunities, yet the overarching container of such for transnational musicians remains the very real matrix of socio-historical and individual migration circumstances.

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Some of the contributions to this book specifically highlight the migration linked to musical projects. Travel is thus not only inherent in the lives of many musicians, constantly ‘on the road’, but can be an important experience to acquire a range of skills and capital. The punk musicians of the city of Coimbra undertook, as described by Guerra and Quintela, a migratory process that led them not only to escape from a local context of reduced musical and professional opportunities, but also to pursue a dream. The trip to London was the result of a plan to experience the music scene in one of the most iconic cities of the punk subculture. The passages through England were relevant to the artistic success of these young people, but also had an impact on the music scene in the city of Coimbra, which reflects the complex and intricate nature of the relationships between different geographical realities. In a diametrically different note, Höffs unveils the afro-mandinga journey in Lisbon, a city with a significant presence of African communities, especially from the former Portuguese colonies. The Griots, Djidius or Djalis, as these musicians are known, adapt to the local context and the opportunities that come up, whether performing for the African diaspora or for the general public. Thus, this ancient music takes different connotations, not only because of the uniqueness of the performative events, but also from the audience that creates distinct connections with these songs. This text reveals how the understanding of ethnic and folkloric songs, linked to tradition, is changeable and permeable to the contexts of musical consumption. The link to the past and the processes of perpetuation and reinvention of traditional music are also discussed in the text by Fushiki. The author analyzes a performative art without borders, which was formed from the geographical spread of migrant communities: the nanyin. The viewpoint of the author is more institutional, revealing the mechanisms by which one particular institution operates in order to protect a number of aesthetic goods in favour of the idea of heritage. However these processes are not free from tensions and debates, as shown by the author. The disputes over nanyin music, its definition and its ties to tradition and canon result in divisions and in the creation of distinct aesthetic pathways.

Music, identity and memory The issue of migration and music is complex, allowing for a number of different approaches. The most common is, as we have seen, the approach that associates acoustic experience to a series of links with the past. Literature (Slobin 1992; Stokes 1994; Baily and Collier 2006) has shown how far the music as a collective element of identification serves on migration and diasporic contexts, as memory formula and a symbolic connector with

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ancestral places. Involvement in certain acoustic and performative rituals or simple music consumption identified with a particular ethnic or geographic boundary animates feelings of belonging: connects emotionally those who share a migrant background, strengthening their connection to the homeland. Several of the texts presented here precisely reinforce this idea. As cultural heritage and a memory device, music is passed from generation to generation. This transposition is not carried out without friction. The transmission of the parents’ cultural heritage, particularly connected to the homeland, may generate in their offspring ambivalent situations. As various studies have demonstrated (Rumbaut 1994; Zhou 1997; Christou 2006) the generational issue is crucial when it comes to migratory situations and how the different symbolic and cultural references are negotiated. If, in the generation of those who made the migration process, the link to the motherland and to its cultural heritage (music, literature, cuisine, etc.) is strong, the situation with their descendants tends to be much more complex. The so-called second (and third) generation lives torn between two worlds and two cultural frameworks (Tsuda 2003; Christou 2006; Reynolds 2008; Sardinha 2011). Several of the contributions in the book take into account not only generational issues, but also the role of youth as social agents with creative and political capacity to act. If music is usually understood as an element of cohesion in migrant communities, we must not forget that this is so often synonymous with disputes and disruption (Bailly and Collier 2009). This is due to the diversity and fragmentation that exists within the migrant communities, often wrongly regarded as a homogeneous whole. Class divisions, ethnicity, gender or age can be decisive in how certain cultural goods are produced, used and understood. The age issue is revealing in this matter. In fact the tendency is, when we think of the migrant communities and music that invokes a certain ‘essentialist’ idea of culture, to focus on the acoustic experience as a connecting factor to a remote past and a certain cultural heritage. However, what happens when we focus on the descendants living with other cultural frameworks, for whom the parents’ ‘traditional’ music acquires other meanings? And what happens in a context of globalization, where young people, migrants or not, produce and consume global musical genres, detached from the traditional and ‘folklorized’ genres? Some of the chapters included in this volume address these issues. Güran Aydin shows us how the study and appreciation of traditional music is considered by Turkish immigrants in Germany, perceived as a vehicle for transmitting values of Turkish culture to new generations. In experiencing their musical roots in diaspora, Turkey can become a field of ontological comfort and security for young people. On the other hand, it can equally carry ambivalence given that, for many, it can represent an outdated world. Similarly, Sardinha spoke of the relevance of Portuguese music consumption and acquisition on the part of Portuguese migrant descendants in Canada to

