Migrating-Music Compress

Migrating Music
Migrating Music considers the issues around music and cosmopolitanism in new
ways. Whilst much of the existing literature on ‘world music’ questions the appar-
ently world-disclosing nature of this genre – but says relatively little about migra-
tion and mobility – diaspora studies have much to say about the latter, yet little
about the significance of music.
In this context, this book affirms the centrality of music as a mode of transla-
tion and cosmopolitan mediation, whilst also pointing out the complexity of the
processes at stake within it. Migrating music, it argues, represents perhaps the
most salient mode of performance of otherness to mutual others, and as such its
significance in socio-cultural change rivals – and even exceeds – literature, film,
and other language and image-based cultural forms.
This book will serve as a valuable reference tool for undergraduate and post-
graduate students with research interests in cultural studies, sociology of culture,
music, globalization, migration, and human geography.
Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the Department of

Sociology at the Open University. He does work on copyright and creativity, and
ethnicity and the post-colonial condition. Much of his research on those issues
focuses on popular music and jazz, as in his books Making Popular Music:
Musicians, Institutions and Creativity (Arnold, 2000) and Bob Marley: Herald of
a Postcolonial World? (Polity, 2007).
Byron Dueck is Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music. His
work focuses on the role of musical and embodied experience in constituting
public cultures. The majority of his research concerns First Nations and Métis
music in western Canada; other interests include Cameroonian popular music
and jazz.
Culture, Economy and the Social
A new series from CRESC – the ESRC Centre for Research on
Socio-Cultural Change
Editors
Professor Tony Bennett, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney
Professor Penny Harvey, Anthropology, Manchester University
Professor Kevin Hetherington, Geography, Open University
Editorial Advisory Board

Andrew Barry, University of Oxford
Michel Callon, École des Mines de Paris
Dipesh Chakrabarty, The University of Chicago
Mike Crang, University of Durham
Tim Dant, Lancaster University
Jean-Louis Fabiani, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
Antoine Hennion, Paris Institute of Technology
Eric Hirsch, Brunel University
John Law, Lancaster University
Randy Martin, New York University
Timothy Mitchell, New York University
Rolland Munro, Keele University
Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter
Mary Poovey, New York University
Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff
Sharon Zukin, Brooklyn College, City University of New York/Graduate School,
City University of New York
The Culture, Economy and the Social series is committed to innovative contem-
porary, comparative and historical work on the relations between social, cultural
and economic change. It publishes empirically based research that is theoretically
informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural and economic
change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that tend to
be ignored or sidelined by grand theorizing or epochal accounts of social change.
The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capitalism, and
considers the various ways in which ‘the social’, ‘the cultural’ and ‘the economic’
are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly compara-
tive, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, cross-culturally,
or across different historical periods.
The series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical tradi-
tions that have contributed to the development of the ‘cultural turn’ with a view to
clarifying where these approaches converge and where they diverge on a partic-
ular issue. It is equally concerned to explore the new critical agendas emerging
from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive
turn, for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching
theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common
ground that has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake
in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model.
Series titles include:

The Media and Social Theory (2008)
Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Jason Toynbee
Culture, Class, Distinction (2009)

Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Bortolaia Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto
Gayo-Cal and David Wright
Material Powers (2010)

Edited by Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce
The Social after Gabriel Tarde (2010)

Debates and assessments
Edited by Matei Candea
Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human (2010)

Richie Nimmo
Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy (2010)

Edited by Elizabeth Silva and Alan Warde
Creative Labour – Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2010)

Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker
Migrating Music (2011)

Edited by Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck
Inventive Methods (forthcoming)

The happening of the social
Edited by Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford
Rio de Janeiro (forthcoming)

Urban life through the eyes of the city
Beatriz Jaguaribe
Migrating Music
Edited by Jason Toynbee

and Byron Dueck
First published 2011 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011.
To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.
© 2011 Selection and editorial matter, Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck;
individual chapters, the contributors.
The right of Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck to be identified as editors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized 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.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Migrating music / edited by Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck.
p. cm.
1. Globalization–Social aspects. 2. Music. 3. Ethnomusicology.
4. Cosmopolitanism. 5. Emigration and immigration–Social aspects.
I. Toynbee, Jason. II. Dueck, Byron.
HM841.M54 2011
780.89–dc22
2010043359
ISBN 0-203-84175-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN: 978-0-415-59448-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-84175-4 (ebk)
This book is dedicated to the memory of Charlie Gillett (1942–2010),
broadcaster, historian and lover of music. Charlie was a lifelong
advocate of the extraordinary power of ordinary people’s music. He
was also a contributor to the present volume (see Chapter 9) and the
conference on which it was based.
Contents
List of contributors xii

Acknowledgements xv
â•⁄ 1 Migrating music 1

JASON TOYNBEE AND BYRON DUECK
PART 1
Migrants 19
Introduction 21
BYRON DUECK
â•⁄ 2 Migrant/migrating music and the Mediterranean 28

MARTIN STOKES
â•⁄ 3 ‘My own little Morocco at home’: a biographical account

of migration, mediation and music consumption 38
CAROLYN LANDAU
â•⁄ 4 ‘Realness’: authenticity, innovation and prestige among

young danseurs afros in Paris 55
LAURA STEIL
xâ•… Contents
PART 2
Translations 71
Introduction 73
JASON TOYNBEE
â•⁄ 5 Ridiculing rap, funlandizing Finns? Humour and parody

as strategies of securing the ethnic other in popular music 78
ANTTI-VILLE KÄRJÄ
â•⁄ 6 Hip-hop Tehran: migrating styles, musical meanings,

marginalized voices 92
LAUDAN NOOSHIN
â•⁄ 7 Un voyage via barquinho: global circulation, musical

hybridization, and adult modernity, 1961–9 112
KEIR KEIGHTLEY
PART 3
Media 127
Introduction 129
JASON TOYNBEE
â•⁄ 8 What migrates and who does it? A mini case study
from Fiji 135
RUTH FINNEGAN
â•⁄ 9 Migrating music and good-enough cosmopolitanism:

encounter with Robin Denselow and Charlie Gillett 150
KEVIN ROBINS
10 Ports of Call: an ethnographic analysis of music

programmes about the migration of people, musicians,
genres and instruments, BBC World Service, 1994–5 165
JAN FAIRLEY
11 Music, migration and war: the BBC’s interactive music

broadcasting to Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora 180
JOHN BAILY
Contentsâ•… xi
PART 4
Cities 195
Introduction 197
BYRON DUECK
12 ‘New York Comes to Groningen’: jazz star circuits in the

Netherlands 202
KRISTIN MCGEE
13 ‘Keepin’ it real’: Bombay Bronx, cultural producers and

the Asian scene 218
HELEN KIM
14 Cavern journeys: music, migration and urban space 235

SARA COHEN
Index 251
Contributors
John Baily is Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths College,

University of London. His research is focused mainly on the music of AfghanÂ�
istan, starting with two years’ fieldwork in the 1970s and continuing with field-
work in the Afghan diaspora in Pakistan, Iran, USA, Europe and Australia.
Since 2001 he has visited Kabul several times, where he set up a music school
on behalf of the Aga Khan Music Initiative for Central Asia. He has published
a book and numerous articles, CDs and DVDs about the music of Afghanistan.
He is Head of the Afghanistan Music Unit at Goldsmiths and is currently
working on a monograph entitled War, Exile, and the Global Circulation of
Afghanistan’s Music.
Sara Cohen has a D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from Oxford University and
specializes in ethnographic approaches to music research and in research on music
and urban geography. She is Professor of Music and Director of the Institute of
Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, a member of the Editorial Board of
Ethnomusicology Forum, and a former editor of Popular Music. She is author
of Rock Culture in Liverpool (Oxford University Press, 1991) and Decline,
Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture (Ashgate, 2007).
Byron Dueck is Lecturer in Music at the Royal Northern College of Music. He
studies the music and dance of Cree, Ojibwe, and Métis people in western
Canada, drawing connections between intimate contexts of aboriginal music-
making and broader indigenous social imaginaries. Additional research inter-
ests include jazz in Britain and popular music in Cameroon.
Jan Fairley has been involved in popular music research since lecturing at the
Catholic University, Temuco, Chile in the early 1970s. A Latin Americanist
(M.Phil., Oxford) and ethnomusicologist (Ph.D. Edinburgh), she has taught
courses in various universities and published widely. Since the mid-1980s she
has worked as a music journalist (NUJ). As a broadcaster she pioneered world
music radio with Earthbeat on BBC Radio Scotland (1990–3) while making
features and documentaries across the BBC network until 2003. A member of
the editorial board of Popular Music journal (CUP) since 1988, she is present
Chairperson of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music
(IASPM).
Contributorsâ•… xiii
Ruth Finnegan FBA was a founder member of the academic staff of the Open
University (1969), where she is currently Emeritus Professor and Visiting
Research Professor in Sociology. Her main work has been on the anthropology/
sociology of artistic activity, communication and performance (especially
‘oral’ literature and music), as studied both ethnographically and in cross-
cultural perspective, interacting with ongoing debates about orality, literacy
and multimodality. Recent publications include Communicating: The Multiple
Modes of Human Interconnection (2002), The Oral and Beyond: Doing Things
with Words in Africa (2007), and The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an
English Town, 2nd edn (2007).
Antti-Ville Kärjä is Academy of Finland post-doctoral researcher at the DepartÂ�
ment of Musicology, University of Turku, working with the research project
Popular Music in Postcolonial Finland (2009–11). He holds adjunct profes-
sorships at the Universities of Helsinki and Tampere, in popular music studies
and the study of audiovisual media music, respectively. His research interests
include historiography of music, censorship, cultural industries, and the intel-
lectual history of ethnomusicology and popular music studies. Kärjä is also the
Chair of the Nordic Branch of the International Association for the Study of
Popular Music (IASPM-Norden).
Keir Keightley is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media
Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where he teaches in the M.A.
in Popular Music and Culture programme. His published research includes
work on gender and audio technology, the culture of rock music, and historical
studies of the mainstream music industry during the Cold War. His current
project examines the emergence of ‘Tin Pan Alley’ as the derogatory designa-
tion for popular music at the turn of the last century.
Helen Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the London
School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on the
London ‘desi’ urban music scene, ethnicity, space and diaspora.
Carolyn Landau is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Music Department
at King’s College London, conducting research into the nature of contempo-
rary Islamic devotional music in Britain and its impact on Muslim communi-
ties in London. She completed her Ph.D. at City University London in 2010.
It explored the role of music for different generations of Moroccans in Britain
and the potential use by this community of archival sound recordings held by
the British Library.
Kristin McGee is Assistant Professor of Popular Music at the University of
Groningen in the Netherlands. Her recent book Some Liked it Hot (Wesleyan
University Press, 2009) explores twentieth-century film and television
performances featuring American jazz women. The book investigates women’s
presence in popular music, and emphasizes changing perceptions of gender,
sexuality and race during the critical quarter-century of industrialized American
popular culture. Other research interests include crossover jazz, new media, the
xivâ•… Contributors
culture industries, and normative notions of gender and race in performance

practice. Kristin is also a performer, playing saxophone and writing music for
multimedia collectives in Chicago and Groningen.
Laudan Nooshin is Senior Lecturer in Ethnomusicology at City University,
London. Her research interests include creative processes in Iranian music;
music and youth culture in Iran; music and gender; neo/post-colonialism
and Orientalism; and music in Iranian cinema. Recent publications include
Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central
Asia (Ashgate, 2009) and book chapters and journal articles in Iranian Studies
and JRMA. Laudan also writes reviews and features for Songlines maga-
zine. Her forthcoming monograph is entitled Iranian Classical Music: The
Discourses and Practice of Creativity (Ashgate). Laudan is currently co-editor
of Ethnomusicology Forum.
Kevin Robins lives in Istanbul, and is a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths College,
University of London. He is the author of The Challenge of Transcultural
Diversities (Council of Europe). At present he is working on questions of
media policy in Europe, and also on a project on Roma/Gypsies in Eastern
Europe and Turkey.
Laura Steil is a Ph.D. student in anthropology at the École Pratique des Hautes
Études (EPHE) in Paris. She obtained a B.Sc. in anthropology at University
College London (2003), then a Maîtrise in anthropology at the University
of Paris 10 (2005) and an M.A. at the EPHE (2006). Passionate about black
music, she has been exploring the cultural and social practices of black youth
in Paris. Her research interests include clubbing cultures; amateur dancers;
authenticity and cultural innovation; achievement, opportunity and ‘chance’;
peer relationships, gossip and prestige; bluff, sham and subterfuge; and race,
boundaries and cultural intimacy.
Martin Stokes is a University Lecturer at Oxford University and a Fellow of
St John’s College, Oxford. His most recent book is The Republic of Love:
Transformations of Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music (Chicago University
Press, 2010).
Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the Sociology Department
at the Open University. His most recent books are Bob Marley: Herald of a
Postcolonial World? (Polity, 2007) and (with David Hesmondhalgh as editor)
The Media and Social Theory (Routledge, 2008). He is currently researching
black British jazz.
Acknowledgements
This book is based on some of the papers that were presented at a conference
which we organized with the theme of ‘Migrating Music’ at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London, on 10–11 July 2009. The conference
formed part of a research project based at the Open University, called ‘Tuning In:
Diasporic Contact Zones at the BBC World Service’, and funded by the AHRC’s
Diasporas, Media and Identities programme. We would very much like to thank
the conference administrators Karen Ho and Josine Opmeer from the Centre for
Research on Socio-Cultural Change (based respectively at the Open University
and Manchester University) for all their work in putting it together. Thanks also
go to Annabelle Sreberny at SOAS for enabling us to use the School’s facilities;
to Marie Gillespie, Principal Investigator of Tuning In, for her support and guid-
ance; and to Morgan Davis and Hanif Khan for providing live music at the event.
Many excellent papers were presented at the conference and we wish that we
could have published more of them. In the end we made a selection on the basis of
theme and coverage, aiming for balance across the book. We would like to thank
everyone who contributed to the conference.
J. T.
B. D.
1 Migrating music
Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck
Migrating musicians
In 2010 the Senegalese hip-hop group Daara J Family were refused entry into the
United Kingdom: they had not demonstrated that sufficient maintenance funding
would be available to them during their stay. Robin Denselow, a contributor to
this volume, described the circumstances in an article in the Guardian (Denselow
2010), noting that paperwork was just one of the difficulties that non-European
musicians faced in travelling to the United Kingdom. He quoted a representative
from Daara J Family’s record company, who expressed dismay that the musi-
cians would not be present in the country for the launch of their own album. And
he suggested that British music fans might find it increasingly difficult to hear
live performances by musicians from outside the EU. The story suggests some
of the circumstances that hold at the time of writing: the increasingly stringent
immigration regulations that have accompanied a growing nativism, an economic
recession, and anxieties regarding European multiculturalism. But it also reveals
a context of global movements and fascinations, in which musicians and genres
circulate, the latter increasingly in mass-mediated form, and in which musicians
and audiences alike are enchanted by the music of the other (as seems evident
in the case of Senegalese musicians performing an African-American genre for
British music fans). In short, it points to the complex set of interlinked objects
herein described as ‘migrating music’.
First, and perhaps most obviously, the story highlights migrants: in this case
musicians seeking to cross a border to make their livelihood. The present volume,
and especially the first part, ‘Migrants’, dwells on people who move physically
to new places. It considers musicians and listeners, moving voluntarily and invol-
untarily, temporarily and permanently, with papers and without. It examines how
they maintain musical connections to home, but also how they reconcile their
musical practices to new and unfamiliar contexts. Of course, not all migrants are
musicians, let alone professionals who sell recordings and concert tickets. Even
fewer are successful enough to make a living primarily through such activities.
Accordingly we are concerned with amateurs as well as experts, and listeners as
well as performers.
That Daara J Family is a hip-hop group points to a second kind of musical
movement, namely travelling styles, instruments and techniques. In the three or
2â•… Jason Toynbee and Byron Dueck
so decades since the emergence of rap, the genre has spread globally, as has the
technology to make it (and indeed many associated elements, including dance
styles, clothing and graffiti art). Daara J Family’s appropriation of rap is hardly a
rare instance of a migrating musical practice. Indeed, the group’s music evinces
the influence of other, earlier-circulating genres, including reggae and soul. And
of course musical styles and technologies travelled long before contemporary
forms of mass mediation: African instruments (including drums and precursors
of the banjo) and African stylistic characteristics (including complex interlocking
rhythmic patterns) came to the Americas along with African slaves. Consequently,
even very different practices like rap, reggae and Senegalese traditional music
share certain common elements of African musical style, and these similarities
partly account for how amenable such genres are fusing with one another, as they
do in the music of Daara J Family. There are abundant examples of ‘foreign’
musical styles enchanting musicians and listeners across lines of cultural differ-
ence. Shortly, we consider the complex dynamics of such appropriations and
exchanges in terms of mimesis, a generative impulse to copy the music of the
other. Further along, the second part of this volume, ‘Translations’, is devoted to
the subject of genres in cross-cultural motion.
A third kind of musical movement has implications for the first two. It is medi-
ation: the circulation through print, broadcast, recording and various forms of
electronic dissemination of musical objects that are separable in time and space
from human subjects yet continually available for activation and engagement by
them (see Silverstein and Urban 1996). Mediation has had important implica-
tions for migrants and migrant communities. It has allowed them to preserve
musical practices from home, and to remake them in new contexts. For instance,
North American immigrant communities have both preserved and cultivated
valued song repertories through hymnals (see the contributions by Roeber,
Bohlman, and Wulz in Bohlman and Holzapfel 2002). More recently, mediating
technologies have permitted migrants to keep in touch in a nearly instantaneous
manner with musical happenings vast distances away. Email, digitized music
files and video hosting sites permit migrants to track the latest trends and dance
moves from back home, and just as importantly to celebrate and create a shared
musical history with distant intimates.1 Mediation has also allowed migrant
communities to join, and play a part in constructing, musical networks, that is
‘scapes’ (Appadurai 1996) or ‘publics’ (see Warner 2002) that cross regional and
national boundaries.2 Here the ‘old’ medium of radio remains a crucially impor-
tant channel, as the essays in Part 3, ‘Media’, demonstrate through what is an
extended case study of the BBC World Service. While mass mediation enables
all sorts of world-making activities, it is nevertheless also the means by which
important musical disparities are perpetuated. Through mediation the music
industry has given the most fortunate musicians – in large part, although not
exclusively, from Western countries and advantaged backgrounds – the ability to
address immense and far-flung audiences. Their works and performances have
been made available to people and communities around the world, and rarely in
any sort of reciprocal way.
Some of the foregoing aspects of mediation are again evident in the case of
Migrating Musicâ•… 3
Daara J Family. Interviewed by Newsweek, Faada Freddy, one of the founding

members of the group, remarked:
The first time we heard American rap, it sounded no different from [tassou,
a traditional genre practised in Senegal]. Our theory is that it traveled to
America during the slave era. It was slumbering in the deepest part of their
souls, and then one day it was awakened. It reminded them of their roots.
Then it conquered the world. And now it’s back home.
(Ali 2005)
The quotation suggests that mediation has allowed black musicians to become
aware of their historical and musical connections to people in countries and
communities far from their own. Faada Freddy’s theory that Senegalese music
slumbered silently for centuries in the souls of African-Americans might not stand
up to a literal interpretation (although certainly, as noted earlier, African elements
have been preserved in African-American musical practices). But his history
does suggest one of the possibilities of mass mediation discussed above: namely
the opportunity it presents musicians to build upon or even invent links with the
music of other, imagined, musicians far away. Faada Freddy’s account under-
takes multiple crossings of the Black Atlantic (Gilroy 1993), binding the music
of Senegal and America together in a shared history. Certainly his rhetorical work
might be interpreted as a canny strategy, on the part of an ‘outsider’, to position
his practice as an authentic and ancient version of the American hip-hop tradition
– thus locating himself at the centre of it. But it does other work too: it contrib-
utes to the growing storehouse of discourses, performances and recordings that
move between black populations on either side of the Atlantic, helping to consti-
tute an international network of diverse, circulating black expressive practices. If,
following the work of recent theorists of public culture, publics (or ‘imaginaries’)
come into being through the circulation of mass-mediated performances and
publications (see Berlant 2008; Warner 2002), Daara J Family is contributing to
the ongoing work of building an international black music public. Finally, Faada
Freddy’s words point to some of the disparities that exist between mass-mediated
performances and genres: some kinds of music ‘conquer the world’ while others
seem to have much poorer chances. It is to such structural inequities we now turn.
Political economy and history

The globalization which has enabled networks of migrating music (such as the
black music public just discussed) is of course nothing new: Marx (1967) famously
described it in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto. More recently Immanuel
Wallerstein (1995) has traced the origins of a ‘capitalist world-system’ to the
seaborne empires launched from Europe in the late fifteenth century. But what-
ever chronology we use, the systematic interconnection of formerly remote parts
of the world is clearly a precondition for many musical migrations. And it is capi-
talism and its precursor, mercantilism, that have been major engines in creating
these networks, and in encouraging the circulation of European musical genres and
instruments within them. Today, while global capitalism persists in its essential
features, centres of power are changing, and the system itself seems to be becoming
more unstable as deregulation and privatization proceed apace. Indeed, as Andrew
Glyn (2006) puts it, in the neo-liberal conjuncture of the late 1970s and after, we
confront ‘capitalism unleashed’. There are two repercussions for migrating music.
One is a modest increase in the relocation of people from their homelands to
other places, combined with a shift in the nature of that movement from North–
South, North–North and South–South in the nineteenth to mid-twentieth centu-
ries, to South–North in the contemporary period (de Hass 2007: 822). Of the 191
million migrants across the world in 2005, Europe hosted 34 per cent, Asia 28 per
cent, and North America 23 per cent (United Nations n.d.). Most of this movement
has consisted of ‘economic migration’ in response to demand from employers
seeking to keep down wages in the core of the world system (Glyn 2006: 102).
The enforced movement of refugees and modern-day slaves has also played a
part. We have already discussed some implications of these new diasporas for
migrating music. Here we simply note a supervening tension in the neo-liberal
‘fix’: on the one hand, encouragement of the free passage of workers to the North
so as to provide cheap labour; on the other, a pandering to racism among settled
populations. These tensions contribute to the restless renegotiation of identity and
difference at stake in the complex we call migrating music, and which make that
phenomenon a profoundly ambivalent one.
The other way in which the advent of neo-liberalism has impacted upon
migrating music is through the rise of the cultural industries and new communica-
tion technologies which have enabled the mediation of musics across the world
– with or without the people who first made and used them. Having said this, we
do not subscribe to a strong version of globalization theory that supposes that the
advent of global cultural networks has been sudden and recent (such as in Held et
al. 1999, or Tomlinson 1999). This is simply not the case. For instance, African-
American musicians were performing in Europe to large audiences in concert and
music halls during the nineteenth century (Pickering 1990), while the tango spread
via recordings and films from its native Argentina to become a global phenomenon
in the 1920s and 1930s (Gronow and Saunio 1998: 75–8). And of course European
art music has assimilated, and then remitted, both court and people’s music from
around the world since at least the seventeenth century (Taylor 2007: 15–110). If
the material means for these developments have been augmented recently, what is
at stake here is actually a steepening of the curve in a much longer upward trend
in the carrying capacity of mass media – from printed sheet music to the multi-
media platform of the Internet today. Contemporary forms of mediation give music
increased potential to migrate more quickly, and to arrive in more places simultane-
ously, in very similar forms, compared to previous centuries.
What has this meant for the movement of music? First and most obviously,
mediated music has become nearly ubiquitous (albeit on a more limited scale
in developing countries) and with it genres of popular music honed in the core
of the world system such as Tin Pan Alley standards, jazz, rock, rap and soul.
Often these are predominantly, or strongly influenced by, African-African forms.
Indeed it might be said that African-American music, made by the descendants
of slaves transported in the Middle Passage, has become a kind of ‘primary’

migrating music which has then been rediffused to the rest of the world. We have
already seen how the hybrid potentialities of African diasporic music contrib-
uted to this development. However behind this movement, and indeed behind the
global spread of Western music in all its forms, has been an economic mechanism:
massive economies of scale and the affluence of domestic markets. These factors
enable the recovery of costs at home followed by cheap exports around the world
of music which has already been ‘market-tested’ in the core, especially in the USA
(see Marvasti 1994).
Other channels of musical migration and alternative networks of circulation
also exist, however. Musical mediation has enabled rarer instances of South–
South movement, most notably perhaps the adoption of rumba rhythms (rumba
was itself a strongly African form) by central African musicians through the distri-
bution of recordings made in Latin America (Stewart 2003). It has furthermore
facilitated the flow of musics from South to North. The tango has been mentioned,
but other significant examples include Brazilian bossa nova (see Keightley in this
volume) and Jamaican reggae, which also has a strong South–South dimension
(Toynbee 2007). Most recently there has been the phenomenon of ‘world music’:
mainly vernacular forms from the global South (or its diasporic populations)
which are then repackaged on CD for a small middle-class niche market in the
North (Stokes 2004). Finally, the emergence of new ‘regional blocs’ needs to be
acknowledged. As Dave Laing (1997) suggests, Canto- and Mando-Pop in East
Asia, Spanish language pop in the Americas, and pan-European repertoire, espe-
cially dance music, now constitute distinct genre-markets.
Today, then, music is being produced and disseminated across the world in
complex ways, with flows reflecting the drive to accumulate of the cultural indus-
tries, and producing asymmetries and inequalities. Yet there are counter-tendencies
too, in the form of bottom-up developments. Just one example: in North India a
lively ‘cassette culture’ emerged after the arrival of this cheap recording tech-
nology in the mid-1970s (Manuel 1993). Peter Manuel suggests that it enabled
a new kind of democratic interactivity, and closer connections between music-
makers and users, as well as posing a challenge to the corporate film music of
‘Bollywood’. Since Manuel did his research there has been a shift to digital
media, and now Bollywood music itself is distributed on cheap ‘pirate’ record-
ings (explored in Beaster-Jones 2008). In the UK a recent report suggests that on
market stalls where many people from the North Indian diaspora buy their music,
70 per cent of Bollywood DVDs were counterfeited as compared to only 5 per
cent for Hollywood products (Cunningham 2008).
Accessible technologies of reproduction and so-called ‘piracy’ may therefore
represent something like participatory payback, enabling music to move across
the world on terms and conditions which favour ordinary people rather than the
cultural industries. It would be wrong to present this as anything like compensa-
tion for a viciously unfair global political economy of music. But it does at least
expose something of the contradictions of a world system in which the movement
of music, as much as the people, while being presented as ‘free’ is actually tightly
channelled and controlled.
Migration and mimesis

In January 1938 the Winnipeg Tribune printed a memoir by Philip Godsell
(Godsell 1938), an account of a masquerade ball held one Christmas Night in
Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. Godsell’s story reflects in many ways the social
divisions between white and indigenous people that existed during Canada’s high
colonial period. Although the festivities took place in a single hotel, participants
occupied two distinct spaces. The ‘high tone’ whites disported themselves in the
dance hall, where radio equipment had been set up to receive a specially requested
programme of dance music. They dressed up as various ‘frontier’ characters: one
man in drag as a Klondike femme fatale, two policemen in costume as a horse, and
Godsell himself in ‘Indian war paint’. Next door in the dining room were the real
‘Indians’. And although they wore moccasins, they neither danced to drum songs
nor wore ‘war paint’. Godsell writes:
Despite the fears of the color conscious the Indians didn’t attempt to mix.
They piled into the large square dining-room, leaving the commodious dance
hall for the ‘high-tone’ people. Already Freddie Behrens, mounted atop a
packing case, was sawing with all his might upon his fiddle while moccasined
feet thumped through the Eightsome Reel.
Eventually, a number of the whites transgressed the colour line by invading the
dining room. The policemen led the way in their equine manifestation, apparently
dancing a confused mixture of ‘high-tone’ jazz from the dance hall and fiddle
music from the dining room.
Into the crowd of Indians pranced Spark Plug, front feet jigging to the time of
the fiddles, hind feet independently following the jazz step. With tossing head
and revolving tail the monster charged the square dance.
What to make of these musical migrations: on the one hand indigenous north-
erners who enthusiastically fiddle and square dance, and on the other whites
who dress up like ‘Indians’ and subsequently break in on the indigenous revels
taking place next door to them? It should be emphasized that such phenomena
are relatively widespread. Many indigenous communities across northern North
America embraced the fiddling, step-dancing and quadrille traditions trans-
mitted by British and French fur traders, even before the period of high colo-
nialism. Conversely, certain spectacular forms of indigenous music and dance
have proved attractive to non-indigenous Westerners. Powwow dancing and
drumming are draws for non-aboriginal spectators across North America and
in parts of Europe. Indeed, some of these enthusiasts wear powwow regalia,
sing drum songs, practise traditional dances, and, in Europe, even organize
powwows (Welch 2007; Paskievich 1996).
Such musical appropriations have been accounted for in various ways. In
the case of non-Western adoptions of Western music and dance, scholars and
vernacular commentators have often voiced concerns about cultural and musical
homogenization, a process sometimes lamented as Westernization or cultural

grey-out (on the latter, see Lomax 1968). Yet, as other scholars point out, many
forms of musical and cultural distinctiveness have endured in the face of long-
standing contact and even despite attempts to extinguish difference; African
practices that survived the Middle Passage and slavery are a dramatic example
(see Merriam 1964: 306–7). There exists a somewhat more complicated model
of cultural persistence, however; one which takes into account the frequent fact
of appropriation. Many have suggested that adoptions of Western music, while
seemingly indicating a slide towards homogeneity, may actually be strategies
for preserving and extending cultural practice or ‘producing locality’ (the phrase
comes from Appadurai 1996). Such theories place the emphasis on what people
and communities accomplish by adopting foreign musical practices, a concern
that also informs the theoretical frameworks shortly to be outlined.
Scholarly writing has also examined a converse trajectory of appropriation,
namely the long-standing appeal to Western publics of the musics of non-Western
others, Western minorities, and peasant and working-class communities. Often
this appeal has been discussed in terms of the dynamics of exoticism. Timothy
Taylor’s 1997 Global Pop identifies several ways in which Western musicians
and audiences conceptualize the music of the other, including as a site of authentic
spirituality, emotionality and primality, and as a source of sounds, ideas and musi-
cians that can refresh stagnating Western traditions. It is also possible to perceive
Western fascinations in a more benign light, as (admittedly sometimes faltering)
steps towards engagement and mutual understanding.
The writing of Michael Taussig (1993) offers another, holistic characterization
of cross-cultural adoptions, one that takes into account both of the trajectories
just discussed. In Mimesis and Alterity he suggests that cultures and communities
draw upon mimesis (imitation) as a strategy for assimilating misunderstood or
potentially threatening alterity (cultural difference). Although mimesis is charac-
teristic of all kinds of encounters, Taussig suggests that it is particularly height-
ened in contexts of colonial domination, where dramatic encounters with cultural
alterity engender crises in both colonizers and colonized. Through mimesis, both
powerful and subordinate groups appropriate and transform aspects of one anoth-
er’s difference, and in doing so attain power over that otherness. As Taussig puts
it, ‘the making and existence of the artifact [or, it might be added, music] that
portrays something gives one power over that which is portrayed’ (1993: 13).
Again, mimesis is not a unidirectional process: it is not only colonized people who
imitate and appropriate from colonizers, but also colonizers who copy their indiÂ�
genous others. Moreover, mimesis is not a process wherein one ‘primitive’ group
borrows from another, ‘advanced’, group, thus ‘catching up’ historically. Rather,
it is a coeval (i.e. simultaneous) relationship made possible by the fact that groups
share a time and space of encounter – in the cases Taussig investigates, a context
of colonialism and domination.
Consider again Philip Godsell’s account of the Christmas ball in Fort Smith.
Emulation clearly moved in two directions. Again, the aboriginal people at the
hotel celebrated the holiday with fiddle music and choreography that had at some
point been appropriated from Euro-Canadians, while certain Euro-Canadians
imitated the ‘war paint’ of distant ‘Indians’ and the jigging of the ones next
door. Moreover, in this colonial context, copying is not only highly visible, it
is employed in ways that both perpetuate and contest structural inequities. The
‘high-tone’ colonizers initially made their distinction and technological privilege
evident by eschewing the ‘sawing’ of the fiddle and the ‘thumping’ of dancing
feet and arranging for an unprecedented radio broadcast. But they also asserted
their power through symbolic action: by transforming their bodies into indigenous
ones (adorning the face with paint in one case and doing the jig step in another)
and moving into the social space of the other. Mimesis was also at work on the
other side of the social divide. Decades before Godsell arrived in Fort Smith,
aboriginal people from north-western North America had begun to appropriate
European music and dance. Contemporary accounts do not offer much insight into
the reasoning behind these adoptions. But at a basic level they may have stemmed
from a need to accommodate strange new people and ways within existing indiÂ�
genous cultural categories and practices. At the time that Godsell was writing,
these practices probably accomplished something else: they quietly demonstrated
that indigenous people were every bit as capable as Euro-Canadians of employing
musical technologies (such as the violin) and valued, expressive forms of choreo-
graphic corporateness (such as the quadrille). In short, these practices transgressed
the boundaries that the ‘colour conscious’ sought to maintain. Yet paradoxically
they also affirmed indigenous difference – for what could be stranger for many
Euro-Canadians than the sight of indigenous people who ‘should’ be wearing face
paint instead dancing the Eightsome Reel?
Taussig’s theory of mimesis and alterity suggests that copying does not neces-
sarily result in sameness. Rather, and perhaps particularly in cases of colonial
domination, it affirms and reinstantiates difference (perhaps not least for those
who see themselves ‘distorted’ in myriad uncanny reflections). This raises ques-
tions about the possibility of the hopes some have for migrating music, for
instance that learning (and learning about) the music of others will reveal a shared
humanity, or that mutual musical engagement will enable conviviality and under-
standing. Certainly the account of the Christmas celebrations reveals the potential
for structures of power to remain in place even as everyone ‘dances together’. But
are there representations of musical alterity – and ways of taking up the music and
dance of the other – that escape the dynamic of knowing but not knowing?
Translation
Copying inevitably involves some kind of translation. That is, in ‘doing’ another’s
music you have to bring it across into your own system of conceptual and aesthetic
categories, in which it makes sense and has value. Translation is a creative move,
then, and one with the potential to transform musical practices and sounds into
ones that operate or signify in ways quite distinct from in their old context.3 And
this may help to explain how it is that certain practices, instruments, and sounds
– some appropriated in the heightened mimetic context of colonial or imperial
encounter – become thoroughly indigenized in their new contexts (thus the harmo-
nium is as indigenous in India as curry in the United Kingdom). In fact in many
cases the copy undergoes further transformations and developments in response

to the specific demands of its new cultural and aesthetic context, so much so that
the original object of copying fades from view, as the following vignettes suggest.
First vignette: in their conquest of present-day Portugal and Spain, the Moors
brought with them the ud, an ovoid, plucked, stringed instrument with a sound-
bowl and fretted neck. Miniatures from Castille c. 1260 show Moorish and
Christian musicians playing uds, as well as a variant called the gittern. By the
fourteenth century, as it spread across northern and central Europe, the ud-like lute
became distinguishable from the ud as shown in those miniatures of the previous
century (Spring 2001: 1–7). Then in the early 1500s there is documentary refer-
ence from Italy to a plucked instrument called the chitarino, and towards the end
of the century a chart from Bologna shows tablature for a viola (the generic term
for a waisted, stringed instrument). James Tyler is in no doubt that ‘the instrument
intended is a guitar-like (plucked) instrument’ (1980: 17–18). Finally from around
1500 in Spain a vihuela survives. This is a plucked stringed instrument with a flat
top and bottom, figure-of-eight profile, and six courses of strings (ibid.: 20). It is
recognizably a guitar. The waisted profile of viols in general, it should be noted,
derives from the medieval European fiddle (Woodfield 1984: 38).
Now although we have no conclusive evidence, it seems likely that behind this
chronology is a continuous process of emergence which can be reduced heuris-
tically to the following stages:
1 The plucked ud is brought to Spain by invading Muslims;

2 Conquered Christians take up the ud in a mimetic (and therefore also
othÂ�erÂ�ing) act;
3 Other Europeans, having a considerably more distant relationship to Muslims,
develop the lute, a related but distinctive instrument;
4 Lastly, a plucked stringed instrument (morphologically a guitar) emerges
with a waisted sound box, historically a European feature.
Second vignette: In the 1950s the main form of musical entertainment for
working-class people in Kingston, Jamaica was the weekend dance, where records
were played back over ‘sound systems’. The repertoire was mixed, but the predom-
inant style was African-American ‘jump’ rhythm and blues. Records were bought
in the USA and brought over to Jamaica by either the sound system operators or
scouts who worked for them. Towards the end of the decade the style preferred
by Kingstonians, in which there was a walking bass-line and an accented off-beat
falling on the ‘ands’ of the beat in 4/4 time, stopped being produced in the USA.
So sound system operators began to hire local musicians and singers to recreate the
sound of jump blues in the two recording studios that were now operating in the
city. Almost from the start of domestic recording around 1958, musicians began to
increase the accent on the off-beat, and by 1962 a new term was coined to describe
the resulting music: ska. The walking bass-line quickly disappeared now, while the
off-beat was voiced by more and more instruments including horns, piano, guitar
and harmonica, leaving the drummer to pick up the backbeat on the snare on beats
2 and 4 – a trope that had been imported from rock ’n’ roll (White 1998).
Then, quite quickly over the spring and summer of 1966, the tempo of the
records slowed from a median 125 beats per minute to around 90, while the
voicing of the off-beat shifted to the guitar on its own. Much smaller horn sections
played antiphonal riffs or melodic decorations. Immediately named rocksteady,
the lighter, slower new style was hegemonic for two years or so, until another
catastrophic change occurred with the advent of reggae – faster, funkier and more
frenetic – in 1968 (White 1983). Critically, the subsequent history of Jamaican
popular music has been one of successive developments of this sort, where quite
sharp changes are followed by relatively stable aesthetic regimes (Toynbee 2007).
Of course these examples of the emergence of the guitar in Europe and of idio-
matic Jamaican popular music are radically different in terms of time, space and
scale. Nevertheless, what they have in common is key for the process of migrating
music, namely that, following an original moment of mimesis, the copied music
undergoes further developments and transformations.4 And although the original
moment of transfer might have involved an anxious attempt to contain a threat-
ening alterity, the copied object often becomes familiar, localized and indigenized
and is then elaborated in response to the most pressing concerns of the people who
have appropriated it.
In cases where mimesis occurred in the heightened context of colonial or
imperial encounter, the copied object (instrument, metre, timbre, costume, dance
step,Â€…) may lose its associations with a threatening otherness as copiers acquire
cultural power or feel less beholden to those they copy. In fact the two vignettes
suggest variations on this theme. In the case of the emergence of the guitar, a
critical factor was the so-called Reconquista which began soon after the Moors
invaded. By 1492 they had been entirely driven out of the Iberian peninsula. Just
as important, though, were political and cultural connections between Christian
northern Spain and Italy in the later Middle Ages. It was in Italy, as we saw, that
some of the key developments seem to have taken place. And northern Italy was
beyond the area of conflict with Muslims. To put it in the terms we have been
using here, once the plucked lute became available outside the othering-space
where it had first been copied, it was no longer a copy but rather an indigenous
instrument, and therefore liable to be modified.
In the case of ska, the power differential between copiers and copied was
much smaller to start off with. Black Jamaicans had connections through migrant
friends and relatives with black Americans. What is more, rhythm-and-blues radio
stations from the southern USA could be received in Jamaica (Katz 2003: 6–7).
Above all, though, this was music from another branch of the African diaspora,
and had nothing at all to do with the despised colonialists. (Indeed, it might be
characterized as another example of the way black musicians have forged an
international network through the production and circulation of mass-mediated
performances.) Interestingly, when the moment of break-out from mimesis came
in the late 1950s, it was prompted by an unwillingness to accept change in the
target culture, namely a shift in taste among African-Americans towards a new
style – what would become known as soul music. In an important sense, then, the
object of mimesis had been made parochial in Jamaica. The elaboration of this
originally ‘copied’ music – a kind of localized aesthetic labour – became more
important than the work of maintaining a relationship of emulation with African-

Americans. This could also account for why stylistic innovation was so quick
and so intense when local production began. The semiotic exhaustion of jump
RÂ€&Â€B may have already been latent, given that dancers had been listening to it for
eight or ten years. When variation was offered by local musicians it was strongly
endorsed by listeners.
There remains the question of why, once music has been translated and a first
round of changes made, it might continue to change. One implication of the
preÂ�history of the guitar is that the introduction of elements from the home culture
may be an important factor. The lute, whose character depended on quite minor
developments from the ud, remained just that, a lute. The significant change which
yielded the guitar was then the addition of a waisted body and a flat or flattish
bottom, derived from the bowed European fiddle. In Jamaica, rhythmic change in
popular music kept on happening in the 1960s partly for a similar reason, namely
the addition of indigenous elements including aspects of the older national folk
music, mento, but also various forms of drumming from the countryside in which
there were strong African retentions (Bilby 2006). There was also the introduction
of new elements from contemporary African-American music, especially Chicago
soul. This represented a second stage of translation from the earlier target culture,
but one which was now, from a Jamaican perspective at least, set on much more
equal terms (Toynbee 2007). Ultimately, it seems likely that behind these moves
is the historical given-ness of Caribbean culture to mimesis and translation (Puri
2004), itself partly a function of the Caribbean’s crossroads position in the world
system. This points towards the immense significance of geography – of networks,
staging posts and conduits – for migrating music (see Part 3, ‘Media’, and Part 4,
‘Cities’, later in the book).
For Taussig, the mimetic act is one in which cultural actors – both weak and
powerful – establish semiotic control over threatening or disturbing alterity. Once
such control is established, ‘copied’ musical objects are available for further trans-
formation and creative innovation (perhaps particularly so when the heightened
power differential that held at the moment of copying recedes). We have focused
in this part on the appropriations of the less powerful, leaving undiscussed those
myriad cases where the copier is the dominant one: Debussy, the Beatles, Paul
Simon, John Cage, Stravinsky …; the list is a long one. Here perhaps the key
point to make is that the powerful are powerful too in their ability to obliterate
or obscure the first act of copying (or just as prone to forgetting that what now
sounds quotidian had its genesis in a traumatic moment of confrontation with
alterity). Rock music, which emerged as a translation of the blues from African
America, has excised the story of its emergence, and remains, within its own
mythology at least, an ex nihilo product of the creative generation of the (white)
baby boom.
Why migrating music now?

