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

音乐是理解一个社会的文化历史和集体认同的核心。受波斯、土耳其和欧洲文化影响的阿拉伯音乐，展示了社会运动和文化对话如何在跨文化接触中出现的音乐形式中显现出来。不同音乐元素的使用使散居海外的音乐家能够探索和构建新的临时身份，不仅反映当前社会，还代表围绕“家”、差异和归属感的问题。我的项目将探讨音乐在协商和形成这些新身份时所扮演的角色。我的目的是解决媒体报道中对阿拉伯音乐家的错误描述，以及通过跨文化音乐项目——将音乐学、人类学和批判性媒体研究结合在一起——挑战德国移民社区公众刻板印象的方式。为了做到这一点，我仔细研究了安曼、贝鲁特和他们在德国的流散社区新兴的实验音乐场景。在讨论跨国界音乐制作时，我扩展了“中间”文化的概念（Slobin 1987），解决了跨民族国家文化交流的潜在动力。这包括研究德国和阿拉伯艺术家通过数字网络提供的新形式的合作，使虚拟和非虚拟公众的出现成为可能。我还研究了促进跨境交流和社交的不同形式的流动，例如音乐材料的在线交换和移民。在音乐创作过程中，艺术家如何以及在多大程度上克服空间、材料和审美上的挑战来表达跨文化交流所产生的共性和冲突？在文化表达之间的界限变得越来越模糊的情况下，媒体文本在塑造新的跨文化形态中扮演了什么角色？为了更深入地研究这些问题，我将重点关注两个现象。首先，阿拉伯音乐项目在德国是如何呈现的，特别是声称是跨文化交流平台的节日和教育项目。曼海姆有大量的土耳其、叙利亚和尼日利亚移民，是德国第一个由国家资助的世界音乐学位的所在地，因此作为一个实地地点特别有趣。此外，通过采访来自黎巴嫩和约旦的音乐家，我询问音乐家如何利用自我异国情调在欧美音乐市场上进行营销和品牌推广。我的民族志的中心将是节日项目“行星之耳”，这是一个新建立的平台，旨在促进黎巴嫩、约旦和德国之间的文化交流，我在过去的一年里一直参与其中。其次，我根据最近的社会运动和数字技术发展来看待跨境合作，关注共同的世界主义愿望，而不是艺术家本身的民族身份，以显示除了激进的政治目标之外，跨文化音乐创作的各种意图，正如当地媒体报道中经常描述的那样。看看那些有着截然不同的音乐创作方法的音乐家，我主张对流散社区的流离失所和文化实践进行更细致入微的叙述。目前对差异的表现，经常关注政治上的二元性和音乐家身份的各个方面，包括民族、种族和性别，导致了有问题的异国情调。通过与艺术家本人交谈并找出网络是如何形成的，我将批判性地反思音乐中传达的各种意图和信息，以促进对国际社区中亲和力跨文化和情感社会形态的研究。我相信我的研究可以有助于更好地理解新的混合流派，这些流派既不代表纯粹的差异性，也不代表完美的和谐，而是艺术家在社会政治现实中的对话和冲突的动态表达。

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.