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Migratory Musics
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Migratory Musics

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752). This special issue belongs to the section "Musical Arts and Theatre".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 13123

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Florian Scheding

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Arts, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TH, UK
Interests: musicology; migration studies; cultural studies; Jewish music; migratory aesthetics; diaspora and transnationalism

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In a conjunctural and extended historical moment of border closures and talk of ‘unprecedented’ numbers of refugees, much scholarship follows the logic of urgency. Discourses of crisis set by media and humanitarian narratives dominate and narrate movement as problematic. This Special Issue aims to de-exceptionalise migration and counter-narratives of marginalisation. We recognise mobility as central to the human experience and listen to how music sounds our migratory journeys. In so doing, we counter approaches that rely on methodological nationalisms, or that reify border regimes and ‘refugee crises.’ Contributions extend beyond restrictive approaches that limit discussions to migratory biographies and thus unwittingly bolster the migrant/native divide. Musics, we argue, are always migrating. Challenging acts of sonic bordering, we pose migratory musics as an aesthetic as well as a political question and opportunity: a means of engaging with the world, a space of encounter and collaboration, an opening for unmaking borders and remaking belongings, a call to migratory imaginaries. This issue gathers creative and critical voices across a variety of disciplines and formats, within and beyond the academy. We probe the politics and poetics of migratory musics, intent on finding spaces of narrativity that have not yet been claimed and foreclosed. We hear how musics can offer a means of rethinking society itself through movement.

Dr. Florian Scheding
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • musicology
  • migration studies
  • migratory aesthetics
  • mobility
  • (anti-)crisis

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 1963 KiB  
Article
“As Long as There’s Me. As Long as There’s You”: Trauma and Migration in David Bowie’s Berlin Triptych
by Ihor Junyk
Arts 2021, 10(4), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10040077 - 19 Nov 2021
Viewed by 3526
Abstract
This essay explores David Bowie’s so-called “Berlin Triptych”: Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger. The essay takes issue with previous interpretations that have claimed that the albums do not form a “triptych” of any meaningful kind, and that this pretentious term was only applied [...] Read more.
This essay explores David Bowie’s so-called “Berlin Triptych”: Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger. The essay takes issue with previous interpretations that have claimed that the albums do not form a “triptych” of any meaningful kind, and that this pretentious term was only applied ex post facto as a marketing strategy. At the heart of my argument is the concept and experience of migration. In the mid-1970s David Bowie was living in Los Angeles at a highpoint of fame and acclaim. His life, however, was also an increasingly hellish nightmare of delusion, paranoia, and cocaine psychosis. In order to save his music, and his life, the singer decamped to Europe. For the next several years he lived an itinerant life with Berlin at its centre. The experience of displacement, and a series of encounters that this displacement facilitated (with the European new wave and a longer tradition of avant-garde modernism), led to both a reshuffling of the self and a radical new sound. The “triptych” tells the story of this progression, both narratively and sonically. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Migratory Musics)
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10 pages, 244 KiB  
Article
Music, Migration, and Public Space: Syrian Street Music in the Political Context
by Evrim Hikmet Öğüt
Arts 2021, 10(4), 71; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10040071 - 22 Oct 2021
Viewed by 3041
Abstract
Due to the lack of social systems supporting the cultural productions of migrant societies in Turkey, the venues and opportunities to which migrant musicians have access for the maintenance of their musical practices are limited. Under the given circumstances, especially in the first [...] Read more.
Due to the lack of social systems supporting the cultural productions of migrant societies in Turkey, the venues and opportunities to which migrant musicians have access for the maintenance of their musical practices are limited. Under the given circumstances, especially in the first years after their arrival, street musicianship emerged as a new musical practice for Syrian musicians in Istanbul, and Beyoğlu District, the city’s cultural and political center, has become the venue for street musicians’ performances. Despite undergoing a rapid neoliberal transformation, Beyoğlu district, with Taksim Square and Istiklal Avenue, is a venue of interaction among locals, tourists, and various migrant groups from diverse social classes and identities. As such, it still possesses the potential to be the public sphere which can operate as the space of “a democratic ideal.” For migrant musicians, the street music practices, which fill the very heart of city with their voices and sounds, are means of claiming their existence in the city as potential actors of this public sphere. However, conducting the interaction with the other public space actors and the state officials through street music is not an easy task for Syrian musicians, and it requires the use of tactics from them. In this article, I summarize the given circumstances of Syrian street music performances and discuss the Beyoğlu district in the frame of being—or not being—a public space. I propose street music practice as political action, a “social non-movement”, as Asef Bayat calls it, and situate migrant musicians as political actors who are possible allies of other subaltern groups in Turkey. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Migratory Musics)
6 pages, 153 KiB  
Article
A Hundred Years of Yiddish Song Mobility
by Mark Slobin
Arts 2021, 10(3), 65; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030065 - 10 Sep 2021
Viewed by 2155
Abstract
The article surveys continuities in the Yiddish song world from 1920–2020 despite the radical disjunctures of eastern European Ashkenazic Jewish life, profiling singers born nearly 100 years apart. The approach is synchronic, a useful method for music and mobility studies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Migratory Musics)
18 pages, 881 KiB  
Article
The Last Mosque in Tel Aviv, and Other Stories of Disjuncture
by Ilana Webster-Kogen
Arts 2021, 10(3), 63; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts10030063 - 31 Aug 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3590
Abstract
Ruins serve as a poignant reminder of loss and destruction. Yet, ruins are not always physical, and they are not always best understood through visual language—the sense memory of loss extends for displaced people far beyond crumbling monuments. Exploring the sonic element of [...] Read more.
Ruins serve as a poignant reminder of loss and destruction. Yet, ruins are not always physical, and they are not always best understood through visual language—the sense memory of loss extends for displaced people far beyond crumbling monuments. Exploring the sonic element of loss and displacement is key to understanding the way people relate to the spaces they have to leave. This article explores the particular disjuncture of staging and commemorating Arabness in Tel Aviv, the “Hebrew City.” The disjuncture of being Arab in Tel Aviv is apparent to any visitor who walks down the beach promenade, and this article examines the main sites of Arab contestation on the border with Jaffa. Most apparent to a visitor is the Hassan Bek Mosque, the most visible Islamic symbol in Tel Aviv; I describe the process of gaining admission as a non-Muslim, and of discussing the painful and indelible memory of 1948 with worshipers. Delving deeper into the affective staging of ruin, I trace Umm Kulthum’s famous concert in Jaffa (officially Palestine at the time), and examine the way her imprint has moved across the troubled urban border of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. A ruins-based analysis of the urban sites of disjuncture in Tel Aviv, therefore, offers a glimpse into underground sonic subcultures that hide in plain sight. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Migratory Musics)
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