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show how sometimes a cultural connection to the land of ancestry can be so tight to the point of motivating a counter-diasporic mobility (Christou 2006). What influences this, according to the author, is derived from four sources: the migrant household and the influence of the parents diasporic community life and especially the work of immigrant associations short holiday visits back to Portugal and fourthly, having their musical world at their fingertips via the Internet. Sardinha further reveals that ethnic music cultivation starts at an early age, often even done so subconsciously. Music as a mobility persuader, however, is a variable within a cultural milieu the returnee engages in and cultivates, contributing to the ever-growing build up of the ancestral homeland return desire. To understand traditional or ethnic music as a collective symbol of pride does not mean that we share a crystallized perspective of music. Music deals with meanings and these are inevitably negotiated depending on contexts: that is, the meaning of certain genres or musical tracks varies in time and space, depending on the way it is appropriated by people. This means that the understandings on certain musical productions vary not only depending on the context but also on the characteristics of the artist or the audience. This situation is even more complex when it comes to contexts where the market and the cultural industries play a key role in the music’s production, broadcasting and consumption circuits. The music industry and the media are crucial actors for the dissemination of musical tracks but also for the creation of meaning around them. Thus, the creation of certain musical categories and their expression in the public sphere is dependent on a number of social actors. The cultural hybridization occurs through the creative use of the different cultural codes (sounds, language, performance, etc.), but also by the identity game that unfolds through these practices. In fact, making new cultural references from a previously existing cultural mosaic entails creating a new identitarian space that interacts with memory, tradition and innovation. The Icelandic rock band Retro Stefson described in the chapter by Guðmundsson and Thorodssen is an interesting example of how the musical hybridity may result from the use of different cultural references. Young people belonging to this band take their Angolan roots and musicality associated with African traditions to create a new and commercially successful formula, in a country without the tradition of African immigration. But hybridity and identity negotiations also take place in the tensions that are established between the auto- and hetero-identifications. Socially constructed categories have normative force, particularly when imposed as natural and consensual. That explains why the children of immigrants are so often perceived as migrants, foreign or ethnically distinct. And what is celebrated is so often an imagined version, folkloric and stereotypical of their cultural references. A certain spectacularization of folk traditions often presides over the institutional

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celebration of multiculturalism and tolerance. This is the case described by Kärjä by reference to Ourvision Singing Contest in Helsinki, a competition that aims to give voice and visibility to the descendants of immigrants living in Finland. This chapter revealed to what extent the boundaries of ethnic identity and their cultural references are problematic. The notion of ‘authenticity’, frequently invoked in regard to these issues, refers to an essentialist and crystallized idea of identity and culture that matches the folkloric vision that so often is celebrated.

Music politics Addressing the issue of music in these contexts implies having particular attention to the identity and political dimension (Martiniello and Lafleur, 2008). This means that cultural expressions must be understood not only for their aesthetic potential, but also by their transforming character, for its ability to affect the public debate. Certain cultural expressions are located precisely in this field, escaping the more consensual logic of a certain aesthetic and ideological hegemony. Popular culture has been, precisely, a field where many creative uses of aesthetic and symbolic goods are comprehended as forms of resistance to the dominant culture (Hebdige 1976; Fiske 1989). This indicates that certain cultural expressions are sometimes adopted as political symbols. Certain musical genres fulfilled precisely this function, such as punk. Graffiti is another good example of a transgressive and politicized cultural expression. However, it is not only the languages and aesthetic goods that take an explicitly politicized nature might be considered as politically relevant. In fact, the most innocuous object can be subject to political use. In other words, what matters is basically to understand the meanings that are attributed to the aesthetic goods and the use that is made of them: that is, the political nature of an object is not dependent on its intrinsic character, but on the operations of meaningful assignments that are developed by social actors. As such, the political nature of cultural expressions may vary in time and space. The same may occur when certain songs and musical genres are adopted as identitarian symbols of pride, especially by groups or communities occupying minority, peripheral or subordinate positions in a given society. Such is often the case of migrant and diasporic communities, as many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate. Music has been at the service of migrants’ and ethnic and religious minorities’ identity politics, those who so often feel socially excluded or culturally devalued. The political dimension of music may be more explicit in the lyrics, but is not limited to this. Adopting certain languages, gestures or music genres can, depending on the context, be regarded as a political act.

