Rethinking hybridity: Organised cultural encounters in collaborative music practices between Amman, Beirut and Mannheim

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Music is central for understanding a society's cultural history and collective identity. Arabic music, with its Persian, Turkish and European cultural influences, shows how social movements and cultural dialogue are apparent in musical forms emerging from cross-cultural encounters. The use of diverse musical elements enable musicians in the diaspora to explore and construct new temporary identities reflecting not only current society but representing issues around 'home', difference and belonging. My project will look into the role that music plays in negotiating and forming these new identities. My aim is to address misrepresentations of Arab musicians in media reports and the way public stereotyping of migrant communities in Germany can be challenged through intercultural music projects - bringing together musicology, anthropology and critical media studies. To do so, I take a closer look at the emerging experimental music scene in Amman, Beirut and their diasporic communities in Germany. In discussing music-making across borders, I expand the concept of 'in-between' cultures (Slobin 1987), addressing the underlying dynamics of cultural exchanges across nation states. This involves examining new forms of collaboration of German and Arabic artists made available through digital networking, enabling the emergence of virtual and non-virtual publics. I also look into different forms of mobility that facilitate cross-border communication and sociability, such as online exchanges of musical material and migration. In the process of music production, how and to what extent do artists overcome spatial, material and aesthetic challenges to express commonality and conflict arising from intercultural exchanges? And what role do media texts play in the shaping of new intercultural formations in which the boundaries between cultural expressions are becoming increasingly blurred? To look deeper into these issues, I will focus on two phenomena. Firstly, how Arab music projects are represented in Germany, especially festivals and educational programmes that claim to be platforms for intercultural exchanges. Mannheim, with a large Turkish, Syrian and Nigerian migrant population, is home to Germany's first state-funded degree in world music and therefore particularly interesting as a field site. Furthermore, by interviewing musicians from Lebanon and Jordan, I enquire how musicians use self-exoticisms for their marketing and branding on the Euro-American music market. At the centre of my ethnography will be the festival project 'Planet Ears', a newly established platform for intercultural exchanges between Lebanon, Jordan and Germany which I have been involved with over the past year. Secondly, I look at cross-border collaborations in light of recent social movement and digital technology development, focusing on shared cosmopolitan aspirations and less on national identity of artists themselves to show the variety of intentions for intercultural music making besides radical political aims, as often depicted in local media reports. Looking at musicians with contrasting approaches to music making, I argue for a more nuanced narrative on displacement and cultural practices in diasporic communities. The current representation of difference with their frequent focus on political binaries and aspects of musician's identity, including ethnicity, race and gender, leads to problematic exoticisms. By talking to the artists themselves and finding out how networks are formed, I will critically reflect upon the variety of intentions and messages conveyed in music to contribute to the study of affinity intercultures and affective social formations in cosmopolitan communities at large. I believe that my research can contribute to a better understanding of new hybrid genres which represent neither mere otherness nor perfect harmony, but instead a dynamic expression of dialogue and conflict in an artist's socio-political reality.