It might reasonably be asked why this volume on migrating music is being
published at the present moment. One reason has to do with the production of
knowledge. Following pitched battles in the social sciences and humanities, a

kind of detente seems to be emerging as regards the ideas of identity and globalizÂ�
ation. Whereas both of these have been the subject of polarized debate in the past,
scholars seem increasingly to be moving to intermediate positions (see Stokes’s
2004 review essay on literature on music and globalization), acknowledging that
concepts such as culture and identity can be discussed without falling into the trap
of essentialism, and seeing ‘globalization’ as a phenomenon that might reasonably
provoke both scepticism and guarded optimism.
Meanwhile, as Sara Cohen’s contribution to this volume suggests, a language of
movement, which can be traced to writers such as Clifford, Appadurai and Gilroy
writing in the 1990s, seems to have been adopted for discussing both cultural
transformation and the circulation of people, objects and expressive practices.
Cohen remarks (p. 247) that scholars are moving away ‘from fixed and bounded
notions of culture’ and have taken up ‘a language of mobility – of travel and flow
or “scapes” – to describe culture in a context of contemporary globalization’.
Her statement suggests two kinds of movement. On the one hand it points to
migration: the movement of people, objects, practices, and sounds, as elaborated
earlier in this introductory chapter. On the other hand, it points to modulation: to
the dynamism of expressive practices, cultures, and societies – to the potential
fluidity of the traditional objects of the humanities and social sciences. Scholarly
discourse still acknowledges genres and structures, but it is increasingly rare that
it depicts them in static ways.
Accompanying this language of modulation and migration, is another set of
terms that suggests qualified forms of persistence. Appadurai (1996) describes the
‘production of locality’, and we have used the term ‘translation’ to characterize
the ways that new objects and practices are integrated, accommodated, and elabo-
rated when they are appropriated in a new context (for a related use of ‘transla-
tion’ see Chakrabarty 2000). Indeed, we have suggested that even moments of
copying (‘mimesis’) do not necessarily produce sameness, but often, paradoxi-
cally, alterity. So, while contemporary writing, including by the authors in this
collection, increasingly acknowledges change and mobility, it also recognizes the
resilience of culture and the agency of groups and communities in affirming their
distinctiveness.
To sum up, academic representations of cultures have become less static,
acknowledging that dynamism is evident not only in how cultures change, but
also in the ways they persist and endure. Meanwhile, the discourse concerning
globalization has increasingly come to acknowledge its contradictions. Our goal
here, accordingly, is to consolidate this trend with a collection that explores music
in motion through migration, cross-cultural appropriation, mass mediation and
cosmopolitan fusions.
These issues are considered in the four parts of this volume. The first,
‘Migrants’, focuses on musicians and listeners who cross borders and continents,
and the musical means by which they and those back home bridge these distances.
The second part, ‘Translations’, explores migrating styles and genres. It considers
how groups and communities adopt circulating music, and how agents make stra-
tegic use of it, but also how they translate it, adapting it to particular cultural and
political contexts. The third part, ‘Media’, considers the technologies by which
music moves into new contexts – and by which migrants and the people they
have left behind stay connected to one another musically. Its chapters examine
how migrating music comes into contact with new audiences. They also explore
the emergence of transnational public cultures that unite migrants and those at
home. The fourth part, ‘Cities’, explores musical cosmopolitanism, addressing its
most privileged site of instantiation, the metropolis. The cities in these essays are
nodes in networks of musical migration. They are destinations for migrants. They
are sites of musical encounter, wherein various migrating musical styles compete
or fuse, are mimetically appropriated, and undergo further translations. And they
are centres of mass mediation. In this sense they are motors which push and pull
music in and out across the world. Thus the volume culminates with a part that
permits reflection on all of the foregoing themes, since the cities considered are
hubs for migration, translation and mass mediation.
The authors of the chapters that follow live and work for the most part in the
United Kingdom or in north-western Europe. Perhaps not surprisingly, a good
deal – but by no means all – of their subject matter concerns areas close to home.
Exceptions include chapters by Finnegan and Nooshin, which examine the effects
of globalization on non-Western societies. Those by Baily, Landau, Steil and Stokes
meanwhile consider connections between north-western Europe and communities
‘back home’. But it seems important to acknowledge that the views of migrating
music presented here have a default geographic centre. Of course from another
angle this is by no means a contingency. As we noted above, more than one-third of
migration in recent years has been to Europe, making it the most important region
of destination for migrants around the world. Given this specificity, it seems right
to conclude by reflecting on elements of the current European context that make
the subject of ‘migrating music’ especially important at this moment in time.
Two issues seem particularly salient. One is that an abundance of contempo-
rary evidence suggests that certain European ideals of civil society and musical
sociality are not as universal as they aspire to be. The other involves growing
concerns over immigration in Europe.
In relation to the first of these, by summer 2010 North American and European
governments were beginning to plan, if somewhat tentatively, for withdrawal
from military interventions in Afghanistan, with rising costs, pessimism about
the possibility of ‘winning’, and growing disillusion and opposition from citizens
all playing their part. The hope that these interventions might perhaps succeed in
generating vibrant, organic civil societies also seemed to be fading. ‘Parachuted’
civil societies on a dominant Western model seemed to be having difficulties,
and their universal viability was called into question. This dilemma has a broader
musical counterpart: emerging public cultures that appear ‘too musical’ or ‘not
musical enough’ from a certain European perspective. On the one hand are publics
whose contents are regarded by some as embarrassing: emotionally ebullient and
centred on problematized religious practices or melancholy sentimentality (see
Stokes’s contribution in this volume). These ‘overly musical’ publics – here we
nod to music’s stereotypical associations with unruly feelingfulness and embodi-
ment – seem removed from visions of civil society as a sphere of rational and
critical discourse (see Warner 2002). On the other hand there are public cultures
where music has a problematized place, as for instance in Afghanistan (see
Chapter 11 by John Baily) or Iran (see Chapter 6 by Laudan Nooshin). The ques-
tion of repression in these societies is complicated by the question of recognition.
That is, for many Europeans, in whose public life music typically holds a promi-
nent and auspicious place, these cultures and societies may seem ‘not musical
enough’. In both cases the apparent promise of mass mediation to enable musical
and social communion is undermined by evidence that certain models of musical
sociality are not exactly universal.
The tension, indeed downright conflict, between these competing notions of
culture and the place of music have probably contributed to the emergence of the
second issue we want to raise, the growing climate of fear about difference, and
in turn about migration, within Europe itself. Official policy, it is true, has tended
not be overtly xenophobic until recently at least.5 Nevertheless the ‘War on Terror’
has been accompanied on the ‘home front’ by a policy framework in which xeno-
phobia, racism and their causes are neatly sidestepped. Instead, cultural differ-
ences are contained under the banner of ‘diversity’. As Alana Lentin and Gavan
Titley show, ‘diversity is mobilising because it potentially includes everybody’
(2008: 19). The authors’ argument is that this is a woefully inadequate response to
rising populist racism and opposition to migration.
In conclusion, then, this volume, and the conference that preceded it, come into
being at a moment of increasing anxiety over migration in Western countries, and
Europe in particular. Certainly, nativism and resentment of immigrants are often
heightened during periods of economic instability such as the one that holds at
the time of writing. Concerns that migrants are taking the jobs of nationals, or
taking advantage of social welfare programmes, become particularly acute. But
there are also fears that precede the current economic climate: that migrants are
transforming the societies in which they relocate – including through the ‘overly’
exuberant or abstemious forms of public culture they contribute to. And of course
supervening above all these causes is the increasingly desperate prosecution of
the War on Terror. We end this first chapter on a pessimistic note, then, if only to
throw into relief the optimistic mood of many contributors to the present book
who rightly hear migrating music as a boon to humanity.
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Notes
1 As various chapters in this collection show.
2 It can be added that mediation technology also allows migrant communities to be
‘overheard’ by mainstream populations – upon scanning television and radio stations,
or even walking down the street in many neighbourhoods in the city of Chicago, one
will be as likely as not to hear some duranguense, a genre of popular music created by
Mexican-Americans in that city and now popular in Mexico as well (see Hutchinson
2007).
3 ‘Vernacular’ translations perhaps being a little less concerned with fidelity to the orig-
inal context than ‘scholarly’ ones.
4 One way to conceptualize this is as a break-out from the intense mimetic relationships
that occur in contexts of unequal power. How does the break-out occur, though? It is
difficult to gather empirical evidence about this because, when it is entwined with rela-
tions of power, mimesis is so often obscured or distorted in the minds of both copiers
and copied. Quite simply the mimetic act is scandalous, even shameful, and is therefore
subject to ideological regulation such that few can speak easily or clearly about it. That
is why at the end of his book we find Taussig advocating a tactic of ‘mimetic excess’.
This creates ‘reflexive awareness as to the mimetic faculty’, and when ‘potentiated
by post-coloniality provides a welcome opportunity to live subjunctively as neither
subject nor object of history but as both, at one and the same time’ (1993: 254–5).
Given the persistence of unequal relations of political, social and economic power,
which invariably extend into the domain of culture, this may be a somewhat optimistic
claim. Nonetheless the tactic of mimetic excess, an ‘owning up’ to mimesis, is surely to
be endorsed.
5 However, during the summer of 2010 the Sarkozy regime launched an open and indeed
highly publicized policy of summary deportation of Roma people from France. It
was roundly condemned as ‘shameful’ by the European Union Justice Commissioner,
Viviane Reding. The consequences of this policy and its public rebuke are unclear at
the time of writing.
Part 1
Migrants
Introduction
Byron Dueck
The three chapters in this opening part, while touching on various aspects of
music’s mobility, give special consideration to moving people: migrants who
travel (or who are displaced) from rural areas to urban ones or from one country
to another.1 Following a short introduction to each of the three chapters I shall
discuss a few broad commonalities that emerge in the accounts.
Martin Stokes’s chapter considers musical developments that appear to cross
a variety of boundaries, including national and religious ones, in the contempo-
rary Mediterranean. He presents case studies of sacred music in Malta and Turkey,
exploring the similarities that connect these ostensibly distinct genres and contexts
(employing a ‘rhizomic’ comparative method characteristic of poststructur-
alist approaches, while moving beyond the tendency of the latter to focus on the
secular). In these sites he observes an increasing appreciation of formerly disa-
vowed migrant populations and their lands of destination, dramatic examples of
the appropriation of public space for sacred activity, and the rise of mass-mediated
forms of religious music that are notable both for their sentimentality and their
popular appeal. In short he documents, in two quite different contexts, the emer-
gence of new border-crossing markets and public cultures constituted around feel-
ingful forms of listening and worshipping. He connects these developments to a
moment of growing economic liberalization that has weakened national powers
and borders, suggesting that, in this context, globalizing religious movements
increasingly provide spiritual and material support to mobile populations discon-
nected from traditional family- and community-based help networks.
Carolyn Landau’s chapter also looks at multiple sites, but through the perspec-
tive afforded by the experiences of a single migrant. Her consultant, Mohamed,
was born in a small village in central Morocco, moved at a young age with his
parents to the city of Fez, went to Paris to study in his late teens, and then as
an adult moved to Denmark, Canada and Britain. The author traces Mohamed’s
migrations and describes the music he hears, and actively seeks out, over the course
of his journeys. Her account suggests the complexity of intersections between the
intimate and the political, describing on the one hand how mass-mediated music
contributes to interactions between friends, kin, and acquaintances, and on the
other hand how these genres create links to broader social movements. So, for
instance, the raï songs that Mohamed enjoyed together with friends in Paris were
on the one hand a source of musical commonality between a diverse group of
22â•… Byron Dueck
Maghrebi students. But they simultaneously linked them to a larger social move-
ment: an alliance of French North Africans and whites who collectively opposed
the insults to dignity and human rights they regularly experienced. Landau’s inves-
tigations suggest that while mass-mediated genres can recruit listeners to a variety
of sometimes conflicting subject positions – for instance as Berbers, Moroccans
and Arabs – this very complexity enables flexible forms of self-making and affili-
ation. She also explores whether the technological transformations of recent years
– perhaps most importantly the shift from the ‘private collection’ of recordings
(Stokes 1994) to the ‘public library’ of songs available through video hosting
sites – have implications for sociability, self-making and the sense of well-being
of highly mobile populations.
Laura Steil investigates the danse afro phenomenon that emerged in Paris
and its surrounding suburbs around 2005. At this time, African genres of music
including coupé-décalé and n’dombolo and the dance styles associated with them
became increasingly popular amongst young, black, France-born Parisians, whose
musical allegiances had previously been to hip-hop and R & B. Fans also adopted
sartorial fashions and even accents that had at one time been regarded as markers
of a somewhat embarrassing Africanness. Steil examines the danse afro scene as a
construction that links black Parisians to Africa through a set of shared expressive
practices. She furthermore explores the way dancers evaluate one another morally
and aesthetically. Authenticity is a major concern for both dancers and fans; it is
evident not only in the ability to innovate and extemporize while dancing, but also
in whether one is seen to remain culturally connected to ‘one’s people’, including
through the maintenance of reciprocal relationships, proper displays of respect,
and, in some cases, a gift for playful dissimulation. These linked aesthetic and
ethical evaluations seem particularly telling in the Parisian context, where they
suggest mechanisms for enforcing moral and material solidarity in the face of
bigotry and economic disadvantage.
Imaginaries, public spaces, and social intimacy

The chapters in this part offer insights into three social bearings that seem to have
particular salience for migrants as people who are far from home and in a foreign
cultural environment: orientations to social ‘imaginaries’; comportment in public
spaces; and relationships to social intimates.
Imaginaries
All three chapters in this part document the importance of publics or social imagi-
naries to the lives of migrants. A social imaginary comes into being when people,
largely unknown to one another, come to share a sense of affiliation (Warner
2002). This relationship emerges as the members of the public engage circulating
performances and publications, that is to say as they take up roles in relation to
these ‘texts’ – whether as audience members or as participants who themselves
contribute additional broadcasts and publications. National publics are the most
familiar instances of these formations (see Anderson 1991), but social imaginaries
Part 1 Introductionâ•… 23
frequently overstep the boundaries of the state (Appadurai 1996). Here is where
social imaginaries have particularly important implications for migrants, who
through acts of attention, performance and publication play a role in extending
homelands across borders. Nor is the ‘border-crossing nation’ the end of the
matter: social imaginaries often come into being around forms of affiliation quite
distinct from nationhood or ethnicity. Of particular interest here are those publics
that emerge through the circulation of embodied and expressive practices, such as
music and dance, and religious activities, such as worship and exhortation.
Boundary-crossing imaginaries, constituted through embodied, expressive,
sacred and ethically motivated practice, are much in evidence in the following
chapters. Stokes describes a recent recording by Mehmet Emin Ay that extends
a blessing in multiple languages to an international audience of Turkish migrants
working in Europe. The recording is one example of a growing body of devotional
music in popular and emotionally forthright styles, in both Christian and Muslim
areas of the Mediterranean. Steil documents how, in the last decade, popular music
performers, styles and choreographies have moved between Africa and France,
and the evidence she presents suggests the emergence of a social imaginary consti-
tuted through the international performance and circulation of musique afro. And
Landau’s chapter points to a number of overlapping and at times competing musical
imaginaries. For instance, in her consultant’s early musical memories of Morocco,
music in Arabic is emblematic of the broader pan-Arab affiliations the state encour-
aged in the early years of Moroccan independence, while the music of Nass el
Ghiwane, incorporating regional styles and instruments, seems more compatible
with a national imaginary that embraces the diverse languages and cultural tradi-
tions of Morocco, to some extent in reaction to top-down Arabization.
The accounts in these chapters suggest that the expressions and discourses
that constitute subaltern forms of publicity are often quite distinct from those
that circulate in dominant and official channels. And while often these perform-
ances and publications constitute enclaved (yet inevitably, because public, over-
hearable) undergrounds or ‘counterpublics’ (Warner 2002; Fraser 1992), at other
moments they move into the mainstream. Thus the Moroccan popular music
Landau’s consultant enjoys with his family members is available on popular video
hosting sites such as YouTube, but flies under the radar of most other Londoners.
In contrast, the raï he listened to in Paris eventually garnered a large audience,
becoming a rallying point for a diverse alliance of French Maghrebis and whites.
Similarly, music and dance related to the danse afro scene documented by Steil,
which in some manifestations maintains a careful distance from the French main-
stream, in other forms has often found its way into the national spotlight. In short,
social imaginaries sometimes offer enclaves of relative cultural insidership, while
on other occasions they give birth to performances, broadcasts and publications
that engage a wider public.
Public spaces
The three chapters also explore orientations towards, and comportment in, public
spaces. It is useful to distinguish public spaces from imaginaries, for while such
spaces are certainly oriented to a public of strangers (they are there for ‘everyone’)
they are nonetheless arenas where knowable persons interact – however cursorily
– with known or knowable others. Broadcasting a song involves a different rela-
tion to an audience than performing a concert in a public venue, because in the
latter case the possibility of reciprocal, real-time interaction is present.2 While
engagement with publications, broadcasts and recordings often involves delib-
erate acts of attention-paying, personal volition plays less of a role in the case of
the persons, sounds, and sights that confront one in public spaces. Sounds in public
spaces have a more immediate and potentially confrontational character than do
radio broadcasts to be potentially dialled in, video clips to be potentially clicked
on, or CDs to be potentially bought. Not surprisingly, then, the kinds of social and
musical comportment that are appropriate in public spaces – and at which times
of the day, week and year – are subject to considerable discussion, negotiation and
policing, as Stokes’s description of the public Good Friday pageant in Żebbuġ,
Malta, suggests.3
Added complexities come into play when the sounds and sights met in public
spaces are perceived to be those of migrants and foreigners, as is evident in
debates over the broadcasting of the call to prayer from European and American
mosques. The presence of ‘alien’ sounds in public spaces is for some a pleasur-
able encounter with alterity and for others a disturbing sign of foreignness. In
both cases, though, the impact of these sounds is a physical one: they are palpable
sonic icons of cultural alterity. Of course, for migrants, the sights and sounds of a
new home can often be just as alien, threatening or morally problematic (compare
Appadurai 2006). Thus Landau’s account of Mohamed’s memories of Fez’s
musical soundscape suggest a boy encountering vivid sonic evidence that he is
far from his rural home.
A final point might be remarked: namely that because public space is there
for ‘everyone’, it is available for strategic and inventive repurposing (albeit in
limited and carefully controlled ways), not least by those without access to their
own spaces for socializing and conducting business. Such creative appropriation
is arguably evident in Steil’s account of the use by danseurs afros of Parisian
underground stations to conduct dance rehearsals.
Intimacies
It is perhaps to be expected that a book on ‘migrating music’ released at a time
of heightened European and North American concern over immigration should
focus on its more ‘public’ aspects: on the one hand, the impact of migrants on the
soundscapes of public places; and on the other hand, the potential to construct
imaginaries and perform a cultural politics through performances of music and
dance. But migrating music also has implications for social interactions between
intimates – kin, friends and fellow musicians and dancers. Furthermore, as will
become evident, it is exactly these intimacies that feed back into public culture
and constitute it in a dialectical process (see Berlant 2008).
Stokes’s chapter might be read to suggest that increases in migration have atten-
uated traditional, intimate networks of emotional and financial support – a collapse
that emerging forms of religious and musical practice attempt to address. Perhaps
the flourishing of new, feelingful forms of sacred and popular music are in part a
response to cosmopolitan alienation. Landau describes the ‘music consumption’
of migrants as in part a means of attaining a sense of well-being and empower-
ment by reconnecting to poignant memories of home. But these listening prac-
tices are more than musical auto-therapy, for, as her account suggests, migrants
also use music to establish and re-establish connections to distant friends and
kin. Exchanging links to clips on video hosting sites becomes an opportunity to
affirm and cultivate relationships with far-away intimates. Her consultant’s ‘little
Morocco at home [in London]’ can certainly be understood as an extension of the
Moroccan public sphere, but it is just as surely the extension of a network of family
members and their collectively remembered localities, events and soundscapes.
Not all intimate connections exist at a distance for migrants, as Steil’s ethnoÂ�
graphy of dancers and choreographers in Paris suggests. Here dance rehearsals
establish fixed or semi-fixed dance routines, a choreographed intimacy of shared
moves and expectations.4 The rehearsals and performances Steil describes are part
of an agonistic yet nevertheless close sphere of social interaction. Participants
continually evaluate one another not only as dancers, but also in terms of their
extramusical conduct. There is pressure to demonstrate ‘realness’ through mani-
festations of ongoing, reciprocal relationships with kin and friends. In short,
Paris- and Africa-born danseurs afros affirm and constitute ‘African’ dance and
sociability through quotidian encounters with social intimates. As suggested
above, these intimacies stand in dialectical and ongoing relationships with broader
African imaginaries, as is particularly evident in the case of choreographic inter-
actions. Dancers learn new moves from mass-mediated music videos originating
in Côte d’Ivoire and Congo. They subsequently incorporate them into routines
in the intimate context of dance rehearsals, elaborating them through personal
stylistic innovations. Then the choreographic intimacy established through long
rehearsal is itself oriented to an audience: on the one hand, in performances in
public spaces, and on the other, to unknown and imagined viewers, via clips
published on video hosting sites and broadcast on television.
Nor is it simply musical and choreographic intimacies that become the basis
for public culture. As Stokes’s chapter suggests, it is also the feelingful intima-
cies of, among other things, religious devotion and encounter. These emotional
proximities are the very stuff that is oriented to an audience of strangers through
recordings and broadcasts.
Conclusion
One way to read the following chapters is as an exploration of three social orienta-
tions in the musical lives of migrants: to publics, public spaces and social intimates.
These bearings are interrelated and overlapping yet nevertheless distinguishable
from one another. First, the musical lives of many migrants have a public orienta-
tion: by engaging the mass media, or undertaking acts of broadcast or publication
themselves, migrants belong and contribute to social imaginaries. In many cases
their relationship is to the national public sphere of their former home. But there
are many other potential spheres of engagement, some conflicting: for instance, to
stateless sub-national groups or larger regional or supranational publics. Moreover,
there exist public cultures constituted around expressive, embodied and religious
practices rather than a sense of ethnic or political affiliation. Many of the latter
have uncomfortable or even antagonistic relationships with dominant or official
public cultures – and this may be true in ‘the old country’, the new one, or both.
While the practices and discourses that generate these ‘counterpublics’ sometimes
have difficulty attaining wider circulation, they occasionally break through to find
a larger, mainstream audience.
If the music and sound that circulate within – and constitute – imaginaries are
engaged for the most part through voluntary acts of attention, the sounds and
behaviours that fill public space have much greater potential to confront and
impinge – whether in the case of members of a native population confronting the
music of migrants, or of migrants encountering the sounds of their new home-
lands. There are, not surprisingly, vigorous debates about public soundscapes,
particularly when some element perceived as new or foreign is thrust (or thrusts
itself) into the spotlight. At the same time, precisely because public spaces are
open, as though to any and all, they seem particularly prone to repurposing and
sonic reinvention.
The chapters that follow also consider intimacy. Migration often means a move
away from kin and friends, loneliness, homesickness and cosmopolitan aliena-
tion. In some cases the music of home – or the intimate music of popular religious
movements – seems to offer a route to a sense of well-being. In other cases it
perhaps summons the nostalgic memory of happiness, or ruefully acknowledges
and models the symptoms of homesickness. In yet other contexts, music offers
migrants an opportunity to reconnect to distant intimates, and to revisit shared
land- and soundscapes together. Indeed, it may be that such reconnections are
increasingly possible thanks to developments in communications technology
and mass mediation. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that new homes also
offer the possibility of new relationships, including musical and choreographic
ones. These are of particular interest here, not least in so far as these proximities
are launched into mass circulation, taking part in the complex dialectical dance
between intimacy and public culture.
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Notes
1 An even broader definition of ‘migrant’ may be warranted in so far as in many places
the children and grandchildren of migrants, even though born and schooled far from
their ancestral homes, are nevertheless considered foreign.
2 Certainly there is a cline in operation here, especially as the tractability of publication
increases. The Internet chat room is an excellent example of a grey area. It is in many
cases more like a public space than a public sphere, since it is oriented to an imagined
public, yet full of known and knowable persons (although the risk of fabrication is
perhaps much higher than in everyday life).
3 Other touchstones include a recent conference presentation by Andrew Eisenberg
(2007) on sound in public space in Mombasa and a Guardian article (Hancox 2010) on
the playing of music on small portable devices in public places and on public transit.
4 Of course, in some cases being ‘in step’ means knowing which dancers are more apt to
extemporize upon the ‘set’ routine, and how and when they are likely to do so.
2 Migrant/migrating music and
the Mediterranean
Martin Stokes
When I was a teenager, in the late 1970s, I spent a Christmas with my parents on
holiday in Malta. I dreamed about that haunted landscape for years afterwards. I
also heard Arab music for the first time there, on the radio of our rented Toyota.
During Prime Minister Dom Mintoff’s latter years, as the relationship with Britain,
the former colonial power, soured, close political relationships were cultivated
instead with Libya. This new political intimacy did not extend far into the cultural
domain. Certainly Arabic, closely related to Maltese, was taught in schools. But
the art music of the North African Arab world, a staple of national broadcasting in
the North African states during these years, and which constituted practically the
first sounds one would encounter on the radio dial in Malta, remained alien. Years
later I encountered this music as an ethnomusicologist and instantly connected
with my earlier memory. It must have been Tunisian Mal’uf, a genre often referred
to across North Africa as ‘Andalusi’, or ‘Andalusian’.
The tale of Andalusi is many-layered, full of ironies, rhizomic meanderings,
absences and doublings. It followed the Muslims and Jews expelled during the
Spanish Reconquista to North Africa. In the nineteenth century it was the music
of North African Sufi lodges and hashish dens. French Orientalists lamented
these signs of decline and sought to purify it. Following closely in their footsteps,
North African intellectuals appropriated it as national art music (Davis 2004).
North African Jewish musicians took this music with them on their migrations.
In Israel it became a musical sign of Sephardic hegemony, supported by the state
in conservatories and orchestras, often staffed by Russian-speaking graduates of
the old Soviet ‘Oriental Music’ conservatories of Tashkent and Bukhara.1 Jewish
musicians who chose France instead of Israel used their training in Andalusi to
market an ‘Oriental tinge’ to French chanson in the 1970s. Such is the story of
Enrico Macias, the ‘Frank Sinatra of the Mediterranean’ (Swedenburg 2005). I am
looking at a picture of the young Macias now on some CD liner notes, playing
guitar in Sheikh Raymond Leiris’s ensemble in what must have been one his last
concerts. Sheikh Raymond was a Jewish musician and a master of the Andalusian
music of Constantine, Algeria. He was also Macias’s father-in-law. Shaikh
Raymond was killed by the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), the Algerian
nationalist forces, eleven months before the end of the bloody struggle for inde-
pendence in Algeria in 1961.
Andalusi is, then, music that has passed through many hands. It has sparked
Migrant/migrating music and the Mediterraneanâ•… 29
complex and intense fantasies of belonging wherever it has travelled. It has also
marked boundaries, senses of otherness, as in Malta. What links for some, divides
for others. It seems to me a very appropriate starting point for this brief essay. I am
interested here in the sounds that attach to migrants, the anxieties and misrecogni-
tions to which they give rise, the struggles over their circulation. For reasons that
I will explore later, religious music poses some particular challenges, and affords
some particular vantage points.
Early in 2009 I received an invitation to give some talks at the Mediterranean
Institute in Malta, and to stay a few extra days for the Holy Week festivities. I
was curious, I think, to return to the scene of that musical haunting, thirty years
ago, and quickly accepted the offer. But I was disappointed, at least in that regard.
My Maltese friends now remember Dom Mintoff’s Arabophilia with a degree of
embarrassment. The radio in my rented car did not seem to be able to make any
kind of contact with the North African coast, only a short distance away. And
this narrow stretch of water had become a matter of interest and anxiety for quite
different reasons.
On 31 March, the day before I departed, an overloaded boat set off from Sid
Belal Janzur in Libya and capsized only 30 km from the coast, on its way to
Italy. Only 23 dead bodies were recovered. The full number is not known. A
handful of other boats disappeared on the crossing that very same day. One made
it to Lampedusa, an Italian island not far from Malta. It contained people from
Bangladesh, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Gambia
and Cameroon. In three years, some 2,000 are known to have died attempting this
crossing, but the actual numbers must be far higher.
Many sinking vessels these days end up in Maltese territorial waters. Those
on board find themselves quickly confined to the Safi barracks, on the south of
the island. There are roughly 4,000 migrants and refugees in Malta and they have
provoked a crisis. Those on the right fear that this tiny, crowded and rather poor
outpost of Europe and Christendom will be swamped. Those on the left organize
NGOs, remind their fellow-citizens of their traditions of hospitality, and point to
their own centuries-long history of migration, to North Africa, Britain, Australia
and Canada. Two conceptions of the Mediterranean clash – one in which Malta, a
tiny outpost of Christendom and European civilizations guards the waves against
the new barbarians, and another that sees Malta and the Maltese as both geograph-
ical and historical connectors at the heart of the Mediterranean. Distinct concep-
tions of responsibility, and of global civility, attach to these competing conceptions.
The two Maltese moments I am describing are separated by about thirty years,
during which much has changed. We have become accustomed, once again, to
the idea that a yawning gap separates the southern and northern shores of the
Mediterranean. Dom Mintoff’s identification of Malta with the Arab world is now
seen by many Maltese and others as little more than post-colonial posturing. And
yet we also live in the contradictory discursive terrain of neo-liberal globaliza-
tion. Finance and commodities might circulate freely, but labour might not, or
might do so only under the most strictly policed of circumstances. This contradic-
tion plays itself out in the Mediterranean area with a particular intensity. It is not
surprising, then, that the Mediterranean area is the site of a number of powerful
30â•… Martin Stokes
fantasies about migrants and migrant culture, in which music – which indexes
migrant bodies, but can at the same time so easily be separated from them – has
played a particularly important role. Metropolitan north-western Europeans love
the idea of these migrating sounds. But they are very unsure about those who
travel with them.
These fantasies – and fears – about music and migration across the Mediterranean
have a long history. The early twentieth century saw aggressive efforts, both in
Spain and in Germany, to imagine a northern European ancestry for European
music. Links with the musical history of Egyptians, Greeks, Arabs and Jews were
systematically disavowed. What lay across the Mediterranean was ‘othered’,
placed firmly outside music history. Such formulations provoked reactions, on
the part of comparative musicologists like Robert Lachmann, who intensified his
ethnographic efforts to demonstrate connections between circum-Mediterranean
Jewish synagogue chant and ‘European’ music history until he was eventually
dismissed from his post at the Berlin National Library in 1935 (Bohlman 1997;
Davis 2004).
Braudel’s Mediterranean (1949) marked a later reaction. It connected shared
patterns of life, and the global circulation of people, technologies, commodities
and ideas in the early modern period. Braudel’s is a nostalgic story. The intricate
web of interconnected cities in the early modern period gave way to the cata-
clysmic struggle of Empires – Hapsburgs in the West, Ottomans in the East. The
unity of the Mediterranean was never to be recovered. Braudel’s nostalgia was
shared by a generation of anthropologists who turned to the Mediterranean in the
late 1950s, including Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist. In its rural corners,
away from the urban centres of national production, a shared Mediterranean
culture could still be perceived, definable in terms of the so-called ‘honor and
shame’ complex (Lomax 1968). For Lomax, this complex had mappable musical
correlates: a predominance of solo singing, a high ratio of vocal ‘noise’ in relation
to text, glottal ornamentation, and so forth. These were all understood as being
determined by a shared ecology and modes of production.2
A yet later reaction is what I would describe as the post-structuralist MediterÂ�
ranean, running on an axis from Michael Herzfeld’s Anthropology Through the
Looking Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe (1987) to Iain
Chambers’s Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity
(2008). Critical ethnography in Greece, for Herzfeld, exposes ‘modernity’ and
‘Europe’ as discursive constructs, up for grabs in an agonistic performative space.
Chambers pursues a similar line of thought. He is interested in migration along,
following Deleuze and Guattari (1980), ‘rhizomic’ axes: that is to say those
layered, repetitive and circular movements between, and around, cities such as
Naples, cities that have come somewhat adrift from national hinterlands and
the teleologies of modernization and modernity. Chambers is particularly inter-
ested in music’s role in exposing these ‘porous modernities’ to critical view. Pino
Daniele and Nino D’Angelo’s recordings of Neapolitan song over the last decade,
with their references to, and sampling of, Arab music are not, then, in Chambers’s
view, empty gestures towards conventionalized World Music hybridity, but true to
Naples’ mixed heritage, and a rhizomic Mediterranean.3
To Naples one might add, surveying recent literature,4 Marseille, Barcelona,

Tangiers, Oran, Alexandria, Istanbul, İzmir and Salonika. Such characteriza-
tions are entangled with a broader post-structuralist theorization of music, move-
ment and migration, one shaped significantly by Paul Gilroy’s formidable Black
Atlantic (1992), and already being critiqued in volumes such as Sharma, Hutnyk
and Sharma’s Dis-Orienting Rhythms (1996). For a decade and a half, such authors
have traced the amblings of Benjamin’s flâneur, ‘botanizing on the asphalt’
(Benjamin 1973: 36), through the migrant ghettos of Brick Lane, Kreuzberg and
Nanterre.5 As their work suggests, the ‘sly civility’ of the migrant (Bhabha 1994)
has been fetishized, projected onto others in ways that reflect metropolitan needs,
desires and outlooks, not necessarily those of migrants themselves. We often lose
sight, as a consequence, of the grinding struggles of migrants with bureaucracy
and racism, of political and strategic options (beyond ‘culture’), of the disciplinary
regimes of multiculturalism and hybridity in host societies (see Kosnick 2007).
Post-structuralist – and much ethnomusicological – theorizing about migrancy
and modernity also occupies a distinctly secular universe, and thus misses some-
thing important. The neo-liberal revolutions of recent decades have significantly
disrupted secular post-colonial nation-state building projects. Religion has been
promoted by the managers of the new ‘market states’ (Balakrishnan 2003) as a
social security net, and as the vehicle of an intimate, sentimental public morality
generally well adapted to the withered states, the sprawl of slums and the dispersed
migrant kinship structures characteristic of globalized late capitalism. National
and religious identities have found themselves in distinctly new and uneasy align-
ments. In migrant communities in Western Europe and North America, religious
institutions and their media networks increasingly provide social and cultural
infrastructure, and a sense of home. The matter has of course been very well
studied, but a broad musical picture has been lacking. This is a pity, since music is
in many migrant contexts a particularly important means of making a home, and
imagining a future.
It will be beyond the scope of a short chapter such as this to do more than sketch
an approach, and indicate some of the stakes of the argument. We might note,
for example, the similarities between the migrant musics of the Christian world
and those of the Muslim world in the Mediterranean, similarities that suggest a
bringing-to-bear of common resources on shared, if not – by now – global, prob-
lems. A key tenet of Orientalism, that Islam is always exceptional, ‘different’,
still very much alive in contemporary social and cultural theory (Almond 2007),
is hard to sustain in such moves. The post-structuralist idea of the Mediterranean
as Europe’s unconscious also provides some cues and provocations. Much goes
on in and through music that is actively disavowed by, or repressed within, the
dominant self-representations of Mediterranean societies. In two societies whose
modern moments of national self-determination have been vigorously secular
(Mintoff in Malta, Atatürk in Turkey), musical practices associated with popular
religion have been richly implicated in such collective disavowals and repres-
sions. The remainder of this chapter moves, accordingly, between two locales:
Istanbul and Malta.6
Turkey has recently witnessed the emergence of an Islamist popular musical
culture, one closely associated with the capture of the state apparatus by religious
political parties in the 1990s and the ongoing Islamization of the public sphere.
All of this has been taking place in a nominally ‘secular’ republic. An important
figure in this world is Mehmet Emin Ay, a Qur’an reciter and theology professor at
Bursa’s Uludağ University, who has developed a sentimental devotional music that
has been immensely popular and has sparked many imitators. I have been inter-
viewing him, speaking to his producers and watching him perform in recent years.7
It is not only the emergence of this kind of public devotionalism that inter-
ests me, but also its connection with a significantly changed landscape vis-à-vis
migration. Over two million people of Turkish descent reside in Western Europe,
particularly in Germany. Migrant workers caused much embarrassment in Turkey
in the 1980s, when I began my research there. I often found myself being told by
new acquaintances that the migrant workers (the gurbetci-s, or almancı-s) gave
Europeans ‘the wrong idea’ about Turks and Turkey. In the view of these acquaint-
ances, they went directly to Europe without having got used to city life in Ankara
or Istanbul first. Europeans’ first impressions of Turks were consequently of peas-
ants, of people who took off their shoes when entering railway carriages, who
preferred to sit on the floor rather than chairs, and (most painfully) whose women-
folk wore veils. The wounding rejections of Turkey by the European Union during
this period were constantly blamed on the poor impression these migrants made.
Political assassinations of prominent liberals were blamed on migrant religious
organizations banned in Turkey itself.8
In the mid-1990s, this changed. German-Turkish rap became fashionable.
Fatih Akın portrayed migrant life in humorous and positive terms in films such as
Gegen die Wand/Duvara Karşı (2004). ‘Migrant chic’ began to dominate maga-
zine fashion pages in both Germany and Turkey. Popular singers either adopted
or no longer bothered to disguise identifiably German ways of speaking Turkish.
The term kanak, referring to German-Turkish street slang, began to evoke cosmo-
politan sophistication rather than linguistic degeneration.9 The ‘Hanzo’10 of 1970s
popular imagination in Turkey became today’s ‘Avro Türk’ (‘Euro Turk’), whose
numbers include cultural icons such as Rafet El Roman and Tarkan (Tekelioğlu
2009). Formerly, this would have been unimaginable.
The new devotional music of people like Mehmet Emin Ay, full of musical
references to the wider Muslim world, and to the nashid (devotional pop songs) of
neighbouring countries, also acknowledges migrant space in a surprisingly direct
way. Mehmet Emin Ay’s 2006 CD, Nur’ül Hüda, for instance, concludes with a
song that repeats an Arabic blessing in English, French, German, Dutch, Turkish
and Kurdish – the languages of migrant workers from Turkey in Europe. It is
worth noting that, as an academic, Mehmet Emin Ay has researched and published
on Islamic education in migrant society. For him, and many like him, German
Turks may be a fashionable topic of conversation, but they face problems. They
have been denied basic spiritual support and left to fend for themselves. As a
consequence, many have, in the views of religious conservatives, forgotten their
culture, their religion and their language. The emotionality and sentimentalism of
the music establishes a common frame of devotional reference. The repetitions
of simple lines from prayers and blessings in the lyrics reinforce for those who
Figure 2.1â•‡ Good Friday Pageant, Żebbuġ, Malta, Holy Week 2009
might have forgotten, or perhaps never been taught, the basic linguistic formulae
through which Muslims, worldwide, acknowledge one another’s presence and
affirm their community. The new devotionalism in Turkey, then, acknowledges
migrant lives and migrant problems in a surprisingly direct way.
From one scene of devotionalism to another: Good Friday 2009, Żebbuġ,
Malta. I am on the balcony of the band club in Żebbuġ watching the pageant
(Figure 2.1). About 2,000 people are involved, roughly 15 per cent of the village’s
entire population. A parade of Roman soldiers, biblical tableaux and Stations
of the Cross pass by, then bare-footed penitents carrying crosses, the band, the
priest, village worthies. A public address system plays lugubrious tracks from
Morricone film scores and Jesus Christ Superstar. The band plays its gloomiest
repertory of funeral marches, much of it written by Italian bandmasters and their
Maltese pupils early in the twentieth century. The bells of the church have been
replaced by huge wooden clappers, which clack dully and incessantly throughout
the afternoon.
The soundscape is dense, multilayered, busy. Quite quickly I develop a head-
ache. I had planned on meeting friends, but cannot locate them in the huge
crowds. They have come, like many, because Żebbuġ’s procession is renowned
for its spectacular nature, as well as a particular air of melancholy – the precise
varieties and nuances of which seemed to elicit a great deal of discussion and
comparison earlier in the week by Maltese friends. The band club director, Philip
Balzan, shows me proudly around the imposing premises, before hurrying off to
resume his official duties. The old parish priest had opposed these pageants on
spiritual grounds. His opposition had been effective. Neither band club in the
village had been able to expand the scale of the event and compete with pageants
elsewhere on the island. But the priest had recently died. Already dominant in the
festa season (a period of saints’ festivals celebrated from the end of May until
September), the band clubs had moved quickly to claim ownership of another key
event in the civic ritual cycle. The director is clearly delighted by this develop-
ment. My host and his in-laws, Maltese-Canadians, leave to spend time with their
terminally ill father, leaving me to observe the pageant from the balcony and take
pictures (see Figure 2.1).
The amplified sound of Andrew Cauchi, a popular Maltese religious singer,
was never far from earshot during the Holy Week period. It was prominent on the
public address system at the Our Lady of Sorrows procession in Valletta, which I
had attended a week earlier. It was to be heard playing quietly in the background
at the ubiquitous exhibitions of Holy Week scenes in churches and in private resi-
dences. I mention him, thinking I had heard one of his songs being played before
the pageant began, and find myself immersed in conversation.11 I discover that he
honed his musical skills at the Marana Thá Catholic Charismatic Community, an
institution with which he continues to be associated.12 I also learn that he tours
widely, for the purposes of outreach and ministry, among Maltese communities
elsewhere in Europe and Australia. His 2008 recording, Lilek Biss, which I track
down in a religious bookshop in Valletta, contains quiet, melancholic, guitar-based
songs. The lyrics, usually in Maltese but sometimes in English, are direct and inti-
mate in emotional address. When in Maltese, they are sufficiently uncomplicated
for me to be able to translate merely on the basis of knowing Arabic.
It all seems calculated to avoid offence. But a distinct ambivalence hovers over
his name when I bring it up in conversation. Middle-class friends and students
clearly find the sentimentality embarrassing, and wonder whether his enormous
popularity might be damaging. Does he induce spiritual passivity? Will he make
people forget the traditional arts of Maltese hymn singing?13 Has this become our
national music? More inchoate concerns seem close to the surface in these discus-
sions. As a Maltese journalist put it to me in conversation at the Maundy Thursday
procession in Valletta, public devotion seems to be shifting from ‘church’ to ‘street’,
a fact that one might readily witness in the huge numbers participating in Malta’s
ever-expanding Holy Week processions and pageants. Popular religiosity is no
longer contained by church and state, as it once seemed to be. Cauchi is a sign of
shifts that my educated, middle-class friends were clearly struggling to understand.
The soundscapes of public devotionalism in Malta and Turkey are cosmopol-
itan, eclectic, and new. They obey a popular dynamic that is not fully under the
control of either state or religious authority. They openly engage a global circula-
tion of people and of sounds. They embrace cultural ties with powerful neigh-
bours (Italy for the Maltese and the Arab world for the Turks), still considered
problematic by many. They project an intimate emotionality onto national ritual
space. They establish new sites of public self-fashioning. They have generated a
market for new kinds of mass-mediated musical devotionalism. They shape new
kinds of listening, ethically motivated (Hirschkind 2006). They ground an emer-
gent cultural politics, one that is, as yet, quite hard to figure.
This cultural politics is certainly connected to defensive and chauvinistic
positions in both Malta and Turkey, and the drawing of new and perhaps even
more emphatic lines of inclusion and exclusion. But this is not the whole story.
Patriarchal secular nation-state building projects, and the fantasies of separa-
tion, boundedness and territorially rooted identity associated with them, have, in
crucial regards, collapsed. Senses of national belonging are now being adjusted
to different spatial and temporal orders, in which migrancy is acknowledged,
and often seen as a resource rather than a national embarrassment. Such adjust-
ments and reimaginings, which play out in the complex soundscapes of public
religiosity that I have touched on this chapter, also involve struggle and contest.
Whose vision of things, of tradition, of modernity, of the nation, of the religious
community, is to prevail, and on the basis of what kind of authority? Even as they
enable these struggles to take place, such soundscapes do not suggest conclusive,
or settled, answers.
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Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge.
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Musicale’, Musica e Storia, 5: 181–204.
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Continuum.
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Counterpublics, New York: Columbia University Press.
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Sharma, S., Hutnyk, J. and Sharma, A. (1996) Dis-Orienting Rhythms: The Politics of the
New Asian Dance Music, London: Zed Books.
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Clarendon.
Stokes, M. (forthcoming) ‘New Islamist Popular Culture in Turkey’, in K. Salhi (ed.),

Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World: Performance, Politics and Piety,
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Swedenburg (eds), Palestine, Israel, and the Politics of Popular Culture, Durham, NC:
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<http://www.radikal.com.tr/Radikal.aspx?aType=RadikalEklerDetay&ArticleID= 932009
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Rotbuch Verlag.
Discography
Andrew Cauchi (2008) Lilek Biss, Heartfelt Worship HFM06
Mehmet Emin Ay (2006) Nûru’l-Hüdâ, Beyza. 2006.Ü.1422.126
Notes
â•‡ 1 I owe this observation to Eddie Seroussi.
â•‡ 2 Women are vital links in the transmission of property in both the Muslim and Christian
Mediterranean, as the anthropologists Lomax drew on emphasized. Sexuality in this
region, experienced within what Mediterraneanist anthropologists – now much criti-
cized – referred to as the ‘honour and shame’ paradigm, was thus intensely bound up
with property issues, the exercise of violence, and competition over scarce resources,
such as water and pasturage. Mediterranean musical practice mediated these sexual
codes, for Lomax and his followers, and was thus thoroughly implicated in the produc-
tive systems and material struggles of these societies.
â•‡ 3 See also Fabbri 2001, which locates such singers and their claims to a ‘Mediterranean
identity’ in the broader historical landscape of Italian popular song.
â•‡ 4 I have in mind the writing gathered in Ken Brown’s Mediterraneans/Méditerranéennes
review, initiated in 1992. See, for instance, Brown and Davis Taieb 1996, on Alexandria.
â•‡ 5 Benjamin’s phrase, from his celebrated study of Baudelaire (1973), describes the new
urbanite, simultaneously of, yet apart from, the emerging social order of nineteenth-
century Paris.
â•‡ 6 In Turkey I would like to acknowledge the generous help of Mehmet Emin Ay and
Mustafa Demirci; and in Malta, of Philip Ciantar, who read through a draft of this
chapter and provided many useful and generous comments; Paul Clough; Philip Balzan
of the St Philip Band Club of Żebbuġ; and Simon Mercieca.
â•‡ 7 See Stokes (forthcoming) for a detailed study of this vocalist.
â•‡ 8 For a discussion of the so-called ‘Rabıta affair’, the assassination of investigative jour-
nalist Uğur Mumcu by a Turkish Islamist organization based in Germany in 1981, see
Stokes 1992.
â•‡ 9 The term was popularized in Feridun Zaimoğlu’s well-known book Kanak Sprak, origi-
nally published in 1995 (Zaimoğlu 1999).
10 Hanzo is ‘little Hans’, i.e. the no-longer-Turkish but not-yet-German immigrant,
usually imagined as a Turkish or Kurdish villager completely at sea in German culture.
Shortening a name and adding ‘o’ is a common way of making Turkish nicknames.
Ibrahim becomes ‘Ibo’, my name ‘Marto’, Abdullah ‘Apo’, and so forth.
11 Maltese ethnomusicologist Philip Ciantar assures me I was mistaken. He notes, ‘I
would restrict Cauchi’s singing to the procession of Our Lady of Sorrows in Valletta.
His “modern” sentimental voice is likely to be considered as unfitting (as an accompa-
niment) for the Good Friday pageant. However, for a reason that I’m unable to explain,
his voice would sound suitable for processions with less pageantry, like those held with
the statue of Our Lady of Rosary and Our Lady of Sorrows. His songs are very popular
in local church services and prayer groups’ (personal communication).
12 The Marana Thá community is an evangelical community within the Maltese Roman
Catholic Church. It resembles many of the Protestant Pentecostal communities bearing
the same name (taken, incidentally, from Aramaic, meaning ‘Come, O Lord’), espe-
cially in its emphasis on popular music as a form of outreach and evangelization. In
Malta, the Marana Thá community is particularly known for its public prayer meetings,
accompanied by a choir that has at times been led by Cauchi himself, and its healing
services.
13 The writer known by many as Malta’s national poet, Dun Karm Psaila, penned many of
these.
3 ‘My own little Morocco at home’
A biographical account of
migration, mediation and
music consumption
Carolyn Landau
YouTube has become my window on Morocco and listening to music is an impor-

tant way of appreciating my ‘Moroccan-eity’. … In the past there was this strong
homesickness, which I find now doesn’t exist, because I have my own little
Morocco at home.
These are the words of Mohamed, the main protagonist in this chapter.1 He was
born in 1974 in Ait Abbou, a small Berber village near Khemissat, in central
Morocco. He was born into the Zimour (Amazigh) tribe and was brought up by his
grandmother speaking Tamazight (one of the Berber languages of Morocco) and
Darija (Moroccan spoken Arabic).2 At the age of seven, Mohamed moved to live
with his mother and father in the ancient medina of Fez, an imperial walled city in
central Morocco and, at the age of 17, he left Morocco to continue his education
in France. After four years in France, he moved briefly to Denmark, followed by
Canada, and finally came to Britain in 1998, where he has remained to the present
day (2010). This chapter explores the correlation between music consumption
and the articulation and negotiation of multiple identities and relationships by
examining the role that mediated music has played in Mohamed’s life at different
stages of his migratory journey.
It is worth noting that my use and understanding of forms of the word ‘consume’
in relation to music throughout this chapter diverge from more ‘traditional’ or
common uses within the field of economics. For the purposes of this particular
biographical account, the nature of ‘consuming music’ is one that comprises both
hearing and listening, but is also more deliberate than each of these, involving some
form of ‘digestion’ of the music’s sounds, meanings and associations, following
(to a certain extent) Appadurai, who has stated that ‘consumption is eminently
social, relational, and active rather than private, atomic, or passive’ (1986: 31).
As people make the journey from village to city, from country to country,
from culture to culture, and from child to adult, the music they consume and
relate to during these migrations can shed important light on processes of identity
construction, negotiation and cultivation. It is well known that music, alongside
other factors such as language, food and dress, can be one of the most poignant
identity markers employed by individuals and communities, as noted by Baily and
Collyer (2006: 173):
‘My own little Morocco at home’â•… 39
Music is bound up with identity and memory in a special way, for music is not
only a ready means for the identification of different ethnic or social groups,
it has potent emotional connotations and can be used to assert and negotiate
identity in a particularly powerful manner.
The music that an individual hears as a child may not be appreciated or seem
meaningful at the time. Once the migratory journey begins, however, the music of
one’s childhood and the music that one might associate with ‘home’ often takes on
new and important meanings. Hearing familiar music out of its original context,
‘the delocalisation of the experience of listening’ in Martin Stokes’s formulation
(1994: 21), may enable individuals to remain connected to ‘home’ (whether real
or imagined) through the emotions and memories that music evokes. Mark Slobin
has illustrated the role of music – be it live, recorded or remembered – in facili-
tating these connections (1994: 243):
Music is central to the diasporic experience, linking homeland and here-land

with an intricate network of sound. Whether through the burnished memory
of childhood songs, the packaged passions of recordings, or the steady traffic
of live bands, people identify themselves strongly, even principally, through
their music.
As Mohamed talked to me about the music he has consumed, how he has

consumed it, and the meaning this music has had in his life, multiple identi-
ties and affiliations began to emerge. Alongside cultural and political identities
(ethnic, national, pan-Maghrebi, pan-Arab and transnational), were more inti-
mate, familial associations, constructed through cyberspace. As Mohamed’s story
unfolds, these various identities and relationships overlap, interact and are reen-
acted and reinterpreted, and I am reminded of Frith’s observations that ‘identity
is mobile, a process not a thing, a becoming not a being’ and that ‘our experience
of music – of music making and music listening – is best understood as an experi-
ence of this self-in-process’ (1996: 109): an experience that has been facilitated
and accelerated in more recent years by digital technologies.
This chapter is divided into three sections, following three particular phases
of Mohamed’s migratory journey. The first section examines Mohamed’s first
stage of migration from the village to the city and the new musical surround-
ings confronting him following this initial internal migration within Morocco.
Mohamed encountered many new genres of music during this period whilst
simultaneously continuing to consume much of the music he had grown up with
in the village through the medium of cassettes and the radio. It was a period of
transition and transformation, where multiple identities were at play. The various
genres of music Mohamed consumed during this phase in his journey shed light
on ethnic, pan-Arab and national identities, as well as the wider political situation
in the region at this time. The second section explores his migration away from
Morocco and into Europe. While in France, Mohamed met many other North
African students and through them encountered genres of North African popular
music (most notably raï). As he consumed this music, he began to construct a
40â•… Carolyn Landau
pan-Maghrebi identity whilst also negotiating the complex socio-political situ-

ation vis-à-vis North Africans in France. The third section explores Mohamed’s
most recent migration to Britain and reveals how this phase has coincided with
the global rise of digital media technologies (such as the Internet) and music- and
video-sharing websites (such as YouTube or DailyMotion).3 I show how these
new media have enabled Mohamed to construct a transnational cyber-community
of family and friends whose focus is music consumption and in so doing rein-
forced intimate notions of kinship. As music clips and comments are exchanged
between cousins, brothers, sons and mothers living across three continents, previ-
ously encountered ethnic and national identities are individually and communally
renegotiated and reimagined and, at times, a sense of belonging and well-being is
experienced.
The first migration: from village to medina