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The case of rap is exemplary, as shown by several studies (Forman 2002; Rose 1994; Stapleton 1998), which highlight its use as a political symbol. The chapter by Campos, Nunes and Simões supports many of these studies demonstrating how a global genre is appropriated as an emblem of ethnic and class struggle. The protest rap is used by many young people of African descent living in Portugal, on the one hand, as a transnational emblem of the struggle of disadvantaged ethnic minorities around the world, and on the other hand, as a symbol of the traumatic experiences and the problems faced locally. For these young people protest rap is linked to the memory of the music invented in the New York suburbs by the black and Latino youth in the 1970s. In this case, music as a political symbol is not associated with the musical traditions of parental origin, but instead with a global musical format. Rothchild equally demonstrated this in her article, showing how, through the dance theatre production DISTORTION, the acts and dialogues aim to bring greater awareness to audience members of who and what ‘the new Germany’ is, one that DISTORTION tries to pass as being in the ‘post-multi-kulti’ phase, that is united through broken borders, that is global and multi-lingual. DISTORTION and what it represents is, in this case, the political tool used to transmit what ‘new Germans’ think ‘new Germany’ is. From a different perspective, the chapter by Gavazzo, Pereira and Estevens, deals with the young Bolivians living in the diaspora. Taking as a case study the Bolivian communities residing in Argentina and Spain, the authors conclude that musical experiences are distinct within the diaspora, depending not only on geography, but also the generations. However, even taking into account different musical genres, the political role of music is emphasized, whether as a statement of national and ethnic pride, or as a vehicle for problematizing experience and migrant condition. In all cases, music serves as a collective identification attribute that contributes to building a certain idea of community. In this book we observed a series of tensions that run through almost all the chapters and that, deep down, reflect the complexity of the relationship between music and migration. In fact, we find that the subjective experience of migrants is defined by continuities and ruptures that mark a fragmented and ambivalent identity, especially in the second and third generations. Music, like many other expressions and cultural assets, plays an important role in identity negotiations. One of the most cited tensions concerns the ‘past’ versus the ‘present’. This polarity summarizes the major issues that migrants and their families face with regard to their identity negotiations. The past is linked to the origins, to a specific cultural heritage, to a certain notion of authenticity and ontological comfort. This is represented in the habits, dress, gastronomy, language or music. To perpetuate them in the host society is to maintain a link with the homeland. And music can be understood in this context, as a reinforcement of a primordial cultural heritage. However, disputes over cultural heritage and ‘purity’ often

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clash with creativity, innovation and hybridity. And here we find another tension when addressing music in these contexts. On the one hand, there are collective forces that seek to perpetuate the legitimate versions of the tradition, and on the other, the confrontation with new references that promote fusion and innovation. Thus, the cultural legitimacy of certain music genres as representative of ethnic, national and local communities is always subject to dispute. These frictions are often associated with generational issues. This is a third tension, one that involves parents and offspring, the former being more likely to maintain, perpetuate and transmit the cultural heritage of origin (taken as legitimate), whereas the latter surrounded by other references, takes this heritage more ambiguously, being more predisposed for cultural miscegenation.

References Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large – Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Baily, J. and Collyer, M. (2006), ‘Introduction: Music and Migration’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32 (2): 167–82. Chaney, D. (2001), ‘From Ways of Life to Lifestyle: Rethinking Culture as Ideology and Sensibility’, in J. Lull (ed.), Culture in the Communication Age, 75–88, London and New York: Routledge. Christou, A. (2006), Narratives of Place, Culture and Identity: Second-Generation Greek-Americans Return “Home”, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Featherstone, M. and S. Lash (1995), ‘Globalization, Modernity and the Spatialization of Social Theory: An Introduction’, in M. Featherstone, S. Lash and R. Robertson (eds), Global Modernities, 1–24, London: Sage. Fiske, J. (1989), Understanding Popular Culture, London: Routledge. Forman, M. (2002), The ‘Hood’ Comes First. Race, Space and Place in Rap and Hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Friedman, J. (1994), Cultural Identity & Global Process, London: Sage. Frith, S. (1996), ‘Music and Identity’, in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, 108–27, London: Sage. Giddens, A. (1990), The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gibert, M.-P. (2011), ‘Transnational Ties and Local Involvement: North African Musicians in and Beyond London’. Music and Arts in Action 3 (3): 92–115. Gupta, A. and J. Ferguson (1997), Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hannerz, U. (1996), Transnational Connections – Culture, People, Places, London and New York: Routledge. Hall, S. (1991), ‘Old and New Identities: Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. King (ed.), Culture, Globalization and the World System, 41–68, London: MacMillan.

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Hall, S. (1992), ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’ in S. Hall and T. McGrew (eds), Modernity and its Futures, 274–316, Cambridge: Polity. Hall, S. (1996), ‘Introduction – Who Needs Identity’, in St Hall and P. Du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, 1–17, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Hebdige, D. (1976), Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen. Inda, X. J. and R. Rosaldo (2002), ‘Introduction: A World in Motion’, in J. Inda and R. Rosaldo (eds), The Anthropology of Globalization. A Reader, 1–34, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kiwan, N. and U. H. Meinhof (2011), ‘Music and Migration: A Transnational Approach’. Music and Arts in Action 3 (3): 3–20. Marcus, G. (1998), Ethnography through Thick and Thin, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martiniello, M. and J-M. Lafleur (2008), ‘Ethnic Minorities’ Cultural and Artistic Practices as Forms of Political Expression: A Review of the Literature and a Theoretical Discussion on Music’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34 (8): 1191–215. Reynolds, T. (2008), Ties That Bind: Families, Social Capital and Caribbean Second-Generation Return Migration, Brighton: University of Sussex, Sussex Centre for Migration Research Working Paper 46. Rose, T. (1994), Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, London: Wesleyan University Press. Rumbaut, R. G. (1994), ‘The Crucible within: Ethnic Identity, Self-Esteem, and Segmented Assimilation among Children of Immigrants’. The International Migration Review 28 (4), Special Issue: The New Second Generation (Winter 1994): 748–94. Sardinha, J. (2011), ‘Neither Here nor There: Identity Constructions, Conceptions of “Home” and the Transnational Lives of Second Generation Luso-Canadians and Luso-French in Portugal’, in F. C. Fagundes, I. M. Blair, T. Alves and T. Cid (eds), Storytelling the Portuguese Diaspora: Piecing Things Together, 153–74, New York: Peter Lang. Slobin, M. (1992), ‘Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach’. Ethnomusicology 36 (1): 1–87. Somerville, K. (2008), ‘Transnational Belonging among Second Generation Youth: Identity in a Globalized World’. Journal of Social Sciences Special Volume Youth and Migration 10: 23–33. Stapleton, K. (1998), ‘From the Margins to Mainstream: The Political Power of Hip-hop’. Media, Culture & Society 20: 219–34. Stokes, M. (1994), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg. Tsuda, T. (2003), Strangers in the Ethnic Homeland: Japanese Brazilian Return Migration in Transnational Perspective, New York: Columbia University Press. Zhou, M. (1997), ‘Growing Up American: The Challenge Confronting Immigrant Children and Children of Immigrants’. Annual Review of Sociology 23: 63–95.

