Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location

Between the Global and the Local

Vanessa Knights, Ian Biddle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754640554
• eBook ISBN: 9781317091592
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

How are national identities constructed and articulated through music? Popular music has long been associated with political dissent, and the nation state has consistently demonstrated a determination to seek out and procure for itself a stake in the management of 'its' popular musics. Similarly, popular musics have been used 'from the ground up' as sites for both populist and popular critiques of nationalist sentiment, from the position of both a globalizing and a 'local' vernacular culture. The contributions in this book arrive at a critical moment in the development of the study of national cultures and musicology. The book ranges from considerations of the ideological focus of cultural nationalism through to analyses of musical hybridity and musical articulations of other kinds of identities at odds with national identity. The processes of global homogenization are thereby shown to have brought about a transitional crisis for national cultural identities: the evolution of these identities, particularly with reference to the concept of 'authenticity' in music, is situated within broader debates on power, political economy and constructions of the self. Theorizations of practice are employed after the manner of Bourdieu, Gramsci, Goffman, Gadamer, Habermas, Bhabha, Lacan and Zizek. Each contribution acts as a case study to characterize the strategies through which differing modes of musical discourse engage, critique or obscure discourses on national identity. The studies include discussions of: musical representations of Irishness; the relationship between Afropop and World Music; Norwegian club music; the revival of traditional music in Serbia; resistance to cultural homogeneity in Brazil; contemporary Uyghur song in Northwest China; rap and race in French society; technobanda from the barrios of Los Angeles, and Spanish/Moroccan raï. In this way, the book seeks to characterize the ideological configurations that help to activate and sustain hegemonic, amb

Vanessa Knights 1969–2007

In the final stages of the preparation of this book, Vanessa Knights, my co-editor, close friend and colleague passed away. She had been struggling with an autoimmune disease for some ten years and it had weakened her heart. She had a massive heart attack on Monday 5th March, 2007 and slipped into a coma from which she never recovered. She died on Saturday 10th March with her husband David and family by her side.

Vanessa leaves an extraordinary legacy.

I worked with her on a number of projects, including the biennial festival of musics from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking origin, ¡VAMOS!, our annual co-sponsored symposia at Newcastle on popular musics and the Conference of Popular Musics of the Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds in Newcastle in 2006. This book is also one of the outcomes of a project that she and I worked on together, a conference on Popular Musics and National Identities held at Newcastle in 2000.

Her work dealt with Spanish-speaking cultures on both the Iberian peninsula (especially her work on Spanish feminisms) and especially in Latin America. She published on the bolero, nationalism, diaspora, science fiction and was working before she died on a collection of essays on music in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my colleague Paul Attinello. She also published on feminism and women’s movements in contemporary Spain and Latin America and Contemporary Spanish and Spanish American narrative.

She was well known and respected in her field. She was vice-president of Women in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies in 2003–2004 and was a member of numerous scholarly organizations including the Association for Contemporary Iberian Studies, the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, the Society for Caribbean Studies and the Society for Latin American Studies.

In the pursuit of her love for traditional and popular musics from Latin America, she travelled to Brazil, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela where she made friends and dazzled everyone with her extraordinary energy, wit, charm and intellect. She leaves behind bereaved friends all over the world.

I feel extremely privileged to have worked with her and to have been able to count her amongst my friends, I will miss her terribly.

This book is dedicated to her.

Ian Biddle, March 2007

Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location

Between the Global and the Local

Edited by

IAN BIDDLE

and

VANESSA KNIGHTS

First published 2007 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights 2007

Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights have asserted their moral rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Music, national identity and the politics of location : between the global and the local. – (Ashgate popular and folk music series)

1. Popular music – History and criticism 2. National music – History and criticism 3. Nationalism in music 4. Popular music – Social aspects

I. Biddle, Ian II. Knights, Vanessa

306.4’8423

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Music, national identity, and the politics of location : between the global and the local /edited by Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights.

p. cm.— (Ashgate popular and folk music series)

ISBN 978-0-7546-4055-4 (alk. paper)

1. Popular music—Social aspects. 2. Popular music—Political aspects. 3. Popular culture. 4. Music and globalization. I. Biddle, Ian D. II. Knights, Vanessa. III. Series.

ML3918.P67M85 2006

781.63’1599—dc22

2006005310

ISBN 978-0-7546-4055-4 (hbk)

ISBN 978-1-3155-9691-4 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781315596914

Contents

• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: National Popular Musics: Betwixt and Beyond the Local and Global Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights
• PART I POSITIONS
  • 1 National Identity and Music in Transition: Issues of Authenticity in a Global Setting John O’Flynn
  • 2 Where Does World Music Come From? Globalization, Afropop and the Question of Cultural Identity David Murphy
• PART II LOCATIONS
  • 3 Voicing Risk: Migration, Transgression and Relocation in Spanish/Moroccan Raï Parvati Nair
  • 4 Banda, a New Sound from the Barrios of Los Angeles: Transmigration and Transcultural Production Helena Simonett
  • 5 Rapping at the Margins: Musical Constructions of Identities in Contemporary France Brian George
  • 6 The Quest for National Unity in Uyghur Popular Song: Barren Chickens, Stray Dogs, Fake Immortals and Thieves Joanne N. Smith
  • 7 The Singer and the Mask: Voices of Brazil in Antônio Nóbrega’s Madeira Que Cupim Não Rói Robin Warner and Regina Nascimento
  • 8 Popular Music, Tradition and Serbian Nationalism Robert Hudson
  • 9 Those Norwegians: Deconstructing the Nation-State in Europe through Fixity and Indifference in Norwegian Club Music Stan Hawkins
• Afterword Richard Middleton
• Glossary of Musical Genres and Subgenres
• Bibliography
• Index

List of Figures

• 1 The Greimasian semiotic square
• 2 Žižek’s Greimasian square
• 3 Local/global as a Greimasian square
• 4 A second elaboration of the local/global as a Greimasian square
• 5 Lacan’s schema for the functions of discourse
• 6 Lacan’s Discourse of the Master
• 7 Lacan’s Discourse of the Hysteric
• 8 The Discourse of the Anal...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Contributors
• General Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: National Popular Musics: Betwixt and Beyond the Local and Global—Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights
• PART I POSITIONS
• PART II LOCATIONS
• Afterword—Richard Middleton
• Glossary of Musical Genres and Subgenres
• Bibliography
• Index