The airwaves are thick with the pulsating voice of Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum.
It is a Thursday night in 1982 and across the Arab world men, women and children
are tuning in to hear the immensely popular ‘Voice of Egypt’, as she came to be
known.4 The long, passionate phrases filter through the narrow alleyways of the
ancient medina in Fez to reach the young ears of Mohamed, who has recently
moved there from Ait Abbou – much like hundreds of other Berber families, as
part of the ‘rural exodus’ that has swept Morocco during the past twenty years.5
He is unaccustomed to the deep sonorous voice, the classical Arabic of the sung
poetry, and the heterophonic6 texture of the music, which bears little resemblance
to the music he has grown up with in the village. As he makes his way along the
winding streets lined with cafés and small shops he passes men sipping mint tea,
playing cards, and contentedly imbibing the rich melodies. In stark contrast to the
men he passes, the music means little to Mohamed. He is neither attracted nor
repulsed by it, but he is aware, even at such a young age, that this is not his music.
Arriving home, Mohamed closes the door behind him, shutting out the Thursday
evening broadcast from Cairo, and soon becomes aware of the welcoming smells
of his mother’s cooking, accompanied by the familiar warmth of the voice of
Mohamed Rouicha and the distinctive sound of his accompanying lotar (plucked
long-necked lute, also known as watra).7 Reflecting on his move from the coun-
tryside to the city many years later, he remarks that he adapted much better than he
might have done, which he believes was largely due to the (Berber) cultural and
musical references he continued to enjoy at home. The music that had surrounded
him while growing up in the village, such as that played as part of the haidus line
dances8 was transported on his mother’s treasured cassettes into their new home
in the heart of the Fez medina. He remembers how important the cassettes were
to his mother:
What I remember vividly as a child is my mother, weaving her magic carpet9

and singing along to Berber music.
Although he did not appreciate the Tamazight lyrics to the extent his mother
did,10 the young Mohamed liked the Amazigh rhythms and felt able to relate to the
music in a way that was not yet possible with the music he was confronted with
day to day as he walked around the medina:
It was strange at the beginning because nothing made much sense, but what
I liked was that I had a cultural reference back at home – with my mother
playing her Berber music on the radio or her cassettes – that has never left
me, even today.
The radio was a medium that was present in Mohamed’s life both in the village
and the city. During Ramadan and other religious festivals, as well as during
periods of drought or other natural disasters, the music played on the radio would
be dominated by Moroccan andalus and melhun music.11 Much of the poetry that
is used as song texts for these genres is religious in nature, and it is these parts of
the repertoires that are broadcast during times of national suffering and hardship,
in order to encourage piety and prayerfulness. These Arab, urban musical genres,
then, along with the ‘rural’ Berber songs, remained constant and meaningful in
Mohamed’s life as he moved from the village to the city, unlike many of the new
genres he encountered as he negotiated the new city:
For me, the music I heard at home I could relate to. But I wasn’t prepared
to hear Arab music all around me in the medina. But I got used to it and it
just became something I heard in the background – it didn’t mean a great
deal to me.
Mohamed’s new, urban surroundings were a far cry from his rural beginnings,
and his parents were keen that he should integrate fully, embracing the language,
lifestyle, education, culture and music of the city and the (relatively) recently inde-
pendent kingdom of Morocco. They perhaps felt the pressures of the ‘Arabization’
policy being enforced by the post-colonial, nationalist government and saw their
cooperation with this system as the best, or perhaps only, way for their son to
succeed. To achieve the desired integration and educational success, his parents
sent him to Qur’anic school, where he was taught classical Arabic by Syrian and
Egyptian teachers, many of whom had been imported to Morocco as part of this
post-colonial pan-Arabization movement. He recalls the important role that clas-
sical Arab music played in this education:
I remember certain things vividly. For example on Fridays I used to go to my

teacher’s house with all the other students and he used to get us all sitting
together, singing for all of us to learn classical Arabic through music. He
would give us cookies and tea and play us music, get us to listen to the words
and then to repeat it. It was a good way to learn Arabic, but it was hard to
remember the words!
Mohamed began to recognize the significance of this music for the urban Arab
men of Morocco as they sat in their cafés. The Thursday night broadcasts both
embodied and therefore somehow connected them (and Morocco as a country)

to the post-colonial pan-Arab movement.12 Mohamed, in his observation of
this period whilst in conversation with me, seemed to position himself in an
intriguing variable manner as regards his self-perception as ‘Moroccan’ at this
stage in his life:
I remember people listening to Cairo and Damascus. There was so much

propaganda: that we were all Arabs and we all share the same language,
ethnicity, culture, religion. For the Moroccans, they were fascinated that this
music was sung in Lebanon and Egypt and yet it had an appeal to us as
Moroccans, who are partly Arab.
The hints of ambivalence in Mohamed’s account of ‘propaganda’ point to a

more general cultural politics of language in play at this time. During the French
Protectorate (from 1912 to 1956), French had been the only language used in
education and government (Ennaji 2005: 97). The newly independent Moroccan
state sought to rectify this situation through a policy of ‘Arabization’, which
included promoting Arabic as a language that could unify the country. However,
over half of the Moroccan population spoke a Berber language – Tamazight,
Tashlhit or Tarafit – as a mother tongue (Ennaji 2005: 72; Njoku 2006: 6; Schuyler
n.d.). Consequently ‘Arabization’ meant the ‘marginalisation of Berber language
and culture’ (Ennaji 2005: 90) and the alienation of Berbers. Today the situation of
Berber peoples in Morocco is much improved, a particular turning point occurring
in 1994, when Berber languages were officially introduced into primary schools
(ibid.: 171). But a push to recognize the importance of Berber languages and
cultures was already under way in the years when Mohamed was growing up, as
is evidenced in his memories of popular music from around that time.
The move from the village to the depths of the medina introduced Mohamed to
more than just singers coming out of Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Popular music
– both the local version from Fez, known as chaabi fassi, and English-language
popular music from the USA and UK could be heard around the medina. Artists who
were popular during this period were those collaborating with Moroccan gnawa
musicians,13 such as Brian Jones (of the Rolling Stones) and Jimi Hendrix.14 In
particular, though, it was the Moroccan ‘roots-fusion’ bands, which also borrowed
stylistically from the gnawa (amongst other traditions) that Mohamed was most
drawn to. The most famous of these15 was Nass el Ghiwane (‘People of Love’ or
‘People of Temptation’), who formed in 1971 and very quickly achieved national
and pan-Maghrebi fame, remaining popular to the current day. Their popularity is
partly due to the way in which their music makes use of many regional (including
Berber) musical genres and instruments, and partly due to the social and political
content of their lyrics, which boldly criticized the political regime of the 1970s
and 1980s. As such, Nass el Ghiwane is considered by many Moroccans to have
been the first Moroccan band to exemplify or signify a national identity that
embodied the multifarious cultural and musical nature of Morocco, rather than
excluding much of the population’s cultural and musical heritage. Mohamed, too,
characterized Nass el Ghiwane as an extremely important and influential band. He
vividly remembers hearing them for the first time while sitting in a coffee shop in
Fez, as he explained to me:
Nass el Ghiwane give an insight into Moroccan culture. They appeal to the
intellectuals as well as the working classes. They took Moroccan heritage
and gave it a voice. They said ‘I’m going to make something artistic and I’m
not going to borrow it from Lebanon or Syria or Egypt. I’m going to borrow
it from you or me!’ And that’s more powerful than anything else. If you see
a man who doesn’t shake his body to Nass el Ghiwane, you know he’s not
Moroccan! When a Nass el Ghiwane song is played it hits you straight away:
the lyrics, the beat and the tempo, the charisma of the members! You don’t
realize but it changes your mood immediately.
It was at the height of this ‘Ghiwanien fever’ (Callen 2006: 6) that Mohamed
had the opportunity to continue his studies in France, age seventeen. During the
ten years that Mohamed had spent living in the Fez medina, he had encountered
numerous cultural (particularly linguistic and musical) influences that were, to
him, strange and new. The Arabic language and the Arab classical musical tradi-
tions, along with the pan-Arab sharqi (Middle Eastern) singers, such as Umm
Kulthum, all of which were elevated within Moroccan society as part of the
‘Arabization’ movement, were slowly (and perhaps subconsciously) forming part
of Mohamed’s cultural identity, despite his apparent indifference towards them
initially. And although his parents remained close to their ethnic roots through
the consumption of mediated Berber music at home, they also recognized the
political necessity of immersing their children in the ‘Arabized’ education
system. By the time Mohamed left Morocco to continue his migratory journey
to France, however, he was also engrossed in the music of the new Moroccan
bands, such as Nass el Ghiwane, which sought to establish a Moroccan musical
identity that resisted the Arabization of Moroccan culture by celebrating rather
than suppressing Morocco’s ethnic diversity. Interestingly, these same bands were
relatively influential in the development of the music that Mohamed encountered
upon arriving in France, at least in terms of its socio-political role for its young
North African performers and consumers.
The second migration: from Fez to France

The transition from Fez to Paris was a relatively easy one for Mohamed to make.
He was already familiar with the French education system, as he had attended
a French secondary school in Fez for some years.16 Moreover, upon arrival in
Paris he soon met and became friends with a number of other North African
students, of Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian origin, and quickly discovered
various factors that united these young Maghrebi students. On the negative side,
many of them felt victimized by the French police, who, in the aftermath of the
attacks carried out by the Algerian GIA (Armed Islamic Group) on the Paris
metro in 1995, would regularly target young men of North African appearance.17
More positively, they found affinity in language and religion. But it was raï (a
genre of popular music that originated in western Algeria, close to the Moroccan
border in the east of the country at the turn of the twentieth century), according
to Mohamed, that bound them together most powerfully.18 Growing up in central
Morocco, Mohamed had not encountered raï during his childhood, but his
arrival in France in the 1990s coincided with the rapid rise in popularity of the
genre in France. The first large-scale concert of raï music in France, sponsored
by SOS-racisme, was held in 1986 in Bobigny, just outside Paris, and featured
the ‘King of raï’, Cheb Khaled.19 During his time in Paris, Mohamed attended
parties and events where raï music was played, bringing together not only North
African but also European students, and in this way acting as a cultural bridge
between them:
That era in France was very important as a student. There were many alli-
ances between students. What I liked was that we were Moroccans, Algerians
and Tunisians and despite the fact that our governments were having territo-
rial disputes,20 we felt united because we all spoke the same language, we
were all Muslims and we shared raï. There were Arab nights when we intro-
duced French students to raï music. They realized it was rhythmic and they
could dance to it. Raï music was a way for us in France to create a dialogue,
because it was light, it was rhythmic, and it had many Western influences. It
wasn’t such a baptism of fire as, say, Nass el Ghiwane would be!
Mohamed’s observations about the role of raï for him and his fellow North
African students in Paris during the 1990s resonate with many of the points that
authors such as Gross et al. (1996) and Marranci (2001, 2005) have made in rela-
tion to the socio-political significance and use of the genre by young ‘Franco-
Maghrebis’. As these young, ‘foreign’ men experienced oppression by the French
police amidst a climate of racism against the North African presence in France
(Silverstein 2004),21 so raï music became a ‘weapon’ of self-expression for the
oppressed, as well as a way of creating not only dialogue but also a counter-
public22 consisting of both young North Africans and young (white) French
progressives, united in their contempt for the French government’s treatment of
immigrant communities.
While living in Paris, Mohamed was able to access most genres of Moroccan
music he wanted from the North African cassette and CD sellers in Barbès, the
eighteenth arrondissement (district) in Paris, where a large number of North and
West African residents, shops, cafés, clubs and restaurants are located. Despite
this availability of Moroccan music, the music that featured most prominently in
Mohamed’s life during his time in France was, strictly speaking, more Algerian
than Moroccan. Moreover, raï was a genre that perhaps best encapsulated the
North African immigrant experience in France and one that he had encountered
for the first time in France, not Morocco. Mohamed’s choice of raï (a pan-
Maghrebi music) over Nass el Ghiwane (a Moroccan music) was one way he
was able to find a sense of belonging within the North African cultural presence
in France, but also to make his own voice heard within the ‘inhospitable, racist
environment’ (Gross et al. 1996: 126) of the host culture.
Migrating to the present: moving to London and the

cultivation of identity online
In his introduction to Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the Musical Construction of
Place, Martin Stokes reminds us of the role personal music consumption can play
in enabling individuals to create transnational connections, regardless of their
physical location (1994: 4):
The case of the private collection of records, tapes and CDs illustrates the
ways in which music can be used as a means of transcending the limitations
of our own place in the world, of constructing trajectories rather than bounda-
ries across space.
Mohamed’s ability to access music and so create his own private collection
has varied according to his location along his migratory journey, as has the nature
and format of this collection. As mentioned previously, the large North African
community in parts of Paris facilitated the ease with which he could access the
music he wanted while in France, as well as providing a physical, immediate
community with whom he could enjoy listening. When he arrived in the UK in
1998, however, where the Moroccan community is far smaller and less visible
than in France,23 he was unable to find any specialized vendors and, upon ordering
CDs from mainstream record stores, endured waiting times of over two months.
Frustrated by this situation, Mohamed decided to wait for his visits to Morocco
to buy the music he wanted from the markets there. This was until he discovered
the video-sharing website YouTube (founded in 2005), along with other websites
where Moroccan music was readily available.24 Since then, his consumption of
music (and music videos) has been transformed:
But when YouTube came in, it opened a whole new window. Whereas before
I might have preferred one genre over another at different times, now I find I
embrace everything much more. … I listen to it all. I listen to French music
now, English music, Moroccan music, sharqi, oriental, Berber. … Nass el
Ghiwane appeals to me the most, but I also listen to sharqi music because I
reminisce about Morocco, it takes me back to Fez; I listen to Berber music
because it takes me back to the countryside in Morocco. I like listening to
watra, because it takes me to my mum’s house, weaving her carpet and
reciting all the wonderful, wonderful Berber poems, you know.
No longer determined by what he can find in the Parisian or Moroccan market

stalls or within the private collection stored physically on his shelves or elec-
tronically on his laptop, the music that Mohamed now consumes in the confines
of his own home using websites such as YouTube has expanded to include most
musical genres he has encountered during his lifetime, plus many more to which
his friends and family regularly refer him. In this way, the ‘private collection’,
which was once physical, definable and limited, has become virtual, public and
fluid.25 Mohamed is aware that many of the consumption choices he now makes
are steered by a sense of nostalgia for his childhood, the places where he grew up,
family members and friends. And as Mohamed chooses to listen to and share with
family and friends different genres of music using global media technologies, he
is at once able to negotiate multiple identities as he transcends boundaries and
positions himself in various locations (Stokes 1994: 3), whilst also articulating
and developing intimate social bonds of kinship and friendship.
Throughout each phase of Mohamed’s migratory journey, different types of
music have been present, and each has played its own role in shaping his identity.
What is striking is how his discovery and usage of YouTube and other music-sharing
websites in the past few years have, in a sense, brought these identities together,
whilst simultaneously intersecting with emerging transnational, communal and
socially intimate identities. Many of the genres of music that Mohamed consumed
during his youth in Morocco have taken on new meanings as he has rediscovered
them on YouTube. This process, or this ‘self-in-process’ (Frith 1996: 109), has been
further facilitated by his increased interaction with Moroccan friends and family
members living all over the world, also made possible by developments in global
communications. Their ability to email each other links to Moroccan music videos
has enabled the emergence of a transnational cyber-community that celebrates its
‘Moroccan-ness’, which in turn is creating a sense of well-being for Mohamed:
I find it [YouTube] really enriching and I find it really brings the community
together because how many times do I have Moroccan friends write to me
to tell me, ‘Oh, have you seen this YouTube? You’ll laugh if you see this
Moroccan woman dancing this way!’ or, ‘Oh, have you seen this new song?
Mohamed, look at this, it takes me back years and years!’ And you do share
those experiences. … My cousins in USA, Holland, Germany, and even from
Morocco itself, now you can all listen to it at the same time and make your
comments. And I find that has brought something of a forum to us, it’s initi-
ated a new dialogue. We write to each other about all sorts of music and we
keep in touch all the time. My cousin, Hecham, the music he grew up with,
he completely didn’t listen to it for about ten, fifteen years, but then he went
back to it and it revived those feelings in him – and it did the same to me!
With those experiences that have been shared between the two of us, it does
make better sense, because, you know, it’s not just me alone, it’s my cousin
who has the same experience and perspective.
As Mohamed’s understanding and appreciation of many of the genres of

music he encountered during his childhood in Morocco are enriched as they are
discussed and communally consumed in a cyber-forum, so also is Mohamed’s role
as ‘son’, ‘cousin’ and ‘friend’ affirmed and strengthened. As this intimate ‘cyber
social forum’ provides a platform for the consumption of these different genres of
music, so are ethnic, national, pan-Arab and pan-Maghrebi identities articulated
and renegotiated communally. The Berber music Mohamed consumed as a young
child in the village, and continued to hear at home in the medina, for example,
draws him closer to his mother, enabling him to occupy the role of ‘son’, whilst
also asserting a clear sense of ethnic identity:
Berber music is the music of my mum and it’s like the bond between me and
my mum. It gets stronger every time I listen to Berber music. Like, I listen to
my own music, I can relax and relate to it and if I want to have a discussion
about it I just call my mother. I say, ‘Oh, I’ve just been listening to Mohamed
Rouicha playing his watra and you remember that song you used to play
when I was a kid?’ And that will bring a whole new meaning to it again by
making, not just a song, but something I grew up with, it’s part of me. Use
breeds familiarity and when things have been within your sort of cultural
DNA as a young kid growing up, you go to listen to them again and you feel
completely different.
Meanwhile, the sharqi music from Egypt that seemed so foreign to him when
he first encountered it upon arrival, age seven, in Fez, he has grown to enjoy over
the years, mainly because of its associations with the place where he first heard it,
which now signifies ‘home’:
It was hard to adapt. [When I moved to Fez] I was bewildered and out of
context, but I developed certain affinities with the music, because, now, it
reminds me of Fez. But mainly it’s my understanding that has grown over
the years and Umm Kulthum wouldn’t make sense to me twenty years ago, it
makes a lot of sense to me now.
By choosing to listen to this type of music in his adulthood, Mohamed is able

to articulate a pan-Arab identity alongside a national, Moroccan identity, since the
voice of Umm Kulthum and her counterparts locate him in Morocco, reminding
him of ‘home’, but during an era of pan-Arab fervour, which partly shaped him
as a child.
His appreciation of Nass el Ghiwane has also grown and matured over the years
and has had a striking impact on him:
I find myself reacting – it’s very, very strange – with varying degrees of
enthusiasm towards particular songs. I find myself, you know, shaking my
head, I can’t control it, when I listen to Nass el Ghiwane because it’s trancing,
because there’s an element of the Sufi and Gnawa music and it gets you more
excited than other genres, and I find that really fascinating that here I am,
I’m the same person and I’m more embracing than I used to be. The other
thing I found out: when I was listening to Nass el Ghiwane in the seven-
ties and eighties, it didn’t make that much sense to me at the time. Now
when I examine the lyrics and how the music is composed, I have a better
appreciation.
Nass el Ghiwane, as discussed above, are iconic of multiple Moroccan identi-

ties in the way that they incorporate diverse musical, linguistic and contextual
references in their songs. Mohamed’s particular affinity with this group in recent
years might accordingly evidence the primacy for him of a Moroccan identity.
Interestingly, this is also partly bound up with the group’s references to spiritual
rituals and practices, which Mohamed seems to appreciate or feel ‘at ease’ with
more as an adult than he did as a teenager.26 While listening to Mohamed talk
about the many other genres of music he listens to via YouTube on a regular basis,
however, it appeared that it was not only the manifestly Moroccan groups (such as
Nass el Ghiwane) that aid him in ‘feeling more Moroccan’. As he consumes and
discusses (with family members) many different types of music in rapid succession
(each with their own connections to North Africa, the Middle East and Europe), he
sees this entire activity as a way of ‘appreciating my “Moroccan-eity” ’, ‘feeling
Â€
empowered’ and ‘feeling a sense of belonging’ because he has his ‘own little
Morocco at home’. At one level this indicates that his search for a Moroccan
identity may well be primary. However, a closer examination of how this iden-
tity is achieved, constituted and articulated (‘my own little Morocco’) seems to
reveal a closer connection to his role as ‘family member’ and the related child-
hood memories of everyday life in Morocco. In other words, ‘feeling Moroccan’
is perhaps just as much about social intimacy and (memories of) daily experience
of these relationships and mundane activities at home (his ‘little Morocco’), than
it is about affiliation to any large, impersonal political (be it Moroccan, pan-Arab
or pan-Maghrebi) identity.
Conclusions
Mohamed’s story incorporates several migratory journeys: his physical journey
from Khemissat to Fez, to France, and finally to London; his musical journey
from the haidus line dances, to Mohamed Rouicha, to Umm Kulthum, to Nass
el Ghiwane, to the Rolling Stones and to Khaled; and a journey of medium from
the radio, to the cassette to the CD, and to cyberspace. As a child in the village,
Mohamed’s location and rural way of life dictated the music he consumed. Music
was part of day-to-day life, with radio broadcasts of Berber and andalus music
and live music (local Berber songs and dances) marking the seasons and moti-
vating communal activities. When he moved to the town, the medium through
which he encountered music changed dramatically as recorded music was played
on cassettes (as well as broadcast from radios) in every café, shop and home,
alongside the weddings and other communal events where live music continued.
He consumed much, but felt truly connected to little, other than the Berber music
recordings he heard in the home. As he ventured away from Morocco to live in
France, he did so as he entered his adulthood. Influenced by a political climate of
racism towards immigrants (particularly North African young men) in France, he
made deliberate choices about where he lived, who he became friends with, how
he spent his time and what music he chose to listen to. Listening to raï music
with other people (with a similar ethnicity and or ideology) was a way of making
friends and finding a sense of belonging.
As music eased his passage through France, so technology eased his passage
into Britain. Mohamed arrived in London as an older, more mature (but still rela-
tively young) man, just as digital global media technologies were advancing. In
London, Mohamed did not find a sense of belonging through meeting and listening
to music with other North Africans, as he had in France. Rather, as global media
technologies developed, so a transnational community of Moroccan friends and

family began to emerge. It is probable, therefore, that Mohamed’s current loca-
tion is not responsible for his renewed sense of belonging or of ‘feeling Moroccan
again’. However, it may be fair to speculate that the absence of a large community
of North African students (such as the one he had been part of in France) coupled
with the relatively small size of the Moroccan community in London led Mohamed
to pursue his interest in finding an online, transnational community with greater
fervour than he might have were he still living in France, or indeed Morocco.
I conclude, then, by returning to Simon Frith’s concept of identity as a ‘self-
in-process’ or a ‘becoming of self’ (1996: 109). Mohamed’s migratory journeys
through physical, musical and technological spaces illustrate the particularly
powerful role that digital technologies (as opposed to previous forms of mass
media, such as the radio and cassettes) can play in not only facilitating, but also
accelerating and heightening the experience of this ‘becoming of self’. Music,
mediated through global digital technologies, can locate the consumer in numerous
times and places in rapid succession, often simultaneously. Moreover, the consum-
er’s experience can be further intensified and validated by interacting with family
and friends in different locations around the world in a very tangible way. Manuel
and Abu-Lughod observed and contested the common fear that the ‘old’ mass
media of the 1980s would ‘promote passive consumption of culture rather than
active creation of social and artistic life’ (Manuel 1993: 7) or lead to cultural
homogenization and the deterioration of sociability (Abu-Lughod 1989: 8–9). But
is it not the case that the ‘new’ mass medium of the Web 2.0 age is providing its
apparently non-passive consumers with an unprecedented diversity of material
that encourages ‘conversation and storytelling, new experiences and information
to recount’ (ibid.: 9) amongst intentional communities of, for example, extended
family and friends? This, then, is a far cry from the predicted ‘fragmented society
of atomized families passively imbibing the impersonal, unidirectional media of
video, television, cinema, and radio’ (Manuel 1993: 9). A key characteristic of
this new, intentional and sociable media consumption is evident when applying
Stokes’s eloquent observation (1992: 128) to this particular case study:
Putting a tape into a cassette player is not a semantically dead gesture of

passive consumption, but an act which constructively defines the self, the
group gathered, and the space in which the gathering takes place.
For Mohamed and his online community, ‘the space in which the gathering
takes place’ is global, multi-sited, real and imaginary all at once, crossing national
boundaries and, in so doing, creating more broadly defined (spanning several
decades of memories in numerous locations) and intimately articulated roles and
identities. And it is this recently emerged online discussion forum between family
and friends, facilitated by global digital technologies, that has been most signifi-
cant in creating a sense of well-being and belonging for Mohamed. For, as he
told me, ‘when you understand the music you feel empowered, and when you
feel empowered you feel a sense of belonging, you feel Moroccan again. So it’s
like a process of cultivating my own identity outside the boundaries of Morocco’.
Perhaps, then, we are still ‘only where the music takes us’ (Frith 1996: 12), but
the journeys music now takes us on, within this emerging digital landscape, may
be faster and more diverse, our fellow passengers more accessible, and the results
potentially more complex than before.
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Notes
â•‡ 1 All quotations from Mohamed (to whom I dedicate this chapter) used in this chapter
are taken from an interview I conducted with him in London in December 2008.
This interview was part of doctoral research for a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at City
University London, completed in 2010, which explored the role of music in the lives of
different generations of Moroccans in Britain and the potential role for this community
of Moroccan archival sound recordings as held by the British Library Sound Archive
(Landau 2010). I gratefully acknowledge the financial support I received for the dura-
tion of this research in the form of a Doctoral Studentship Award from City University
London. I would also like to thank my Ph.D. supervisor, Laudan Nooshin, as well as
Byron Dueck of the Open University, for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of
this chapter.
â•‡ 2 The indigenous population of Morocco, who are thought to have originally collec-
tively called themselves Amaziah (plural: Imazighan), meaning ‘free’, have inhabited
North Africa since the second millennium bce (Njoku 2006: 11). It is thought that the
‘Arab geographers from ancient times’ (Oxford English Dictionary) first introduced the
term ‘Berber’ to describe the indigenous inhabitants of the area, and today the word is
commonly employed as a useful umbrella term to describe this diverse group of people
(Ennaji 2005: 71).
â•‡ 3 In my discussions with Mohamed, he has referred mainly to YouTube, but it is highly
likely that he also uses the French-based video-sharing website, DailyMotion, due to
the large number of francophone discussions and music videos posted there.
â•‡ 4 Umm Kulthum is often referred to with this prestigious title due to her enormous popu-
larity across the Arab world during the second half of the twentieth century (Danielson
1997). A number of other Middle Eastern or sharqi singers were also very popular in
Morocco during this period, such as Abdel Halim Hafez, Farid El-Atrache, Mohamed
Abdel Wahab, Leila Mouard and Fairouz. For more on these singers, see Anderson (n.d.).
â•‡ 5 This occurred following Morocco’s independence from France in 1956, at which point
the rural population of Morocco was more than 70 per cent; whereas by 1992 less than
50 per cent remained in rural areas (Sater 2010: 59).
â•‡ 6 Heterophony is simultaneous variation of a single melody, whereby the different ‘parts’
(such as the voices and instruments) provide embellished versions of the same melody.
â•‡ 7 Mohamed Rouicha, a popular Berber (Amazigh) musician, was born in 1950 in
Khenifra, a town in the Middle Atlas Mountains, rose to fame in the early 1970s and has
remained extremely popular to the present day. He sings in the Darija and Tamazight
languages and incorporates Amazigh rhythms, melodies and instruments, such as the
lotar.
â•‡ 8 For more information on the haidus dance, see Schuyler n.d.
â•‡ 9 The Zimour tribe, from which his mother originates, are renowned for their carpet
weaving.
10 This was less to do with Mohamed’s linguistic capabilities (he had grown up speaking
Tamazight) and more to do with the fact that he was still relatively young at this stage
and his intellectual understanding or appreciation of the lyrics was less developed than
that of his mother.
11 Moroccan andalus music has its origins in the Andalusian court music of southern
Spain of the 8th to the 15th centuries and is today considered to be Morocco’s ‘clas-
sical’ or ‘art’ music, and is heavily patronized by the King and Government. For more
on andalus, see Schuyler 1978, n.d., and Touma 2002. Malhun shares some stylistic
characteristics with the andalus repertoire. It is, for example, an urban genre, although
its roots are found in the Atlas Mountains and, unlike andalus, which is associated
with the educated elite, malhun is performed and enjoyed by a wider proportion of
Moroccan society. For more on malhun, see Schuyler 1974, 2002.
12 In which Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt’s president from 1956 to 1970) was a key player
and for which the female Egyptian singer, Umm Kulthum, became a cultural ambas-
sador (Danielson 1997).
13 Gnawa is a type of ritualistic music brought to Morocco and other parts of North
Africa by West African slaves from the 16th century onwards and aims to heal patients
through trance and interaction with the spirits. The trance is induced by the music,
which consists of call-and-response singing accompanied by the gumbri (bass lute) and
qaraqab (iron castanets). For more on gnawa music, see Claisse 2003; Kapchan 2002a,
2002b, 2007; Langlois 1998, 2004, 2009; and Schuyler 1981.
14 For more on gnawa collaborations with Western artists, see Kapchan 2002a, 2007.
15 Others include Jil Jilala and Lem Chaheb.
16 The French colonial legacy included a number of prestigious French schools in the
main cities of Morocco (including Fez), in which all courses were taught in French and
pupils were able to obtain the French Baccalaureate (Ennaji 2005: 106), thus enabling
easy transition into French universities.
17 Algeria’s prolonged and extremely bloody struggle for independence, following 132
years of French rule (finally ending in 1962) continued to take its toll on Franco-
Algerian (and consequently Franco-Maghrebi) relations, which included various
terrorist attacks in the 1990s (Silverstein 2004).
18 Raï, meaning ‘opinion’, was influenced by a combination of gharbi (a type of Bedouin
music using gasbah flutes and guellal drums) and melhun sung poetry and was initially
performed by female singers (cheikhate) in urban areas, the most famous being
Cheikha Remitti. During the 20th century it was slowly transformed, through multiple
encounters with other musical styles and Western influences, to its current successful
position within the ‘World Music’ market. For more on raï, see Daoudi and Miliani
1996; Marranci 2003; Schade-Poulsen 1999; Tenaille 2002; and Virolle-Souibès 1995.
19 The reason why many Algerian raï singers came to live in France during the 1980s and
1990s was the political situation in Algeria: civil war broke out in 1993 and, with the
rise of extremist Islamic groups who considered raï music to be immoral, because of
lyrics that encouraged alcohol consumption and premarital sex, life become increas-
ingly dangerous for raï singers. Singer Cheb Hasni and producer Rachid Baba-Ahmed,
for example, were assassinated in 1993 and 1994 respectively (Langlois 1996a, 1996b).
One consequence of this situation has been that, since the 1990s, the main centre for the
production of raï music has shifted from Oran in eastern Algeria to France (predomi-
nantly Paris). For more on raï in France, see Gross et al. 1996 and Marranci 2003.
20 Such as the dispute between Morocco and Algeria over the Western Sahara.
21 North African migration to France (usually understood as incorporating Algerian,
Moroccan and Tunisian migrants) began as early as the late 19th century (at least in the
case of Algerian Berbers) (Silverstein 2004: 154).
22 My understanding of the word ‘counterpublic’ here is based on Warner’s usage of the
word, whereby ‘Other publics [such as counterpublics] mark themselves off unmis-
takably from any general or dominant public. Their members are understood to be
not merely a subset of the public, but constituted through a conflictual relation to the
dominant public’ (2002: 84–5; insert in square brackets mine). For further discussions
of counterpublics, see also Fraser 1992 (from which many of Warner’s ideas are devel-
oped) and, more recently, Hirschkind 2006 and Dueck 2007.
23 For information on Moroccans in the UK, see Cherti 2008 and Landau 2010.
24 Mohamed uses Radio Casablanca (http://www.maroc.net/rc/). Other popular websites
are http://www.yabiladi.com/radio/, http://www.musique.ma/, http://www.marocaudio
.com/, and http://www.radioblad.com/, all accessed 12 January 2010.
25 This also raises questions about what constitutes a ‘collection’ and whether or not the
music that one consumes online, whilst browsing from video to video on YouTube, for
instance, can be considered to form part of a collection in the same way that, say, delib-
erately saved audio or video tracks on an iPod might. For a relatively recent discussion
of iPod culture and media consumption, see Bull 2007.
26 This is possibly due to the understanding he has gained over the years of the central role
of such religious groups within Moroccan culture more broadly. For more on Gnawa
and Sufi musical practices in Morocco, see Claisse 2003; Crapanzano 1973, 1977,
1980; Crapanzano and Garrison 1977; Kapchan 2002a, 2002b, 2007; Langlois 1998,
2004, 2009; Schuyler 1981; Waugh 2005; Westermarck 1926.
4 ‘Realness’
Authenticity, innovation and
prestige among young danseurs
afros in Paris
Laura Steil
Jordan1 and I were late for practice at the youth club. Fabrice, Jordan’s best friend,
had already arrived, as had two girls and another boy. Jordan and Fabrice changed
into smart dress trousers and black shirts. They contrasted with the rest of us,
barefoot and in worn-out tracksuits. That afternoon, we rehearsed a show for the
following weekend, when Jordan would present his first and as yet unreleased
single in a Caribbean club. All the while leading the choreography, Jordan sang his
song and interacted with an imaginary audience. For two hours, he carefully moni-
tored the preciseness, style and tempo of each and every one of us. After practice,
we all left the youth club together. On the street, Jordan suddenly started to shout
in a put-on African accent, ‘I have sooo much money! I have sooo much money!’
Fabrice, who was raised in the Congo, replied in his authentic African accent, ‘I
don’t piss at my house, I piss at Chirac’s!’ Jordan then added, ‘Yesterday I lost a
€200 bill!’ They kept going until we entered the shopping mall that was on our way
to the metro station. As we passed a Zara clothes shop, Jordan told us to wait for
him. He had to ‘sort something out’. We could barely refrain from laughing when
we realized he was returning the sweaty dress trousers he had worn for practice.
Outside the shop we were all shaking our heads. Someone said, ‘He is definitely
a real z [vrai z]!’; in other words an authentic Zairian,2 as demonstrated by his
deployment of tricks, lies and make-believe. Jordan replied ‘Me? I don’t have time
for this bullshit! [pause] I have sooo much money!’ He was apparently proud of
the obvious contradiction.
(field notes, March 2006)
This paper deals with the construction of prestige and authenticity amongst young
black dancers in France. In the mid-2000s, two important sources of cultural
and aesthetic capital, African and black American, coexisted and fused to form
a cultural repertoire shared by black young people. Many, although familiar with
both traditions, ‘chose sides’ and invested in one or the other, subsequently making
their choice apparent through dress, speech, bearing and manners. Fieldwork for
this study took place between September 2005 and September 2006, when danse
afro and musique afro (‘African dance’ and ‘African music’), as they came to be
called, were in their golden age in the Île-de-France region. The rise of an afro
scene at the beginning of the decade brought about many changes in the lives of
young people, particularly young black people. First, new artistic opportunities
emerged, and the role of danseur afro – and later, singer of musique afro – came
56â•… Laura Steil
to be envisaged as a ‘career’, yielding little financial profit yet great symbolic

gain in terms of prestige. Second, the habits and tastes of young people changed
as their cultural repertoire was enriched by African elements. Third, this positive
acknowledgement of things African revalorized the origins and cultural heritage of
the parents of these young people, restoring and creating a bridge between genera-
tions and continents. My membership in two African dance groups – the VIPs and
the Glamorous Chicks – permitted a view from within the prestige system shared
by these young people, and provided insights into the crucial significance of ‘real-
ness’ in this system. ‘Realness’ described a particular modality of authenticity
resting upon a tension between a capacity for innovation and respect for social,
cultural and aesthetic norms.
The first section of this paper retraces the rise of the afro scene in the early 2000s
and concludes by considering how black young people’s relationships to, and
representations of, Africa have been transformed. The second section discusses
the origins of these young people and their parents, their living conditions, and the
role of authenticity in their impoverished and stigmatized neighbourhoods. The
last section examines the evolution of the two amateur dance groups mentioned
above, providing an illustration of how ‘realness’ operates in the milieu of the
young black dancers.
The rise of musique afro, 2002–6

In the summer of 2002, an Ivoirian zouglou track won over French DJs working
on the radio and in nightclubs. Released three years earlier in Côte d’Ivoire,
Magic System’s ‘Premier Gaou’ was already a smash hit in West Africa. The song
humorously relates the story of a ‘wannabe’ singer who is dumped by his girl-
friend because his money has run out. When he finally becomes famous, his ex
returns, pretending she was only on a trip. The man decides he will not be a gaou
(a fool) a second time over. He takes her back only to mock her for her ferocious
appetite, a comical metaphor for her materialism. The single became so popular
in France – reaching third place in sales by autumn – that all the important French
television shows sought out the group. Magic System’s subsequent album, Un
Gaou à Paris (July 2003), led to appearances on French CD compilations and
follow-up hits. Their success significantly enlarged and transformed the audience
for African urban music in France. French-born black young people, previously
faithful hip-hop fans, caught up with their elders, who had usually been more in
touch than they with the cultural interests of the African continent. Indeed, this
reconnection is thematized in the video for one of the follow-up hits mentioned
above, ‘Un Gaou à Oran’, recorded by Magic System and 113 and released on
the Raï’n’b Fever compilation of June 2004. In the course of the video, young
Parisians of sub-Saharan and North African descent (wearing hip-hop clothing
and thus probably representing the generation born in France) are surprised by the
appearance of musicians and dancers from ‘back home’ in Mali and Algeria. So it
was that the afro scene emerged in part thanks to the journeys of the gaou between
Paris and the romantic homelands imagined by the children of immigrants.
Around the same time, a new genre, coupé-décalé, was emerging in Côte
‘Realness’â•… 57
d’Ivoire in the aftermath of the Ivoirian civil war (Soro 2004). Whereas the lyrics
of Ivoirian zouglou had often protested against corruption and poverty, those of
the new genre seemed to condone fraud, boldness and a crudely ostentatious
lifestyle. The name spoke for itself: ‘coupé-décalé’ was Abidjan slang for ‘swin-
dled then disappeared’. This electronic music, born in the clubbing district of
the capital, Abidjan, was propelled by a group of well-to-do men in their thir-
ties, many of whom belonged to a collective called ‘La Jet-Set’. The men were
especially admired for their dancing skills, and their popularity as singers in fact
depended in no small part on their ability to invent good dance moves. These
moves had names, and many of the songs consisted of enumerations of those
names. Because French black youth at that point not only were receptive to
African urban music but actively demanded it, coupé-décalé became, with the
assistance of the Internet, almost instantly popular in France. The Ivoirian artists
appeared particularly charismatic because they had a bold and ostentatious atti-
tude similar to that of the rappers admired by young people. Coupé-décalé started
to reshape the way young people spoke, dressed and carried themselves, as well
as modifying the soundtrack, ambiance and texture of their leisure time. Speaking
with an African accent became a source of pride rather than an object of scorn, and
those who could not put on a convincing accent were disconsolate. Wearing baggy
clothes and sports brands lost its appeal, and young people began to don Versace
and Dolce & Gabbana imitations.3 Fast, excited gestures were replaced by slow,
broad ones, especially in walk and conversation.
Coupé-décalé’s main attraction was definitely its dance. The moves were styli-
zations of everyday activities (e.g. eating or playing football) as well as more
unusual or fantastic ones (e.g. filming, doing martial arts, or flying). There was a
notable element of ‘showing off’. Ivoirian artists sometimes distributed banknotes
at concerts. Accessories like sunglasses and fat cigars were incorporated into
dancing. And a ferociously competitive dance scene appeared in Paris, inspired
by the music videos available on the Internet and DVDs. The dancers, in their
mid-teens to mid-twenties, practised at home, at school during recess, in closed
shopping malls, and in youth clubs. Large underground stations such as Gare
du Nord and Châtelet-les-Halles, which had long been meeting spots for black
young people, became spaces for dance practice. Spontaneous dance perform-
ances and battles (competitions) also moved into Afro-Caribbean nightclubs, in
both informal and organized forms, and these spaces became arenas for status
definition. Because reputations were built mainly upon visibility in these various
public spaces, dancing was intimately tied to nightlife. Active participants in the
scene ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-five, but thanks in part to the practice
of making amateur videos available on the Internet, they captured the enthusiasm
of a wider audience, including young children.
A French variety of ‘African’ music was arising alongside this dance scene.
French-born black artists – zouk4 singers and rappers – increasingly collaborated
with African artists or produced ‘African’ music themselves. Passi, a famous rapper
of Congolese origin, had actually anticipated this enthusiasm for African music
and in May 1999 issued a hugely successful album called Racines (Roots) with
his (all Congolese-descended) collective Bisso na Bisso (amongst ourselves). The
album featured rapping over soukous5 melodies and chanted choruses in Lingala,
Congo’s most widely spoken language. Passi invited Magic System to perform as
the opening act on the concert tour to promote the album. Racines was however
still considered to belong to the hip-hop genre. In June 2003, the rapper produced
a compilation called Dis l’heure de zouk (‘Zouk dealer’ or ‘It’s zouk time’) to
promote emerging French zouk artists; the end result was an effective African-
Caribbean mélange, infused with both zouk and African rhythms. He followed
it two years later with Dis l’heure d’afro-zouk (July 2005), this time including
collaborations with African stars.
Another thirty-something singer of Congolese origin was especially active
during the early years of this French ‘African’ music. Kaysha started by including
‘African’ songs on his albums, whose other contents consisted mainly of zouk
(‘On dit quoi’ on his It’s All Love album of June 2003 was a smash hit). He then
produced a series of recordings in both zouk and ‘African’ genres (e.g. Grand
Maquis of October 2005). Unlike Passi, and despite his Congolese roots, he tended
to employ a coupé-décalé rhythm in his ‘African’ compositions. This ‘African’
music with hybrid influences became widely popular and began to be heard on all
major urban radio and television shows, which traditionally had focused on hip-hop
and R & B. As this might suggest, it was not only black youth who embraced
French ‘African’ music, but the broader public as well. Soon enough, it had left
the underground and happily joined international pop tunes on summer singles
compilations and as downloadable ringtones. The dancers abandoned these French
productions early on and looked for inspiration on the African continent.
The prominence of the Ivoirian genre was soon weakened by the return of
Congolese popular music. Unlike coupé-décalé, Congolese n’dombolo had a long
and rich history.6 It was not a modern electronic genre but rather one rooted in
live ensemble performance: kit drums and electric guitars were essential to its
distinctive sound. Its most famous artists in 2005 were men in their mid-fifties
with big bellies, bleached skin and flamboyant clothes (evidence of long and
successful careers) belonging to the generation of the parents of young people
in the musique afro scene. In the 1980s, Congolese music was closely linked to
the phenomenon of the sapeurs, Congolese immigrants to France whose lives
revolved around acquiring designer clothes to show off back home during
their holidays (Gandoulou 1984a and 1984b; Gondola 1993; MacGaffey and
Bazenguissa-Ganga 2000). Although it might be presumed that n’dombolo would
be unappealing to the aesthetic sensibilities of French black youth, the genre was
in fact reclaimed by the young dancers, many of who happened to be of Congolese
origin. Simultaneously, on the African continent, n’dombolo was being revived
by a new, more youthful, generation of Congolese singers. In June 2006, 29-year-
old Fally Ipupa released his album Droit Chemin, with the guidance of David
Monsoh (Obouo Music/Next Music), the Ivoirian producer behind the success
of La Jet-Set and Magic System in France.7 It was an instant hit among French
black youth, and dancers in particular. Fally had been the favourite chorister of the
eminent singer and composer Koffi Olomide and the renowned conductor of his
group Quartier Latin. Fans were initially shocked that he had left the man who had
propelled him into music and success. His critics said he disrespected his elder.
Famous singers were indeed greatly respected and loved, and treacherous chal-
lenges of this sort, when they happened, often precipitated a profound reshaping
of Congolese music. The dissident was soon followed by other singers of his age
who similarly took the risk of breaking off from their mentors. In addition to
the Ivoirian Jet-Set, French rappers now also had Congolese age-peers, and this
enabled more transcontinental collaborations.8
French ‘African’ music was baptized musique afro soon after its emergence.
On the one hand, this was a seemingly reasonable name, as afro did not actually
mean ‘African’ but rather a sphere of musical practice that was racially marked.
An English-language equivalent might be ‘black music’. But on the other hand,
coupé-décalé and n’dombolo were also identified as musique afro. What the term
expressed, then, was young people’s desire to fuse ‘African’ cultural produc-
tions from ‘here’ (France) and ‘there’ (Africa) as if they were the same thing,
to believe in an elastic (cultural) Africa floating over territories, that could be
stretched one way or the other by the circulations of ‘culturally African’ indi-
viduals. Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) notion of ‘ethnoscape’9 may be useful in char-
acterizing transnational cultural connections of this sort. Appadurai argues that in
‘the disjuncture and unstable interplay of commerce, media, national politics and
consumer fantasies, ethnicity, once a genie contained in the bottle of some sort
of locality (however large) has … become a global force, forever slipping in and
through the cracks between states and borders’ (ibid.: 6). Indeed, both n’dombolo
and coupé-décalé have actually circulated between Africa and France since the
moment of their emergence, and the success of the African artists who perform
it has been defined by, and performed through, transnational mobility, relation-
ships and identities. French artists such as Kaysha took their African investment
a step further and, after collaborating with African artists, they started to perform
in Africa, reversing the habitual production–consumption pattern. Their apparent
hope was to be considered the equals of their African-born colleagues. What we
have here is a francophone inflection of Paul Gilroy’s ‘Black Atlantic’ (1993: 3),
namely the diverse diasporic black culture that has its origins in the encounter
between Europe, Africa and the Americas during the slave trade, and continues to
be salient in the movement of persons, practices and texts in the present day. This
broad social imaginary is infused with, and constituted in part through, sounds of
African origin, which, while not performed solely by blacks, nevertheless retain
great power as signifiers of blackness and black solidarity.
Black young people began to relate in new ways to their ‘home’ countries,
or rather, the home countries of their parents. They envisaged and talked about
the regular trip ‘back home’ in different ways. Such trips could be catastrophic
for young people, particularly for those who did not go often and from an early
age.10 The success of afro music and dance in France significantly transformed
young people’s attitudes. They felt gradually more comfortable exposing and
identifying with ‘aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of
external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance
of their common sociality’ (Herzfeld 2004: 3). As such ‘culturally intimate’ (ibid.)
identification increased, ‘back home’ ceased to be equated with the parents’ ‘back
then’ and was re-rooted in the present. Some young people in their late twenties
started to organize their own trips to Africa, renting apartments near the beach
with other French blacks (regularly not of the same origin) and reclaiming their
‘home country’ outside the realm of family relations.
The social and economic context of ‘realness’