INDEX

aesthetic goods 228 Afro-American music 114–15 air travel 183 A-Jay 167 Anderson, Benedict 163, 168, 189 Anna and Alexandra (singing duo) 79–80 Appadurai, A. 159, 190 arabesk music 206, 210 Arango, J. 139 Argentina 140–1 see also Buenos Aires artistic activities 135 assimilation 158, 170, 185 Auslander, P. 24, 26 authenticity 5, 80, 88, 90, 228 Azzerad, Michael 67–8 Badu, Eruka 80 bağlama playing 207–9 Baily, J. 133, 223 Balán, Jorge 140 Bateson, G. 22 The Beatles 58 belonging, sense of 3, 7, 181–4 Bennett, A. 34, 44, 116–17 Bent, Amel 80 Berlin 8, 201, 206–7 Berry, Chuck 57–8 Bhabha, Homi 155, 166, 169–70 Bilbao 6, 134–40, 144–8 Björk 59–60, 66 ‘Black Atlantic’ culture 55–6, 63, 78, 118–19 black music 77–8, 118 blackness as a cultural identity 77, 84, 88 Blau, J. 23–4

Bolivian migrants in Argentina and Spain 134–49, 229 Brah, A. 33 Brando, Marlon 57 Brecht, Bertolt 165–6 bridging social capital 159, 162 De Bruijn, M. 14 Buenos Aires 6, 134–5, 140–6 Campos, Ricardo 6, 229 Canada, immigration into 182–3, 186–7 Canuté, Baba 25 Castells, M. 214 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), Birmingham 32–3, 55–6 Chau, Pedro 38–40, 43 Chin, R. 157–8, 168–71 chronotopes 25 Clifford, James 156, 188 Cohen, R. 181 Cohen, S. 43 Coimbra 4–5, 31–44, 225 Cole, J. 16 collective feelings 135–6 Collyer, M. 133, 223 ‘communities of sentiment’ (Appadurai) 190 Crane, D. 32 Creole rap 126 cultural activism 143–7 cultural citizenship 142 cultural codes 227 cultural heritage 226, 229–30 cultural imperialism 116 cultural memory 8, 201, 217 cultural symbols 136

234 Index

culture definition of 143 global 44 local and national 222 dance and dance groups 145, 210 Dantchev, Anna 79–80 Dean, James 57–8 DeNora, T. 40 diasporas 3, 16–17, 44–5, 181–3, 187–8, 194, 214–16 Diawara, Mamadou 14 Didi Blanco (group) 89 Dijck, V. J. 203 Dion, Celine 80 DISTORTION (dance theatre show) 7, 155–6, 160, 163–73, 229 Djabaté, Budunka 25 Djabaté, Kimi 4, 13–14, 17–19, 22–6 Djabaté, Umaro 26 djaliá 4, 13, 16–17, 19–26 ‘double consciousness’ 33–4 Du Bois, W. E. B. 56 düğüns 210 Duval, D. 192 ‘easy listening’ 77, 87 Ebron, P. 20, 23 Egorova, Vasilina 80 É Mas Foi-se (band) 38 enclaves, ethnic 141 English language 76, 83, 85, 96 Erickson, R. S. 162 Eryılmaz, A. 205 Estevens, Ana 6, 229 ethnic minorities 127 ethnic music 180, 186, 225, 227 ethnicity 85, 87, 157, 187–8 ethnicization of a nation 141 European Union 120–1 Eusébio 63 Eyerman, R. 203 Fagerlund-Evangelista, Ella 79 family relationships 184–6, 189, 215 Featherstone, Simon 74 Fehrenbach, H. 157–8, 168–71

Finland see Ourvision Singing Contest Finnish language 79–80, 85 Finnish music 75, 87–90 Finnishness 74, 87 folk music 203, 205 Foroutan, Naika 169, 172 Frith, Simon 75, 115, 118 Fukuyama, F. 159 Fushiki, Kaori 5–6, 225 ‘gatekeeper’ role in families 189, 215 Gavazzo, Natália 6, 229 Gell, A. 20 generational issues 79, 85, 125, 230 Gentes del Mundo festival 139 German citizenship 158 German language 162–3, 170, 204–5 Germanness 156, 163–7, 170–3 Germany 55, 155–9 Turkish community in 201–15, 226 Getxo Folk 139–40 Gilbert, Marie-Pierre 224 Gilroy, Paul 33–4, 54–6, 63–7, 78, 88, 118–19 globalization 3, 32–4, 66, 115, 143, 190, 222 ‘glocalism’ 3, 45 Greve, M. 203 Grimson, A. 141 griot performances 13–27, 225 Gudmundsson, Gestur 5, 227 Guerra, Paula 4, 34 ‘guest worker’ agreements 204 Guinea-Bissau 15–18, 25–6 Güran Aydin, Pinar 8, 226 halay nights 210 Hall, Stuart 55–6 Hamburg 157–60 Harding, F. 20 Harle, V. 89 Hebdige, D. 55 Heinonen, Emilia 81 Helsinki see Ourvision Singing Contest Hemetek, U. 203 Hengyunge Association 97

Index hip-hop 7, 83–5, 122–3, 126, 136, 147–8, 160, 164–5, 210 HipHop Academy, Hamburg 7, 155–64, 171 ‘hipster racism’ 65 Höfs, Carolina Carret 4, 225 holiday visits 191–3 home environment domination of 193 and new technologies 214–16 homecoming visits 191 homeland cultures 3, 7–8, 15–16, 181–2, 193–4, 203 Hudson, R. 39 Humboldt, Wilhelm von 162 Huq, R. 33 hybridity and hybridization, cultura 3, 41, 54–6, 66–7, 122, 169, 211, 227 Iceland 5, 53–68 Icelandic language 58, 60 identity 54–6, 169 collective 181, 203 construction of 180, 186 cultural 6, 32, 88, 222 ethnic 114, 118–21, 126, 133–4, 184, 186, 216, 228 German 170–3 ‘hyphenated’ 74, 81–2 of the immigrant 43 multiple 173 musical 114–19 personal 181, 222 identity politics 121–2 imagined communities 7, 66–7, 166, 168, 182, 189 immigrants, integration of 144–5 indie rock 60, 62 Infantino, J. 149 Ingold, T. 21 integration barriers to 204–5 double-sided 168 gradual 206 of immigrant 144–5 macro-political 162–4, 171–3 interaction with audiences 20–2

235

interculturality, principle of 139 ‘international repertoire’ of music 115–16 internet communication 189–93 Islamophobia 158–9 Iyer, Anusha 81–2 Jalkanen, P. 75, 77 Jameson, F. 42 Jing Li 76 Johnson, M. 15 Kalpaka, Annita 168 Kärjä, Antti-Ville 5, 228 Keita, Sunjata 16 Keys, Alicia 80 Kin, Noah 79, 84–5 The Kinks 58 Kirchner, Cristina 141 Kivinen, Ehunoluwa 81 Kiwan, N. 16, 224 Kjuregej 64–5 Koh, Suzan 98, 105 Kullervo, Kani 78, 85 Kunin, J. 147–8 Lau, Johnny 103 Lay Low 64 Lee Rubin, R. 136 Leonardo, J. 139 Leoncie 64 Lévi-Strauss, C. 26 Levitt, P. 192 Lewis, Leona 80 lifestyles 222 Linke, Uki 162 Lisboa Mistura Festival 13, 17–20, 26 Lisbon 4, 6, 15–18, 26, 119, 121, 225 Little Richard 58 London 5, 37–44, 225 López-Rodríguez, L. 158 Lull, J. 116 Machado, F. 120 Macras, Constanza 164–7, 179 Mande history and society 14–18, 22, 26–7

236 Index

Mandingo 13–17, 20–1, 24–7 Mardones, P. 145–6 Marxism 55–6 MC Xstin 79–80, 83–4 Mead, G. H. 54 media influences 227 Meinhof, U. 16, 224 memory collective 135 concept of 202–3 cultural 8, 201, 217 MERCOSUR 141 Merkel, Angela 159 migration 1–5, 15–16, 35–6, 182 ‘contagious’ nature of 36 and music 43–4, 117–18, 134, 224–5, 229 see also return migration Miller, T. 171 Mistura Festival 4 mobility 221–3 Moisio, S. 89 Moraes Farias, P. 22 multiculturalism 74, 90, 183 múm 60, 62 music as a bond 183–4 and collective feelings 136 and daily life 40 in the family environment 184–6 and identity 114–19 and migration 43–4, 117–18, 134, 224–5, 229 nature of 1–2 and politics 76, 88, 133–6, 228–30 Portuguese 180, 183–4 in relation to place 33, 39 social construction of 43 social significance of 115, 203 tastes in 186 music industry 88, 227 music schools 206–10 nanyin music 6, 93–106, 225 educational programmes on 101–2, 105 history of 95–7 national culture 144