The parents of the dancers I knew and worked with came to France in the mid-
1970s and the early 1980s for the most part. Some came as students in the 1970s
with the assistance of scholarships offered by newly independent African govern-
ments. As their scholarships were not always very reliable, they sometimes had to
start working before the end of their degrees. Many of those who graduated found
jobs and stayed in France, since the unstable political and economic systems of
their home countries ruined their prospects for state employment or jobs that paid
well enough. Unfortunately, discrimination against Africans often forced them to
seek jobs below their level of expertise in France (MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-
Ganga 2000: 36–45). Other parents came clandestinely between 1974 and 1982,
relying on the support of compatriots who had arrived earlier. Immigration laws
were made stricter in 1974, making work and residence permits harder to get
and circular labour migration impossible. In 1982, however, the French Socialist
government eased immigration policies and legalized some 150,000 illegal immi-
grants. Some parents also came to France during that period (ibid.).
The parents settled in the north of Paris and in the banlieue (suburbia) in large,
ethnically mixed public housing projects that were home to both white working-
class families and immigrant families. These cités (projects) are not all in the same
state of dereliction, yet residents are rather unanimously stigmatized. Indeed, la
banlieue, where they were mostly built, is often described ‘in a homogenizing
singular and without any specification of its location or makeup’ (Wacquant 2008:
137–8). The emergence of the far-right National Front in the mid-1980s and a series
of incidents – including confrontations between young people and the police,
sometimes followed by riots, fights between youth of different cités, tensions
between families of different origins, and racist and non-racist assaults – meant
that la banlieue became a hot topic in national discourse (ibid.). This rise was
accompanied by the lightning-quick promotion of the theme of the ‘ghetto’

and, with it, the blossoming of an imagery of presumed American origin
(Chicago, Harlem, the Bronx, gangs, etc.), suggesting, in a more articulated
manner, that the condition of the residents of the peripheral public housing
estates of France was growing increasingly akin to that of blacks trapped in
the abandoned urban core of the United States.
(ibid.)
French cinema of the mid-1990s reflected this national preoccupation with la

banlieue, producing esteemed films such as Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine (1995)
and Jean-François Richet’s Ma 6-T va crack-er (1996).
The negative perceptions of their neighbourhoods did not prevent the parents
from finding jobs. They sometimes earned up to twice the minimum wage.11 Of
course, responsibilities towards poorer relatives (including those in Africa) or

reimbursements of bank loans taken in times of financial hardship easily ate up
such salaries. Public assistance provided a much-needed bonus, often comple-
mented by unreported income-generating activities (ibid.: 62) such as baby-sitting,
hair braiding, subletting rooms or entire flats, and trading African goods and food-
stuffs. Young people often lived with their parents until their late twenties, either
because they were unemployed and had to rely on their families, or precisely
because they were not, and their families relied on them. A number of studies have
shown that stigmatized groups tend to encourage collective rather than individual
survival and therefore favour co-residence and the pooling of resources (Hannerz
1969; Stack 1975; Newman 1999). In such groups, loyalty to the manners, people
and place of one’s upbringing is a moral obligation, lest one is considered a ‘sell-
out’. Success is difficult to negotiate, since obligations to ‘one’s people’ come to
weigh heavier and therefore the temptation to break free from them increases.
The sell-out loses his place within the group, and thus his status as an authentic
member of it. In so far as a collective escape from misery seems difficult or unfea-
sible, such thinking has profound implications for the construction of prestige and
boundaries.
Authority and authenticity in the danse afro scene

The popularity of African music brought about a positive acknowledgement of
the African dimension of young people’s lives, and added new layers of meaning
to ‘authenticity’. First, public displays of affection and attachment to the quartier
(‘hood’) no longer sufficed to perform ‘authenticity’. The culturally intimate
African dimension of young people’s lives had to become visible. Second, poverty
and wealth were invested with new significance. French young people who had
cultivated a romantic attachment to the manners and lifestyle of the ‘ghetto’ were
confronted by the energy their Africans peers deployed to leave, or at least appear
as if they had left, poor living conditions. Indeed, the key figures in coupé-décalé
and n’dombolo were actors who put forward an image of success and wealth.
Moreover, other meanings of the ‘ghetto’ became available. For many Congolese,
for instance, ‘ghetto’ meant a way of dealing with things rather than a place; it
referred to the ‘hustling’ and ‘working the angles’ that pervaded the music busi-
ness. It was thus possible to ‘hustle’ and belong to the ‘ghetto’ while simultane-
ously living in a huge mansion, wearing authentic designer clothes and producing
mainstream music. Aspirations to a better life on the one hand and ‘authenticity’
on the other were not contradictory to African artists. This may explain their
appeal to dancers who ardently wanted to make it but did not want to let go of
their ‘authenticity’.
‘Realness’ was intimately tied to authenticity. What the dancers insisted upon
was loyalty to individuals (manifest through physical presence, phone calls, text
messages or Internet chats) and to artistic norms (evident in dance moves that
were identical to the African originals in name and execution). But being ‘real’
(vrai) also required a certain degree of rupture and irreverence. Indeed, a dancer’s
status depended on possessing a style, a unique and original signature to apply
to routines. Friendships that were too close could hinder the development of a
personal style, since dancers who constantly hung out and rehearsed together
tended to mimic one another’s habits unintentionally. Being ‘fake’ ( faux) denoted
the exact opposite: social isolation, disrespect or ignorance of artistic norms, and
a lack of personal style. The two dance groups considered here represented two
extremes in terms of status. The VIPs were greatly admired; their fan-base and
their opportunities grew as the year unfolded. They were considered ‘real’. The
Glamorous Chicks were either unknown or deliberately ignored, and remained
so throughout the year, their rare performances subject to mockery. They were
considered ‘fake’. My idiosyncratic profile as a white, yet not French, woman, in
mostly black and African-descended groups gave me an excellent vantage point
from which to approach the issue of ‘realness’. ‘Realness’ had actually as much
to do with attitude, behaviour and ‘morality’ as with race, ethnicity and cultural
capital. Indeed, vrai meant not only ‘real’ but also ‘true’, while faux denoted ‘fake’
as well as ‘wrong’. The implication of these double meanings was that ‘realness’
had to do with some kind of moral correctness.
The leader of the VIPs was a handsome, stylish and disarmingly charismatic
man of 23 years. Jordan was at once the group’s choreographer, manager and most
talented dancer. His unusual haircut – chemically straightened hair sculpted into a
Mohawk – reflected his creativity and boldness. Jordan was living proof that the
spirit of the 1980s sapeurs lived on in the present. As the only permanent fixture
in the group, he aimed to become a star, and the group’s popularity ultimately
depended on his own. He had been in two other groups before creating the VIPs.
The first was a group of a rare kind, midway between a ‘traditional’ Congolese
band and a French afro dance ensemble. It was led by a middle-aged man born
and raised in the Congo and had musicians and singers as well as dancers, yet the
group was created and based in France and the leader was not a famous singer.
Jordan decided to leave because of the group’s reputation; according to rumours
the middle-aged leader was promiscuous with his young, sometimes teenage,
female dancers. The second group Jordan had created and managed with a cousin,
and was one of the typically French afro dance groups. Rivalry in both dance
and love had split the two cousins apart. Jordan created his own group just after
that, initially deciding on an all-boys format to avoid the rumours and conflicts
resulting from female presence. However, he soon realized the asset girls repre-
sented and sent out word that he wanted them to join. Not even a month went by
before acquaintances were rushing to become part of the VIPs. Because affective
ties, real or feigned for strategic purposes, were the cement of the group, the VIPs
never really had a fixed number of members. A pool of ‘on-and-off’ members
gravitated around the group for the entire year, helping to build the group’s reputa-
tion by talking about it, in both good and bad terms.
The VIPs were mainly of African origin. At the onset of my fieldwork,
Jordan, two young men and two young women were of Congolese heritage,
one young woman was of Ivoirian background, one was of mixed Martiniquan
and Algerian descent and another (myself) was white, her origins having little
importance to the other dancers. Jordan in fact scrupulously followed the example
of other Congolese singers, who always made sure they recruited at least one
light-skinned female dancer. Even in France, white, Caribbean and mixed-race

dancers, especially females, were perceived as more exotic and more impressive.
The Glamorous Chicks were a mirror image of the VIPs: white, mixed-race and
Caribbean girls were in the majority. Mariamou, the leader, was a full-time dance
teacher in several prestigious Parisian dance schools and recruited members for
the group from her dance classes. The girls attending her classes tended to be
light-skinned, and, black or white, were not very much in touch with African
urban cultures, although they ardently desired to be. The VIPs often said that the
black and mixed-race Chicks of African origin were ‘fakes’ for attending expen-
sive dance classes. They were shocked the girls paid so much, or indeed even
paid at all, to learn dances that they felt could be accessed for free in family and
community celebrations. It suggested the girls or their parents had severed ties
with their African families. Mariamou, leader of these ‘lost’ girls, may have been
‘lost’ herself. Her Malian origins were unusual in the milieu of the dancers since
families of Malian origin, mostly Muslim, tended to condemn overtly sensual
dances such as n’dombolo (although their own dances were not always ‘modest’).
Many dancers therefore suspected Mariamou had lost touch with her family; only
two of her sisters were seen by members of the group, and sporadically.
Being a professional dancer and dance teacher enhanced her outsider status.
At 29, she had a decade-long career behind her, and she was very confident in
her dancing and opinions – too confident so far as many dancers were concerned.
Before meeting her, I had bought two videos she had produced several years
earlier, one for learning n’dombolo, the other for learning Jamaican dancehall,
on which she appeared to be an energetic and outgoing young woman. I had not
imagined how strictly ‘professional’ she would seem. This strictness was above
all evident in the contractual membership required to join the Chicks. Contracts
stated the dancers would never dress in blue, as it was Mariamou’s colour (even
her hair extensions were blue), and that they would contribute to the rather onerous
costs of renting out a sophisticated dance studio in the centre of Paris, all-white
and sound-proofed. Mariamou taught in the manner of a stern dance instructor.
She broke choreographies down into eight-count groupings and insisted they be
assimilated without music. She only allowed the music to be turned on when she
considered the level of the dancers to be acceptable, and this could take up to two
hours. Some of these austere rehearsals culminated in an explosion of noise (and
fear): occasionally Mariamou had dancers form a circle and enter one by one to
do a small improvised choreography. What Mariamou did not realize was how
much her teaching prevented any real assimilation of dance moves, particularly
because it did not impart a repertoire of choreographic ‘building blocks’ on which
improvisation could feed.
Jordan excelled where Mariamou failed. He employed a very different style of
teaching, independent and loosely directed. Instead of breaking the choreography
down, he showed it again and again, letting the music play in the background
and pointing to particular musical passages that could help dancers memorize
the routine. The dancers followed as best they could, picking it up little by little,
and doing better each time the track played. This brought out the personal style
of the dancers, as well as their competitive spirit, and left room for modifications
suggested either by Jordan or by the other dancers. A circle often materialized

spontaneously at the end of rehearsals, since the dancers were truly enthusiastic to
show off in front of their peers. Additionally, the noisy, crowded suburban youth
club where the VIPs rehearsed provided a very different space and atmosphere for
practising, much more relaxed and informal. The studio was decorated in graffiti
and lined with benches on which younger attenders sat, staring admiringly at the
dancers. Many dancers brought younger siblings with them. The only condition
dancers had to meet to practise was paying a small club membership fee, and even
that condition was not systematically enforced. The youth workers understood
many dancers had little financial means, and they turned a blind eye to non-payers.
After the Christmas holidays, Jordan brought in an infectious coupé-décalé
track he had composed at home on his computer. The VIPs started rehearsing to
this song, not knowing it would become a massive hit a year and a half later. At
night, Jordan spent hours composing songs, and in six months he had produced
enough tracks to fill an album. In the meantime, his first one was being played
in clubs by DJs he knew. Around this time, girls started whispering when Jordan
entered nightclubs, and his spontaneous performances generated increasingly
hysterical screams. He was becoming a real star. He gradually started missing
rehearsals and asking his best friend Fabrice to fill in for him. Fabrice, born and
raised in the Congo until his late teens, was an awesome dancer, but a failure as
a choreographer and teacher, in part because of his skill as an improviser and
phaseur (i.e. a playful, even trickster-like dissimulator).12 The rehearsals became
increasingly messy and sporadic. Jordan’s reliability as an individual was not to
be questioned, however: he remained a dedicated employee despite conducting
his artistic activities, working as a chef in a small suburban French restaurant.
In fact, Jordan’s detachment had more to do with his investment in what would
bear fruit. The VIPs had not turned out as Jordan had wanted. During the year, the
group had had no opportunities to perform – or, rather, Jordan did not consider the
group good enough to accept such opportunities.
The Chicks in comparison had had some interesting opportunities. They figured
on a list of groups in the running for a one-year cheerleading contract with a
second-league basketball club (but were rejected). They participated in a number
of television shows – a television quiz (judged ridiculous by the VIPs) and an
obscure music programme on a pan-African cable network. After Christmas, the
Chicks were scheduled to compete in a dance battle, but the performance was
cancelled after the other group pulled out, refusing to compete with them. Towards
April, a Congolese agent contacted Mariamou to dance for one of the few famous
female Congolese singers. Mariamou and another member of the Chicks were to
go on tour with the singer in May. Mariamou chose twenty-one-year-old Marie,
the mixed Martiniquan-Algerian member of the VIPs I had reoriented towards
the Chicks when the VIPs’ rehearsals were beginning to fall apart. Marie’s talent
greatly surpassed Mariamou’s and she told me afterwards that she had sensed
Mariamou’s jealousy during their performances. After two concerts abroad, the
girls were laid off. In the summer, Mariamou recruited amateur comedians and
rehearsed a play she wrote about the condition of women in an impoverished
and culturally mixed Parisian suburb. It was staged at a theatre affiliated with the
prestigious dance school where Mariamou gave classes. The audience was moved
by the story, but most of the dancing was of mediocre quality.
Mariamou’s crowning achievement was becoming a TV presenter for a black
television channel. Mariamou’s show was divided into two parts: it typically began
with an interview with an artist and then moved into some African music videos.
A recent chat at a café with a former member of the VIPs reminded me again of
Mariamou’s poor reputation. Vincent remembered one particular show to which
a prominent Congolese singer had been invited, and claimed that Mariamou had
been extremely rude with her guest, teasing him about some rumours that his
female recruits ended up in his bed sooner or later. It was highly disrespectful, said
Vincent, to ask such questions of ‘the greatest Congolese artist of all time’. Many
young dancers dreamed of a chance to approach the star, and Mariamou had not
honoured her own opportunity. Even if the rumours had been true, Mariamou had
still demonstrated a grave lack of propriety and discernment in daring to shame
such a high-status individual to his face. Vincent was not surprised Mariamou’s
contract only lasted a year. His deference to me during the rest of our meeting tell-
ingly illustrated his conception of respect. At five-thirty he asked me if we should
leave, as we both had appointments scheduled for afterwards. In a caring voice,
he said he was afraid I would be late. Enjoying his presence, I told him I still had
fifteen minutes, and so we stayed a little longer. In the Métro, I was surprised
when he called his date to inform her that he was going to be late and that he was
very sorry. Why had he not told me he was in a hurry? He replied that he would
never have done that, because it would have been disrespectful. The young man
is four years younger than me, admires my level of education, and has always
considered me as an ‘elder’ he ought to respect.
At the time of my fieldwork, the young amateurs of danse afro were acutely
aware that only a few could make it to stardom. Afro dance and music were in their
golden age, but still new phenomena; no one knew how long they would last and if
they would ever enter the mainstream, thus becoming financially profitable. Since
money was not yet in the picture, the only thing the ‘real’ dancers obtained was
prestige. If Mariamou managed to live off her dancing, it was precisely because
she was not ‘real’. Yet staying connected to the ‘real’ afro dancers was essential to
back up her image as an ‘authentic’ African dancer for the dance school directors,
comedians, photographers, music video directors and older (but not so famous)
Congolese singers that peopled her social world. She did have many opportuni-
ties, but unfortunately these were poorly managed, and over time she lost the
contacts who were most closely connected to the African music industry. Upper-
class white contacts continued to be impressed by her, mainly because they did
not know much about afro music and dance. Relational competence and cultural
capital were factors in Mariamou’s failure to become and stay ‘real’. Because she
separated her private network – partner, family, friends – from her professional
one, the young people suspected she did not spend much time with ‘her people’.
Such behaviour suggested that she had the intention to rise and be successful by
herself, without the help of others, and without helping others. Worse, she had
started to identify with other people and adopt their manners, as her lack of respect
for an elder such as the aforementioned Congolese singer showed.
The young people were familiar with the loyalty dilemmas associated with
careers involving a dimension of stardom (namely music and sports). Many did
not succeed in such pursuits, and accordingly did not experience the demands for
help that accompanied success. They were more familiar with the other side of
the dilemma: namely the position of seeking assistance or benefits from one of
the successful individuals they knew. When they accused someone of ‘having
forgotten where they came from’, they were often pointing to a problem of social
loyalty – a refusal to help – rather than one of cultural integrity. But cultural
matters did have some weight. Jordan’s evolution from silent dancer to singer was
a familiar transformation in the African contexts on which the French afro dance
and music scene was modelled. Yet in those contexts, female dancers, even very
famous ones, almost never went independent. They tended to remain the ‘dancer
of x’ and rarely became singers. The gendering of opportunities in the African
context may thus provide a further explanation of Mariamou’s failure to be ‘real’.
Mariamou may have courted contacts and patrons in an upper-class white milieu
because she did not see any possibility for advancement in the danse afro scene.
Before 2002, black French artists had only managed to become famous as
rappers and zouk singers. Jordan’s breakthrough in mainstream music has there-
fore been quite impressive. His album, released in 2008, achieved immediate
success, probably in part because many of the tracks had received regular play at
clubs and on radio shows for two years. The VIPs (now with a different member-
ship than during my fieldwork) will celebrate their fifth anniversary as a group
close to the time of writing at the legendary Bataclan concert venue. Jordan is
becoming a national icon: he was recently chosen to represent France in an inter-
nationally broadcast television special. If he is still considered ‘real’ by black
youth today, it is because he has remained available and has never put a distance
between himself and his growing audience, even if that has meant feigning famili-
arity and affection with people he may not have wanted to be part of his life. He
has continued to honour the most important obligations of all: being present and
keeping in touch with ‘his people’.
Conclusion
The ethnographic accounts above suggest an articulation between innovation,
relational competence and authenticity in the danse afro scene. Dancers such
as Jordan and Mariamou were innovators, but members of the scene inter-
preted their innovation – that is to say their creativity, boldness or originality
– in different ways: Jordan’s innovative skills were admired and added to his
‘realness’, while Mariamou’s were mocked and contributed to her ‘fakeness’.
Judgements about the cultural and aesthetic capital of dancers, and their use of it,
were in fact dependent on evaluations of their moral and social value as individ-
uals. Moreover, the relational competence of these individuals – and their ability
to attain or maintain positions of prestige in the afro scene – involved in part the
ability to respond to the complex social entailments of their own innovations.
Stylistic success, for example, enticed admiration and generated ferocious jeal-
ousy. Socially adept afro dancers were able to transform hostility into alliances
and amity. Jordan and Fabrice’s close friendship arose out of a serious conflict
and months of reciprocal bad-mouthing; Fabrice had tried to obtain a payment
behind Jordan’s back for a show at Jordan’s cousin’s wedding. Mariamou’s inca-
pacity to transform the bad-mouthing she suffered into alliances led ultimately to
the discrediting of her style.
In this paper I have attempted to account for the rise of a new youth culture of
African inspiration in France, exploring how, under the impact of this new culture,
black youth of immigrant origin – and afro dancers in particular – redefined what
authenticity meant for them. It could be argued that laying claim to an African
authenticity is problematic or even illusory for these French young people, since
they are French rather than African. However, if one steps away from simplistic
definitions of authenticity and gives the dancers a voice, one discovers a notion
of ‘authenticity’ that is much more relevant and efficient, a practical concept that
helps describe and order social reality. Artists, in France as in Africa, are admired
and famous because they are creators and innovators. They cannot be ‘authentic’
as they are invested in the work of attempting to define an authenticity to come. As
they become legitimate and prestigious, their productions do so as well; it is their
status as individuals that matters (Bourdieu 1979). Even as the young dancers’
evaluation of authenticity is an estimation of cultural capital and connectedness to
an African source, it is above all an appraisal of social loyalty. Authenticity, partic-
ularly in its ‘real’/‘fake’ modality, demonstrates that the legitimacy and prestige
of cultural expressions depends upon a relational dimension. In the rise towards
success and stardom, dancers inevitably develop their own style, becoming inno-
vators. They will assuredly be resented and criticized for standing out, yet through
intelligent management of such negative gossip, by which they turn perpetrators
into allies and friends, they will ultimately shine and be respected as authentic.
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Discography
Bisso na Bisso (02/1999) Racines, Sony BMG Entertainment.
Compilation [various artists] (10/2005) Grand Maquis, Sushiraw Entertainment.
Compilation [various artists] (07/2003) Dis l’heure de zouk, ISSAP Productions.
Compilation [various artists] (06/2004) Raï’n’b Fever, Epic.
Compilation [various artists] (07/2005) Dis l’heure d’afro-zouk, ISSAP Productions.
Fally Ipupa (06/2006) Droit Chemin, Obouo Music.
Kaysha (09/2003) It’s All Love, Sushiraw Entertainment.
Magic System (07/2002) Premier Gaou, Next Music.
Notes
â•‡ 1 Out of respect for their privacy, my main ‘ethnographic subjects’ (people and dance
groups) are identified under fictitious names throughout. I have also altered some
biographical details. However, the names of famous artists (and their productions) I
have left unchanged as they provide the historic-social-cultural context for my ethno-
graphic accounts.
â•‡ 2 Citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
â•‡ 3 The change in dress had stronger implications for men than for women. Indeed,
young black men born in France used to consider wearing tight clothes (such as those
produced by Italian brands), and especially tight trousers, ‘gay’ or ‘white’ – in other
words not at all masculine. So the aesthetic change was coupled with a reshaping of the
idea of masculinity.
â•‡ 4 Zouk is a Caribbean music genre for couple dance. It has been present and popular in
French metropolitan contexts since the 1980s. Many Caribbean-born singers actually
live in Paris, or go back and forth between the capital and the islands, but a consequen-
tial proportion of singers are today metropolitan-born.
â•‡ 5 Soukous grew out of rumba congolaise in 1960s Congo DRC (then Zaire). Its golden
age occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it became popular in cities such
as Paris, Brussels and London.
â•‡ 6 N’dombolo dance evolved from soukous, itself evolved from rumba congolaise, which
dates back to the 1930s.
â•‡ 7 See E. G. 2007.
â•‡ 8 One of 113’s members, 29-year-old Mokobe, issued Mon Afrique (My Africa) in June
2007 and included a song with Fally Ipupa.
â•‡ 9 One of five types of ‘scapes’ inflected by the historical, linguistic and political
situatedness of different sorts of actors, in and through which current cultural flows
occur (ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapes and ideoscapes).
10 Sagot-Duvaurnoux, author of On ne nait pas Noir, on le devient (We are not born black,
we become so) explains that African parents tend to underestimate the structuring char-
acter of the representations of Africa assimilated in France by their children from a
young age (2004: 96). They often do not understand that the stakes are different for
them and that the success or failure of a trip will impact directly and dramatically on
the construction of their children’s self-image (ibid.: 91).
11 €1500–1800 per month at the time of fieldwork.
12 Phaser is a crucial competence in African dance. The more a dancer is able to person-
alize his moves (‘have style’), the more talented he is. The inability to stick to one
version of a specific move, and the tendency to change it on each run through the
choreography (Fabrice’s ‘problem’), is thus greatly admired.
Part 2
Translations
Introduction
Jason Toynbee
Migrants, as we saw in the first part of the book, are constantly involved in
proÂ�cesses of musical reshaping, of remaking the sounds of home in the context of
being away in a strange place. But when it is music itself that moves to people,
then such processes – what we are here calling translation – come to the fore. In
an important sense, translation is made more salient when people bring the music
of others across to them because the act of translating is a primary cause or reason
rather than a response to being bodily transposed to another place. The chapters
in Part 2 all deal with the issues that arise in such cases. The pieces by Antti-Ville
Kärjä and Laudan Nooshin are concerned with hip-hop, as it has been adopted in
Finland and Iran during the contemporary period. The chapter by Keir Keightley
deals with the globalization of Brazilian bossa nova in the 1960s. On the face of
it, the two genres and moments could not be further apart in cultural and political
terms. Yet as we will see, from the perspective of translation, there are actually
strong connections between them.
Reflexivity and aptness

Translation emerges from mimesis, as we argued in Chapter 1. Essentially agonÂ�
istic, mimesis involves an original encounter between two cultures whose radical
alterity each one recognizes in the other. This alterity becomes an object of fasci-
nation, and prompts a mimetic response. But in the context of colonial or imperial
adventure it is a response that is never freely made. Power relations supervene to
ensure a kind of symbolic entrapment in which both copier and copied are caught
in a mimetic dance. Michael Taussig poses a strategy of ‘mimetic excess’, a reflex-
ivity about copying, as a means of breaking out of the cycle in the post-colonial
age (1993: 254–5). In fact it is likely that the effectiveness of such a strategy will
be limited because power is never only a symbolic relation. It always has a mate-
rial dimension, and structural causes which exist prior to musical mimesis, so that
simply being able to hear the power relations at stake in copying them, or even
parodying them, may do little to overcome them. But if Taussig overestimates the
facility of reflexivity for political resistance, he underestimates the extent to which
mimesis may be transcended through local adaptation where other factors may be
at stake, including simple aptness. A musical trope or practice may be copied and
then translated because it has a usefulness in the adopting culture, and does a job
74â•… Jason Toynbee
which local music cannot do. There need not be much reflexivity involved at all
in such cases.
This certainly appears to be so with Iranian rap, which, according to Laudan
Nooshin, has been adopted mainly by middle-class youth in Tehran, and ‘is
starting to gain ground amongst the less privileged’. Partly this is because it offers
such a powerful language of resistance. Through her interviews with participants
in the new rap scene, Nooshin shows how rap has been taken up because it is
heard as a ‘natural’ idiom of self-expression, and because it enables performers
to use everyday language. For Koli, a young female rapper, the spoken word of
the Persian vernacular, legitimated by rap, as it were, seems to enable by turns
strong metaphor and straightforward description of states of mind. We only have
Nooshin’s English translations to go on, but in this form at least the lyrics do not
seem to defer much to original, that is to say African-American, rap discourses.1
We may suppose, then, that there is a considerable degree of indigenization here,
in other words that translation has been radical and, given the short history of rap
in Iran, almost instantaneous.
In her account of the musical and political background to these developments,
Nooshin shows how the oscillation between music censorship and regulation in
Iran since the revolution of 1979 has had important consequences. Local rap took
off at a point in the mid-2000s when the liberalizing administration of Mohammad
Khatami was replaced by the authoritarian retrenchment of the Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad regime. It was thus necessarily an underground music scene, and
increasingly a working-class underground. Doubly oppressed through their
class position and by the repressive state, young rappers identified with the
imaginary space of the ‘ghetto’ as represented in archetypal US rap, yet at the
same time, as we have seen, they also used local language and articulated local
preoccupations.
Effectively, then, the appropriation of the genre by young Iranians is character-
ized by a kind of close–far relation. On the one hand, rap comes from a long way
away – produced by the US culture industry in a racialized society whose foreign
policy is recognized as imperialistic. On the other hand, rap (and the broader
culture of hip-hop) is heard as a something near – made by African-Americans
whose ‘ghetto’ position is understood to parallel that of urban dispossessed youth
in Iran.2 Reflexivity is hardly the issue here. Rather it is the utility or aptness of
rap, whereby the concrete nature of its ‘original’ specification has been abstracted
and then translated into a new concrete form.
The contrast is with Finland, where the appropriation of rap has been nothing if
not reflexive. However, the reflexivity at stake includes a profound awkwardness.
What is more, it seems to be riven by ambiguity about the meaning of rap in rela-
tion to Finnish identity. In his chapter, Antti-Ville Kärjä shows how domestic rap
in Finland emerged in three waves, or at least how it has been described in these
terms in academic, but chiefly journalistic, writing. In the first phase dating back
to the late 1980s, and the main focus of Kärjä’s piece, mockery is key. The first
Finnish rap bands engaged in a kind of self-deprecating banter which seemed to
demonstrate the absurdity of Finns attempting to grapple with this palpably alien
musical form. The response of commentators at the time varied, from endorsement
of the reflexive humour at stake here to a characterization of the music as ‘dispos-

able’. Increasingly the mockers were mocked.
Kärjä too discusses distance, comparing the appropriation of rap in Cuba and in
Finland. Whereas for Cuban rappers the distance of their adopted style from rock
brought it close to them, for Finns the un-rockness of rap represented an enor-
mous gap which could only be closed through the modality of humour. For some
commentators, however, such humour was understood in a different way; as being
characteristic of cosmopolitan Finnish culture with its bluff bonhomie. In this
manner the question of rap’s first meaning as the music of an oppressed race/class
fraction was suppressed. Rather it was the (Finnish) act of appropriation which
was privileged. This is key and suggests a more general point. A reflexive form
of translation, where music-makers frame and even parody their own translating
moves, does not necessarily produce better knowledge of the power relations at
play in these moves, and may actually serve to obscure them.
Sideways and linear translation

In his account of the globalization of Brazilian bossa nova in the 1960s, Keir
Keightley follows the trajectory of a seminal song in the bossa repertoire, ‘O
Barquinho’. From a vocal recording in 1962 by the Tamba Trio, through its rein-
carnation in the theme to the influential French film of 1966 Un Homme et une
Femme and also its sequel Vivre pour Vivre, to reworkings by the US jazz musi-
cian Herbie Mann later that year, thence to Hollywood in the Valley of the Dolls,
and finally issuing in the theme song to a Spanish/German/US exploitation film of
1969, The Girl From Rio, Keightley shows how the ‘O Barquinho’ ‘song network’
played a key part in the articulation of a 1960s structure of feeling: a sense of
global now-ness and sophisticated adult modernity built on jet travel, satellite
communications, the cosmopolitanism of the secret agent … and bossa nova.
If the scene of a first encounter between the musical cultures of copier and
copied is enacted quite starkly in the cases of Iranian and Finnish rap, with bossa
nova the situation is rather different. As Keightley suggests, ‘[w]e need to recall
that alongside more distant Portuguese and African influences, bossa integrates
samba, bop and cool jazz, Cuban bolero, Impressionism, and more’ (p. 115). Bossa
was an outward-leaning, cosmopolitan form even in its ‘indigenous’ Brazilian
manifestations, and this made it a particularly suitable object of appropriation – it
was apt, or ripe, for translation on a global basis.
Keightley’s account of the vicissitudes of ‘O Barquinho’ takes the form of
chronicle. He follows successive translations of the song across the world and
through different media. But the linear dimension here is less important than what
are, much more fundamentally, sideways moves. Via the successive reincarnations
of the song, something is being performed which Keightley calls ‘global simul-
taneity’, a sense of synchronicity in the present that is strongly associated with
adulthood. In fact the global bossa nova phenomenon of the 1960s represents, as
he puts it, ‘the last gasp of popular musical modernity to be explicitly associated
with adults’ (p. 117). After bossa comes rock with its youth culture, permanent
revolution but also obsession with its own history. Bossa has none of this. There
is no development here, or rather, there is no idea of development. Rather what is

at stake is a lateral enfolding of the world.
One illuminating way in which the synchronic dimension of culture has been
elaborated is through the concept of dialogue. In Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) influ-
ential account, novelistic discourse is premised on dialogical relations between
idioms, genres, the speech of characters, and always, the social location of
language. Language encapsulates social relations, and the dialogue between
diverse voices in literature is a kind of transfiguration of these relations. But
Bakhtin’s theory of the lateral dimension, of encounters between utterances, has
almost no purchase in the case of bossa nova. Here the sideways move is best
understood through the metaphor of wrapping rather than dialogue. Translation in
bossa means the embrace of a musical culture which is notionally Brazilian, but
(immediately) comes to stand for the world, without much need for dialogue with
local voices, or with subaltern interests.
Structure, agency, power

There seems to be little room for agency on this view. The question is posed,
then, of what can be done with the music of another when it has always already
been rendered as your own. The first point to make is that, as Keightley suggests,
bossa nova was created in the first place through the efforts of Brazilian musicians
to translate a host of other musical forms from both near and far, while Herbie
Mann’s recording of ‘O Barquinho’ represented ‘a sharp commentary on commer-
cial appropriation, even as it also further developed the song network’ (p. 115).
These are great examples of the agency of musicians emerging from the stasis of
first-world, system culture at a time of Cold War. Bossa, we might say, and despite
its utterly different aesthetic, was part of the same large-scale cultural revolution
as beat music in the UK.
Increasingly, though, it seems that active translation was overtaken by coagula-
tion, the fixing of the world in a bossa structure of feeling, rather than any inter-
rogation of it.3 As always, the culture industry played a part (though, as always,
we cannot attribute coagulation simply to the culture industry – the imperative to
commodify is at play in all stages of the unfolding of a popular cultural tradition,
including the active, innovatory moment of break-out). Critically, however, the
culture industry marketed bossa as music for the masses to aspire to. Class reared
its ugly head again here. Where, 20 years later, rap came to signify as a global
music of the oppressed, bossa in the 1960s and 1970s conjured an elite global
culture which might be accessed by ordinary people for the price of an LP or a
film ticket.
The reason for trying to develop an account of musical migration under the
heading of translation is that the term highlights two crucial dimensions which
may be missed when we use an existing term such as hybridity. Translation refers
to a process of bringing across, a lateral movement which is also quintessentially
transitive, that is involving some aspect of doing to, intervening in, making over.
Translation is mimesis, the encounter of mutual selves and others, but redeemed
through transformative human agency and the emergence of some qualitatively
new musical form. Actually, if we return to consider mimesis qua mimesis again,
as in those vignettes of first musical encounters from Chapter 1, it may well be
that translation is always implicit there – always latent in the act of copying.
Conclusion
Still, there are no political or ethical guarantees here. What is new may not neces-
sarily advance the cause of human emancipation, as with Suomi humour rap, for
example. And after an initial episode of translation there can be no assurance that
this will continue. The stasis of Bossa-fication is always one potential outcome.
Ultimately, though, translation holds out the promise of agency and of cultural
and social change. Under present TINA conditions this is a cause for hope, and
therefore to be valued.4
Bibliography
Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogical Imagination: Four Essays, Austin: The University of
Texas Press.
Mitchell, T. (ed.) (2002) Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Taussig, M. (1993) Mimesis and Alterity: a Particular History of the Senses, New York:
Routledge.
Notes
1 There are perhaps a few North American precedents – instances of plaintive references
to an unhappy home situation. Big Boi’s irate but still clearly hurt verses in Outkast’s
‘Ms. Jackson’ come to mind as far as the latter is concerned.
2 Tony Mitchell’s (2002) edited collection on global hip-hop shows a similar pattern
occurring in many places around the world.
3 This reading, it needs to be added, is not necessarily one which Keir Keightley would
agree with.
4 TINA – there is no alternative, a phrase coined by Margaret Thatcher to insist on the
inevitably of neo-liberalism and the model of the market in the governance of human
affairs.
5 Ridiculing rap, funlandizing Finns?
Humour and parody as strategies
of securing the ethnic other in
popular music
Antti-Ville Kärjä
In the autumn of 1989, the group Pääkköset released a single entitled ‘EläinÂ�
rääkkäystä’ (‘Cruelty to Animals’), which soon became epitomized as the first
piece of Finnish-language rap music, or suomirap (‘Fenno-rap’), and conquered
domestic pop chart pole positions for several weeks. To be sure, rap as a genre had
not been overlooked in Finland prior to the rocketing rise of Pääkköset, as proved
by several ‘rap’-suffixed song titles since at least 1987. Yet these preceding
instances are rather isolated in terms of their performers’ profile, and mostly
comical in orientation. The whole repertoire of Pääkköset, in contrast, consists of
uniformly rapped pieces along with Run DMC and Beastie Boys inflected instru-
mental accompaniment.
Almost exactly ten years after the breakthrough of Pääkköset, the duo
FinÂ�telligens took over the charts with their ‘Voittamaton’ (‘Unbeatable’), which
was rapidly taken as the vanguard in the ‘boom’ of ‘authentic’ Finnish rap. Indeed,
based on journalists’ accounts of the early noughties, in next to no time a sharp
distinction between an earlier ‘humour rap’ and a contemporary ‘authentic’ one
emerged. This distinction has been inscribed also on the pages of the few histo-
riographical and scholarly accounts on the topic, on the basis of which it is in fact
possible to suggest that the vicissitudes of Finnish rap can be structured into three
phases so far. Thus, following the first and second waves, as it were, it appears
that nowadays one is amidst the third wave, supposedly characterized by more
frequent fusions of rap with electronica, reggae, folk, punk and other forms of
contemporary popular music, as well as the dominant position in the genre of self-
released recordings and indie companies, after the commercial disappointment of
major record labels during the ‘boom’ (e.g. Mikkonen 2004; Hilamaa and Varjus
2004; Fiilin 2008; Wikipedia 2010).
The notion of humour in the context of genre-specific historiography of
popular music constitutes the fundamental point of departure for my analysis.
Taken that the genre in question is rap, questions of ethnicity are central too.
In other words, I want here to interrogate the relationship between humour and
strategies of ethnic othering by asking: how come rap has become ‘comedi-
fied’ at a particular time and place? Is it a mere coincidence that it is rap with
all its strong African-American affiliations and that it is Finland in the 1990s
and 2000s? Hardly; rather, it is a matter of conjuncture, and thus the broader
issue here involves considerations of ethnic identity, multiculturalism and
Ridiculing rap, funlandizing Finns?â•… 79
post-coloniality with respect to both music and a particular nation-state at a

particular historical point of time.
Meta-history of rap in ‘postcolonial Finland’

In broad methodological terms, my approach may be characterized as meta-
historical discourse analysis which is informed primarily by theories of humour
and post-coloniality. Simply put, at issue is what kind of history of Finnish rap is
being produced here; how is Finnish rap remembered within the institutionalized
context of historiography? As implied by the notion of discourse analysis, the
analysis is focused on verbal and in most cases written statements and their under-
lying power relations and ideological presuppositions. This is in direct alignment
with Hayden White’s (1973: 4) landmark idea of meta-history as a form of inquiry
which considers ‘histories’ as ‘formal verbal structures’ that, especially when
‘produced by the master historians’, function as ‘models of historical narration
and conceptualization’ that depend ‘on the preconceptual and specifically poetic
nature of their perspectives on history and its processes’. Following White (1973:
22–7) further, I stress the importance of not conflating the past with history, and
perceiving the latter as an utterly ideological and political construct that is based
on ‘a set of prescriptions for taking a position in the present world of social praxis
and acting upon it’, as well as on ‘the value accorded to the current social estab-
lishment’ (emphasis in original). Thus every history needs to be considered in the
framework of its intended and possible usages rather than its alleged objectivity
and truth-value; the past is full of facts and there should be no pretension to deny
them, but what makes a history a history is the plethora of interpretations it carries
about the significance and causality of those facts.
In the prevailing world order based on purportedly sovereign nation-states,
historiography nevertheless holds a fervent legitimating power which may be
summarized in the form of the proverb that ‘in order to exist, a nation has to have a
history’. This can be clearly seen also in the realm of music historiography, as the
general routine obviously is to produce histories of music of (and, importantly, not
just in) a certain independent country – and, as countries come and go, as testified
by the geopolitical changes in Europe in the 1990s, so do their histories of music.
But here one need not stare at maps alone; in the global condition of transnational
immigration, multiculturality and post-coloniality, the banal, customary nation-
alism (Billig 1995) of most music historiography indeed becomes banal, in the
more pejorative sense of the word. This issue has been plausibly criticized within
so-called post-colonial studies, whereby different ways and reasons to remember
and forget are forcefully put forward, with a specific emphasis on the interwoven-
ness of history, knowledge and power. In essence, at issue is ‘the power to narrate’:
‘Any attempt to reconstitute the history of the colonised requires not only a ques-
tioning of history’s subjects, but also a questioning of the methods and audiences
of its narration’ (Featherstone 2005: 167).
The notion of ‘post-colonial Finland’ causes in addition its own particular
problems. Despite the fact that the majority of the land mass now governed by
the State of Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden until the beginning of
80â•… Antti-Ville Kärjä
the nineteenth century, and from 1809 to 1917 a Grand Duchy of the Empire of
Russia, or that there has been a considerable amount of discussion concerning
‘internal’ oppression of the indigenous Sámi population during the twentieth
century, Finland may not be among the first countries that come to mind when
discussing post-coloniality. But there is no denying that the country is implicated
in this, both historically and contemporarily. One might even argue that, because
of colonial rule by Sweden and Russia, a strong ethnonationalist ideology was
established in the country. As a consequence, a sharp distinction was made not
only with Swedes and Russians, but also especially with the Sámi population and
other, geographically more distant groups of people as well – regarding the latter
two categories, racial theories were instrumental. Indeed, there is no denying that
the inequalities produced by the colonial and imperial European rule of Africa,
the Americas, Asia, and Oceania virtually throughout the second millennium ad
have left their mark also on the ways in which relations between different groups
of people are interpreted in the most north-easterly corner of Europe.
Furthermore, as cultural models for the burgeoning nation-state were sought
especially from central Europe, it is plausible to argue that ‘manners of thought
and representation originating from the colonial era’ have been and are still
consumed in Finland, too (Lehtonen and Löytty 2007: 105–6). Examples of this
state of affairs include the racialization of 1930s jazz (Helander 2001), musical
orientalism in Finnish popular song from the 1930s to 1950s (Kurkela 1998),
‘infantilization’ of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s (Kärjä 2005), the role of Finnish
musicians as mediators in West African music since the 1970s (Thiam 1999) and
othering of Asian musicians in the 1995 Sibelius Violin Competition (Leppänen
2000). There can be also little doubt that future investigations into the music of
‘multicultural Finland’, as it were, framed by discussion over the increasing pres-
ence of immigrants and their progeny, will be built on concerns and theories about
post-coloniality.
Significantly, as Finland has adopted a new, ‘multicultural’ societal existence,
similar forces have apparently been at work in the local development of rap as
music and hip-hop as a set of cultural practices. Since the emergence of localized,
or ‘glocal’, forms of rap during the latter half of the 1990s in Europe and else-
where outside the USA, accounts arguing that the genre is a distinctively African-
diasporic one have diminished, and deliberations on various modes and degrees
of ‘inflection’, ‘adaptation’ and ‘hybridization’ (Borthwick and Moy 2004: 170–2)
or ‘imitation’, ‘adoption’ and ‘indigenization’ (Mitchell 2001b: 217) have become
increasingly important. Whatever the case, however, there is a need to be wary of
condemnations of glocal rap which are based on the assumption there is an essen-
tial, original form because these run the risk of ‘historici[zing] and sociologi[zing
hip-hop] in a way that closes off any consideration of its significance in non-
African-American contexts’ (Bennett 2000: 135). A vital issue in this respect
pertains to the relationship between perceived affinity to US urban blackness and
the use of rap as an expressive medium in various local contexts. No doubt under-
standing this problem is obfuscated by the economic imperatives that drive the
production and dissemination of any popular music genre.
In what follows I tackle these issues through close reading of two primary sets
of material. On the one hand, I seek references to ‘first wave’ rap in the existing
history books of Finnish popular music in general, and relate these to the one and
only book-length account on the ‘rise and balls’ of Finnish rap itself (Mikkonen
2004). On the other hand, I juxtapose these retroactive claims and evaluations
with coeval reviews and features published in the leading Finnish popular music
magazines (e.g. Rumba, Soundi, Suosikki) between fall 1989 and spring 1992. I
have also examined the (very) few existing academic accounts on Finnish rap
(Nieminen 2003; Kuivas 2003), as – regardless of people’s faith in scholars’ objec-
tivity – it is apparently impossible for popular music scholars to examine a given
phenomenon without asserting their own more or less explicit value judgments.
Humour, honesty and boredom