Natri, Annabelle 76 Nkoko, Terence 6 Nunes, Pedro 229 Obolonskaja, Olga 79 Of Monsters and Men (group) 60 Olick, J. K. 202–3 Olivera, C. 145 Ong, Aihwa 168, 170 Ong Guat Hwa 99 Orientalism 55, 89 Örn, Einar 59 Ourvision Singing Contest (OSC) 5, 73–90, 228 Öztürk, A. O. 206 Pang, C. L. 186 parental authority 193 The Parkinsons (band) 31–2, 38–45 Peel, John 59 Pegida organization 159, 172 Pereira, Sónia 6, 229 Pereyra, B. 141 Perez, Javier 77 Pinto, Afonso 38–43 polyrhythmics 75 popular culture 34, 118, 228 Portugal, Portuguese culture and ‘Portugueseness’ 6–8, 15,31, 34–8, 42–3, 119–20, 180–93, 226–7 postcolonial theory 44, 74 praise singing 21–3 Presley, Elvis 57 ‘protest rap’ 6, 113, 123 punk rock 31, 34–8, 44, 228 Purcell, Henry 166 Quintela, Pedro 4 racism 145, 168 Ramone, Joey 38 rap music 76, 79, 82–4, 119, 122–6, 136, 147–8, 229 see also ‘protest rap’ Räthzel, Nora 168 Regev, M. 38 Retro Stefson (band) 5, 61–8, 227

Index return migration 42, 179–80, 188, 194, 227 Reykjavik 61–2, 67 rhythm and blues (R&B) 76–82, 90 Roma community 73, 85–7 Rosaldo, Renato 42 Rose, T. 36 Rothchild, Emily Joy 7, 229 Said, Edward 55–6 Sardinha, João 7, 185, 215, 226–7 Sarrazin, Thilo 158 Sassone, S. 141 Schreiber, Falk 164–5 The Sex Pistols 34 Sheng Hong Art Institute 96 Siggi Johnnie 57 Sigur Rós (band) 59–62 Simões, José Alberto 229 Singapore 5–6, 94–7, 105–6 Siong Leng Musical Association 5, 93–106 Skodra, Krissa 77 Slobin, M. 117, 181, 183 Slowblow (band) 62 snowball sampling 202 social capital 184 social cohesion 135 social exclusion 126 social integration, definition of 158 Somali refugees and Somali music 78 Southeast Asian Nanyin Group 99 Der Spiegel (newspaper) 172 Stefánsson, Logi Pedro 61, 64 Stefánsson, Unnsteinn Manuel 61–6 Stokes, Martin 15, 136, 206, 216 Strathern, M. 22 subcultural theory 32–3 Subterranean (group) 64 The Sugarcubes (group) 59 Suoralähetys (group) 85–8 supercultures 117 Surakata 16 Tagg, P. 118 Talking Heads (band) 63

237

Tan, D. 205 Tapia Ladino, M. 138 Taylor, C. 142 The Tédio Boys (band) 38 Teng Hong Hai 100, 105 Teng Mah Seng 93, 97–101, 105–6 Teo, Angelita 106 Thoroddsen, Arnar Eggert 5, 227 Torpedo, Victor 38–45 traditional music 137 transglobal sounds 221 transnationalism 14–16, 27, 33, 182 musical 194 for a sense of being and belonging 186–7 Tucker, J. 145–6 Turkey and Turkish music 8, 205–7 türkü bars 211–13, 217 türküs 205–6 United Nations 158 Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 95–6, 104 Vampire Weekend (band) 63 Van Dijk, R. 14 Van Kerckhove, Carmen 65 Vertovec, S. 181 Waldhoff, H. 205 Waldman, M. 21 Wang Pheck Geok 98–102, 105 Wenger, Etienne 162, 166, 169 world music 26–7, 88, 115–16, 194 xenophobia 142, 168 Ylinen, Jeison 79 youth cultures 2–3, 44, 55–7, 223, 226 Yudice, G. 143, 171 Yu-Yang Bai 76 Zhou, Z. J. 99–100 Zhuo Shen Xiang 99–100