Alongside Pääkköset (whose name, by the way, is the plural form of a fairly
common Finnish surname), the ‘first wave’ of Finnish rap was embodied by such
groups or artists as Raptori (translatable as ‘Rap Square/Market’, but resembling
also traktori, i.e. ‘tractor’), MC Nikke T., Hausmylly (‘Haus Mill’) and Rapatti
(ostensibly a pun on Finnish words sapatti, ‘Sabbath’, and papatti, meaning small
firecrackers). In many reviews of those days, ‘rap’ appears to be quite interchang-
able with ‘disco’, ‘dance’ and – especially in the case of Hausmylly, suggested
by the name in fact – ‘house’ music. In addition, accompanying or juxtaposing
these commercially rather successful acts there was an underground scene, spear-
headed by the group Damn The Band (DTB), where the point of departure was to
follow the US models quite carefully. Occasionally, the coexistence of these two
scenes resulted in outright conflicts: while warming up for the US group Digital
Underground in November 1989 in Helsinki, Raptori was greeted with spitting
and accusations of racism by DTB fans in the audience, and when Pääkköset
performed in Helsinki little later, raw eggs were thrown at them (Kemppainen
1990: 28).
It is quite apparent that similarly critical, to say the least, sentiments have
occupied the minds of later historiographers of suomirap. For example, journalist
Jani Mikkonen (2004: 20, 24) refers to Raptori as ‘a market gimmick exploiting
hip-hop’ and a representative of ‘comical dance music’. In his account, one clearly
witnesses an outright hostility towards the first wave; for instance he (2004: 52,
63) quotes a couple of relatively well-known participants of the second wave,
according to whom, first of all, ‘[humour rappers] ruined it, they made a joke of
rap[; t]hen society was not ready to talk about the issues we wanted to talk about’,
and second, ‘within the hip-hop scene, the hindrance for many to listen to Finnish-
language rap music was caused by some kind of a trauma caused by [the early
groups such as] Raptori and Pääkköset.’ Also in a feature article on ‘the legend of
hip-hop in Finland’ the groups of past years are branded as ‘tragicomic tune-ups’,
‘joke artists’, ‘traitors’, ‘travesties’ and ‘pathetic rhyme-rapists’ who ‘muddied the
whole genre’s foundation that had been built with austere work during the years’,
and the credit for releasing the first Finnish rap album is given to DTB, whose
eponymous LP was actually issued two years after Pääkköset’s (Kervinen 2000:
22). Another indication of the blunt attitude towards the first wave is that the acts
in question are not mentioned at all in a couple of accounts of the 2000 break-
through and 2008 ‘new rise’ of Finnish hip-hop (Luukkanen 2000; Kauppinen
2000; Fiilin 2008).
One way to decipher this is to point to the historiographical act of ignoring trou-
bling elements that do not fit in with the ‘hidden agenda’ of the historian in ques-
tion (Featherstone 2005: 167; Samson 2009: 18). The hidden agenda in this case
is something like the deliberate creation of a ‘pure’ lineage for the genre and thus
no responsibility for or, even more importantly, profit from the genre attributed to
the earlier bands. A related move is to emphasize the change in nomenclature by
avoiding the label ‘rap’ in favour of ‘hip-hop’ in the captions of the articles. The
practice extends – if in a less judgemental way – to historiographical accounts
too, for example by juxtaposing ‘old suomirap’ with ‘new hip-hop’ (Hilamaa and
Varjus 2004: 199). In this way suomirap (of the 1990s) becomes constructed as a
derogatory category, while suomi hiphop (of the noughties) accrues a more posi-
tive quiddity.
That said, it is important to note that neither Pääkköset nor Raptori, the main
representatives of the first wave, ever denied that humour was a fundamental
ingredient of their output. Indeed their humour was recognized by the most
acclaimed popular music critics of those days. Pääkköset and Raptori in particular
were praised by critics for being ‘honestly Finnish’ and equipped with ‘healthy
self-irony’ (Voutilainen 1990a). Also worthy of commendation were their ability
to ‘master the genre’s laws in a sovereign manner’ and production of music that
was ‘not stupid plagiarism or yokel-like pounding’ (Grönlund 1990: 45), although
for some it was precisely the ‘kitsch humour’ and ‘triumph of unstylish stylish-
ness’ (Mankkinen 1990) or ‘self-ironic yokel-humour’, boosted with ‘healthy
instant impressions’, that made the whole thing tick (Alanen 1990). In addition,
in the rock magazine Soundi’s readers’ poll, the bands were elected the ‘Domestic
New Talents’ of 1989 and 1990 (Soundi 1990: 107, 1991: 7).
The response to suomirap was hardly unanimous, however, as the magazine’s
editorial staff summed up the vote of 1990: ‘Rap got on Your nerves quite a hell
of a lot’ (Soundi 1991: 5; capitalization in original). This was apparently based
on the fact that acts associated with suomirap held the positions 1, 2 and 14 on
the ‘Error of the Year’ list, and the phenomenon in general was number 4 there.
Nevertheless, the ‘disbanding of Pääkköset’ – which happened in August 1990 –
was error number 13 (Soundi 1991: 7). The situation was practically the same in
the other main polls: as evaluated by the rock magazine Rumba’s readers, Raptori
was the runner-up ‘New Talent’ in 1990 and their output conquered the fifth and
sixth places on ‘Piece’ and ‘Album’ charts, respectively. They were, however,
number 4 on the ‘Disgusting Creature’ listing, with another rap-associated artist,
namely MC Nikke T., reaching the pole position. The editorial staff totted the situ-
ation up by remarking that ‘Raptori does in this year’s vote the same as Pääkköset
last year: they invoke passions both for and against’ (Rumba 1991: 20–1).
Significantly, the critics became more critical over time. So, in the reviews
of Pääkköset’s second and third single releases, doubts concerning their waning
appeal and ability to renew themselves were expressed (Grönlund 1990: 45; Ojala
1990: 36). Even more odium was heaped upon other, less successful suomirap
acts; for instance Hausmylly, whose pop–house background was deemed ‘work-
able’, but whose lyrics were stigmatized as disposable (Voutilainen 1990c). The
records of MC Nikke T., in turn, were ‘suitable only and at most for the dance
floor’ (Ojala 1990: 37).
If there was a general trend towards increasing disapproval, we should note
a distinction (made by journalists too) between rap acts and rap tracks. In other
words, the first wave of suomirap consisted of two interrelated phenomena: on
one hand, there were bands such as Pääkköset and Raptori whose entire output
was categorized as rap; on the other hand, there were artists who had isolated
individual rap performances on their albums. It is arguable that the latter were
to a significant extent less serious-minded than the former. For example, in this
category one of the very first recordings of suomirap would be ‘Saattokeikka rap’
(‘Escort job rap’) from 1987, performed by Jean-Pierre Kusela, one of the many
stage personae of actor and comedian Vesa-Matti Loiri. In addition to this, there
were ‘Humppa-räp’ (‘Oompah rap’) and ‘Röpönallen räppi’ (‘Rugged Teddy’s
rap’), both from 1989, and performed by a dance band and a children’s orchestra,
respectively. The list can be continued with MC Kemppainen’s ‘Rappilan hätä-
vara’ from 1990, which is a pun on a term literally translatable as ‘the vicarage’s
makeshift’ but also refers to a dessert made by mixing (cheap) cookies, lingonberry
jam and whipped cream. The ironic implication of this was not lost on journalists
(see for instance Junna 1991: 30). Another commentator, however, found the track
in question ‘a horrible mishmash of lambada, [Finnish] polka, sampled crap of
political broilers1 and … artificially funny chatterboxing’ and deemed that ‘also in
this case comedy turns to pure tragedy’ (Mankkinen 1990: 11).
Mock, black and rock

It seems, then, that rap and hip-hop were to some extent greeted in late 1980s
Finland with ridicule and mockery. Significantly, this was a pattern of response
that had historical precedents in the country in the infantilization, as it were, and
derision of rock ’n’ roll in the late 1950s, and suspicions towards jazz in the 1930s
(see, for example, Kärjä 2005; Jalkanen and Kurkela 2003: 253–61, 457–60;
Helander 2001). Indeed, if the historiographical accounts of Finnish popular
music are trustworthy, it appears that it takes roughly ten years until a ‘new’ or
‘foreign’ musical phenomenon is accepted in a more serious fashion. Furthermore,
it is hardly a coincidence that all the ‘new’ or ‘foreign’ musical categories above
have been associated with so-called black identity. Two journalist-historians in
fact suggest that the reason behind suomirap’s joking is that ‘[t]he gap with black
culture was too wide for even attempts at serious adoption’ (Hilamaa and Varjus
2004: 196). This immediately brings forth questions about the construction of
Finnish identity vis-à-vis blackness, especially in the context of music.
Here the relationship of rap to such dominant genres of Finnish popular music
as iskelmä (i.e. Finnish-language Schlager or middle-of-the-road entertain-
ment music) and suomirock (i.e. rock with Finnish lyrics) becomes paramount.
Tellingly, the only black iskelmä or suomirock performer so far has been a ficti-
tious character – in a television comedy series entitled Mogadishu Avenue, where
an immigrant of sub-Saharan origin is compelled to make his son a tango king in

Finland. Whether or not this idea is indeed so ludicrous that it befits only comedy
shows, the fact remains that the discussion of early suomirap has been conducted
mainly in accounts that constitute and construct the genre of rock. In other words,
suomirap has been a small episode in the larger story of Finnish rock. An exception
to this rule is Heikki Hilamaa and Seppo Varjus’s book chapter on ‘the northern
dimension’ of hip-hop, in which they maintain at one point that ‘in the promised
land of guitar rock … machine sounds raised hackles after the initial excitement’.
Despite this limited recognition of hip-hop as hip-hop, the general emphasis of
the chapter is nevertheless on the links between Finnish punk and early suomirap.
(Hilamaa and Varjus 2004: 195–6.)
One way of opening up this issue is through the concept of genre, as, following
Simon Frith (1996: 94), it is on this level where conventions of sound, behaviour,
marketing and value judgements converge. With respect to suomirap, it is in fact
dubious if it can be treated as a genre as such. This is evident on the basis of both
journalistic critique and historiography: not only is there a substantial amount
of discussion on Finnish rap in Jee jee jee, the book whose subtitle reads ‘the
history of Finnish rock’ (Bruun et al. 1998), but the reviews of early suomirap
were published in magazines defined as representing the rock press (e.g. Soundi,
Rumba), or under the general rubric ‘Domestic Rock’ (e.g. Aksentti). In the actual
reviews Pääkköset, for instance, were characterized as ‘not any hip-hop group
following the models of the world (a wise trick), but more a rock band’ (Voutilainen
1990a). Another prime example of the conflation between rock and suomirap is
constituted by the charity single ‘Talaskangas rap’, in which a group of renowned
suomirockers rapped for the benefit of a certain nature reserve, with Pääkköset
alongside them. ‘No fewer than 14 rock persons mumble for Talaskangas’, wrote
one critic, and continued by giving ‘the best points’ partially to ‘rap troupers’
Pääkköset (Sorjanen 1990: 10). Raptori, in turn, were taken to represent the begin-
ning ‘of a new era in Suomi-rock’ (Voutilainen 1990b) and by the release of their
second album ‘a new kind of culture in the field of rock’ (Luoto 1991: 20).
This subordination of the first wave of rap in Jee jee jee and elsewhere rein-
forces the idea that, in the critical imagination at least, rap and Finland simply
did not fit together. No doubt such an impression was reinforced by the fact that
many of the examples originated from the realm of comedy. For instance, in the
Top 10 of ‘the most Finnish rap titles’ there is ostensibly only one with no comical
associations, and that is ‘Röpönallen räppi’ – a children’s song (Bruun et al. 1998:
457). More evidence of the same is provided by the fact that in the 600-page
account of popular music in the so far eight-volume History of Finnish Music
series there are no references to rap whatsoever. The explicit temporal scope of
the book extends from the early nineteenth century to the year 1990, thus raising
the question of why such a popular genre at the end of the period is excluded.
Could it be, in the end, that rap as a specific form of expression does not fit in with
Finland per se? This is surely implied in the final words of the historiographers,
as they emphasize the importance of ‘singing, songlike-ness, melodic inventive-
ness and melodic gestures originating from the nineteenth century’ and ‘the form
of melodic and accompanied poem [carrying] small narratives of love, yearning,
loss, memories and life’ as the aesthetic backbone of Finnish rhythm music of the
late twentieth century. In other words, had they included rap in their grand narra-
tive, their assertion that ‘the function of the pop song seemed to remain the same
as before’ would be less coherent (Jalkanen and Kurkela 2003: 618).
Be that as it may, the real issue concerns the relationship or outright disjunc-
ture between the appreciation of early rap in journalistic critique of the time and
in later historiography. Regarding Jee jee jee (to emphasize, this was the first
history of Finnish rock, from the 1990s), it is undeniable that the writers treat
Raptori in particular as self-assured and equipped with a sense of style, their cred-
ibility amplified by self-irony and humorous social commentary, yielding ‘the
same freshness as in the first steps of Finnish punk’. The writers also refer to the
audience’s interpretation of the group as less of a joke than Pääkköset – but, at
the same time, they bring out that the group itself denied that they made rap or
hip-hop (Bruun et al. 1998: 443). Now, whether or not the group did this is of
no importance for the present argument, nor is their name and demeanour. The
important thing is that this is the way in which Raptori was framed and made
meaningful in the first history book of Finnish rock: rock, not rap.
There is an interesting contrast to be made here with Latin American rap.
According to Deborah Pacini Hernández (2003: 27), ‘the perception of rap’s
distance from rock appears to have been strong enough to explain why [Latino
musicians] felt comfortable incorporating rap.’ It is tempting to speculate, then,
whether a similar kind of perception of rap’s distance from rock has been strong
enough to explain why so many Finnish commentators have felt uncomfortable
with the so-called first-generation suomirap.
From local variants of rock to ‘funlandization’ of rap

If Finnish scholarly (or otherwise authoritative) accounts have continued to treat
rap as ‘a peculiar local variant of rock’, to quote sociologist Kimmo Saaristo
(2003: 14), this treatment has not necessarily been appreciated at the grass-roots
level. To a substantial degree Mikkonen’s (2004) book testifies to such a change of
sensibility with respect to Finnish rap. It is hardly a coincidence that this change
happened simultaneously with a proliferation of statistical and ethnographic
analyses of multiculturalism in Finland. Indeed, as one witnesses the presence
of new generations – and new kinds – of Finns, one also finds different kinds of
Finnish rap than in the early 1990s. And, for the contemporary performers of rap
in Finland, to paraphrase Pacini Hernández’s (2003: 27–8) remarks about Latin
American rap once more, the genre ‘may [carry] a “Made in the USA” label, but
unlike mainstream rock, it [is] clearly perceived as an oppositional music associ-
ated with marginalized communities of color.’
Given this shift, it is perplexing that there nevertheless appears to be a need to
find ‘national predecessors’ of rap, for example those verbally talented figures,
‘whose trick was not in machine accompaniment and rhythmic recitative, but in
an even more central issue (by Finnish standards): facetious chat’ (Bruun et al.
1998: 441–2). So-called Finnish standards stand out here, a key characteristic
of Finnish discourse being to treat things not so seriously as compared to US
models (Bruun et al. 1998: 446). The same idea is repeated almost word for word
by Mikkonen (2004: 50). Here once more the point is not whether or not this is
so, but that in this way Finnish-ness becomes constructed in a certain way – and
this Finnish way, so to speak, is based on essentialized and canonized notions of
the nation and its people as being somehow more humorous than the ‘original’
representatives of rap.
Interestingly enough, the same is also true for le rap, or so suggests André J.
M. Prévos (2001: 45). He claims that humour has been ‘more evident in French
productions’. Thus it might be more to the point to think of the practice of funland-
ization, as I now want to call it, as just one manifestation of a wider strategy
through which the integrity and authenticity of national identity are enhanced.
This is further evidenced in a superficially contradictory remark by Prévos (2001:
52) about the idea of signifyin’. Prévos suggests that in the final analysis US and
French rappers are equally competent in this kind of ‘us[e] of language with
meanings beyond those found in dictionaries’.
Work by Geoffrey Baker (2005: 379) would seem to back this up. In his account
of rap Cubano he maintains that there are basically two strategies to confront US
roots: either ‘to downplay the American roots of rap in favor of the African [or
to] underlin[e the nation’s] historical capacity for incorporating and transforming
North American cultural forms’. Needless to say, perhaps, in the case of early
suomirap (or even the later forms of Finnish rap), there are hardly any grounds in
terms of historical connection to emphasize the genre’s African roots – unless in
a comical sense.
Indeed, the local ‘histor[ies] of substyles focusing on puns, plays on words, and
suggestive phonetic combinations’ emphasized by Prévos (2001: 42) are appar-
ently not lost in treatments of later Finnish-language rap either. Writing about
the ‘late hiphop cult group’ MC Taakibörsta, sociologist Matti Nieminen (2003:
182) claims that the group extended the objectification of women in the style
of gangsta rap to the extent that ‘by Finnish standards … one is very close to
parody even’. An immediate point of comparison here of course is the ‘original’
US gangsta rap, and one is compelled to wonder if the misogynist images of this
‘original’ sub-genre should be interpreted as parodic too. Yet this seldom happens;
instead, it appears that the ‘Finnish standards’, once again, make a difference
here, as by emphasizing them a crucial distinction is made between Finnish and
African-American mentalities: ‘We, the Finns, can exploit and objectify women
to the extreme, because we are fundamentally funny and thus only joke about
it – whereas they, those others, really think and behave that way.’ This suggests
a direct link to the notion of ‘Finnish exceptionalism’, which according to Anna
Rastas (2007: 119) includes the assumption that the use of the so-called n-word,
for example, is inherently neutral in Finland, regardless of the fact that the people
referred to when using it find it without exception offensive and outright racist.
Parody to the rescue

As I suggested above, the ‘boom’ in ‘authentic’ Finnish rap coincided quite nicely
with the proliferation of statistical and analytical accounts of multiculturalism in
Finland. In other words, a shift in the cultural sphere was matched by a parallel
shift in the political. It is noteworthy that after these shifts the label ‘humour-rap’
was exclusively reserved for the first generation suomirappers. Certainly, there
have been rap performances and recordings that were intended and/or understood
as comical later on; rather, the point is that the phenomenon of the 1990s has
been ‘comedified’ on the level of a (sub-)genre, while in the later phases – and
ostensibly also in various previous examples within (sub-)genres not labelled
as rap – the ‘comedifying’ has taken place on the level of an individual musical
piece.
This reinforces the point that, if rap and hip-hop in general have been indi-
genized as ‘a vehicle for global youth affiliations and a tool for reworking local
identity all over the world’ (Mitchell 2001a: 1–2), there apparently have been
quite different sensibilities at work depending on the local and historical context.
In relation to race, for instance, Andy Bennett (2000: 152, 157) refers to circum-
stances that may beget ‘celebration of blackness in the absence of blackness’ or
even ‘deflected’ racism. Moreover, if rap as well as many other musical practices
provides youth with possibilities, ‘in the articulation of a “generational protest”
against authority figures’ (Bennett 2001: 100), then one might make a distinction
between ‘grave’ and ‘humorous’ forms of such protest (cf. Rautiainen 2003). In
fact, Bennett (2001: 97) points to the use of satire in the context of rap as a means
of critically addressing such problematic social phenomena as racism. Likewise,
Mitchell (2001a: 17) refers to the possibility of ‘seemingly cryptic attempt[s] to
form a (perhaps parodic) attachment to some of the more misogynist and violent
aspects of U.S. rap’. Furthermore, Mikkonen (2004: 49) in his history of suomirap
characterizes the Beastie Boys as a humorous and parodic version of ‘street cred-
ible’ rap of the late 1980s. Interestingly enough, the members of the Beastie Boys
are, according to the US racial logic, Caucasian or ‘white’.
In this context the output of Raptori, Pääkköset, Hausmylly and others raises
the question of the role of parody – if not quite in the way suggested by Mitchell.
To begin with, a critical point concerns the role of parody both as a generic or tech-
nical category and an interpretative practice (cf. Elleström 2002: 155; TilÂ�mouth
2010). In other words, at issue here is whether, on the one hand, parody should
– or could, for that matter – be thought of as a framework of interpretation that
derives from production incentives and textual features or, on the other, from the
ways in which given interpreters are positioned in terms of intertextual compe-
tence in particular. In recent theorizations of parody, the latter aspect has been
emphasized strongly, with a particular stress on the importance of ‘interpretive or
discursive communities’ that enable the parody to happen (Hutcheon 1994: 89;
Elleström 2002). Furthermore, it has been suggested that instead of juxtaposing
‘those who get it’ and ‘those who do not’, it is more productive to examine the
gamut of production choices, reception competencies and strategies, and contex-
tual factors (Harries 2000: 101; see also Dentith 2000: 188; Hutcheon 2000:
84–5). Importantly, ‘competence’ does not refer to any kind of adequateness here,
let alone correctness – instead, a crucial issue pertains to the fact that different
competences result in different interpretations. What this means with respect to
parody is that in order to be recognized – or rather, conceived – one has to have
an idea of what is parodied. And here concerns over authorial intentionality are
by no means decisive, not least because of their inevitably reductive or even falla-
cious nature (Elleström 2002: 44–6); more interesting (and less arrogant) than to
ponder whether or not people got it ‘right’ is to ask why they thought that ‘this’
was a parody of ‘that’. Or, if an intentional parody was not recognized as such,
why was that?
The history of Finnish popular music and especially that of tango provides some
material for thinking the latter question further, but regarding the first-generation
suomirap, it is the former one that calls for attention. In other words, why was
early Finnish rap deemed humorous or even parodical in the first place? By way
of conclusion I suggest three possible explanations.
First, as in the remembrance of all stings in the tail, humour functions as an
alleviating factor. Jerry Palmer (1993: 62) remarks that one recurring function
of humour is that it provides ‘relief from tension, anxiety or fear’. This role of
humour in ‘the ecology of the mind’ (Palmer 1993: 94) is intimately tied to the
way in which both the outright hostility of the second-generation suomi-hip-
hoppers and the denial of the alleged ‘humour-rappers’ themselves point to a state
of affairs where the actions of the past are considered dubious. In the words of one
particular contemporary reviewer: ‘This hardly makes one laugh, rather one feels
ashamed’ (Grönlund 1990: 45). Another critic wrote about the output of Raptori
that ‘[t]o label it as humour would be a preventive attempt’ (Ketvel 1991: 93). The
obvious question on the basis of this is: what is or was dubious, what was or was
not prevented? The reviewers do not provide direct answers, but the implication
is that the cultural appropriation at stake in suomirap involved the expression of
little or no empathy towards rap’s original musical and cultural model. Concretely:
the perceived gap between models of Finnish-ness and African-American identity
was so great that humour could provide the only bridge.
Second, as an ancient category of humour, parody is intimately tied to concep-
tualizations of ‘high art’ (cf. Rose 1993). In other words, when something is
deemed a parody, its cultural status is elevated and the practice in question is
legitimized. Thus, in the end, the politics of parody appear to be relying on two
seemingly contradictory strategies, as a phenomenon is determined simultane-
ously as not serious or even as worthless, yet at the same time in and through
parody it becomes possible to defend forms of popular culture as artistic, valuable
and profound. Both these strategies seem to have been at stake in Finnish critics’
accounts of suomirap.
Third, it might be plausible to think of this ‘comedifying’ as a part of a broader
cultural logic whereby somehow too different, disturbing or even threatening
identities are distanced, and one’s own identity kept safe. In relation to (white)
Finnish-ness, regardless of the apparent shame of some participants, a partic-
ular musical genre with strong (black) African-American affiliations is othered
in a secure manner through humour. Here, one question concerns the particular
genres, and by extension identities, that can be subjected to ‘comedifying’ or
parody, and by whom. Simon Dentith (2000: 188) maintains that parody can func-
tion as a form of ‘precarious censorship’ that aims at keeping ‘a check on the
strange, the challenging or simply the new.’ Palmer (1993: 2–3) in turn notes that
‘what people laugh at, how and when they laugh is absolutely central to their
culture’, and continues by suggesting that ‘the occasions on which particular types
of joking are appropriate may well vary considerably between different societies’.
Building on the implication of this notion, and the fact that Finnish society has
changed considerably during the 1990s, it is worth reiterating that the emergence
of second-generation rap coincides with the emergence of second-generation
immigrants, to use the paradoxical common demographic label. What this makes
abundantly clear is that parody in Finnish rap is fundamentally a question of histor-
ical contingency and power relations. And this points to another equally crucial
direction: historiography, whether or not its emphasis is on musical aesthetics, is
never neutral or innocent. It follows that neither can be the humour produced by
historiography.
Acknowledgements
The article is a part of the research project Popular Music in Postcolonial Finland,
funded by the Academy of Finland, and based on presentations delivered at the
XII Annual Symposium for Music Scholars in Finland in Tampere on 28 March
2008, Multiculturalisms in the Arts conference in Turku on 30 August 2008,
British Forum of Ethnomusicology conference in Liverpool on 18 April 2009,
Migrating Music conference in London on 11 July 2009 and Regulated Liberties
conference in Turku on 22 August 2009.
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Notes
1 The term ‘political broiler’ (poliittinen broileri in Finnish) is frequently used when
referring to younger (second-generation) politicians who have been ‘broiled’ in parties’
youth sections and who ostensibly have never had any other occupations in mind; the
quotation refers to a song section in which speeches of these people have been sampled.
6 Hip-hop Tehran
Migrating styles, musical
meanings, marginalized voices
Laudan Nooshin
Introduction
A great deal of ethnomusicological writing in recent years has explored the impact
of global processes on the creation and consumption of music in specific locales.
Whether expressed in terms of cultural ‘deterritorialization’, the emergence of
transnational networks and flows, or migrancy (both physical and virtual), it is
clear that previously accepted ideas about the intimate connection between music
and place – in the sense of specific kinds of music ‘belonging’ to particular places
and peoples – have become disrupted. Musical migrations throughout most of
human history have depended on the physical movement of people; however, the
rise of mediated technologies since the late nineteenth century made it increas-
ingly possible for musical genres and styles to ‘migrate’ independently, without
any necessary connection to a people or their culture, or to the music’s ‘orig-
inal’ meanings. Moreover, styles or genres could be ‘adopted’ in new contexts by
people who had no cultural or ethnic connection to the music. As Eisentraut (2001)
discusses for the case of samba in Wales, in such situations the music can serve as
a catalyst for the creation of new communities and identities focused around the
music itself, and associated lifestyle choices, rather than around cultural or ethnic
affiliation.
The complex cultural configuration of many urban centres globally (including
but not exclusively those of the metropolitan ‘North’) encompasses musical genres
that are closely tied to diaspora and other migrant populations. At the same time,
some of these genres, and others, have spread well beyond their ‘own’ culture:
gamelan, samba, salsa, rebetiko, klezmer, bhangra, and so on, are fast gaining
a global presence, not in the sense of being heard literally everywhere, but in a
growing number of physically non-contiguous sites. This includes musics where
there is a connection with local diasporic or immigrant populations, but also and
increasingly others where genres are disconnected from such populations, even
where they have a presence. As musics migrate, and some achieve a near-global
presence, authors are increasingly attending both to the local as the site of meaning-
construction, and to the potential emergence of transnational meanings.
In this chapter I explore the reasons why certain musics appear to be particu-
larly mobile, focusing on hip-hop, a genre that has gained a notable global pres-
ence over the last 20 years or so, going well beyond its roots in the Bronx area
Hip-hop Tehranâ•… 93
of New York, as is well documented in the literature.1 Specifically, I focus on the

case of hip-hop in Iran, and examine some of the reasons for its remarkable rise
in popularity since the mid-2000s, taking on distinct local meanings including,
significantly, a reconstructed sense of connection to place, in this case the capital
city Tehran. Hip-hop might be regarded as the migrant music par excellence in
that its migration has been almost entirely effected through mediation and rarely
through the movement of ‘tradition bearers’. As such, it is interesting to explore
the new meanings that music acquires in contexts that are culturally distant from
its origins.
Global hip-hop
From its birth in the Bronx in the 1970s, hip-hop started its global spread from the
early 1980s, something that took several years to attract scholarly attention. One of
the earliest collected studies of hip-hop outside the USA was Tony Mitchell’s edited
volume Global Noise (2001), which focuses on Europe, East Asia, Australasia and
Canada. As Mitchell notes, ‘in most countries where rap has taken root, hip-hop
scenes have rapidly developed from an adoption to an adaptation of US musical
forms and idioms’. Mitchell uses Robertson’s (1995) term ‘glocal’ to describe the
intersection between the local and the global in ways that are particularly apt for
hip-hop. Clearly, hip-hop was not the first musical genre to migrate but what is
interesting is how hip-hop ‘arguably serves both as canvas and template, a blank
sheet but also a guide’ (Baker 2006: 236). Could one reason for hip-hop’s rapid
worldwide spread be just this: that it brings with it certain associations but is also
malleable enough to take on new meanings in new contexts? There is now a fairly
considerable literature on ‘global’ hip-hop within ethnomusicology and popular
music studies, much of it focused on the delicate balance between a specific local
embeddedness and a broader consciousness, both of hip-hop’s connection to an
‘original’ locale and its emergence as a ‘global’ form. In one of the earliest pieces
of scholarly writing to include discussion of hip-hop outside the USA, Gross et al.
(1996) point to the significant presence of young Franco-Maghrebis in the French
hip-hop scene, most notably in cities such as Paris and Marseilles, which have
large North African diaspora populations. As elsewhere, rapping becomes a vehicle
for hard-hitting comment on racism, marginalization and other social and political
issues (ibid.: 141–51). In this context, rap
expresses and mobilizes new forms of identity. It serves as the badge of a

multiethnic minority youth subcultural movement that participates in the
struggle against the new racism’s attempts to impose rigid boundaries around
French national culture. … Unlike the sometimes nostalgic and community-
based appeal of rai, rap is aggressively deterritorializing and anti-nostalgic,
even as it reterritorializes a multiethnic space … linking the diasporic
Mediterranean to the diasporic Black Atlantic.
(ibid.: 149–50)
Many writers describe similar processes of ‘deterritorialization’ accompanied

94â•… Laudan Nooshin
or followed by ‘reterritorialization’, and which relate directly to processes of

globalization and their impact on the reconfiguration of local identities; ‘hip-
hop’s urge to locality’ (Krims 2002: 191) can be seen again and again as artists
around the world engage in ‘indigenizing, locally re-emplacing the globally circu-
lating musical genres of rap’ (Solomon 2005a: 51). Such ‘re-emplacing’ often
involves placing hip-hop firmly in a new locale and emphasizing this through
lyrics and music videos. Both Solomon (2005a) and Baker (2006) describe how
hip-hop artists in Istanbul and Havana respectively have ‘developed a character-
istic discourse about the city’, embedding themselves and their music in a specific
locale and, as it happens, in both cases commenting on competing visions of urban
space and ownership of the city. In Istanbul, ‘Turkish rap … embodies the tensions
between a cosmopolitan, globalizing Istanbul and the “other” Istanbul populated
by rural migrants and the urban poor. … Istanbul rappers comment on and critique
what globalisation wrought’ (ibid.: 51).2 In a remarkably similar way, hip-hop in
Havana reflects new divisions within the city as certain parts are cleaned up for
tourists whilst the rest of the city continues to disintegrate physically and socially.
By creating alternative spaces for those marginalized and socially and financially
excluded from the official tourist nightlife, Baker argues that hip-hop represents
a reclaiming of the city space, as well as providing a forum for debate in which
artists comment on, among other things, the contradictions between an idealistic
socialist order and the new hierarchies created by the emerging tourist economy.
Thus, the ‘message’ of the music lies not just in the lyrics:
It may be argued that music-making can enable a community to generate

(rather than simply embody) a different social order and a distinct set of moral
values. The organizational principle of rap peñas – as communal, interactive
performances in which a number of artists share the stage, collaborate and
create space for freestyling – challenges a social order in which opportunities
to speak publicly about social issues are limited, and in which such public
utterances are usually carefully planned and controlled.
(ibid.: 225–6)
In a striking parallel with the case of Istanbul, ‘Rappers explore the disjunctures
between Havana as a global city of the imagination, packaged for consumption by
foreign tourists, and the realities experienced by most local people’ (ibid.: 236).
In the discussion below, I explore the local meanings of hip-hop – as a globally
circulating music – in Iran, where it has been the fastest growing popular music
genre in recent years. As will be seen, many of the issues encountered elsewhere
– the creation of a space for marginalized voices, the emergence of new globally
inflected local identities, and the intimate connection with urban geography – are
pertinent to Iran.3
Mediated popular music in Iran: a historical overview

The significance of the emergence of a hip-hop scene in Iran should be understood
in relation to the specific conditions under which mass-mediated popular music
developed there, something that I have discussed elsewhere but will summarize
here. A local popular music industry first developed in Iran after the Second World
War and was promoted by the regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941–
79) in line with his policies of modernization, Westernization and secularization, a
trajectory initiated in a somewhat autocratic way by his father, Reza Shah Pahlavi
(r. 1925–41). The music was heavily influenced by Euro-American artists whose
recordings were imported into Iran at this time. From the 1960s, locally produced
pop music increasingly came to dominate Iran’s public soundscapes and attracted
a huge following among young people for whom the new pop stars became role
models in fashion and lifestyle. By the late 1970s, both Western popular music
and Western-style Iranian pop had become a symbol both of the Shah’s moderni-
zation project and of his close political ties with Europe and the USA.
In February 1979, the Shah was overthrown in a revolution which brought
together religious, nationalist and leftist groups in what was essentially an anti-
imperialist bid for self-determination. The resulting power vacuum was rapidly
filled with the return of senior religious figure Ruhollah Khomeini after 16 years
of exile, and Iran officially became an Islamic Republic on 1 April 1979. Amongst
the many issues facing the new regime, the attempt to shape a legal framework
that would accord with religious law had profound implications for music, whose
status has for centuries been debated within Islamic orthodoxy. For popular music
in particular, the associations accrued in the 1960s and 1970s – the perceived
connection with the pre-revolutionary regime and with the ‘West’, not to mention
its use for dancing and what the authorities regarded as un-Islamic lyrics – resulted
in all popular music being banned. The prohibition remained for almost 20 years,
during which time mediated popular music was presented by official discourses
as a symbol of Western imperialism and cultural decline. Many musicians left the
country, and an exilic pop music industry developed abroad with Los Angeles as
its hub. Between 1979 and 1998, many Iranians continued to listen to popular
music in private, both pre-1979 recordings and music imported through the black
market or (from the early 1990s) accessed through satellite television. As I have
argued elsewhere, listening to popular music at this time became a form of oblique
‘resistance by consumption’ (2005a: 243–4).
In 1998, as part of the cultural thaw that followed the election of reformist
President Mohammad Khatami, certain types of popular music, most notably
mainstream ‘pop’, became legal again and were brought under the auspices of
the government through the permit system operated by the Ministry of Culture
and Islamic Guidance, by which all public performances and published record-
ings require a permit (mojavvez). In this way, the government was able to exer-
cise control over popular music, something it had been unable to do through two
decades of a flourishing black market and general flouting of official restrictions.
Today, locally produced pop music is largely unproblematic and it is relatively
easy for musicians to gain a permit. However, the loosening of restrictions after
1998 led to something unexpected: alongside the newly legalized pop music there
emerged an alternative, independent grass-roots ‘underground’ music movement
encompassing a wide range of styles and genres from rock and heavy metal to
hip-hop and techno. And, since the birth of this movement coincided with the
arrival and rapid growth of the Internet in Iran, musicians no longer needed
government authorization, nor even the illegal channels of the black market or
satellite, to reach audiences. Indeed, the Internet has played a crucial role in the
development of the alternative music scene in Iran (Nooshin 2005b: 472–4), with
hundreds of band websites and generic alternative Iranian music sites, as well as
postings on social networking and video hosting sites. Never has it been easier
for musicians to circumvent central control and reach audiences directly, at least
those that have Internet access.
As well as the Internet, two factors have been significant in the growth of the
alternative music scene. First, Iran’s large youth population: following the steep
birth rate increase after the revolution, approximately two-thirds of the popula-
tion are currently under the age of thirty; young people and urban dwellers repre-
sent the two largest sectors of Iranian society (United Nations 2009). The second
factor is the civil-society discourse which became a hallmark of Khatami’s presi-
dency and which promoted an opening of the social space to a diversity of voices
(Nooshin 2005a: 255, 257). In this context, the new music scene created an alter-
native space in which those born after the revolution, and who in the late 1990s
were coming of age, could claim their share of this new civil society, as they
expressed their concerns and frustrations, whether personal, social or political
(Nooshin 2005b: 474–80). The end of Khatami’s presidency and its associated
discourses of civil society, ‘dialogue of civilizations’, cultural tolerance and liber-
alism, and some rapprochement with Europe and the USA, and his succession
in 2004 by conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seem not to have affected the
astounding growth in the alternative music scene.
The emergence of hip-hop in Iran

Which brings us to hip-hop, arguably the fastest-growing alternative music genre
in Iran in recent years. Iranian hip-hop4 first emerged in the diaspora in the mid-
1990s, initially in Los Angeles, the best known artists being the band Sandy; but
it was rapper Deev and his politically-charged lyrics, particularly in ‘Dasta Bala’
(‘Hands Up’, 2002), who gave the first indication of the potential for social and
political comment through rap in Persian. The arrival of satellite television in Iran
brought the sounds of hip-hop – including non-Iranian artists such as Eminem
and Tupac, both immensely influential in Iran – and images of hip-hop culture to
the ears and eyes of Iranians at home. By the early 2000s there were a handful of
hip-hop artists in Iran and, from 2003, a local hip-hop scene started to take shape.
Since 2005 hip-hop has experienced an extraordinary growth and in a relatively
short time has become a central part of the alternative popular music scene from
which it emerged, the scene itself growing out of the liberalizing policies of the
Khatami period. Based on both official and unofficial figures, Bilan et al. (2010)
estimate that there are currently between 1000 and 2000 amateur and professional
rappers in Iran.
It is not my intention here to provide a history of hip-hop in Iran; I will, however,
mention the most influential artists before moving on to my specific case study.
First, two points should be noted. As mentioned, for much of its 60-plus-year
history, mediated popular music in Iran has been closely associated with the
relatively affluent, educated and cosmopolitan middle and upper classes.5 Such
associations are partly rooted in polarities established before the revolution and
which were reflected in dominant discourses and official policies and rhetoric –
which presented Islam and tradition as incompatible with modernity – and which
partly resulted in the intense reaction against popular music after 1979. Moreover,
these associations were reinforced by the ways in which Iranian pop music was
used and promoted by those who had benefited under the Shah and who fled Iran
after 1979 to places such as London and Los Angeles, taking their wealth and
their music with them; many musicians who left Iran after 1979 were from the
same privileged background. In recent years, however, the class demographics of
Iranian popular music have started to change, with artists and audiences coming
from less affluent backgrounds, some even from the religious and traditional areas
of south Tehran and the provinces, which would have been unthinkable a decade
ago.6 This is happening in the context of a more general, and very gradual, social
acceptance of music since 1979. Slowly but surely, music has entered the homes
of those who, before the revolution, would not have permitted a radio or a televi-
sion, let alone a musical instrument. Thus, what thirty years ago was presented as
the epitome of Western cultural imperialism and decadence, and hitherto largely
the preserve of the Westernized middle classes, is starting to be taken up by
members of those social classes that have been the strongest supporters of the
government and its anti-Western rhetoric. This is not to say that mediated popular
music has gained widespread acceptance amongst such social classes – it is still
contested – but a trend is emerging and is more marked in the case of some genres
than others. Rock music, for instance, has remained steadfastly the domain of
the middle classes; hip-hop, however, is starting to gain ground amongst the less
privileged, as discussed below.
Second, it is important to distinguish between rapping as a musical style and
the broader culture of hip-hop within which it originally developed, including
break-dancing, graffiti and DJ-ing. Whilst some of these broader cultural mani-
festations are found in Iran, as seen on some music videos, until recently hip-hop
music in Iran was largely divorced from the broader culture. However, there is
an emerging hip-hop community that draws directly on such signifiers as break-
dancing or public rap contests.7
There is relatively little academic writing on hip-hop in Iran, the most compre-
hensive to date being Elling (2007) and Johnston (2008). There are a number of
Persian-language articles, including Mowlaei (2008) and Bilan et al. (2010), the
latter including material collected from interviews with young hip-hop audiences.
Mowlaei seeks to categorize contemporary Iranian rap through lyrical analysis,
resulting in a four-fold classification based on, first, whether the lyrics are largely
in line with and respectful of the ‘norms’ of Iranian society (hanjārgarā) or
against such norms (hanjārshekan); and second whether they are socially engaged
or focused on personal issues. Within these categories, Mowlaei suggests a further
series of sub-categories and gives examples of each. Breyley (2008, 2009) has
written about the female rapper Koli, whom I discuss below. In contrast to the
academic literature, there is a wealth of information, interviews, discussion and
analysis on websites such as www.zirzamin.org (zirzamin, lit. ‘underground’), the

main alternative Iranian music site, and dedicated Iranian rap sites such as www.
rapfa.com, bia2rap.com and www.farsihiphop.com, the latter launched in 2009 by
the Tehran-based rap outfit Raplarzeh (‘Rap Quake’).8
Even a brief Web search reveals an extraordinary number of artists, male
and female, in Iran and in diaspora (with strong connections between the two).
In February 2010, ‘Voices of Change’, the first festival of Iranian hip-hop,
was held in Sweden and included performances by Ghogha (Iran), Erfan and
Khashayar (USA) and Shahin Najafi (Germany). Within Iran, the pioneer of
Iranian rap, and still widely regarded as the most significant figure, is Hichkas
(‘Nobody’; Soroush Lashkary, b. 1985), whose work epitomizes the kind of
social engagement typical of Iranian hip-hop. Hichkas established the group 021
in 2003 and released the album Jangale Asfalt (The Asphalt Jungle) in 2006. His
early work was mainly in English, but he now raps mostly in Persian. Hichkas
has collaborated with several artists in diaspora including UK-based Reveal on
‘Tripe Ma’ (‘Our Everyday’, 2004),9 which comments on Tehran’s high level
of street crime. ‘Tripe Ma’ has a strong local feel typical of Hichkas’s work,
beginning with an invocation to God and weaving the ‘traditional’ sound of
the setar lute through the music, as well as a gentle background male chorus.
Against this, Hichkas and Reveal take turns to rap a verse, and then join together
for the final verse in which they alternate lines, Reveal echoing Hichkas, some-
times providing a direct translation into ‘street’ English of the previous line.
The work of Hichkas, perhaps more than any other Iranian rapper, has shifted
the class associations of hip-hop: for instance, ‘Ye Mosht Sarbaz’ (‘Bunch of
Soldiers’)10 places hip-hop firmly in the poor, working-class and traditional
areas of south Tehran, with its militia-style imagery in the young men rapping
with Hichkas, and its prominent references to religion and nationhood, together
with the poor urban environment where the video is shot. Seven years after
establishing 021, Hichkas was finally able to perform live, in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, in May 2010, sharing the platform with Reveal. Hichkas has also
worked with Saman Wilson from the UK/France-based (largely gangsta) rap
group Zedbazi on ‘Vase har Iruni’ (‘For any Iranian’, 2005) about the power of
hip-hop, and sung in Persian.11 Elsewhere I have discussed the new collective
ethos apparent in alternative popular music (2005b: 487), something that takes
on particular significance in the context of the civil-society discourses inherited
from the Khatami period. Not only do many hip-hop artists collaborate on an
equal basis (in contrast to the predominant ‘solo star singer’ cult of mainstream
pop), but a number of established rappers such as Hichkas use this as a way of
introducing new artists to audiences.
At the time of writing, other hip-hop artists based in Iran include Yas, Sasy
Mankan, Eblis, Tohi and Reza Pishro, although new artists are emerging all the
time, and those who become successful often leave Iran for personal or other
reasons. For those who cannot travel, the Internet allows them to transcend phys-
ical borders. The female rapper Salome, for instance, has collaborated online with
Germany-based Turkish rapper Pusat on an anti-Iraq War rap called ‘Petrolika’
with lyrics in Persian and Turkish, and with Iranian rapper Shirali, also based in
Germany, on the pieces ‘Mayous Nasho’ (‘Don’t Give Up’) and ‘My Path, My
Fight’, without having met either artist.
Artists’ performance style, delivery, body language and even dress are heavily
influenced by US hip-hop. Some create their own backing tracks and beats or
collaborate with musicians; others access ‘ready made’ beats, often downloading
other rappers’ ‘instrumentals’ without the lyrics (Elling 2007: 4). As one might
expect, Iranian rappers sing about a range of topics; most write their own lyrics,
but some draw on the rich heritage of Persian poetry. Indeed, as has been observed
for hip-hop elsewhere, Iranian hip-hop is strongly intertextual and includes refer-
ences to other artists and their work12 as well as being ‘filled with insiders’ slang
and references that in some cases can only be understood by young Tehranis from
a certain part of the city or from a certain milieu’ (ibid.: 6). Elling suggests that
about two-thirds of lyrics ‘belong to the category boasting, i.e. bragging and self-
staging. The rapper proclaims his skills and other rappers’ mediocrity, or uses the
lyrics to diss (disrespect) the other rappers’ (ibid.: 5) in a manner familiar outside
Iran. However, there is a large contingent who use hip-hop to engage with social
and political issues, and it is this that I focus on in this chapter. Such issues include
addiction, street crime, women’s rights, social injustice and poverty, street chil-
dren, the pressure of university entrance exams, Internet addiction, the nuclear
power issue, the representation of Iranians outside Iran,13 internal politics,14 inter-
national politics,15 religion, nationalism, and so on, through to some of the most
taboo subjects in Iranian society such as suicide and sex. There is a history of
music as social comment in Iran going back at least to the constitutional revolu-
tion of 1906, and which was revived in the 1960s and 1970s with singers such as
Farhad and again in the late 1990s, since when it has been an important element in
alternative ‘underground’ music. However, social comment on such a scale, with
so many artists and covering such a range of topics, is unprecedented. Whether
this is because the Internet allows the circulation of ‘sensitive’ material to an
extent not experienced before or because of other factors is unclear. Certainly, the
level of state censorship and social taboos prior to 1979 should not be underesti-
mated, the former arguably tighter than today, and there has been a palpable shift
in attitudes towards certain taboo subjects as well.
Most hip-hop artists in Iran operate without a permit. Few are prepared to jump
through the necessary hoops, involving months, sometimes years, of waiting and
responding to the demands of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, only
to be finally rejected. There is also a sense that gaining a permit compromises
one’s perceived independence. Whilst decisions on permits rest with the Ministry
of Culture, these are inevitably influenced by the political climate of the day and
there has been some recent anti-hip-hop rhetoric from government officials (see
Elling 2007: 5).16 However, a very few artists have managed to gain authorization,
the earliest being Shahkar Bineshpajooh, a somewhat dapper, quasi-comic rapper,
for his 2003 album Eskenas (Cash). Yas has also gained permission for six tracks,
including one recorded in response to the Bam earthquake in 2003.
Hip-hop is a music of the city and, as discussed for Cuba and Turkey, so in Iran
it has developed a close relationship with its urban locale, particularly Tehran;
music videos show hard-hitting images of the urban environment and lyrics
reference the city, most often in relation to social problems.17 The first hip-hop
group in Iran, 021, was named after Tehran’s telephone code and this has now
become a signifier for Iranian hip-hop, including a hand gesture that forms the
three numbers; rappers also regularly reference the code in their lyrics. The use
of local slang was noted above. Just as Baker and Solomon describe hip-hop in
Havana and Istanbul as showing a side of the city often hidden to outsiders (tour-
ists in Havana; the global ‘community’ in the case of Istanbul), so in Iran hip-hop
artists reveal the underbelly of society, rapping about an alternative reality that is
taboo or hidden from view. As UK-based rapper Reveal says, ‘I have chosen the
stage name Reveal because my art is about revealing the truth, regardless of what
the reality seems to be’ (Farzad 2009/10: 5). Hichkas’s ‘Ekhtelaf (Inja Tehrane)’
(‘Difference (This is Tehran)’) addresses the social and economic divide between
rich and poor in Iranian society:
A hobo stands next to a Benz

He isn’t worth enough to rent it
Me, you and him came from a single drop
Look at the gap between us now18
Tehran and its social inequalities also form a constant backdrop to the work
of female rapper Koli, the name of whose group, Metro 707 (now disbanded),
references Tehran’s relatively new metro system. Having introduced the broader
hip-hop scene in Iran, much of it focused on the capital, the following section will
discuss Koli and her work.
Rapper Koli and the Omid-e Mehr project:

hip-hop as therapy, hip-hop as social conscience
Whilst Iranian hip-hop has been dominated by the presence of men, women do
also play a role. The best known female rappers are Salome and Ghogha.19 Elling
briefly discusses Ghogha (2007: 12), focusing on a rap about runaway girls, and
another female artist, Pani. The outfit Raplarzeh includes female rapper Shahya,
who also works on her own. In this section, I focus on a young woman whose
rap name is Koli (‘Gypsy’, b. 1988) and who has turned to hip-hop as a form of
social comment but also as a means of personal therapy. I will begin with some
background on Koli and then explore the meanings that hip-hop has for her. Koli
is little known in Iran, but gained exposure internationally through The Glass
House, a 2008 documentary film about the Omid-e Mehr Foundation, a Tehran-
based charity which offers training and therapeutic support to girls and young
women from disadvantaged backgrounds.20 I decided to focus on Koli because she
epitomizes the growth of a grass-roots hip-hop movement in Iran, and specifically
in a sector of society where popular music has traditionally been problematic.
Even after appearing in the film, which has not been screened in Iran, members
of Koli’s family (other than her sister and aunt) were unaware of her involvement
in hip-hop. The idea of hip-hop as ‘the voice of the people’ is a well-worn cliché
that has been widely used by commentators in Iran and elsewhere; at the same
time, it is true that for many on the margins of Iranian society there has hitherto
simply been no forum in which their voices can be heard. Koli also illustrates how
the increasing presence of women rappers shapes the kinds of topics addressed in
Iranian hip-hop, particularly formerly ‘hidden’ subjects which disproportionately
affect women, such as domestic violence, runaway girls and rape.21
The Omid-e Mehr foundation was established in 2004 ‘as a privately-funded
charity to provide emotional and practical support for severely disadvantaged
young women in Tehran’.22 Aged between 15 and 25, the women are referred by
social services or family members, or self-refer. The foundation runs a day centre
that offers training over an 18-month period in areas such as computer literacy,
office skills, English language, and so on, to equip the women for the workplace
and, ultimately, economic and social independence. The charity started with seven
women and now has capacity for 70 at any one time. Many of the women have
suffered physical or psychological trauma or both, and most come from poor, tradi-
tional and religious families where social pressures, unemployment and poverty
often create the conditions of violence, abuse and neglect. Alongside vocational
training, therefore, the women are offered therapeutic support, and are also encour-
aged to explore creative outlets through visual arts, poetry, music, and so on. As
Koli explains, ‘Omid is all about finding your voice and your sense of self’.23
Koli became responsible for her six siblings at the age of 13, when her parents
separated and her mother left home. She has faced many challenges, including
domestic violence, a period in jail, and trying to find accommodation for her
family following eviction from their rented room. Koli attended Omid-e Mehr’s
training programme and is now working on her English; she hopes eventually
to train as a Montessori teacher in the UK.24 For Koli, rap provides a vehicle to
express and come to terms with her past experiences: ‘Rap allows me to talk about
the things that everyone tries to deny. The problems which I had in the past; the
problems which I see in society today; the problems which the national media
doesn’t want to be spoken about.’25 She enjoys rapping because it enables her to
communicate her feelings, thoughts and experiences using everyday language.
The topics that Koli raps about range from personal experiences of abandon-
ment and violence, and earlier feelings of anger towards her mother followed
by greater understanding as she has grown older, to broader social issues such
as the consequences of social injustice – poverty, addiction, street children, and
so on, issues that other rappers also sing about – and the ‘often forgotten victims
of social changes since the revolution’ (Breyley 2009). A good example of how
Koli’s lyrics bring the two together can be heard in The Glass House: one of the
film’s final scenes shows Koli, her sister (Yaghi) and her best friend (Toofan), in a
recording studio. Koli begins,
I am living a sequestered life

Carrying a doomed legacy to eternity
I want you to know why I was left behind
Left with all those silent moments
The horror of sarcasm still in my mind
…
My survival was balanced on the edge of a knife

And the whole world expected my end without a cry
My prayers were nothing but screams in painful nights
The nightmare of living a tomorrow worse than today
Only hell could hear my pleas.26
After further verses, Toofan takes over,
I was quiet but now I’m gonna shout

Like when you shouted at me when I called you ‘dad’
Mum thinks we’re still kids
We’re fed up with you being our stepdad
You destroyed her body and soul
Even when you acted nice, you were mean
You took everything away from us, you bastard
I can see my misery in your wicked eyes
…
Only the mirror knows if I’m lying
I must bring out my deep scars
I don’t need soothing hands over my head
I don’t care, I’ll carry on.27
Yaghi subsequently comes in:
I’m not content, I don’t wanna be isolated

Although they look upon me as fading light
I am not bothered if I have no support
All I want is respect and nothing else
Because we are not asleep, we are like others
But we are used to all that injustice
Living in hell, we pretend to be happy
Tired of being thrown around and living penniless
Even the law didn’t want to know about us
And that’s why we have sunk so deep
Society ignores the reality
And when you talk, you end up in a cage
No two ways about it.28
The deeply personal and direct nature of the lyrics is quite new to Iranian music,
where sensitive topics have tended to be addressed obliquely, or at a very general
level. The scene begins with the three girls arriving at the studio late; they have
told Koli’s father that they have gone to buy a tin of stew – he doesn’t know where
they are. As they leave at the end, they remind themselves to buy a tin of stew on
the way home. Whether the story was exaggerated for dramatic effect, it conveys
the social opprobrium attached to music performance for women, particularly in

the domain of popular music. Adding to the family tension, legal outlets for solo
female singing are severely circumscribed and the recording studio was likely
operating without a licence. Thus, female rappers such as Koli face both social
pressures – resistance to hip-hop per se and reputational risks to themselves and
their families – and considerable legal risks. In an earlier scene, Koli’s aunt (her
father’s sister), tries to forbid her from recording, terrified of the fallout for the
family if the studio were to be raided. But rapping is a lifeline for Koli and she is
determined to continue, ‘I have found independence in my loneliness. … I was
living in a situation that forced me to bear all the difficulties by myself. … Maybe
it wasn’t all bad, because it helped me to stand on my own.’ Then she starts to rap,
I’m steadfast in my place; I won’t move

Difficulties have forced me to stand on my own
I’m standing all alone
I have to keep going and I have no fear.29
This discourse of ‘survival against the odds’ (familial, social, financial) is a

strong element in Koli’s work and resonates with what Elling describes as the
‘global hip-hop community’s socio-cultural self identification’ and particu-
larly the symbolic power of the ‘ghetto’. As noted above, compared with other
popular genres in Iran, hip-hop has developed a close association with the socially
disadvantaged, and many artists stress (even fabricate) an upbringing in harsh
economic and social conditions in order to authenticate themselves as hip-hop
artists. Citing Saman Wilson’s weblog about the life of rapper Babak Tighe
(‘Babak Razorblade’), Elling observes (2007: 9)
With a powerful history of a boy from the ghetto, who has everything against
him, but decides to verbalize his dissatisfaction through rap music, a symbolic
and cultural capital for Babak Tighe has been established … he has survived
the real ghetto. … This is a self-representation that one will find with rappers
the world over, from Los Angeles and London to Rio de Janeiro and Teheran.
Koli first encountered hip-hop at the age of 12 when she and her friends started
listening to artists, mainly from the USA. She was drawn to hip-hop and gradually
became aware of rappers in Iran, which was a revelation to her. She describes the
stark realization that someone else was singing about her life,
At first it was so interesting and new that I just listened out of surprise. The
things that were said, the ways in which the poetry was shaped … I was
attracted by all of this … but when I listened more closely, I realized that they
were singing about my life, my pain, my experiences.
(interview, 17 April 2010)
Koli became involved in the early Tehran hip-hop ‘scene’ at a time when new
songs would be eagerly awaited and discussed on-line,
In those days, our numbers were very small. One was in the east, one in
the north, one in the south or centre … they would sing a song at night and
then put it on the Internet. We had a chat room at that time. Everyone met in
the room and we debated and discussed, gave our opinions and critiqued the
songs. It was very fast. When a song was sung – because there were so few
of us and so few songs being produced – when one rap would come out it
was really listened to. Everyone was waiting to see who had produced what
new work.
(ibid.)
At that time, there were rap meetings outside the Eskan shopping centre (north
Tehran) on Thursday evenings; they would often be moved on by police who had
no idea what hip-hop was; later, Koli formed Metro 707 with her sister and best
friend. For the backing, like other Iranian rappers, Koli uses downloadable tracks
and also has an arrangement with a group who record tracks for her.
Koli cites among her influences rappers such as Tupac and Eminem and singers
such as Bob Dylan and Bob Seger. Amongst Iranian artists she has been partic-
ularly influenced by Shahin Najafi, a rapper who addresses issues relating to
women, most famously in ‘Ma Mard Nistim, To Zan Bash’ (‘We are Not Men,
You be Women’),30 dedicated to Iran’s women’s movement and a catalogue of the
suffering inflicted on Iranian women:
Najafi’s words are like a cutting blade … when you listen to him it makes
your hairs stand on end and you become shocked from all these pure and
unobstructed words, and so much openness about such issues … for me, it
was really interesting how a man could so easily sing about being a woman in
Iran, the pains of being a woman.
(ibid.)
The case of Koli raises many questions. First, why hip-hop? What does it mean
that thirty years after a revolution in which all forms of Westernized popular music
were banned, that young people, including those from traditionally religious and
conservative backgrounds, should ally themselves with a musical style born out
of very different circumstances, as an expression of African-American disenfran-
chisement? Specifically, it seems intriguing that hip-hop should be embraced by
a young woman from a social milieu that has traditionally rejected manifestations
of Western culture. With a growing global hip-hop culture on the one hand, and
on the other, the long-standing denigration of Western popular culture by official
discourses within Iran, one might ask how far the increasing popularity of hip-hop
in Iran resonates with the genre’s meanings elsewhere.
In response to a question about why hip-hop has become so popular in Iran,
Koli replied,
You know what? At first, you think it’s a very hard thing. You have a pain in
your being, you want to express it [be zabān biārish] in whatever way you
can. You start to write poetry, and then you find some music. And then you
see that they sit together so beautifully. You persevere, you hire a studio and
start to sing. And gradually you see that it is possible, you can put into words
the pain you have held within you for years; something that you know and
others don’t know, you can write it and others can listen to you … you feel
something in your being is boiling over [joosh mizaneh].
(ibid.)
Asked how she feels when rapping, Koli said,
It’s a very interesting feeling. You get used to it gradually but every time I
stand before the microphone … as a young woman, when you come from a
society that … it forces you to think. … What are you doing here? What are
you doing here? Then, I wait … for me, it’s an achievement. That I started
doing something and have got to a position where not everyone can easily get
… of course, I worked hard. Maybe it isn’t a very big achievement, but in a
society like Iran as a woman, and the kind of family background that I have
come from … I was swimming against the flow of the river. And just so that
I could say that I know things and I hear things and I see things that many
people don’t pay attention to. And it’s necessary for these things to be heard.
I felt there are pains that I know and feel that if I write them maybe someone
like me would hear it and get comfort from it. I remember a time when I was
so alone and saw such hard things. I said to myself, is there someone else like
me who is suffering in the same way? And that’s why when I write about the
problems that I had in the past, I think maybe one day a girl like me will hear
these songs and if I can say to her that I got myself out of that situation, I got
somewhere, and maybe you can as well. All of this so that somehow you can
give hope to people.
(ibid.)
It is clear from these quotations that rapping is an important form of expression

for Koli: both personally, as a means of voicing and coming to terms with past
traumatic experiences; and as a commentary on social issues. Writing about trauma
and performativity in relation to Koli’s work, and drawing on Walter Benjamin’s
writings on memory and truth, Breyley describes rapping as a form of therapy
for Koli and suggests that ‘rapping practices serve to perform the unfolding of
her personal “fan of memory” and its various “truths” ’ (2008), including both her
personal memory and also the collective ‘postmemory’31 of the Iran–Iraq war that
she was born into, in the process helping her move from a feeling of alienation
to social ‘reinstatement’ (ibid.). Beyond this, there is an important sense in which
Koli seeks to reach those with similar experiences, even seeing herself as a role
model for other girls in her situation: ‘Kuoli explains that the articulation of her
most personal and traumatic memories always has collective significance; this
is partly why rap is, for her, the most effective medium’ (ibid.). Perhaps this is
part of hip-hop’s appeal: allowing artists to frame personal experiences within a
broader social framework, seamlessly synthesizing the personal and the political,
just as it does the local and global. To quote again from Koli,
When hip-hop arrived in Iran, artists used this tool well to express many
things through the mould of this style of music. So, you would suddenly be
shocked that someone is singing about, for example, runaway girls or addic-
tion or political issues. You would never have thought [this possible]. In the
past, talking about certain things was taboo; you just wouldn’t hear about
them. But then when rap established itself after a while, you could very easily
hear about such things.
(interview, 17 April 2010)
Concluding thoughts: why rap?

What does the case of Iran, and specifically that of rapper Koli, tell us about
hip-hop as a migrating global genre – and why it has been so avidly adopted
in Iran in recent years? The kinds of sentiments expressed by Koli, and which
resonate strongly with hip-hop discourses around the world, suggest that hip-hop
as a means of expression is the single most important factor in its wide appeal,
whether at a personal level as therapeutic outlet, or as a means of making one’s
literal and figurative voice heard. Time and again, musicians and audiences claim
that hip-hop is a forum unlike any other; as with marginalized voices elsewhere,
hip-hop offers a powerful means by which individuals can tell their stories:
Look, with this music style I can tell a whole story which is impossible in
other music styles. I had a lot to say. I have stories that I can express only
through this style. Stories about the problems in the society and the problems
I’ve gone through. It is only this genre that can capture the attention of the
audience to what you want to say. That is why I turned to this genre.32
In the words of Hichkas, ‘you can speak about anything in it. And since most
of it is verbal, it’s possible to say a lot of things and open up subjects’;33 as noted
above, this is significant in the context of a civil-society discourse that encouraged
debate and plurality in the public domain. The fact that the end of Khatami’s presi-
dency (2004) coincided with hip-hop’s meteoric rise is maybe not coincidental: as
the new regime started to rein in public debate, some of this was perhaps diverted
into hip-hop. Several artists sing about the power of rap to reveal the truth. For
instance, the official Mousavi campaign song ‘Mibarim Ma’ (see note 8) includes
the line ‘Rap has become an excuse to speak the truth, anyone who says otherwise
is lying’, at the same time subtly commenting on hip-hop’s officially contested
status. There is also the fact that rap speaks ‘in the current everyday language
of the youth of Iran’ (Sahand Qazi, member of Raplarzeh, personal communica-
tion). Certainly, a constant theme emerges of hip-hop providing a forum to talk
about real issues that are ignored by the mainstream (and largely government-
controlled) media.
To return to the charge often made by the authorities that hip-hop is a ‘foreign’
import – something particularly pertinent in relation to those social classes where
popular music continues to be problematic – it is significant that most rappers,
Koli included, do not regard hip-hop as foreign at all. Besides the fact that ‘Rap-e
farsi has developed a distinctly “Iranian” sound and identity’ (Johnston 2008:
108) through references to poets such as Rumi and Hafez and to traditional music,
there is also an important sense in which hip-hop’s recent popularity can be under-
stood not as the adoption of something culturally distant, but as an extension both
of the centuries-old centrality of poetry to Iranian culture generally, and specifi-
cally the use of poetry as a vehicle for social comment.34 Moreover, just as rock
musicians – through their musical choices – problematize accepted notions of
belonging and what it means to be Iranian in the global context of the twenty-first
century (Nooshin 2005b: 480–4), so, through the adoption of this migrating style,
hip-hop artists assert new and complex identities that are both rooted locally and
shaped by a broader global consciousness.
In relation to the changing social demographics of Iranian popular music,
seen most strikingly in hip-hop, the association with African-American culture is
important. Although issues of ‘race’ are rarely addressed by rappers, the explicit
link with ‘ghetto culture’ noted above can be understood as a form of post-colonial
empathy with the ‘disempowered’. Koli talks about using hip-hop as a weapon to
expose social inequalities, and The Glass House even includes a passing reference
to Latin American revolutionaries and leaders of the US civil rights movement,
as Yaghi raps
Che Guevara and Zapata are my leaders

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are black but they are my colour35
In this way, local concerns and global consciousness are brought to bear on one
another in ways that are quite new to Iranian music.
Other reasons have been suggested for hip-hop’s popularity and the inroads
it has made into disadvantaged areas. First, in comparison with other popular
genres, hip-hop requires little specialist technology and is thus relatively cheap
to produce, ‘Rap invites creativity with language, one resource available to all’
(Breyley 2009). Both entertaining and thought-provoking, hip-hop provides a
refreshing alternative to saccharine mainstream pop. Some have claimed that it is
simply a matter of fashion, that hip-hop is a passing fad that has acquired a certain
cachet. Whilst artists themselves dismiss this idea, Bilan et al. (2010) suggest a
recent decline in popularity as the novelty of the hip-hop phenomenon starts to
wear off. At the same time, there are indications that the government is starting to
realize the potential of hip-hop as a way of reaching young people. I have already
noted the choice of hip-hop for Mousavi’s 2009 presidential election campaign
song, a clear attempt to attract the youth vote. In February 2010, a pro-government
YouTube video was posted showing aerial shots of street parades on the anniver-
sary of the revolution, and set to a hip-hop track.36 Indeed, according to Bilan et
al. (2010), a team of film-makers has been tasked with making a documentary
film about Iranian rap artists, to be shown to members of the Iranian Parliament as
a means of informing them about hip-hop. All of this suggests a possible shift in
future strategy from confrontation to control (as happened for cinema in the 1980s
and for pop music in the late 1990s). How any such ‘mainstreaming’ will impact
on the trajectory and future meanings of Iranian hip-hop remains to be seen.
In this chapter, I have explored the question of why hip-hop has gained such a
presence in Iran in recent years, and increasingly amongst those social groups that
have hitherto rejected Western popular culture. Most obviously, the privileging of
text and message provides an ideal medium through which artists can make their
voices heard. Whether the voice that hip-hop offers can effect anything beyond
provisional empowerment to rappers such as Koli remains to be seen. Musical
styles migrate and are adopted because they answer a need. In Iran, hip-hop has
become indigenized or ‘re-emplaced’ (to quote from Solomon), creating a space
of its own within which local meanings can be inflected against a global backdrop,
and where the personal becomes the social.
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Notes
â•‡ 1 The fluid boundaries between terms such as ‘genre’, ‘style’, ‘idiom’ and so on have been
addressed by several authors (see in particular Holt 2007: 12–20). One might argue
that rapping is a style of delivery within the broader genre of hip-hop music, although
the term ‘hip-hop’ of course also refers to a broader sub-cultural entity that goes well
beyond music. Clearly, choices in relation to terminology are far from neutral. Holt,
for instance, points to the connections between ‘genre’ and notions of both biological
lineage and the fixing of certain types, leading to the eventual emergence of a canon. To
my mind, ‘hip-hop’ implies both style (of the music, text, delivery, performance, and so
on) and genre in the sense of a type of music with its own identity, but one that is (like
all genres) constantly in flux.
â•‡ 2 The particular song (lyrics and music video) analysed by Solomon is ‘Istanbul’ by
Nefret. Solomon has written extensively on the Turkish rap scene; see, for example,
Solomon 2005b and 2008.
â•‡ 3 Whilst it is not possible to give a detailed overview of the academic literature on
‘global’ hip-hop, useful writings in addition to those mentioned include Pardue (2004,
2008) and Baker (2005). For a different perspective, see Tan’s discussion (2009) of the
appropriation of hip-hop by the Singapore state governing body for music, film, print
and television for an in-house promotional video which aimed to present its employees
as ‘cool’, but which took on a life of its own as it was circulated around the Internet.
Several documentary films have been made about hip-hop around the world, including,
for the Middle East, Slingshot Hip Hop (2008, Jackie Reem Salloum) about Palestinian
hip-hop and I Love Hip Hop in Morocco (2006, Joshua Asen and Jennifer Needleman).
â•‡ 4 Also widely known as rap-e farsi since the lyrics tend to be in the Farsi language
(Persian).
â•‡ 5 In contrast, perhaps, with the predominant class associations of popular music in
Europe and the USA.
â•‡ 6 Whilst class issues are complex, there is a clear divide in Tehran between the affluent,
cosmopolitan and ‘Westernized’ middle and upper classes of north Tehran and the less
affluent, more traditional and more overtly religious in the south, a divide marked
visually through the manner of dressing, particularly for women. See Nooshin 2009:
256–7.
â•‡ 7 As reported by a number of observers. See, for instance, a video of break-dancing in
Park-e Mellat, southern Tehran, in 2007 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5pQbJU
p6U0&feature=fvw> (posted 1 February 2008, accessed 14 May 2010); also ‘Persian
Rap Meeting Ariashahr’, a competitive meeting in a public space in 2008 (and marked
as suitable for those over the age of 18) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_neuonS-
tvM> (posted 27 June 2008, accessed 14 May 2010). Rapper Salome (see below) is
also a graffiti artist.
â•‡ 8 Raplarzeh recorded the official song for Mir Hossein Mousavi’s 2009 presidential elec-
tion campaign. ‘Mibarim Ma’ (‘We Will Win’) is a dancey rap piece which can be
heard on <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XpuBSqqlBo> (posted 30 May 2009,
accessed 2 March 2010).
â•‡ 9 See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXW5lpEJps> (posted 1 May 2006,
accessed 12 March 2010) and discussion in Elling 2007: 7–8.
10 See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU1NNAH6b_g> (posted 13 May 2008,
accessed 18 August 2010).
11 See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdjCjaI-Ojc> (posted 13 December 2009,
accessed 15 May 2010).
12 For instance, Hichkas references pre-revolutionary singers Googoosh and Delkash; and
Yas and Hichkas include sounds from Iranian classical music in their backing tracks.
Johnston (2008: 111–16) discusses the use of ‘indigenizing’ elements by hip-hop
artists, including dedications to medieval poets such as Rumi and Hafez, drawing on
traditional music, and invocations to religiosity, particularly Sufism: ‘Iranian rap is
often perceived as secular and anti-religious, but in fact shows that Iranian youths have
not forsaken their ancient culture of spirituality’ (ibid.: 114). She suggests that this is
one way in which artists seek to reach older audiences for what is generally regarded as
a music for young people.
13 See, for instance, Yas’s response to the film 300 and its alleged misrepresentation
of Iranians, ‘Hoviate Man’ (‘My Identity’) <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
VdJClWSMNT0> (posted 29 November 2008, accessed 17 May 2010).
14 For example ‘Nameh-i be Rais Jomhour’ (‘Letter to the President’) by Bahram, presum-
ably influenced by US rapper Tupac’s song of the same name.
15 Particularly US foreign policy in the Middle East, and the Israel/Palestine issue. See
‘George-e Goosh Kon’ (‘Listening George’) by Geev (Mowlaei 2008: 10).
16 It should be noted that the ‘government’ is by no means a unified body and has long
been divided on questions of cultural policy. Interestingly, such rhetoric is similar to that
used against popular music in the early 1980s; and there are also parallels with media
representations of hip-hop elsewhere. See Binder’s (1993) discussion of the negative
media discourses surrounding heavy metal and (the more racialized discourses around)
hip-hop in the US in the mid-1980s to early 1990s.
17 The many songs which directly reference Tehran include ‘Tehran’ by (female) rapper
Pani and ‘Shahr-e Gom Shodeh’ (‘Lost City’) by Kami MC; the latter presents a
nostalgic view of old Tehran which is contrasted with the problems of the city today.
18 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACCuFrI43WE> (1:11 to 1:19; posted 21 NovÂ�Â�
emÂ�ber 2009, accessed 18 May 2010). ‘Ekhtelaf’ also features in Bahman Ghobadi’s
2009 film No One Knows about Persian Cats.
19 See interview with Salome <http://www.kolahstudio.com/Underground/?p=192>
(posted 6 August 2006, accessed 12 May 2010).
20 The Glass House (2008), dir. Hamid Rahmanian and Melissa Hibbard, Fictionville
Studio <http://fictionvillestudio.com/> (accessed 18 May 2010). The film focuses on
the personal stories of four women, including Koli.
21 See Breyley 2009 for discussion of a rap by Koli about the rape and murder of a 9-year-
old boy.
22 See <http://ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½å°“ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½
www.omid-e-mehr.org/> (accessed 27 May 2010) for the aims of the foun-
dation, its activities, and some of the stories of the girls and women who have been
helped.
23 Omid-Mehr Foundation Annual Report 2006–7, page 8.
24 Information on Koli’s life is taken from The Glass House, from correspondence (in
Persian and English, May 2009) and personal interview (in Persian, translated by the
author, April 2010).
25 Personal correspondence, May 2009.
26 The Glass House, 1:26:44 to 1:27:24. The translation (in the English subtitles) does not
preserve the rhyming patterns of the original Persian. All the lyrics presented here are
by Koli.
27 1:27:45 to 1:28:43.
28 1:29:04 to 1:29:56.
29 The Glass House, 1:13:33 to 1:14:22.
30 Najafi left Iran in 2005 and now lives in Germany. The opening lyrics give some idea
of the tone of this song: ‘Like the girl with the hymen sewn/And the poor one in the fire
thrown/Like my mother’s oppressed lot/Summed up in her kettle and pot/Her body yet
unseen/Her veiling unforeseen ….’ My thanks to Shahin Najafi for sharing this transla-
tion with me.
31 ‘[T]he response of the second generation to the trauma of the first … Postmemory most
specifically describes the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective
trauma to the experiences of their parents …’ (Hirsch 2001, quoted in Breyley 2008).
32 ‘An Interview with Yas, a Rapper from the Persian Underground Hip-hop Scene of
Tehran’, Nassir Mashkouri (29 October 2007) <http://zirzamin.se/?q=node/198>
(posted 29 October 2007, accessed 18 May 2010).
33 Hamid Monebatti, ‘Before Us there was No One Else – An Interview with Soroush
Lashkari’, 15 May 2009 <http://www.zirzamin.org/?q=node/776> (posted 15 May
2009, accessed 17 May 2010).
34 With the important difference that the poetics of Iranian hip-hop tend to be deliberately
forthright in comparison with the veiled and ambiguous messages in poetry from the
medieval period through to the present day.
35 Yaghi, The Glass House, 14:40.
36 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbYqckFvUJI> (posted 12 February 2010,
accessed 18 August 2010).
7 Un voyage via barquinho …
Global circulation, musical hybridization,
and adult modernity, 1961–9
Keir Keightley
Introduction
Alongside the better-known British Invasion, the early 1960s witnessed a Brazilian
Invasion of the USA and Canada. These two moments of musical globalization
were distinguished by their respective age and taste formations, as is revealed
in some dialogue from The Steve Allen Show of 7 July 1964. Introducing the
Brazilian vocalist Astrud Gilberto and the American jazz musician Stan Getz
performing their hit version1 of “The Girl from Ipanema” (Brazilian composer
Antonio Carlos Jobim’s translated bossa nova), the pianist and jazz fan Allen says:
It’s always a marvelous thing when good music is also popular music – the
two things do not happen often enough. … It’s a remarkable thing that the
bossa nova fad or craze, which some observers had thought had run its course,
is now bigger and better than ever and I predict it will never go away, because
good music, even if it goes through a phase, always sticks around.
“Good music” is coded language, describing not only classical or art music,
but, as here, easy listening, the adult-oriented popular music that would remain
economically dominant until circa 1967 in the USA and Canada.2 Allen’s
comments, made at the very peak of Beatlemania, suggest an awareness that
multiple musical “1960s” were in play at the time. That the bossa nova “fad
or craze” was characterized as “bigger and better than ever” reminds us of the
widespread circulation of sophisticated and cosmopolitan popular music during
a decade conventionally associated with youth culture and Anglo-American rock.
The rise of rock was the most prominent symptom of a key historical shift in
the West, in which the traditional veneration of age over youth was decisively
inverted; from the 1960s onward, youth culture would be symbolically privileged
as the bearer of modernity’s progressive impulses. Rock is regularly understood
to have been central to accelerating social change at the time: the spread of the
“sexual revolution” is often attributed to rock culture, and rock’s “rebel sell” has
been strongly implicated by David Buxton (1983) in the expansion of consumer
culture in the West. The historiography of popular music, and of the 1960s in
particular, reveals similar investments in rock and youth culture. This has served
further to obscure the critical importance of adult-oriented forms of consumption,
Un voyage via barquinho …â•… 113
such as easy listening or “adult pop,” in marking the structure of feeling of the
1960s. This chapter examines some widely circulated, highly successful popular
music and media that were explicitly marketed to adults in the 1960s, and which
were felt to embody specifically adult concerns. In focusing here on a series of
songs loosely associated with bossa nova, cosmopolitan consumption, and sexual
“liberation,” I hope to map out a different 1960s: not the standard version in which
a rebellious youth counterculture stands center stage, but one instead defined by
jet set travel, musical transculturation, and an idea of the historical present, of a
global “Now,” that was privileged as the particular possession of adult consumers
in the West.
This 1960s is especially marked by musical transculturation and hybridization,
by the cross-pollination of multiple musical and media forms. Jan Nederveen
Pieterse (1995) contends not only that globalization and hybridization are synon-
ymous; he further suggests a key issue for research is what he calls “temporali-
ties of hybridization,” those junctures that witness speeding-up or slowing-down
proÂ�cesses of hybridization, indeed of hybridizations of hybridization. It is just
such a juncture that interests us here. So I want us to listen to processes of hybridi-
zation, globalization, and temporal marking across what we might call a “song
network”: a set of songs that not only sound somewhat similar, but which are
also embedded in similar media texts, circulating in similar fashion. In fact, these
media texts contribute to how we hear these songs, highlighting aspects to which
we might not otherwise attend. A purely musicological relationship to bossa nova
may at times seem tenuous; indeed, I will discuss but a single “authentically-
Brazilian” bossa, “O Barquinho” (Roberto Menescal–Ronaldo Bôscoli, 1961).
But what I am interested in here is perhaps better described as what Roland
Barthes might have called “bossa nova-icity,” a sense that a recording somehow
shares in some aspect of “bossa nova,” even when it might not be a bossa nova
in strictly rhythmic terms. This is of course closely tied to ideas about Brazil.
However, the “Brazil” in question is something more than the long-standing, ster-
eotypical notion of an “exotic paradise,” that timeless, fixed, unchanging space of
Western fantasy. Admittedly, elements of this remain, but buried beneath a newer,
more prominent version of “Brazil” now viewed as moving forward, as precisely
a vanguard of modernization.3
With its vaunted “fifty years progress in five” modernization efforts promoted
by President Juscelino Kubitschek, this Brazil emerges by the 1960s as an emblem
of constant movement, collapsing and condensing rhythm, travel, development.
This sense of ongoing movement informs the period’s linkages of Brazil, bossa
nova and “Now-ness”—the feeling that Brazil was happening “Now,” and so
could act as a metonym for the globalizing present in the historical period. As
an avatar of “Brazil,” bossa nova becomes a key musical means of figuring new
forms of global simultaneity that were growing in the period, such as the Telstar
satellite’s celebrated telecommunicative production of a mediated, instantaneous
global present from 1962 onward; this contributes to what Lisa Parks (2003)
calls the “fantasy of global presence.” Indeed, the rapid global migration of songs
such as the ones I will be discussing was enabled by the multiple forms of elec-
tronic presence that constitute modern media. Media’s potential for simultaneous
114â•… Keir Keightley
transmission and reception further enhances the temporal dimension of globaliza-

tion—experienced musically—that will interest me here.4
Who benefits from these migrations remains an open question. Discussing the
influence of the favelas on the outskirts of Rio on global cultures of popular music
and soccer, Doreen Massey (1994) reminds us of the “differentiated mobility” of
subjects of globalization—cultures may travel while their creators remain fixed in
place. On the other hand Roberto Menescal, composer of “O Barquinho,” journeys
to the USA in 1962, and, as Treece (1997: 11) points out, is able to build an enduring
career as an internationally recognized professional musician.5 And yet the most
prominent subject of movement is the white elite of the Northern Hemisphere,
either literally voyaging around the world for business or pleasure, or figuratively
occupying and enjoying the vicarious power-positionality produced by posses-
sion of bossa-commodities. (Here we should note the notoriously harsh Brazilian
critic of bossa nova in the 1960s, José Ramos Tinhorão, who argued bossa was,
in the words of Perrone and Dunn (2002: 16), akin to “the assembly of foreign
cars masquerading as national products.”)6 Because “differentiated mobility” still
cuts across nations and ethnicities, globalization produces winners and losers both
inside Brazil and out. Certainly bossa nova’s global circulation was of a different
order of magnitude than the tours of individual Brazilian artists. Nonetheless,
bossa nova was a vehicle for Brazilian participation in globalization. Viewing
this as a simple story about appropriations at the periphery by a controlling center
overlooks the multiple flows in multiple directions of Arjun Appadurai’s “moder-
nity at large” (1996)—and misses the crucial point that Brazilian bossa composers
and performers significantly shaped the mediascape of the 1960s.
By referring to the set of songs in question as a “song network,” I want to
acknowledge and foreground the multiple mediations involved in producing
the mediascape and the structure of feeling under investigation here. Unlike
the diachronic, folkloric, organic, “song family” approach used by Hatch and
Millward (1987), the notion of a song network highlights synchronic, industrial
impulses behind the multiple performances and appropriations and hybridizations
and commodifications of a song, a sound, a style. The song network examined here
connects composition, performance, recording, prototype, pastiche, mix, mash-
up. An industrial-aesthetic logic drives the relative simultaneity of these processes
and productions, since the cultural commodities in question were all trafficking in
contemporary culture, in fashioning, commodifying and selling a version of the
“now.” Indeed, asserting affinities between the “new” and the “now” is crucial to
commercial success. Once a trend is established (or appears to be on the verge of
being established), replicas of prototypes proliferate and, if successful, musically
mark the historical moment.7 The Bossa Sixties was one result of this process,
as were the Beat[le] Sixties, or the Disco Seventies, or the Grunge Nineties, etc.
I would ask readers to begin an exploration of this song network by listening to
the Portuguese vocal version of “O Barquinho” by Brazilian group the Tamba Trio
from 1962. This is not to suggest a point of origination, but rather a point of depar-
ture. Composed by Roberto Menescal and Ronaldo Bôscoli in 1961, the song was
itself already a hybrid before it was published in France in 1962, translated into
English by Buddy Kaye as “Little Boat” c. 1963 and subsequently recorded by
dozens of non-Brazilian performers, eventually becoming a jazz and pop standard.

We need to recall that, alongside more distant Portuguese and African influences,
bossa integrates samba, bop and cool jazz, Cuban bolero, Impressionism, and
more. Roland Barthes’s comments are apposite here—“The text is a tissue of
quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture” (1977: 146)—as long
as we acknowledge Rio among those centers.
“O Barquinho” so clearly “inspired” Francis Lai and Pierre Barouh’s hugely
successful theme song for the French film Un homme et une femme (1966) that
US jazz musician Herbie Mann creatively combined the two songs on his 1966
LP A Mann and a Woman with vocalist Tamiko Jones. The album features Jones
singing Jerry Keller’s English lyrics for “A Man and a Woman” on one track.
But a later track slyly starts with Mann’s flute again playing the first three notes
of the iconic opening riff of “A Man and a Woman,” before suddenly turning
into Menescal’s “O Barquinho” (Jones actually sings the English version, “Little
Boat”). This was not simply overly clever arranging, though. Mann was a key
early figure in what later would be called “world music,” regularly travelling the
globe to work with local musicians. He had visited Brazil as part of a US State
Department tour and then returned to Rio in 1962 to record “O Barquinho,” with
the composer Menescal playing guitar on the session. In fact, by 1966 Mann had
released no less than four full albums featuring bossa nova.8
Mixing Lai and Barouh’s song with Menescal and Bôscoli’s thus performed
a kind of critical musicology: clearly we are meant to meditate on the strong
similarities between “A Man and a Woman” and “O Barquinho.” And any fan of
Mann’s would have immediately understood where his artistic allegiances lay.
Mann was one of the last jazz musicians who moved easily, even elegantly, back
and forth between the worlds of sacralized jazz and commercialized pop (in 1975,
he had a Billboard top 20 disco hit with “HiJack”). Doing a “commercial pop
vocal” LP such as A Mann and a Woman allowed him to keep exploring world
music as a source of inspiration for modern jazz on his other Atlantic albums.
Thus this version of “O Barquinho” (which he had already recorded and released
for the same label twice in the previous four years) was a sharp commentary on
commercial appropriation, even as it also further developed the song network we
are exploring: it was not Lai’s version, but Mann and Jones’s English-language
recording of “A Man and a Woman” that made the Billboard chart.9
Mann likely heard something derivative in “A Man and a Woman” and, as a jazz
intellectual, perhaps wished to “educate” listeners by proferring the “authentic”
as a counterpoint to Lai’s “alienated” appropriation. Certainly the combination of
the rhythm and the nonsense syllables of the main melodic hook of “A Man and
a Woman” (“Ba da da da dah” from “O Barquinho” becomes “la la la la lah”),
coupled with its descending chromatic chord progression, strongly recalls “O
Barquinho,” even if the rhythm section of Lai’s recording of “Un homme et une
femme” is actually not playing a bossa, but rather a waltz. But, again, the point
here is not to privilege authentic original over alienated copy. Instead, Mann’s
version of “O Barquinho” demonstrates the characteristic promiscuity of the song
network that will shortly include yet another hit composition by Lai.
The sequel to the film Un homme et une femme was entitled Vivre pour vivre
(1967). Its hit theme song is clearly derived from the composer’s own “Un homme
et une femme” and yet gestures more closely toward the melodic contour of “O
Barquinho” (even as the melody and chord progression are slowed down and
drawn out). Fitted with English lyrics by Norman Gimbel (author of the English
version of “The Girl from Ipanema”), it became a top-10 “Easy Listening” hit for
Jack Jones in 1967. That same year, a pastiche-as-mixture10 of Lai’s two songs is
used in Valley of the Dolls, while in 1969 a Spanish/German/US exploitation film,
The Girl From Rio, features a theme song whose chromatic descent and melodic
contour are strongly reminiscent of all of these earlier songs. And if we strain, we
might even detect faint echoes of these sexy adventures in David Bowie’s “Young
Americans” track, “Right” (recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, 1974), and
the theme from Charlie’s Angels (Allyn Ferguson, 1976), both of which seek to
embody the worldly sensibility at play here.
From Rio to patio

The song network I have been describing links the soundtracks of cinema, radio,
hi-fi and public-address systems in defining a 1960s musical public sphere, one
running in parallel with that of the more familiar rock counterculture. At this
point, some might be tempted to approach the network along the axes of original
and copy, local and global, roots and rip-offs; this perspective would then proceed
to evaluate the erosion of the authenticity of “O Barquinho,” or the economic
exploitation of its authors, or the endurance of its musical inspiration. However,
this could equally lead to mystification, by romanticizing origins and positioning
the song (or its authors or bossa nova) as passive or pure victims of globalization.
Like bossa, “O Barquinho” was already, from its composition, a hybrid vehicle
for pre-existing musical materials, an impure assemblage adapted by its profes-
sional composers from multiple global cultural traditions. The reconfiguration and
packaging of these elements allowed them to migrate more efficiently across the
global bossa boom of the 1960s. They ended up contributing to various adap-
tations, appropriations, pastiches, whether in the USA, France, Spain, or else-
where—signs of circulatory success in a global context, at once products and
producers of globalization-as-hybridization. The appropriative pop logic that led
Lai to be “inspired” by “O Barquinho” and bossa is not unique to “first world”
professional songwriting; it operates globally. Reading this as a simple story of
colonial expropriation may overlook the cosmopolitan sensibilities of Brazilian
artists and veer into an implicit paternalism, denying agency to professional song-
writers working in the metropole of Rio.11
From the outset, bossa nova was a global music, looking outward to the world,
operating within a cosmopolitan sensibility that had long been second nature to
“first world” musicians. But this made critics inside Brazil nervous, and attacks
on bossa nova by Tinhorão and others saw it as a problematic break with tradition,
ultimately impure, inauthentic, indeed unpatriotic in its global allegiances and
aspirations. The nativist critique of bossa nova articulated anxiety about hybridi-
zation and the attendant dilution and destruction of local traditions. Unlike crude
cultural imperialism, in which forces from without impose their culture upon a
traditional one and so obliterate it, bossa nova was perceived as an enemy within,
its young musicians identifying too closely with international perspectives tradi-
tionally reserved for colonizers. Meanwhile, another reading suggests these musi-
cians were in fact seeking to control their own destinies as musical cosmopolitans,
by asserting their autonomy as modern artists (this is how David Treece (1997)
characterizes the first generation of bossa nova performers and composers).
Helped by its widely acknowledged hybrid origins in the melding of (among
other things) samba and jazz—genres already well established in the repertoires of
US professional musicians—bossa nova quickly came to define the sixties sound
of the suburbs. In particular, it gained global acceptance almost immediately as
a central component of the adult-oriented music industry (in advertising, sound-
tracks, jazz, easy listening). Able to signify sophistication, adulthood and modern-
ness, it could easily be aligned with notions of globalization-as-modernization,
further helping bossa nova make a very smooth journey from Rio to patio.12
Bossa nova was an adult-oriented popular music that was also considered cutting-
edge or up-to-date. After the rise of rock c. 1967, adult pop would be heard as
increasingly out of touch, indeed as quite un-Pop, if we take “Pop” as a synonym
of “Now” (this year’s pop hits will of course be packaged in an album called Now
That’s What I Call Music).13 After 1967, youth culture would monoÂ�polize the musi-
cally modern. This makes the bossa nova boom of the 1960s the last gasp of popular
musical modernity to be explicitly associated with adults. Rapidly spreading
outwards from the middle-class enclaves of Rio in the late 1950s, by 1962 songs
like “O Barquinho” were being performed by composer Menescal at Carnegie Hall,
that site of musical sacralization in a city at the center of the modern world; bossa
nova had been invited into the White House by Jackie Kennedy and its songs and
rhythms were entering the jazz canon—all privileged, adult-oriented contexts. So
we need to keep in mind an idea of the adult as herald of modernity (and as vanguard
of consumer culture) as we voyage via barquinho across the sea of the sixties—a
sixties not of long hair and loud music, but of quiet nights and quiet stars.
Consuming worldly music

The years of easy listening or adult pop’s hegemony, c. 1946–66,14 might also
be characterized as a period “When the United Nations was Cool.” Period
films regularly invoked their own contemporary hipness with shots of the UN’s
“International Style” building in New York; cold-war, global fantasy figures such
as James Bond seemed somehow implicated in maintaining its global order whilst
vacationing; and hundreds of popular music LPs promised virtual voyages around
the world, including several featuring the UN on their covers, such as Paul Anka’s
Our Man Around the World (RCA-Victor, 1962).15 Bossa nova thus successfully
entered a large, adult market for music that promised a vicarious, virtual voyage
around the world.
An important early world music series by Capitol Records, entitled Capitol of
the World, issued almost 400 LPs from dozens of countries between 1956 and
1969. In fact, I believe a Capitol of the World LP by Brazilian orchestra leader
Leo Perrachi, Brazilian Cocktails (T-10122), to be the earliest album domestically
released in the USA and Canada to feature compositions by a key player in the rise
of bossa nova, Antonio Carlos Jobim, c. 1958. In the early 1960s, the series would
release albums by Luiz Bonfa and João Gilberto. Interestingly, however, none of
these were commercial successes; selling bossa nova as world music did not seem
to work.16 But bossa nova would subsequently succeed massively when marketed
as contemporary popular music for sophisticated adults. So bossa nova was not
world music but, precisely, worldly music: it was music that marked its moment
in terms of a global present and a global co-presence.
Of course, as the allusion to James Bond above reminds us, these consumer
forms were not selling a purely progressive, “One World” song of global harmony.
The UN frequently figured in fantasies of global power, and the title of Tony
Bennett’s If I Ruled the World: Songs for the Jet Set (Columbia, 1965) makes
explicit the deeper desires of such musical cosmopolitanism. Its cover image, a
powerful aerial view of Corcovado in Rio, is also suggestive: why would Rio
in particular signify the jet set c. 1965? One reason is the inclusion on the LP
of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Samba do Avião” (translated as “Song of the Jet”).
Another is bossa nova’s prominence at this particular historical conjuncture. By
1965, bossa nova had indeed conquered the world, enacting the kind of simulta-
neous global presence that is one of the power fantasies (and strategies) of globali-
zation more generally.
The adult modernity I am interested in here was suspended between two
conceptions of “living in the moment,” neither of which alone fully character-
izes the structure of feeling at issue—because both are, ultimately, anti-modern,
albeit in different ways. What we might call the pre-modern conception involved
the primitivist fantasy of a timeless Other, geographically distant, more in touch
with the subject’s animal nature, and so more fully present to the beauty of a
primal Now. On the other hand, what could be called the post-modern version
involved fully embracing consumer culture’s hedonistic injunctions to live for
the moment through overconsumption (for example, via credit-card debt, that
most anti-modern disavowal, indeed disposal, of the future). Adult modernity
presumed one could dabble in each of these, yet still be defined by a middle-
of-the road balancing act that maintained a proper distance from excessive alle-
giance to either. The adult-branded version of “living in the moment” overcame
Puritan or Victorian restraints while keeping faith in a grand narrative of progress
and a better tomorrow. That this was precisely a fantasy must not go unremarked,
nor should we overlook its ultimate contribution to the deeper entrenchment
of consumerist values. Indeed, it might be termed a high-class bait and switch:
bossa’s sophisticated aloofness and cool minimalism actually worked hard to
naturalize a world of fervid overconsumption—one underpinned by underdevel-
opment elsewhere ….
Bossa à la franç(a)is
One song in the barquinho network expresses these ideas most directly. Francis
Lai’s theme from Claude Lelouche’s 1967 film Vivre pour vivre (Live for Life),
a sequel in both cinematic and musical terms to 1966’s Un homme et une femme,
was clearly composed in the longstanding tradition of “sound-alike” songs meant

to follow up on an earlier hit.17 Thus “Live for Life” can be heard to invoke “A
Man and a Woman” even as it invokes “O Barquinho.” Norman Gimbel’s English
lyric constantly calls the present to mind, filled as it is with words (in bold) that
allude to time, to temporality, and to movement:
Come with me my love and seize the day and live it,
live it fully live it fast.
Never thinking once about tomorrow,
till tomorrow’s been and gone and past.
We’ll pour the wine and fill the cup of joy and drink it,
drink as if it were the last.
Live, just live for life.
In Paree today, in Amsterdam tomorrow,
sixty minutes through the skies.
Fly with me and see the setting summer sun
and stay with me to see it rise.
And say to those who say to live this way is mad,
that mad we’d rather be, than wise.
Consuming the adult good life, whether via jet or wine, appears as the impera-
tive of a new sensibility; why else would the injunction “live for life” be neces-
sary? The chord progression’s half-step drops occur and reoccur, creating an effect
suggestive of lingering in one place and then moving on to another. Presenting a
montage of moments at both the lyrical and musical levels, the song’s harmonic
instability and pleasurable pausing remind us of the restless mobility that char-
acterizes the global consumption at issue. And if we have any doubt about the
fetishization of contemporaneity here, the fourth verse’s compulsion to possess
the present is plain:
Yesterday’s a mem’ry, (gone for good, forever)

and tomorrow is a guess.
What is real is what is here
and now, the “here and now” is all that we possess.
So take my hand and we will take the moment,
if for just the moment’s happiness.
The “adultness” of this musical-lyrical articulation of the “Now” is under-

lined on “Time for Us,” the track that immediately follows “Live for Life” on
Jack Jones’s Without You LP (RCA-Victor, 1967). It directly addresses the adult,
married couple with children who are the intended consumers of this product.
“Time for Us” paints a picture of the return of romance to a suburban marriage
after the kids are in bed, a time when husband and wife can “share these quiet
moments after” and become “lovers again at last.” Here adult responsibilities and
adult pleasures mingle in a popular musical commodity that explicitly acknowl-

edges the preferred listener for songs like “Live for Life.”
Likewise, Lelouche’s 1966 film A Man and a Woman had offered a relatively
novel narrative about a quite explicit love affair between a widow and a widower,
both with children. Indeed, the film’s man and woman meet by chance when
picking up their respective children from a boarding school, and eventually rent
a hotel room together, where they are shown having sexual intercourse. A Man
and a Woman was made in French in France, and released with subtitles around
the world. In the USA, it was marketed initially as an art film, a genre historically
associated with spicy, specifically adult, fare; indeed, the history of art film exhibi-
tion in the USA shows its close links to the rise of pornographic cinema (Schaeffer
1999: 331ff.). A Man and a Woman is not pornographic by the standards of the
twenty-first century, but its marketing positioned it as a bold, even risqué, film
presenting a mature take on sexuality—indeed, it offered cinematic sexuality as
a commodity meant to mark the modern consumer as up-to-date, as “with it,” as
precisely adult. Certainly the title and main image used to promote the film—a
close-up of the two stars kissing that was cropped in such a way as to highlight
the intensity of the promised voyeurism—remind us that this is a film about sex
as much as about romance. The film climaxes with a semi-nude lovemaking scene
that was indeed relatively daring within dominant cinema in the USA in 1966, and
yet by 1967 it had entered the mainstream, having won multiple Oscars, including
that for Best Foreign Film.
Lai and Barouh’s title track is played repeatedly, even obsessively, throughout
the film. It is important to note that the director, Claude Lelouche, made his start
in advertising and went on to make over 400 Scopitone shorts while breaking into
feature production (Scopitone was a kind of video jukebox introduced in 1960).
Jeff Smith notes that “Critics have frequently described the film as a feature length
commercial, and indeed this characterization is quite compatible with Scopitone’s
function as a vehicle to promote music and other products” (1998: 145). If pop
songs are advertisements for themselves, then music videos like this are adver-
tisements for advertisements. So what is A Man and a Woman selling? The film
lovingly depicts various leisure activities, restaurants, high fashion, cigars, wine,
Ford Mustang sports cars, Coca-Cola, and other commercial components of
“the good life” as pursued by attractive and stylish people being sexy in exotic
settings—all accompanied by contemporary, sexy, bossa-inflected music.
This notion of the contemporary good life is clearly one of the key signifieds
put into play by the globalized bossa sound of the 1960s. Consuming bossa
allowed one the fantasy of communion with just such a world, a virtual immer-
sion in a pulsing, global “Now.” Even if the title song, “A Man and a Woman,”
may obscure its affinities with bossa nova via waltz time, another song in the
film removes any doubt whatsoever that the privileged, authentic soundtrack for
sexy, contemporary, cosmopolitan adults is indeed bossa. In an extended montage
sequence, Pierre Barouh performs Vinicius de Moraes and Baden Powell’s
“Samba de Bençao,” whose lyrics he has translated into French.
The song, now called “Samba Saravah,” is placed in the film immediately
following dialogue in which “originality” is the topic of discussion, suggesting
some small awareness of the film soundtrack’s many appropriations (see Clover
1995 for a parallel case in Singin’ in the Rain). Telling the widower about her
husband (who we do not yet know is dead), the woman suggests it is difficult, if
still desirable, to be original:
WOMAN:â•‡ I don’t claim to be original… What can be original is the man you love.
MAN:â•‡ Your husband must be original.
WOMAN:â•‡ For me, he is. … A man of great integrity [wholeness]. He’s passionate
about, things, about people, ideas, about countries. … For instance, I spent
a week in Brazil without ever having been there. Pierre was in a film there.
When he got back, he talked about samba for a week. Samba came into our
lives.
At this point a montage sequence shows them living the adult good life to a
bossa soundtrack. It features Pierre Barouh singing “Samba Saravah” within the
diegesis, while he and his wife go about their daily lives of leisure—playing guitar,
riding horses, drinking wine, making love. The performance includes a spoken
section in which Barouh “salutes” the bossa nova musicians and composers who
have inspired him, some of whom are playing on the track:
João Gilberto, Carlos Lyra, Dorival Caymmi, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius
de Moraes. Baden Powell (who wrote the music for this song and for so many
others) … I salute you … Pixinguinha, Noel Rosa, Dolores Duran, Cyro
Monteiro, and so many others … Edu Lobo, and my friends who are here
tonight. Baden, of course, Nico, Oswaldo, Bidgi, Oscar, Nicolino, Milton …
Saravah!
(author’s translation)
Alongside this heartfelt homage, there is another spoken-word section that

addresses a perhaps subtler form of appropriation. After Barouh notes that
lyricist de Moraes “calls himself the blackest white man in Brazil” he inserts
himself into this lineage, using music to pass as the Other: “I, who am perhaps
the most Brazilian Frenchman in France/I’d like to talk to you about my love
for the samba.” Here cosmopolitan presumption—both French and Brazilian—is
laid bare, even as Barouh seeks to communicate his respect for Brazilian music.
Finally, the virtual Brazilian addresses the charges of commercialization that have
plagued bossa nova and distinguishes his appropriation as motivated by love and
a deep knowÂ�ledge of musical roots rather than by economics:
I know that the song inconveniences those for whom it’s merely a fad
And others who profit from it without loving it.
Me, I love it and I’ve gone around the world
Searching for its vagabond roots
Today, to find the most profound,
It’s the samba song we must sing.
(author’s translation)
Barouh appropriates Brazilian identity via bossa, but ultimately does so in

the service of his own distinctiveness, of his own “personal autonomy” and
“mastery at home,” as Ulf Hannerz’s critique of cosmopolitans more generally
puts it (1990: 240). Remember, the film, and this montage sequence, take place
in France; “Brazil” remains an emblem, an icon, an ideal—somewhere you can
“spend a week without ever having been there”—assuming, that is, you possess
the economic capital to live the kind of leisurely good life portrayed in the film.
Toward the end of the montage, the couple return home dressed in tuxedo and
evening gown after a night on the town. They pass a globe on the way to their
bedroom, subtly reminding us of the film’s powerful, cosmopolitan conjuncture of
consumption, globalization, sex—and various versions of bossa nova.
After the massive success of the film, title song, and their “sequels,” Lai’s
work was regularly called upon when sexy cosmopolitanism needed to be
evoked—but he now becomes an object, rather than subject, of appropriation
and pastiche. In Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, 1967), one of the heroines
(played by Sharon Tate), who has failed to make a career in Hollywood, is
forced to support herself (and her sick husband) by going to Paris to make “art”
films, which are actually soft-core porn. At one point we are shown a segment
of the French film she has made, in which she makes love in a stereotypical
Parisian garret accompanied by Johnny Williams’s quite broad pastiche, mixing
elements of both “A Man and a Woman” and “Live for Life.” We are here
approaching the turning point, when adult modernity will finally be supplanted
by the more youthful, arguably countercultural version. Clearly, the alignment
of moral corruption and commercial degradation in Valley of the Dolls’ activa-
tion of the barquinho song network does not bode well for the future of adult
modernity’s musical cosmopolitanism ….
An actual “adults-only” film, Jess Franco’s The Girl from Rio (a multi-
national co-production shot in that most modernist of cities, Brasilia, in 1969)18
returns us to the beginning, sort of. Daniel White’s theme song resembles “O
Barquinho” in its melody and descending chromatic chord progression. Its
rhythm section deploys the classic sidestick clave that emerges as the standard
bossa groove in the 1960s, and its lyrics make explicit the “Brazil” it seeks
to evoke musically. All of these factors point to bossa source material. But it
is equally a pastiche of Lai’s “A Man and a Woman” and “Live for Life,” at
once glocalized and globalized, suggesting the barquinho has not so much
returned home as become “at home in the world” (Brennan 1997). The song
plays during the film’s opening and closing credit sequences. We first see a jet
flying over the harbour in Rio, followed by a slow pan to the city itself. The
film’s final scene has its female protagonists boarding a cruise ship and heading
out to sea, presumably back “home.” These technologies of tourism frame the
film as a kind of sexual travelogue, with bossa nova as the soundtrack of rest-
less hedonism. Whether via sheet music, film, sound recording, Ford Mustang,
jet, ship, or satellite, bossa nova accompanies—and accentuates—cosmopolitan
promiscuity.
The lyrics of “The Girl from Rio” seem slyly to acknowledge appropriation,
just as the dialogue about originality in Un homme et une femme had done:
The girl from Rio is as cold as ice

She plays with men just like a cat plays with mice
…
Sometimes a smooth operator comes along
But she soon changes his song.
Unsurprisingly, exotic and erotic meet in the theme to a soft-core porn film set
in Brazil. But rather than the colonial relation of cool center dominating torrid
periphery, the lyrics propose that the male colonizer (the “smooth operator”) will
be glocalized (“changes his song”) by the controlling (“cold as ice”) subaltern.
This of course is one reading of the song network we have been tracing, even as
such interpretive inversions are always subject to further revision.
Conclusion
One version of a 1960s global structure of feeling can be recovered in the song
network we have been exploring. Lai and Barouh’s song, “Un homme et une
femme,” for example, is a pastiche-as-mixture: it is a product of France, influ-
enced by Brazilian music, itself influenced by US jazz, itself influenced by
Impressionism (heard in similar descending chromatic pieces from the jazz reper-
toire such as “Early Autumn” or “Midnight Sun”), and we might then go further
back to explore Debussy’s infatuation with Indonesian gamelan, and then gamelan
itself, and then, and then …. Only the historical record arrests our discussion of
these global mixing sessions and their processes of pastiche, bricolage, montage,
melange. The barquinho song network was especially influential for the beautiful
if bizarre mix of US jazz, Brazilian bossa, French soundtrack, wordless vocals,
and various local forms of go-go or ye-ye music that characterized sexy Italian
film music of the late 1960s and early 1970s (e.g. Ennio Morricone’s “Metti, una
sera a cena,” 1969). This is a dimension of globalization in action; its musical
stylization of a globalized “Now”—a globalizing-hybridizing present marked by
the emergence of globalization into everyday life—helped shape the historical
moment’s structure of feeling.
Globalization-as-capitalism clearly involves forms of appropriation on a
massive scale. That said, this song network should not be understood simply
as ripping-off Brazilian music—and not only because homage may at times
be paid, exemplifying love alongside theft. As an instance of globalization-as-
hybridization, the song network uses pastiche-as-mixture to draw upon, as well
as disseminate, a fantasy of global presence and power. Here the “presence” of
globalization is not only spatial but temporal. Certainly the song(s) and film(s)
marked their moment of adult modernity through endless repetition (on radio,
in cinemas, later on television or in used record bins). But they also are impli-
cated in the new forms of simultaneity that characterize modern mass media
in a globalizing world more generally. We cannot grasp the full meaning of
globalization without understanding the role of communications technologies
therein (not simply in “representing” it, but in administering it, in provoking
and perpetuating it, as Edward Said (1978) shows). Alongside actual physical
travel, means of communication include the virtual forms of presence produced

by high-fidelity sound recording, endlessly hyped in the period. Music industry
promotional discourse assiduously asserted that one could indeed “spend a week
in Brazil without ever having been there” by buying the right hi-fi and the right
record to transport listeners virtually there. The belief that one can be “there” as
well as “here” via electronic media is something new in human history. This is
as much a temporal as a spatial notion, since simultaneity defines such mediated
relationships. And capitalism more generally depends for its success on precisely
this kind of distant relation, on the virtual presence and remote control enabled
by media technologies.
Bossa nova’s global presence, and its articulation with a “live for the present”
ideology, marked the global present of the adult-oriented 1960s. Tracing out the
barquinho song network allows us to glimpse some of the processes of globali-
zation that produced that structure of feeling. The network was at once product
and producer of this global feeling, at once rooted in Brazil and a hybridized
“universal sound,” at once individually identifiable songs and a complex web of
mediated influence, allusion, and appropriation, establishing its own “tradition”
yet equally emblematizing contemporaneity.
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Notes
â•‡ 1 Their recording reached #1 on the Billboard “Pop-Standard Singles” chart and #5 on
the Hot 100 chart in July of 1964. The original Portuguese lyrics were by Vinicius de
Moraes and the English lyrics by Norman Gimbel.
â•‡ 2 See Keightley 2001 and 2004 on adult-oriented popular music in the period.
â•‡ 3 Tabajara (1962) nicely expresses the linkage of bossa nova, “Brazilian-ness” and moder-
nity in his discussion of “young Brazilians conscious of the conflict between their way
of thinking and the spirit of old Brazil which in popular music outlasted the changes that
took place in the country during the last ten years or so. Strangely enough, while every
aspect of Brazilian life and culture kept abreast of world changes—especially in archi-
tecture, poetry, theater, movies, industry, transportation—popular music clung to ideals
and habits more akin to the present generation’s grandfathers. … When Bossa Nova was
introduced, the new generation of Brazilians recognized it as the music that ideally fitted
their pattern of life. … And it was essentially Brazilian; a reaction to foreign rhythms.”
â•‡ 4 See Anderson (1991) for an argument about the role of synchronized experiences of
media in the development of feelings of national/collective belonging.
â•‡ 5 Castro (2000: 322) discusses the global migration of bossa composers and performers,
noting that by 1967 “almost the entire bossa nova gang had left Brazil.” Menescal
released a number of US LPs as a solo performer, including The Boy from Ipanema
Beach (Kapp KL-1418, 1964) and Soul Beat Brazil (Kapp KS-3495, 1966).
â•‡ 6 In 1962, Tinhorão called bossa nova artists “diligent imitators of American music”
(quoted in Castro 2000: 252); later he would dismiss bossa as “acoustic pap” (quoted
in Vianna 1999: 95). See also Stroud (2008: 26–7).
â•‡ 7 See Gendron (1986) on the industrial logic driving this proliferation.
â•‡ 8 And a fifth album, the presentist Right Now! (Atlantic 1384, 1962), has Brazilian bossa
compositions as four of its nine tracks.“O Barquinho” (listed as “Borquinho”) appears
on this LP and on Herbie Mann and Joao Gilberto with Antonio Carlos Jobim (Atlantic
SD 8105).
â•‡ 9 Their recording reaches #9 on the Billboard “Easy Listening” chart in 1966. While Lai’s
does not chart, his is arguably the best-known version in terms of subsequent circula-
tion and canonization: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack A Man and A Woman (“Un
Homme et une Femme”), United Artists UAS 5147, 1966.
10 Here we must remember that “pastiche” has a meaning, established centuries before
its deployment in post-modern critique, referring to the mixture of multiple ingredients
in a single dish, a “pasticcio.” This subsequently became the term for a single operatic
performance containing arias from a variety of composers. Thus, rather than reading
pastiche as a mark of impurity, we can approach it as that most fundamental of popular
musical procedures: a mix.
11 But neither should we overlook the claim made by Ruy Castro (2000: 217–18) that
French publisher Sacha Gordine obtained the world-wide rights to “O Barquinho” in
1961 by paying Menescal and Bôscoli a grand total of $92.
12 Frith’s comments are germane here; he contends that music offers the potential for
experiencing an ideal time that celebrates integration, and that rhythm helps us “live in
the present tense” (1996: 15).
13 Retrospectively, the style I am discussing is referred to as “The Now Sound” by collec-
tors, the name probably derived from the Brass Ring’s 1967 LP The Now Sound of the
Brass Ring (Dunhill DHC 5023).
14 See Keightley (2008) for a defense of this periodization.
15 This LP was part of Anka’s well-known attempt to move away from the teen and into
the adult market at the time, perhaps best evidenced in the documentary Lonely Boy
(Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor, 1962).
16 In the wake of the bossa boom, Capitol re-issued their 1961 world music album, Brazil’s
Brilliant Joao Gilberto (T-10280) with an orange sticker reading “The original bossa
nova sound!”. It still did not sell, much to the consternation of Capitol executives.
17 We should also note Lai and Barrouh’s further contribution to this song network with
their theme song for House of Cards (John Guillermin, 1968), a film that explicitly
addresses colonialism.
18 The film is known by a number of titles, including The Seven Secrets of Sumuru,
Mothers of America, and Rio 70 to name but three. It was shot in Spain and Brazil, and
appears to have been financed by German, Spanish, and US producers.
Part 3
Media
Introduction
Jason Toynbee
Most contemporary media are music media. Because sound occupies a small
amount of ‘bandwidth’ in communication systems (both analogue and digital),
and because loudspeakers or headphones are relatively small, music can be easily
and cheaply relayed across time and space. So, while there are specifically audio
media such as the CD, mp3 and radio, visual media including television, film, and
video downloads are audio carriers too. Music media are pretty much ubiquitous,
then, and provide a strong example of what Raymond Williams (2003) has called
‘mobile privatisation’. Williams means by this the way that media users have
become able to roam, virtually, across the world through sound and image while
remaining planted in their living rooms.1 Increasingly, of course, media users may
be on the move themselves through the facility of portable media – mp3 players,
iPhones and so on. In all cases, though, mobile privatization has enabled migrants
to stay in musical commune with home, especially via the Internet, which has all
the faculties of a mobile-private system, but also a ‘narrowcast’, multi-channel
dimension. Carolyn Landau examines some interesting consequences of this in
her chapter in Part 1 about the musical practices of one man from Morocco now
based in the UK.
But as well as enabling people to move with their music, media also bring the
music of more or less distant others to those who have stayed at home. In this part
of the book, the authors look at both these dimensions.2 Indeed, the sense one
gets from reading the chapters is that, while the distinction is certainly a salient
one, it is also complicated. On the one hand the media do have enormous powers
of introducing new music to others on the far side of the earth. On the other
hand it is often migrating peoples themselves who play a key part in initiating
global flows of music: diaspora, we might say, is fully mediated in the twenty-
first century.
One other preliminary point: radio is sometimes treated as a vestigial medium,
a poor cousin of the Internet and other brave new digital forms. Yet, as all the
chapters in this part of the book show, radio persists as a vitally important channel
for disseminating music. Its low bandwidth, low cost and high portability, noted
above, have remained extremely important features, and help to explain why it
remains such an important medium for migrating music across the world. And
of course in the form of ‘streaming’ audio and podcasts, radio is available on the
Internet too.
Mediation, migration and publics

Responding to the question she sets herself with her chapter title – ‘what migrates,
and who does it?’ – Ruth Finnegan is rightly keen not to attribute too much to a
single cause or agent in the complex history of the music scene on the island of Fiji.
She includes the media in this caveat. Nevertheless radio in particular has been a
key factor in all three moments which she examines: 1937, 1978 and 2009. The
island makes an important case study partly because there are two distinct groups
of migrants – Europeans and Indians, respectively descendants of the colonialists
and of indentured labourers brought to the island – as well as indigenous Fijians. In
an important sense, Finnegan’s account brings out a tension in the island’s musical
life. On the one hand there has been communal conflict between these groups, in
recent years especially between Fijians and Indians. On the other hand there has
been a significant degree of musical hybridity or translation across cultures.
Mediation has always played a key part in these processes. Finnegan’s choice of
a starting point of 1937 is partly determined by the arrival that year of Beresford
Clark, Director of the BBC’s Empire Service. Clark was on a world tour to estab-
lish how the Service was being used and might be developed. Even before he
arrived, a local independent radio station was in operation, competing with the
BBC. No doubt partly with an ear to the local competition, Clark was keen to
broaden what the Service offered to include Fijian and Indian musics as well as
European. Even so, as Finnegan recounts, he missed major strands of musical
life on the island – the Fijian dramatico-musical tradition of meke for example.
By 1978, though, there was a much greater number of music media channels,
including local recording facilities, which impacted on a much wider part of the
island’s musical life. What is more, musicians were now consciously translating,
that is attempting to mix and re-use components from ‘their own’ and others’
cultures.3 For the Indian community, musical films from Bombay brought new
fusions, but there were also locally made hybrid forms. Guitarist Krishna Murti
was heavily influenced by the US player Les Paul. He wrestled with the problem
of how to ‘apply the Fijian-European chordal style to Indian music’ (p. 139),
and clearly succeeded well enough to be able to assemble a very popular band,
the Gurus. In the Fijian community another guitarist, Yaminiasi Gaunavou, was
trying to combine island rhythms with Western popular sounds. These crossover
forms all depended utterly on mediated communication, both for ‘source’ material
(sounds from outside the island came via recordings, film and radio), but also in
relation to production (the studio was now a key part of much, if not all, contem-
porary music-making).
But there is a third dimension that needs to be considered here too, namely the
assembly of mediated publics (see also the introduction to Part 1 by Byron Dueck).
In the earliest theory of mass communications from the first part of the twentieth
century the fear was that broadcasting produced an audience which was at one and
the same time an undifferentiated mass, and an aggregation of isolated individuals.
Anxiety about the media oscillated between a fixation on each of these poles. More
recently, and deriving from the work of Jürgen Habermas (1992), there has been
a countervailing proposal that the media may constitute a public sphere – neither
part of the state nor belonging to the private realm of the family and property, but
rather located in a realm of public communication in-between. The mediation of
music in Fiji certainly has public-sphere qualities: people from all communities
may, and indeed do, ‘assemble’ on a virtual basis to listen to any music. Indeed
in her 2009 ‘snapshot’ of the island, Finnegan points to the way in which the
ubiquity of media, particularly cheap and accessible radio, has enabled a much
greater mixing (or what we have been calling translation) of musical forms and
traditions across communities. Yet at the same time in the contemporary period
inter-communal strife has reached new heights, sometimes involving violence.
This has been the cause of significant migration: a second diaspora among the
Indian population. In sum, various Fijian groups clearly ‘overhear’ one another’s
music, suggesting the existence of a kind of shared Fijian publicness, while other
factors, especially conflict between population groups, suggest that Fijians may
simultaneously be engaged in creating differentiated social imaginaries.
Cosmopolitanism of the will

The emergence of mediated publics may thus be a contradictory phenomenon
consisting in both communication and conflict, and where a kind of fateful contin-
gency seems to be at play. Kevin Robins in his chapter points to something rather
different: the possibility that music broadcasters and journalists themselves can
encapsulate, and project for their audiences, a ‘good-enough cosmopolitanism’
which involves embrace of the music of others and thereby of the world. Far
from being a contingent matter, this represents nothing less than the exercise of
exemplary agency and good will.4 The broadcasters in question are Charlie Gillett
and Robin Denselow, whom Robins had questioned and coaxed, but chiefly just
allowed to talk, at the Migrating Music conference of 2009 about their long
engagement with and promotion of what has come to be called ‘world music’.
In presenting and developing themes from that discussion, Robins characterizes
their ‘good-enough cosmopolitanism’ as being made up of three elements. First
is the ‘practical experience of encounter’. Encounter is a key term for Robins,
which gets at the surprise and enchantment of coming upon musical other-ness.
What intermediaries like Denselow and Gillett bring to their encounters, though,
is a practical quality, both in terms of their habitual practice, a lifelong outward
orientation towards diverse cultures – the music of the world – but also practical
in the sense of being grounded, and not abstract in the way of a certain kind of
academic. The second element follows. It is the time-based nature of good-enough
cosmopolitanism, its dependence on personal trajectories and journeys, but also
the larger historical conjuncture in which lives are lived. The third element,
according to Robins, is access, and in particular an innocent engagement with
music which, even while it is reflexive has, above all other aspects, the dimension
of enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is not something which social scientists have discussed a great
deal. Indeed, as presently constituted, social science tends to ignore what Andrew
Sayer (2005) has called ‘lay normativity’, in other words the value-ridden and
emotional nature of everyday life, or else it engages in ‘sociological reduction’
of these same norms. However it is exactly such emotional materials that play a
fundamental role in constituting various forms of publicness. Sentiments, feelings
and ethical judgments – including about world music and the radio personalities
who introduce us to it – play a central role in constituting and extending social
imaginaries.
These ideas are also key in the chapter from anthropologist, journalist and
sometime broadcaster, Jan Fairley. Reflecting on her own experience of making
two series of programmes about music of the world for the BBC World Service
in the early 1990s, Fairley describes not only the production process, but also the
potentiality of voice in radio and the possibilities of interaction with the audience.
The public which is brought into being by these means is, according to Fairley,
an active one, willing and able to discriminate, answer back and criticize, but also
praise. Fairley thus sees her international audience of that time as co-contributors
in the production of a sense of global flow, or navigation, through music (signifi-
cantly the programme was entitled Ports of Call). There are striking parallels here
with the way Kevin Robins describes the roles of Gillett and Denselow, that is
as discoverers, facilitators and would-be sharers of their passion for the music of
others. No doubt the ‘mimetic faculty’ (Taussig 1993) is at work again here (see
Chapter 1 in this volume). Robins’s use of the word ‘encounter’ gets at this, while
Fairley’s central idea of the evocation of place through sound and music is nothing
if not mimetic.
But there is something else which unites the three broadcasters under discus-
sion, namely optimism of the will. All three take it as axiomatic that to encounter
and then bring music across to people requires action where what is at stake is not
merely performance, but making-happen. Broadcasters and media producers have,
rightly, been treated with suspicion in the scholarly literature. Their positioning
within, and role in reproducing, unequal social relations has been emphasized,
especially by the critical, political economy school in media studies which tends
to see media production as a function of power, cultural privilege and economic
interest (see, for instance, Garnham 1990). The mediation of ‘world music’ in
particular has come in for sharp critique along these lines. But in the cases of
Fairley, Denselow and Gillett there are good grounds for recognizing good faith.
How far this has been effective in terms of the shaping of world music and its
public is less clear. But there is no doubt that love of cosmopolitanism and a will-
ingness to practise it founds their work as music broadcasters.
Mediation and politics of the world

For the Afghan broadcasters, musicians and listeners who are the subjects of
John Baily’s chapter the situation has been strikingly different. Husband and wife
Haroon and Amina Yousofi each broadcast a weekly music programme on the
BBC Persian/Pashto Service from the World Service heaquarters, Bush House, in
London. The former presented a programme called Studio 7, in which he played
recorded music, interviewed guest musicians and took calls and emails from
listeners. This was a highly interactive format which depended at one and the same
time on Haroon’s knowledge about Afghan music and culture, and his ability to
elicit responses from interviewees and listeners. Crucially the audience included
both Afghans in the homeland and members of the huge Afghan diaspora which
has spread across the world as war, repression and deprivation have all played
their part in driving mass migration. In his discussion of the Studio 7 programme,
Baily brings out the extraordinary difficulties which Afghans face in sustaining a
musical culture under such conditions. While the possibilities of making music
in the homeland are circumscribed, among the diaspora there are huge problems
too of keeping continuity with musical traditions from home, but also achieving
the critical mass necessary for a vibrant and creative music scene. In this context
Haroon and Studio 7 provide a vital resource, hooking up home and diaspora,
musicians and listeners in an Afghan public sphere of music.
Amina Yousofi’s Zamzama programme played an equally important part in
sustaining Afghan musical life, but in a contrasting way. The term zamzama
refers to the Afghan custom of singing and humming to accompany everyday
tasks and rituals. Amina’s programme was specifically aimed at Afghan
women, many of whom felt unable to sing in the context of gender repression
and inequality, even in the home. However through the programme Zamzama
women listeners were able to call in by phone and sing to an extended Afghan
public, especially other women, across the airwaves. In the context of repressive
gender relations, as one participant tellingly reveals, the singing voice provides
something like public anonymity – you can sing to the world, yet nobody will
know that it is you.
Quite suddenly, shortly after Baily had completed his research, the BBC World
Service decided to cut both these music programmes. It seems the cut was part of
a larger shift in the Service away from cultural content towards news. Still funded
at this time by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the BBC World
Service has served as an instrument of British foreign policy. But whereas in the
past this has been broadly conceived, and the conception has encompassed music
and other cultural content, increasingly the Service has been moving towards a
more narrow vision of global broadcasting in which political communication is
prioritized. It is difficult not to raise the inference that this is connected with the
increasingly desperate, and increasingly fated, prosecution of the War on Terror.
There is a paradox here. Military intervention in undemocratic states on the part
of international institutions has been justified as ‘cosmopolitan’ in the academy
(Buchanan and Keohane 2004). Indeed, US and British leaders have justified such
intervention along these lines. Democracy, it is argued, is inherently a cosmo-
politan good; ergo the justification for the use of force in instituting it in those
states where it is notably absent. Iraq and now, more pertinently, Afghanistan
are cases in point. Yet quite apart from the grotesque selectivity with which this
doctrine is applied (for instance not to Saudi Arabia, Egypt or the non-state of
Israel-Palestine), we should also note that it appears to be undermining the very
possibility of cosmopolitan culture on which ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ must
surely be premised in the first place. Nowhere is this made more clear than in the
case of the BBC World Service and its cuts to Afghan music programmes. These
programmes, infrequent though they were, offered an opportunity for Afghans
inside and outside the country to embrace one another through music. It is hard to
think of a more effective way of facilitating an Afghan public, open and receptive
yet also with a sense of shared culture – against all the odds of war and repression.
Conclusion
Music migrates through the media, certainly. And this movement depends on the
material dimensions of mediation discussed at the start of this introduction: acces-
sibility, ubiquity, reproducibility across time and space. Yet, as with any consider-
ation of the media, it is a mistake to emphasize technological facility too much, in
other words to make the error of technological determinism (Williams 2003). For,
as argued here, and demonstrated across the chapters coming up, it is always in the
domains of the social and the cultural that the nature and flow of migrating music
takes shape. Here what counts is emergence: of musical publics and the musicians
who play a creative part in assembling them as in Fiji; of good faith and good will
among broadcasters like Charlie Gillett, Jan Fairley and Robin Denselow; or of
good faith thwarted and instrumental logic installed, as with the Yousofis and their
global Afghan music programmes.
Bibliography
Born, Georgina and Rice, Tom (eds) (forthcoming) Music, Sound and the Configuration of
Public and Private Space, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buchanan, A. and Keohane, R. (2004) ‘The preventive use of force: a cosmopolitan, insti-
tutional proposal’, Ethics and International Affairs, 18(1): 1–22.
Garnham, N. (1990) Capitalism and Communication, London: Sage.
Habermas, J. (1992) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Sayer, A. (2005) The Moral Significance of Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taussig, M. (1993) Mimesis and Alterity: a Particular History of the Senses, New York:
Routledge.
Williams, R. (2003) Television: Technology and Cultural Form, London: Routledge.
Notes
1 See also the contributions to Born and Rice (forthcoming).
2 All four contributions were commissioned by the research project, Tuning In: Diasporic
Contact Zones at BBC World Service based at the Open University and funded by
the AHRC’s Diasporas, Migration and Identities research programme. The project ran
from January 2007 to December 2009.
3 Such hybridity was nothing new in Fiji, as Finnegan shows. For example, the long-
established large choir tradition was a European–Fijian hybrid par excellence. But what
had changed by the 1970s with the advent of more, and more ubiquitous, media was the
intensity and reflexivity of musical translation.
4 This is not at all to suggest that good will has not been at work among Fijian musicians
and broadcasters, just that, for Robins, redeeming it from the condescension of abstract
analysis is his major aim.
8 What migrates and who does it?
A mini case study from Fiji
Ruth Finnegan
Fiji, that group of small islands in the South Pacific, may seem remote and ‘mini’
in scale compared to the settings for other chapters here. Nonetheless its musical
history is far from simple, working out in multifarious interactions of politics,
media, musical genres and personal action both in and beyond Fiji, multiplici-
ties that illustrate the limitations of West-centred would-be comprehensive para-
digms such as modernization, globalization or epochal periodization. Though the
full narrative obviously cannot be presented here – my account too is ‘mini’ – I
hope to catch something of its complexity by juxtaposing three ‘moments’ of this
history: 1937, 1978 and 2009.1
1937
On Thursday 29 July 1937, a young man disembarked from the liner Mariposa
for a six-day stay in Suva, capital of the British colony of Fiji. He was met by
the Governor’s Adjutant and taken to stay at Government House. He recounts
being entertained at the Governor’s residence, shown around by the aide-de-
camp, invited to dinner, tea and tennis within the English-speaking community,
and an evening jointly listening to gramophone records of Gilbert and Sullivan’s
Ruddigore (‘one of the best recollections of my tour’).2
He was Beresford Clark, Director of the BBC’s Empire Service, now on his
six-month ‘Empire Tour’ through British colonies around the world. Following a
Colonial Office report (1936) on broadcasting services in the colonies, his direc-
tions were ‘to establish contacts, discuss mutual problems with broadcasters
overseas, and study reactions to the Empire Service’.3 Now he had reached the
Fiji Islands, from one viewpoint a few specks in the ocean, but from another the
largest of the island colonies in the South Pacific, long a node on international
oceanic routes.
Radio was then starting to be seen as the coming medium for the circulation
of music at a distance, supplementing the established channel of gramophone
records. It was not a self-evident medium, of course, and Fiji not a particularly
easy location. Added to the technical problems of the time, exacerbated in Fiji by
distance from Britain, large time difference and unevenly distributed population,
in the many areas without electricity even those few with radio sets found them
useless when the recharged batteries failed to arrive.
136â•… Ruth Finnegan
By 1937, however, radio broadcasts from London were up to a point heard

in Fiji; so too were some from Australia, New Zealand and (loudest) Germany.
About 700 radio licences had been issued, overwhelmingly to Europeans and
‘half-castes’, and the BBC Empire Service was attracting some loyal listeners.
As throughout the Empire, the British diaspora warmed to the sounds of ‘good
old England’. ‘Your greeting, Big Ben, and then the National Anthem, moved
us profoundly’ wrote one ‘middle-aged exile’ [place unspecified]; ‘It took quite
a time to listen without real emotion. I don’t think we realised until then just
how much Home meant to us’ (‘A middle-aged exile’ 1936: 2). English-speaking
listeners in Fiji resented the interference from German transmissions, local
electrical devices and the local radio station: ‘an infernal nuisance to seriously-
minded listeners’.4 As people under the British flag, they felt ‘entitled to listen to
the Empire Broadcasts’ and a 1938 letter pleaded that ‘on your return to the Old
Country you will not forget to let the B.B.C. know how eager we English are
to get their voice in this part of the world.’5 The programmes were a mixture of
news, documentaries, dramas and, prominently, music. During Clark’s stay they
included, among others, a Chopin recital, brass bands, the BBC Singers, BBC
Orchestra (Section C), Victor Sylvester and his Ballroom Orchestra, Old Tyme
Music Hall, and ‘Airs of Ulster’ by the BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra (BBC
1937). On the couple of times Clark listened he heard London Log and (somewhat
muffled) some of Orchestre Raymonde, from which he fully agreed that ‘some-
thing should be done about the interference from refrigerators, dirty fan-brushes
and a washing machine’.6 Listening to the BBC was not all enjoyment.
The new station about which some were so indignant proved to be the founda-
tion for Fiji’s long local radio history. In 1935 Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia)
Ltd had been contracted, first, to run the wireless-telegraph service, then, with
a licence from the Fiji Posts and Telegraphs Department, to develop a regular
radio service through its local subsidiary Fiji Broadcasting Co. Ltd.: 4 hours
daily (except Sundays) of ‘music, entertainment, instruction, public announce-
ments, and other matter’, with up to 10 per cent advertising.7 It was primarily for
Europeans, mostly transmitted from gramophone records with some rebroadcasts
of London programmes, but from January 1937 had added an hour a week in
Fijian. Clark spent many hours with the manager of this local station, Frank Exon,
with whom he forged a friendship that continued for nearly 20 years. A broad-
casting committee was set up, its first meeting during Clark’s stay, eventuating in
proposals both to continue rebroadcasting BBC material and make greater provi-
sion for local Fijian and Indian listeners (4 hours each per week), proposals duly
discussed in London by the BBC and the Colonial Office.
Clark did indeed then find European music in Fiji, heard on gramophone
records, on local radio, and (if with difficulty) through broadcasts from London
and elsewhere. There was doubtless also active European-type music-making in
true colonial fashion, such as brass bands, choirs in the churches, home playing,
and, no doubt, amateur Gilbert and Sullivan productions.
But there was other music that Clark did not find, or anyway did not mention.
The situation was vastly more complex than suggested in the image, common in
1937 and not unknown even today, of Fiji as a primitive and isolated community,
What migrates and who does it?â•… 137
the uncontaminated base on which [European] history and culture could now start
working. For Fiji was in 1937 already the site of three major musical traditions.
European music, with all its diversities and disagreements, was certainly one.
But there were also the rich musics of the South Pacific. This was no single
unchanging ‘Tradition’, for the Fiji Islands encompassed many different tradi-
tions and mutual influences from other Pacific islands, especially Tonga. Let me
highlight just a few among these many forms – and they were many; this was a
complex musical scene, and fashions changed over time.
Foremost was the meke, the danced-sung-narrative genre in the highest esteem
among Fijians, famous from the mid-nineteenth century. This was a group
performance of voices in intertwined threefold layering with coordinated dancers
illustrating the story, accompanied by clapping, wooden slit-drum, and bamboo
tubes rhythmically striking the ground, and enhanced further by the visual spec-
tacle of costume, shell ornaments, flowers and the performers’ oiled bodies. It was
strongly associated with chiefship and public ceremony. Some mekes were remem-
bered for years but new ones composed too. The year of Clark’s visit for example
saw a meke about the two Fijian representatives sent to George VI’s Coronation
in May 1937, recounting their departure in a two-funnelled boat, their arrival at
Westminster Abbey, and the crowning of the king and queen (Coulter 1942: 33).8
Hymn-singing was also of huge importance. By 1937 Christianity, predomi-
nantly Methodist, was no incoming religion but pervasive in local Fijian culture,
brought to Fiji by missionaries from the overwhelmingly Christian island of
Tonga. Hymns in Fijian were sung by congregations everywhere, sometimes to
tunes reminiscent of European hymns, but also influenced by older Fijian forms,
sung in resonant Fijian-voiced style. ‘I don’t think I have heard a richer tone
anywhere’ notes a 1937 visitor (‘Tourist’ 1937: 141). Hymn books in Fijian had
been printed locally for nearly a century and by 1937 many possessed one, some-
times with sol-fa notation. Other sacred choral works were also popular, above all
Handel’s Messiah: the 1935 mission centenary celebrations predictably included
the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, sung local-style by unaccompanied Fijian choir (Burton
and Deane 1936: 127).
The popular forms currently sung also illustrated how Fiji’s music had by 1937
seen many historical changes and already-lengthy interactions between local
musical styles and European and American popular music. Sometimes this was
just putting Fijian words to known tunes, but musicians were soon composing
both words and melody, drawing not only on Western musical styles but also on
models from elsewhere in the Pacific and the Caribbean. One example were the
‘bumping songs’ (sere ni cumu), starting as bar songs in the 1920s when Fijians
were for the first time legally allowed to drink beer in public, then adapted for
kava-drinking sessions, common settings for informal singing.9
The third strand lay in Fiji’s Indian musical tradition. Between 1879 and 1916,
over 60,000 indentured labourers had been shipped from India to work on the
sugar plantations, a deliberate policy to allow native Fijians to retain their land
and be sheltered from commerce: their interests were to be paramount. At first
labouring in the harsh conditions of ‘the lines’, many Indians subsequently opted
to settle in Fiji, the majority Hindu and from North India but also joined by later
waves from the south and a sizeable Muslim minority. In 1937 Indians – and their
music – were well established in Fiji, working as tenant farmers and active in
commerce and industry. Indeed by the 1930s they were arguably ‘almost as indiÂ�
genous as the Fijians themselves’ (Burton and Deane 1936: 106), more than half
Fiji-born and soon to equal or even outnumber native Fijians.
Central to Fijian-Indian culture in 1937 were the regular Ramayana reci-
tations by religious singing groups (mandali), characteristic of the musical
emphasis within the locally dominant Ram Bhakti devotional tradition, while
the annual Ramlila festival provided dramatized musical re-enactments where
Indian labourers could identify their experiences with the exile and sufferings of
Ram. The migrants brought other genres too, notably bhajan devotional songs,
music associated with festivals like the Hindu Holi – in part devotional, in part
boisterous topical songs – and the many popular songs for ceremonies such as
weddings. This was not just some passive handing-on from the past. New versions
of established genres were composed locally, and differing fashions rose and fell,
with mutual influences between Fiji and India. By the 1930s there was also a
flourishing international gramophone industry, not least in India, and cinemas in
Fiji, operated by Indians, were starting to show Hindi films rooted in traditional
Indian theatre, dance and song.10
This then was the variegated musical situation during Clark’s 1937 visit. The
three musical traditions were brought, created and activated by individuals and
groups from criss-crossing resources, moulded too by the media available, the
religious settings, and the colonial government’s policy of separating Fijian from
Indian. From the London and BBC perspective the framework was Britain and
Empire. But for many in Fiji the regional powers of Australia and New Zealand
also loomed large; so too for many Fijians did the Pacific Islands, especially Tonga,
and, for Indians, South Asia. The imperial setting was without doubt important but
not everything focused on Britain.
1978
By 1978 the setting had changed in multiple ways. Fiji was now independent
and the media scenario different. But, as before, the musical situation was
multi-stranded.
So again there was Indian music, its high-classical forms now promoted by an
Indian Cultural Centre and exchanges between Fiji and India. In everyday Fijian-
Indian culture, religious music was still central, not least the sung Ramayana reci-
tations (now often with imported harmonium rather than locally-made tambura
(single-stringed lute)), together with Ramlila dramatizations, and Holi and Diwali
festival songs. Older Indian genres were still widely sung but with lyrics from reli-
gious texts now sometimes set to local tunes, and genres once sung to the classical
tabla now accompanied by the locally made dholak drum. At the more popular
end the songs of Hindi films, thronged by enthusiastic audiences in local cinemas,
were denounced by the Fijian-Indian press for ‘corrupting youth’ but nonetheless
widely known and much heard on the local radio. Indo-Fijian groups such as the
Empire Old Boys, Harmony Makers, Gurus, or Geetangeli were making music for
their own and others’ entertainment, often using the instruments locally defined as
‘Indian’ – tabla, dholak, sitar, tambura, harmonium – but sometimes also trying
out a mix from accordion, electric organ, guitar and bass to saxophone, clarinet
and Indian flute. They played music ranging through Indian traditional genres,
Hindi film songs and ‘European’ popular music, this last particularly at weddings
and entertainments. Some leaders could read Western musical notation, but most
playing was self-taught and by ear.
One innovator among others was a local bank clerk, Krishna Murti. Coming
from a family committed to both music and Hindu observance, he had been
inspired by hearing one of the first Indo-Fijians to play the guitar (then thought of
as a ‘Fijian’ instrument), made his own guitar and, still at school, started teaching
himself and playing with a group. He would lock himself in his room with a
recorded performance to copy, especially fired by the American jazz guitarist Les
Paul – ‘so neat and clean and sweet’. As he commented, it had been a challenge
to apply the Fijian-European chordal style to Indian music, but by 1978 he was
the leader of the popular ‘Gurus’ band, successfully playing a mix of Indo-Fijian,
American and Indian music, both classical and popular.
In what was classed as ‘Fijian’ music the meke dance-song remained the classic
form. Though older people bewailed a lack of interest by the youth, polished
meke performances both old and new were still produced on public occasions.
The composer of a meke for the 1972 South Pacific Festival of Arts in Suva, for
example, had drawn on a wide range of material, including Tongan influences,
to create ‘his own tradition’ (Saumaiwai 1977: 354). There were still plentiful
church choirs – perhaps 100 in Suva alone – mostly of around 40 to 60 singers,
but some, like the famous Methodist Centenary Church choir, of over 100. Most
singers could not read music, so conductors had to deploy their amazing skill of
personally demonstrating each line in the four-part harmonies regularly sung by
the choirs (there was no accompaniment, not even a piano). The repertoire was
again primarily hymns, almost always in Fijian and in recognizably Fijian style,
but also the perpetual favourites of Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah and
Stainer’s Crucifixion. Choirs were constantly rehearsing and performing both for
church services and for innumerable competitions – typical of Fiji’s music – above
all, the annual Methodist conference when 100-plus choirs competed before audi-
ences of thousands. Brass band music was also well established. Already taken
up by Fijian players in earlier years, it had by 1978 become closely associated
with the Military Forces band, now dominated by native Fijians. The players read
music and were familiar with the international brass band repertoire, but also
played local arrangements such as the famous Fijian farewell song isa lei.
There was also informal musical activity, when people relaxed with Fijian songs
round a kava bowl or danced to ukulele or guitar, and older genres acquired new
instrumental accompaniments. In Suva thirty or forty amateur Fijian groups were
singing together with minimal instrumental input under such names as Firefighters
or Bua ni lomainabua (‘Frangipani of Nabua’), while other individuals and groups
were adopting electric guitars, drum sets and keyboards, but still singing in Fijian.
One example was Yaminiasi Gaunavou, leader of the ‘Gaunavou’ band. Born
and raised in a village he had started singing at school in the 1950s to mandolin,
acoustic guitar and one-string bass, then had joined Radio Fiji as an announcer:
for him ‘radio was music’. After work he would sing with friends. At first this was
just old songs, but soon, inspired by the rock and country music they were hearing
on the radio, his friends persuaded him to get material together for a recording.
He came back with Fijian lyrics, and the group, all keen Radio Fiji listeners and
aware of the styles of music being broadcast, set to work on the chords: ‘we tried
to blend island rhythm to country, western and rock … with a new sound, a new
approach to Fijian music’ (Yaminiasi, quoted in Fiji Times 28 September 2008).
After several months they achieved a radio audition and all ten of their newly
composed tunes and lyrics were broadcast. By 1978 the band were in high demand
with 21 players, all self-taught, on amplified guitars, bass guitar, keyboard and a
drum set. Yaminiasi continued to compose, creating what he described as ‘a fully
fledged Fijian rock band’, performing in Fiji and touring in Australia, Solomon
Islands and Tonga.
The European musical heritage, heterogeneous as ever, still formed a third
strand. The high-art classical tradition was supported by the Fiji Arts Council, who
sponsored visiting musicians from Australia or New Zealand, as well as by enthu-
siastic individuals who mounted performances by (mostly European-based) choirs
and instrumental groups – including, predictably, Gilbert and Sullivan and other
musicals. Classical instrumental teaching largely depended on private teachers,
often trained abroad and, as in many English-speaking diasporas, the children of
(mainly) European parents moved through the [London] Trinity College of Music
examination grades, with visiting examiners from New Zealand.
Popular music in the Euro-American tradition was much in evidence.
Musicians and audiences kept in touch with international trends through local
radio, discs and audio cassettes, and many popular numbers had equivalents in
Fijian. There were numerous amateur ‘pop groups’ to perform them, such as the
Nadro Swingers, Quintikis, or Racial Harmony, using whatever blend of instru-
ments they could muster, from guitars, mouth organs, bongos or organ to drum
sets. The full-time bands at hotels and night clubs where English was the common
language were the most heterogeneous – it was in popular music that the divides
were most clearly surmounted. Experience in local bands could lead into a profes-
sional musical career, with a flow of players between Fiji, other Pacific islands,
Australia, and New Zealand. There were some notable jazz players too, above all
the Fijian Tomasi (Tom) Mawi. Self-taught, he had been inspired in his teens by
the legendary Barney Kessel, and by the late 1970s was acclaimed as the leading
jazz guitarist in Fiji, perhaps beyond.
The mix of media was part of the picture that had changed notably since 1937.
There was now more printed material, with hymn books, notated music and local
newspapers in several languages; well-attended cinemas with Indian film music;
and a multiplicity of music shops in touch with international markets in Europe,
Asia and America. Discs and audio cassettes were readily available – not just
to hear but, as with Krishna Murti and others, to control and emulate – and an
incipient industry of locally recorded audio cassettes.
Radio was playing a significant role. The transistor had come of age and even
in rural areas just about every home had a radio. Overseas stations included the
BBC with its classical music broadcasts and the (more reliable) signals from
Radio Australia and Voice of America. More pervasive was the voice of Radio
Fiji, now operating as the fully localized Fiji Broadcasting Commission. The
scanty hours of 1937 had grown to a day-long service on two differentiated chan-
nels, one English with Fijian, the other English with Hindustani. Music featured
prominently on each. The ‘English’ programmes had songs, light classical, band
music, some folk and jazz, ‘Music around the world’, and local productions like
‘Hit parade of local artists’ songs’ (there was little high-art music). Radio 1 inter-
spersed this by programmes in Fijian, with hymns, locally recorded Fijian music,
a ‘Top hit parade’ of Fijian songs, and some request programmes, while Radio 2
offered substantial Indian music, like geet, ghazal, bhajan and qawali (including
a weekly ‘local qawallis’ slot), wedding songs, a little classical music, light music
shows, film songs, a weekly ‘Music from Radio Pakistan’, request programmes
and a local artists’ ‘Hit Parade’.
Some of Radio Fiji’s music originated directly from abroad, including rebroad-
casts from overseas programmes and the regular receipt of popular music from
America, Britain, Australia and New Zealand through overseas disc-library
organizations. But nearly half drew on local resources. Some were live perform-
ances but a major source was the impressive and ever-growing music library built
up by Radio Fiji containing BBC transcriptions, material from All-India Radio
and Radio Pakistan, and a huge collection of commercial recordings from India,
supplemented by Radio Fiji’s own recordings on tape or cassette, principally of
Fijian music, where the main gap lay.
In addition Radio Fiji played a crucial role in stimulating and supporting local
music. Groups of musicians were constantly in their studios, offering their wares,
rehearsing for a local event, or working up to a recording or broadcast. The radio
staff kept closely in touch with the local musical scene, sponsoring competitions
and keen to encourage and record indigenous music. This inevitably meant getting
caught in local struggles between competing musics. In April 1978, for example,
over 200 Hindustani listeners had petitioned Radio Fiji to favour local performers
over imported recordings from India (Fiji Sun, 12 April 1978) and there was also
regular pressure from some for greater coverage of classical music, both Indian
and European. But if always subject to controversy, in 1978 Radio Fiji was now a
highly influential centre and patron for music.
This was in a social and political setting very different from the 1930s. Fiji,
now independent, maintained connections to Britain and the Commonwealth,
but was increasingly part of a Pacific region. The social, political and economic
contrasts between Fijian-Indians and native Fijians, while still partly continuing,
especially in some rural areas, were no longer so comprehensive, and people from
both backgrounds attended the University of the South Pacific in Suva. The earlier
political balance had been retained, however, perpetuating the position of native
Fijians as the land-owners within an electoral system in which every citizen had
to register as ‘Fijian’, ‘Indian’ or ‘General Elector’ (‘European’, ‘part-European’
and ‘other’). Fiji was imaged as a ‘three-legged stool’ made up of three racial
‘communities’.11 In practice, there had long been areas of synthesis across the
Fijian-European musical spheres (less so between Indian and Fijian), and the
popular musics being played were to an extent shared across what were otherwise
projected as cultural divides. But at the same time the political-racial classifica-
tions, further reinforced by the separated radio programmes and their music, had
an inescapable influence on local discourse and experience, not least in the label-
ling and practices of music.
2009
By March 2009 there had been notable changes in the range and variety of media,
and after four coups the country was now under military rule. But musical activity
continued, as individuals and groups operated with new, yet also old, resources
and constraints.
One striking change was the massive exodus of Indo-Fijians, impelled by the
successive coups, the violence many had encountered in 2000, and uncertainty
about their future in Fiji itself. Tens of thousands had left, and by now nearly one-
third of Indo-Fijians were believed to live outside Fiji, largely in New Zealand,
Australia, Canada and west-coast USA. Here was a second Indian diaspora, with
these ‘twice-migrants’ now looking not to India but to Fiji – ‘the golden place’ – as
their home.
But whether overseas or in Fiji, the Fijian-Indian music tradition maintained
its strength. Singing groups continued Ramayana recitations, and the musical
year still revolved round festivals like Holi, Diwali and the Birth of the Prophet
Muhammad. There was a recognized local repertoire of Ramayana tunes but
singers also drew on recorded versions, radio transmissions, film melodies, Web
renderings and new performers both local and from abroad, and while established
genres like bhajan, ghazal, kirtan and qawali flourished they often had topical
words and local references. Bollywood-inspired music was immensely popular:
a kind of parallel, if partly overlapping, world to Western pop culture. Its songs
were integrated into local genres and pervaded the multiple ‘pop’ Hindi radio
stations and websites.
Popular music of other kinds too poured out from multiple radio stations, in
buses and in shopping malls, especially prized by younger people, with the latest
hits avidly listened to and sung. As elsewhere, fashions had shifted since the 1970s,
related in part to differing age groups and backgrounds. Thus Radio Fiji’s English-
language ‘2dayFM’ station was youth-directed with ‘the freshest and hottest hits’
from ‘RnB, hip-hop, rock, rap, pop, dance music and reggae’, while their ‘Fiji
Gold’ for the over-30s provided ‘easy listening’ from the 1980s and 1990s. The
competing Communications Fiji Ltd’s ‘FM96’ likewise had ‘the hottest music’
for ‘westernized listeners under 25’ as against Legendfm’s hits from the 1970s,
1980s and 1990s for those who had ‘reached a time in their lives when the latest
rap music is getting a little hard to handle’.
Many Fijian bands were playing as an enjoyable part-time hobby, coming up
with their own songs in Fijian. Rap and hip-hop were the rage among young men,
especially native Fijians, with newly composed Fijian works focusing on local
politics, poverty, or the singers’ struggles and home towns. The more ambitious
groups made recordings and aimed for broadcasts, sales, and perhaps overseas
tours, performing in a mix of languages and styles. The now plentiful local
recording studios had to a degree superseded live night-club gigs, but many semi-
professional entertainment groups were playing in a variety of popular styles, one
example being the mixed amateur/professional Fijian ‘Jeriko’ band, performing
mainly reggae, blues, and rock and roll, mostly to English lyrics.
Players moving onto a more professional circuit often started as self-taught
part-time performers at tourist resorts and looked to a Pacific setting, sometimes
trying to forge a unique combination of styles to suit their interests and audiences.
The singer and composer George Veikoso, for example, came from a typically
Fijian background where his ‘first professional singing appearance’ earned him
‘the licking of my life’ from his mother (‘Mom didn’t want her 8-and-a-half-
year-old son singing “worldly” music. The only place I could sing was in church’
(Berger 1999)). Inspired by other musicians in his family to listen to performers
such as Elvis and Stevie Wonder, he had gained experience with a local Fijian
band and had by now become one of the most popular entertainers in Hawaii
under the stage-name of ‘Fiji’, creating a personal ‘fusion sound of classic reggae,
Hip-Hop, r&b and jazz’ with a touch of meke chant (Berger 1999). Another was
Daniel Rae Costello, self-taught singer, composer and sound engineer of mixed
Pacific and (Fiji-born) Irish parentage. After working with his ‘Cruzez’ band in
Australia and Fiji he had developed his own ‘Aqualypso’ style (blending ‘African,
Island, Calypso, Latin and Reggae rhythms’ to English lyrics intermixed with
a little Fijian), had toured the Pacific rim, set up his own recording studios and
released over thirty albums (Costello n.d.).
The longer-established Fijian forms were still going strong. The predominantly
Fijian military band – there were no Indian members – was still performing the
familiar band repertoire together with Fijian songs and hymn tunes. Mekes too
were played regularly on the radio and to celebrate public occasions, with new
ones still being composed, now sometimes utilizing new harmonies, a ‘contempo-
rary beat’ or instruments like big drums or ‘Indian’ keyboard. Ubiquitous church
choirs still sang, some now with national reputations, not least the still-leading
Centenary Church choir, and, together with gospel groups, some toured overseas
selling their albums with both new and old compositions.
The Western high-art classical tradition was less prominent. Sheet music was
no longer readily obtainable and the externally validated music examinations
of the 1970s had lapsed, but some highly qualified specialists were associated
with the university and institutes, and a few classically trained local composers
were drawing together Fijian and Western traditions. One vibrant group was the
amateur Fiji Arts Club Choir, revived in 1992 by its current conductor Robin
Palmer, a British-born engineer married to a Fijian. It was well connected into the
local networks and also reached wide audiences through Fiji Television, for whom
it had recorded over thirty programmes. Unlike the 1970s, it was markedly multi-
national, with a nucleus of native Fijians and resident Europeans (no Indians).
One notable feature was the interaction between the musics once seen as
belonging to Europe, to Fiji or to India respectively. Most people had some famili-
arity with popular music across the board, and on the buses sometimes sang along
to radio broadcasts whether in Fijian, Hindi or English, while some indigenous
Fijians enjoyed Hindi films and their music. The merging was most apparent in
some forms of popular music and between what would once have been differenti-
ated as of ‘Western’ and of ‘Fijian’ origin. Between what was labelled as ‘Indian’
and as ’Fijian’ it remained more divisive. A few native Fijians had, admittedly,
adopted Indian singing styles and repertoire, and ‘Fijian remixes’ sometimes alter-
nated verses in Fijian and in Hindi. But, despite the publicity given to such cases
in the name of multiculturalism, they remained defined as ‘native Fijians’ learning
‘Indian’ music rather than some by now unmarked form of music-making (see
Miller 2008: esp. 366–76). Certainly no specifically Indian/native-Fijian cross-
over genre had emerged – nothing, for example, like Trinidad’s Indian-Caribbean
‘chutney’. Deeply rooted classifications still divided ‘Fijian’ from ‘Indian’ music,
constantly recycled in political, religious and racial terms and, equally significant,
in radio’s Fijian/Hindi separation.
This has to be set against the background of the changing media context. Most
of the 1978 media continued, but their relative significance had altered and there
were now new players. Film was less dominant, for local television was now trans-
mitting programmes from overseas as well as recording and broadcasting local
musical performances, and local recording studios were now prolific. Videos, CDs
and DVDs supplemented audio cassettes, with mp3 players and mobile phones
popular among the youth, and, for a few, the Internet. It was arguably radio that
remained the most influential. With satellite transmission, international stations
were more accessible, and local radio was listened to by all sections of the popu-
lation throughout Fiji. Now with a multiplicity of stations, suffused with music,
and vastly more accessible than television or the Internet, the relatively cheap and
simple medium of radio could be found in just about every setting.
Radio Fiji (renamed the Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Limited) remained the
leading service, broadcasting locally and offering 24-hour live Web streaming.
It now had six stations, two in each of Fiji’s major languages – English, Fijian
and Hindi – with markets and musics to match. Of the other local radio serv-
ices, all emphasizing music, Communications Fiji Ltd boasted five stations in
Fiji, again differentiated by language, musical style and target audiences, and
numerous smaller services, including religious organizations, similarly focused
on different musical styles and audiences. Here radio had a significant role in
structuring people’s listening and perceptions. It might no longer provide the same
direct patronage as in the 1970s, for Radio Fiji’s archive of local music was now
well stocked, field recording less frequent and, given the often better-equipped
local recording studios, ambitious musical groups had less need for live audi-
tions, being able to arrive with ready-made discs. But musicians and music shops
lobbied for broadcast attention and publicity, and recording studios needed radio
to promote their music, just as radio benefited from free recordings for broadcasts.
Radio Fiji also provided regular support for competitions, and sponsored events
like the fund-raising ‘Concert of Hope’ following the 2009 floods, showcasing
‘some of Fiji’s best bands and singers’, among them Jeriko, the military band, and
the now legendary guitarist Tom Mawi (Bhagwan n.d.). Not just for music bought
in from elsewhere but for local productions across a wide span of genres, radio
continued to be a crucial and activating medium.
Radio had the further attraction, moreover, that listeners could now interact
on a personal basis. There was heavy reliance on listeners’ requests, with songs
constantly being ‘dedicated’ for families, friends, workmates, sports teams, for
people in hospital, prison, on the sea. Requests arrived by phone, text, fax and
email. Many came from overseas as radio and television stations were bombarded
for music from the homeland. For those abroad, Fiji’s music and musicians had
immense appeal, and Radio Fiji’s Web streaming (predominantly music) was
attracting 26,000 visitors a month in 2009, over 75 per cent from the USA, New
Zealand and Australia. Requests came from native Fijians living overseas as
students or soldiers and becoming passionate about Fijian music. For emigrant
Indo-Fijians, music held perhaps even greater emotive significance than in Fiji
itself. Dedications flooded into Radio Fiji’s Hindi youth station, for example, not
just from Australia and New Zealand but from China and Trinidad. Both Fijian
and Fijian-Hindi recordings were widely featured and discussed on the Web by
those overseas, yet a further impetus for requests.
Amidst these transnational links and intermingling musics, another noticeable
thread was the weight attached to musical forms that had come to symbolize a
continuity with past tradition and present identity. For (indigenous) Fijians, the
meke represented the authentic tradition of the Fijian people. Even if with newer
rhythms, instruments or words, the meke was redolent of far-back tradition, its
‘centuries-old’ quality promoted as ‘the real traditional Fijian music’ (Fijimagic
n.d.). Whether in Fiji or overseas, meke performance epitomized pride and conti-
nuity, an assertion of their deep-rooted presence in the world of today. As a native
Fijian scholar concluded, meke had become ‘the traditional Fijian link that binds
the Fijians, vanua [physical, human and spiritual Fijian world] and its culture
together’ (Tuqota 2006: 40). Hymn-singing too had grown to be one entrenched
part of Fijian native tradition, to be contrasted to the sounds of non-Christian
Indian intruders. Just about all Fijians knew hymns and were deeply committed
to them, with religious as well as musical evocations: as one dedicated but not
untypical church singer encapsulated it, ‘I believe from the bottom of my heart …
one day we will sing together in heaven’ (Vuki, personal communication 2009).
‘Hymn-singing’, in Finau Hu’akau Tuqota’s assessment, ‘had united the indiÂ�
genous Fijian people’ (Tuqota 2006: 64).
Indo-Fijians too worked with ideas of authentic musical tradition, but in a
different way (see specially Miller 2008). The sung Ramayana, the traditional
genres and the musical cycle of the ritual year symbolized an unbroken connec-
tion to a shared and deeply felt past not so much in India but, above all, in the
Indo-Fijian indenture experience. Bollywood music too played a part among
people who, as Manas Ray put it, ‘harboured no illusion of return [to India] but
for reasons of identity and cultural make-up, yearned for a romanticized version
of India that Bollywood amply provided’ (Ray 2004: 257). This was doubly
meaningful for the ‘twice migrants’ overseas. Among Indo-Fijians in Australia,
Ramayana recitals, Ramlila dramas and bhajan singing were even more popular
than in Fiji itself; Hindi films were central to many local activities; and Fijian-
Indian young people used their re-mixes ‘to fashion a discourse of authenticity’
(Ray 2004: 266). At its centre lay the unique musical soundscape of Fiji. ‘Keeping
that alive is the only way we can say that we’re Fijians’ (Indo-Fijian in Auckland,
quoted in Miller 2008: 406).
All this in some ways ran counter to the facts of changing musics, and to the
parallel interests in originality and experiment. But music, powerful symbol
as well as deeply emotive dimension of human experience, is indeed a potent
locale for the articulation and realization of continuity and identity, of your place
in history and in the universe. And there were indeed elements of tradition as
well, obviously, as change. To those intimately involved, the re-enactments of
Ramayana singing or devotional song, of Methodist hymns, the multisensory
meke, Gilbert and Sullivan arias, a golden Bollywood melody or the lovely Fiji
farewell song could hold a timeless symbolic import. Though only one aspect
of their music, these evocations of somehow transcendent continuity, sonically
realized, did indeed in some contexts embody a profoundly resonating reality in
people’s lives.
So what migrates and who does it?

A response that does not answer that question is some simple story of Western
musics sweeping out over the islands of Fiji, whether in the imperial expansion
of earlier years or, later, through some all-enveloping mass-media propulsion of
Euro-American pop. Certainly there has been mutual contact between Fijians and
many Western nations – but also, long antedating the recent era, with Tongans,
with other Pacific Islanders, with Australians, Indians, and South Asia generally.
Nor can Fiji’s changing and continuing musics be shovelled into universal global
epochs, whether in terms of British colonial experience, of economic structures, or
of technological waves pushing all before them. The media did indeed have their
importance. But their interactions played out in more complex ways than allowed
in the West-oriented vision of a foreordained upward curve of oral to literate to
electronic or – in alternative but overlapping metaphor – of tradition to modernity.
The answer to ‘what migrates’ is not really ‘music’ either. In Fiji as elsewhere,
a plethora of musical genres, ideologies, instruments, conventions were indeed
variously available at many periods and from many origins. But it was human
beings who carried and manipulated – or bypassed – these resources, and acti-
vated their choices.
People’s actions in making musics ‘migrate’ did not of course happen in a
vacuum. They acted amidst the influences and mutual interactions that throughout
history have spread around the world – musical, political, economic, cultural.
Whether in the past from North Indian folk genres or Hindu musical recita-
tion, Tongan dance or English brass bands, from jazz, rock, hip-hop or the latest
Bollywood hits, from all these diverse and themselves mixed musics (and more),
people in Fiji have selected and rejected, and, in both listening and playing and
whether creative or repetitive, have turned things to their own tastes. Here too
music was enacted within the complexities of specific historical contexts, religious
adherence, economic opportunities, conflicts and power relations, in Fiji further
compounded by the constructed ideologies of race, community and tradition.
People acted with the media resources of their time, notably different between
our three moments. Live performance was always one context, too easily over-
looked. But then there were also the devices through which music could be
‘bottled’: in recent centuries it has indeed become possible to capture sound to be
heard across space and time. 1937 had the largely one-way (listen only) media of
that time, especially gramophone records, radio and (just starting) film, together
with the fixing of certain (limited) musical elements in hard-copy forms – not
all equally available to everyone, but by then well-recognized media for music.
1978 saw a greater range of both local and international sources, more widely
accessible and more locally controlled, with recorded music available in cheaper
formats, local recordings, and media that could be personally manipulated for
diverse musical purposes. By 2009 the media were yet more interactive, coming
in multiple forms that enabled not just vastly greater individual control and local
experimentation but rapid and inexpensive multi-media musical exchange across
transnational networks. Amidst all this, radio formed a continuous if changing
thread, with its sense of immediacy and, over the years, increasing accessibility.
It had undergone striking transformations in Fiji from the 1937 scenario, largely
shaped by incoming material and control from abroad, to the fully fledged local
radio of 1978 with its own voice, then on to the multiple channels of 2009 that
also spoke outwards to the world: listened to in Fiji indeed, but also interactively
called on by Fijian listeners from across the globe and heard over the Web in both
hemispheres.
So in the end, what is ‘migrating music’? We come back to the people, of
whom I have indicated only a handful among myriads. In Fiji musics did not
migrate, but lived and changed in and through the actions of countless indi-
viduals and groups, whether staying or travelling, with their sonic memories,
their senses and their bodies. They are innumerable: the native Tongan mission-
aries who brought Methodist hymns to Fiji; the church choirs and Ramayana
singers over the years; Krishna Murti and his band utilizing guitars for Indo-
Fijian music; Yaminiasi Gaunavou’s crafted songs or Tom Mawi’s jazz; creators
of mekes, Holi songs, Fijian rap or new ways with Bollywood tunes; callers
requesting songs and radio announcers responding to them; those who recorded
performances for radio archive or Internet marketing; self-taught vocalists,
instrumentalists, band members; performers like Daniel Rae Costello or George
‘Fiji’ Veikoso using old and new to shape distinctive styles; even in his way
Beresford Clark with his 1937 Gilbert and Sullivan listening and his long
encouragement for local radio, that continuing and changing resource for Fiji’s
musical experiences.
References
‘A middle-aged exile’ (1936) Letter, in ‘Empire Mail Bag’, BBC Empire Programme
Pamphlet 3, 2 December: 2.
BBC (1937) Empire Programme Pamphlet: Thursday 29 July – Tuesday 3 August.
Berger, John (1999) ‘By George. Fiji’s got it, and more’, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 29 June.
Bhagwan, Padre James (n.d.) ‘Hope through music’, Fiji Times, 21 January, online <http://
www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=11233> (accessed 17 April 2009).
Brenneis, Donald (1998) ‘Musical migrations: Indians in Fiji’, in Adrienne L. Kaeppler

and J. W. Love (eds), Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 9: Australia and the
Pacific, New York: Garland Publishing Inc.: 92–4.
Burton, John Wear and Deane, Wallace. (1936) A Hundred Years in Fiji, London: Epworth
Press.
Colonial Office (1936) Interim Report of a Committee on Broadcasting Services in the
Colonies, London: Colonial Office Misc. 469.
Costello, Daniel Rae (n.d.) ‘Band profile’, online <www.garageband.com/artist/daniel_
rae_costello> (accessed 2 April 2010).
Coulter, John Wesley (1942) Fiji. Little India of the Pacific, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Fijimagic (n.d.) ‘Chanting island style’, online <www.fijilive.com/fijimagic/view.php
?mlx=11&st=73&frm=chanting%20island%20style> (accessed 21 May 2009).
Glamuzina, Kaye (2001) ‘Melanesia, Fiji’, in S. Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, Vol. 16, London: Macmillan.
Goldsworthy, David (1998) ‘Popular music: Fiji’, ‘Fijian music’, in Adrienne L. Kaeppler
and J. W. Love (eds), Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 9: Australia and the
Pacific, New York: Garland Publishing Inc.: 161–2, 774–6.
Kelly, John D. and Kaplan, Martha (2001) Represented Communities. Fiji and World
Decolonization, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lee, Dorothy Sara (1998) ‘Fijian music’, in Adrienne L. Kaeppler and J. W. Love (eds),
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 9: Australia and the Pacific, New York:
Garland Publishing Inc.: 774–80.
Miller, Kevin Christopher (2008) ‘A Community of Sentiment: Indo-Fijian Music and
Identity Discourse in Fiji and its Diaspora’, doctoral thesis, University of California,
Los Angeles.
Ray, Manas (2004) ‘Bollywood and diaspora: Fiji Indians, from indenture to globalisation’,
in Lipi Ghosh and Ramakrishna Chatterjee (eds), Indian Diaspora in Asian and Pacific
Regions, Jaipur: Rawat Publications.
Sanadhya, Totaram (2003) My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands, ed. and trans. J. D.
Kelly and U. K. Singh, 2nd edn, Suva: Fiji Museum.
Saumaiwai, Chris (1977) ‘Meke wesi’ [Record review] Ethnomusicology 21(2): 353–4.
‘Tourist’ (1937) ‘The diary of an English visitor’, in George Kingsley Roth (ed.), Fiji:
Handbook of the Colony 1938, Suva: Acting Government Printer: 141–58.
Tuqota, Finau Hu’akau (2006) A Critical Examination of the Music Curriculum in Fiji
Secondary Schools with Reference to Indigenous Fijian Music: A Study of Four Schools,
M.A. thesis, University of the South Pacific, Suva.
Notes
â•‡ 1 This chapter is based on (1) field research in Suva, Fiji, in 1978 and, more briefly, March
2009: for both periods I am grateful to the many people who gave so generously of their
time and knowledge; (2) primary and secondary documentary sources: for the former I
particularly thank the Pacific Collection in the University of the South Pacific’s Library
in Suva, the University of Auckland Library, and the BBC Written Archives Centre (BBC
WAC), with its ever-helpful Jeff Walden (this chapter relies particularly on BBC WAC files
in E4 Empire Service, E1/1124 Fiji Broadcasting Service, and R101/51 Fiji Broadcasting
Committee: I gratefully acknowledge BBC WAC for permission to reproduce BBC copy-
right extracts here). I hope to detail these varied sources more fully in a future publication.
â•‡ 2 Notes on visit to Fiji (BBC WAC E4/22); Letter Clark to Lady Richards 24 December
1937, Empire Service / J. B. Clark’s tour VI 1937-8 (BBC WAC E4/18).
â•‡ 3 Letter JCWR to Shelley 20 February 1937 (BBC WAC E4/13).

â•‡ 4 Radio Listeners Association Memorial to Acting Governor, 14 November 1936 (BBC
WAC E1/1124/1).
â•‡ 5 Letter R. C. Farquhar to Malcolm Frost, June 1938 (BBC WAC E1/1124/2).
â•‡ 6 Notes on visit to Fiji (BBC WAC E4/22).
â•‡ 7 Fiji Broadcasting Service File 1, 1932–7 (WAC E1/1124/1).
â•‡ 8 On meke see further Glamuzina 2001, Lee 1998, Tuqota 2006.
â•‡ 9 See further Goldsworthy 1998, Lee 1998.
10 On Indo-Fijian music see Brenneis 1998, Miller 2008, and for further background
Sanadhya 2003.
11 As all writers on Fiji have found, this makes nomenclature notoriously difficult. For
convenience I have followed the tripartite terms mostly used in Fiji itself – ‘Europeans’,
‘Indians’ (sometimes ‘Indo-Fijians’, ‘Fijian-Indians’), and ‘Fijians’(sometimes ‘native’
or ‘indigenous’ Fijians) – but this should not be taken as an acceptance of the racial and
solidified impression these can imply (for a wider context see Miller 2008, Kelly and
Kaplan 2001).
9 Migrating music and good-enough
cosmopolitanism
Encounter with Robin Denselow
and Charlie Gillett
Kevin Robins
To enlarge the world
Great surprise of encounter

As Charlie Gillett says (below), he was at first hesitant about attending the
Migrating Music conference because he felt that he did not really have anything
to contribute to its theme – Charlie’s world was very much that of the music
business, and I think that he was a bit guarded about an academic event, with
ethnomusicological leanings, at such a venue as SOAS. But then he came to the
recognition that all the popular forms of music that he had ever been interested in
were in fact radically grounded in the experiences, and in the creative possibili-
ties, of migration.
Popular musical forms have always been migrating forms (hence the objec-
tion of the editors of the present volume to the ‘epochalism’ that would claim the
theme of ‘music and migration’ to be a recent development). This is apparent –
to take but one example, and one engaged with the enhancing value inherent in
divagation – in Richard Williams’s book, The Blue Moment (2009). A book that
is all about musical intersections, redirections, and resurrections. Of Miles Davis
in Paris, say, and his encounter with Juliette Gréco, and Louis Malle, too; and
therefore of New York jazz musical culture through the prismatic focus of the
Paris of the 1950s – Paris as an ‘interzone’ (Campbell 2001), ‘another country’,
where life could be engaged with differently (as for other black American artists,
including, at that time, James Baldwin and Richard Wright). (‘Anyway, every-
thing seemed to change for me while I was in Paris’ (Davis 1990: 117).) Of Miles
bringing together in his mind, as he prepared Kind of Blue, his experience of a
performance of Keita Fudeba’s Les Ballets Africains and the sound of ‘those dark
Arkansas roads’ of his childhood, all in ‘the spirit of discovery’ (Williams 2009:
105). Of Louis Armstrong, surprisingly, telling Gil Evans that he thought that
Miles sounded like Buddy Bolden, the legendary cornetist from New Orleans.
Of Bolden, committed to an insane asylum in 1907, and of whom there are no
known recordings. But, says Williams, listen to Miles Davis’s version of ‘When I
Fall in Love’ from his Live at the Plugged Nickel LP of 1965, and ‘for a moment
you could be listening to a man playing on a levee by the Mississippi river more
than half a century earlier’ (ibid.: 57). And Richard Williams’s whole book is a
Migrating music and good-enough cosmopolitanismâ•… 151
wonderfully compendious narrative of the reverberations and repercussions of the

inviting afterlife of Miles’s Kind of Blue. I could go on to mention Miles Davis,
via In a Silent Way, along with that man of combined Austrian, Hungarian, Czech
and Sinti connectedness, and much more, Joe Zawinul. And Joe Zawinul would be
a whole other switching point, to other and multifarious possibilities of encounter
and – what? – well, we might think of it as the call-and-response modality of
being in this world.
What am I driving at? The point, to try to move towards more precision in
understanding, is to do with the significance of encounters and experiential media-
tions, alignments and accords, and separations, and indispensable cultural disag-
gregations, too. ‘Migrating’? A word, as Robert Musil evocatively expresses it
– he means any word, any well-pitched word – ‘is not the bearer of a concept to
the extent that one usually assumes, corrupted by the fact that in certain circum-
stances the conceptual content can be defined; it is, rather … the seal on a loose
package of ideas’ (Musil 1990: 78). That was a wonderful remark. ‘Migration’
does not mean – does not have to mean, let us say – the migration concept that
most people – and almost all sociologists – seem to think that it means, and must
mean, these days (generally meaning ‘immigration’, and its consequent prob-
lems and discontents). ‘Migrating’ in its more bountiful loose-package sense can
accommodate more expansive possibilities for thinking about popular musical
cultures across spaces. (And, also, as the Miles Davis/Buddy Bolden example
well illustrates, across the span of decades. It is commonly believed that collective
cultures are about heritage, by which is meant accumulation through continuity
and consistency – but cultures could only really ever be accumulative in the most
disarranging and rearranging of ways, by ways of deviation.) Most significant are
the surprises of the way, for they are what make all the difference. ‘The crossroads
accompanies us on our way, every moment’ says Martin Heidegger (1976: 175).
‘Where does this strange triple way lead? Where else but into what is always prob-
lematical, always worthy of questioning?’ The crossroads you are always standing
at. ‘Don’t you know the delight’ – Fernando Pessoa’s very good question – ‘of
roads which, when we’re distracted, we take by mistake?’ (2001b: 277).
Migration is evidently concerned with physical mobility. But what is of far
greater importance is what this mobility makes possible to human thought and
thoughtfulness. For what is really, in the end, most significant is mobility of mind.
And this mobility I want to associate with the aspiration to a cosmopolitan dispo-
sition in and towards this world. Musical cosmopolitan: the potential, that is to
say, through which migrating music might contribute to general cosmopolitan
intent – in terms of its capacity to enlarge awareness of the world, thoughtful
awareness. Musical cosmopolitanism: a human principle, let us call it, that anyone
who listens to music can readily affirm through their own experience. What is it
that is at issue? We can surely agree that it has nothing to do with the current world
music mythology – the conception of a new global ecumene, the shallow political
message that ‘we are all connected’ – that critics such as Veit Erlmann (1996) and
Steven Feld (2000) have rightly deconstructed. But what, then, might musical
cosmopolitanism be? And why does the idea of musical cosmopolitanism have
undoubted plausibility and resonance?
152â•… Kevin Robins
In order to approach these questions, my proposition would be that, to begin

with at least, we should stay well clear of contemporary social-scientific theories
of cosmopolitanism. We will not get very far by thinking about migrating music,
or world music, in the context of the abstract theoretical domain of a more general
sociological and political programmatism. My proposal is, rather, to reflect on
what might be learned from within popular musical culture about cosmopolitan
imagination and accomplishment. The cosmopolitan debate has generally been
conducted – to borrow Robert Musil’s (acknowledged by himself as ‘execrable’)
neologism (1990: 62–3) – on ‘ratioid territory’. Perhaps migrating music, oper-
ating in and out of the ‘nonratioid area’ has something distinctive to tell us about
cosmopolitan dispositions? I think, by way of freely associating, of what the
psychoanalyst J.-B. Pontalis (2003: 4) has to say of language, which he carefully
distinguishes from the domain of encapsulating concepts: ‘Words are travellers in
every way. … Language breathes; it is mobile; and rich or impoverished, it can
say everything; it is a meeting with the unexpected. It disconcerts the concept,
mocks it.’ How much the abstract concepts of cosmopolitanism must be made to
take account of the actualities and moods of grounded sensibility! This is where
the discussion of migrating music might take us. Let us even think of it in terms
of the great surprise of encounter (good for us all to have this indispensable sense
in this life) – and acknowledge that ‘surprise’ might be regarded as an experience
worthy of deliberative reflection.
Good-enough cosmopolitanism
Fernando Pessoa (2001a: 200): ‘The cavalry’s horses are what makes it a
cavalry. Without horses the cavalry would be infantry.’ Charlie Gillett and Robin
Denselow are in no way, if we may gently proceed now by way of this metaphor,
infantry. So, we might think about their horses. Which, in the end, I guess, is to
ask what it is about them both – in the context of the issues I am trying to get
at here – that has made a difference, according to their distinctive ways, and a
valuable difference:
Robin Denselow has a dual career, as a political journalist and as a music writer
and reviewer. He is a highly respected and independent-minded journalist, who
has worked on many television current affairs programmes, particularly on the
BBC’s Money Programme, Panorama and Newsnight. Robin has covered events
around the world, but has been particularly associated with the reporting of African
issues. He is well and widely known as a music reviewer for the Guardian, and is
the author of When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop (1989).
Charlie Gillett is a highly respected DJ, whose musical journey has moved
over the years from rock and roll to world music. He has worked extensively on
radio, including Radio London, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3, Capital Radio.
In programmes from the early Honky Tonk through to Charlie Gillett’s World of
Music, he has developed a distinctive trajectory of interpretation, with a strongly
transcultural inflection. He is the author of the now classic The Sound of the City
(1983; first edition 1970) and of Making Tracks (1988). Charlie is also very much
inside the business, setting up Oval Records in 1974 with Gordon Nelki (it was
through this that he became one of the Empress of Russia [a London public house]
coterie – see immediately below).
In 2004, Robin Denselow and Charlie Gillett met up with a few of the band of
associates who conspired to put ‘world music’ boxes (at the modest cost of just
£3500) in record stores, the Empress of Russia people, reassembled in that same
place, which by then had become The Fish Shop. At an interesting point in the
conversation, the record producer Joe Boyd teasingly challenged Charlie Gillett
about his dislike of English folk music:
JB: Charlie is a typical self-hating Englishman!

CG: I’m the least self-hating person I know. You’re trying to say that I hate my
own culture, but I have no affinity whatever with it. I grew up listening to
Little Richard and Gene Vincent.
JB: Whether you want to admit it or not, you are an Englishman, and that is
English culture.
CG: No, I’m a man of the world. I mean, that is what this whole thing is about,
isn’t it?
(Denselow 2004)
Both Charlie Gillett and Robin Denselow have long been significant figures
in my own thinking about musical cosmopolitanism, and thereby about cosmo-
politanism more generally. It is an issue that I have thought about in intellectual-
ized, that is to say social-scientific, terms. But it is also something that interests
me – and must necessarily concern us all – in terms of, let us say, practical sense
and reason. Of how the quality of cultural existence and situation that many of
us want to think of as ‘cosmopolitan’ might, in some form, be available to us
now, in the present life, even if meagrely, and in want of elaboration. I have been
carrying around in my head for a long time a phrase from the psychoanalyst D. W.
Winnicott. With respect to the function of the mother, Winnicott sought to counter
the image of ‘ideal mother’ with the more realistic, and actually more necessary
and productive, figure of the ‘good-enough’ mother. In my view, we need, along
quite similar lines, and for similar reasons, the realistic notion of good-enough
cosmopolitanism.
World music in experience: a conversation

How does migrating music actually exist in everyday experience and praxis? How
do we braid it into our lives in process, and how do we channel it into our life
interests and, maybe, cosmopolitan aspirations? Why should it have such a hold
on our imaginations? What, which I think is an even better question, might that
created and cultivated thing called ‘migrating music’, often known as world music
these days, expect and deserve of us?
KEVIN ROBINS [KR]:â•‡ Let’s begin with your recollections of how World Music
happened, at least, in your experience of it. You both came into it in rather
different ways.
CHARLIE GILLETT [CG]:â•‡ Well, I blame it on parking restrictions of South London,

as, in the seventies, I used to go to a record shop in Balham called Record
Corner, where I would buy soul and sometimes country records. And then the
Borough of Wandsworth introduced the yellow line system, and I defaulted
to Brixton market, where they didn’t have such lines for a while. My wife and
three children would go to the market to buy the week’s vegetables and meat,
and whatever else, and I would attend at a stall run by a very tall Trinidadian
woman called Elsa, who sold soca records, and until this moment I barely was
aware of this whole phenomenon. It was what had happened to calypso, it had
become more strident and fierce and rhythmic and I was really quite capti-
vated by the records, some of which I would buy. By this time, I was playing
records on Capital Radio and would occasionally slip in one of these soca
records. We’re talking about 1982. By chance, the same year Island Records
released the first record by Nigerian band leader King Sunny Adé, which
seemed somehow to fit alongside what I was already doing.
So I started playing pretty much one a week only, in which otherwise was a
pop-oriented programme and made a kind of … principle’s the wrong word
… but made a kind of regular practice of playing one of these, and then I got
the sack. The only time it has ever happened to me, and I was very dismayed.
Fortunately so were a few listeners, who wrote in to both me and the station,
who then changed their minds and said, ‘Would you like to come back?’
In effect, ‘Are you so offended you won’t come back? Or will you come
back?’ I wasn’t in the least offended, I was very delighted to have a second
chance, and they said, ‘Well, what are you going to do now? Because it will
look a bit strange if you simply do again what you were doing before.’ And I
said, ‘Well, the listeners were writing in saying, “we really like these tropical
records you were playing, this tropical music.” So, without wanting to limit
myself purely to ‘tropical’ music, I said, ‘Well, I’ll play what I’m ashamed to
say I call “foreign music”, and I’ll call the programme A Foreign Affair’. And
they said, ‘Well, if you’re prepared to dive in the deep end ….’ I said, ‘I don’t
really know this music at all, but my experience is that the audience will tell
me what I don’t know. They will correct me where I’m wrong and suggest
what I’m missing out.’ And that is what came to pass.
RD: I think I discovered World Music, as it became known many, many years later
completely by chance, like all the best things in life. When I left school I had
a year off, and the headmaster phoned up and said, ‘What are you doing?’
And I said I was playing guitar in a pub, which I was, rather badly. And he
said, ‘I think you should go to Burundi because we need someone to go and
work in a refugee camp there.’ So I asked my mates where Burundi was, and
I was told that Burundi was in Northern India. This was the late sixties, and
India was pretty fashionable at the time, so I thought this would be fantastic.
So I went to the interview and talked solidly about India [laughter], and the
bloke behind the desk said, ‘Oh, it’s extraordinary, I was India myself. I never
thought of it in those terms, but you’re absolutely right. You’re clearly the
man for the job, here’s your air ticket.’
So I looked at the air ticket and it said ‘London–Kampala’, and I’d heard of
Kampala, and thought that was a bit odd. Then it said an hour and a half extra
flight for Kampala–Bujumbura, which I had never heard of. Two weeks later,
I was in a camp with about ten thousand Tutsis, who’d fled to Burundi from
Rwanda after the first massacres – not the really serious ones that happened in
the nineties. And I had an extraordinary year in which the refugees looked after
me amazingly well. I hope we did some good – there was me and a couple of
other 17- and 18-year-olds, looking after them, allegedly. And at night, we’d
all sit around and listen to the radio and there was British pop music booming
down through BBC World Service – fantastic, the Beatles, the Stones, the
Animals – there was what was then Zairean music coming across from what
was then Zaire, now the Congo, and there were vocal sounds coming up from
South Africa. And listening to them all together in the middle of the night, in
the middle of a camp somewhere in the middle of Burundi – a place called
Kayangozi – it struck me that this was all fantastic music. I’d been a huge pop
fan, and I’m still a huge pop fan, but it struck me then that this was all equally
good music, and I was determined to find out more about it.
So later, after university, I found my way into the Guardian and started
working for the BBC in the Africa Service, and, once I was writing for the
Guardian, I’d try whenever I possibly could to add in African records. The
only problem was that there were very few on release in the seventies – there
was Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, who had of course escaped from apart-
heid South Africa and gone to the States, where they were making a lot of
records, and then moved back to West Africa when everything went wrong
for them in America. And it wasn’t, I suppose, until the eighties – with the
Bhundu Boys, the Zimbabweans, and so forth – that one actually got records
one could write about, because it was difficult writing a column about stuff
that people couldn’t get hold of.
I remember one of the first trips I did back to Africa. I met a Moroccan in
the street, who said, ‘Oh, you must come to my village, we have a fantastic
festival, it’s in a place called Jujuka.’ And I went to this village, up in the
mountains, which is extraordinary. They’re a pre-Islamic tribe of court musi-
cians, who’ve moved back into the mountains. Brian Jones of the Rolling
Stones went out there and recorded them. They have a festival in which they
play music for three days non-stop. The moon seems to rush across the sky.
They bring in the sick and play to them, and Ornette Coleman, who has just
had them on his Meltdown recently in London, turned up when I was there,
and I sat there and thought, ‘This is amazing,’ and as soon as I got a chance,
I tried to mix all of these sounds into what I was writing about, and I’ve tried
to do so ever since.
There’s been a long English fascination with what was later called World
Music. Around the same time that Brian Jones went to Jujuka, Ginger Baker
of Cream got a jeep and drove across the Sahara and went to Ghana; he went
to Nigeria and played with Fela Kuti, and was fascinated by African drum-
ming. And Led Zeppelin got interested in North Africa as well. There was a
fascination, I think, from the sixties onwards, by a lot of what were later seen
as the dinosaur rock bands, with African music, and with World Music in
general. It goes right back to that, so it shouldn’t be seen as a separate form,

there’s no such thing as World Music, on the one hand, and pop music, on the
other – it’s all great pop music.
CG: And John Peel, who was fantastic for so many reasons, was always open to
music from all over the place, and it’s unfortunate that when people have
done compilations retrospectively of the music that John played, they don’t
really deal with that side of his taste. They pretend that it’s all white rock
music, and it never was. What fascinated me, as I began to become more …
expert, that’s never been the right word … but more knowledgeable about the
music I was playing, it would continually bewilder me that, whenever I found
something, John had already played it. And how did he do that? Because he
was listening to so much stuff! He found it over and over again. Misty in
Roots had a whole career as a reggae group out of John’s support for them,
and, of course, the Bhundu Boys, too, since Robin has mentioned them. Their
popularity was entirely the result of John’s passion.
KR: For a long time, World Music was about music with African origins ….
CG: People who grew listening to Western pop music, particularly if they had any
taste for Black American music, when they first heard records from Mali and
Guinea, and from Senegal, then both the style of singing and the importance
of rhythm made it pretty easy to get into it. … The tendency for me is to love
that music, and every now and then I’ll get a letter sent to me at the World
Service saying, ‘Your programme is called A World of Music. Why don’t you
play music from the rest of the world, and not Africa all the time?’
RD: Well, I think that from the seventies onwards the whole thing started to
expand. By the seventies and eighties certainly, there was Eastern European
music coming in, Bulgarian music and the Eastern Europe music. And once
people realized that it wasn’t just America and Britain, and a bit of Europe,
maybe that there was a whole world out there, people started listening to all
sorts of things. The term World Music, with which Charlie was involved, and
the invention thereof ….
CG: Invention’s a dangerous word … the ‘naming of’… it was never invented, it
existed ….
RD: Although the term was invented … the music was there anyway. But that was
largely because there were things like … well, the Bhundu Boys were around,
who didn’t like the term ….
CG: The people who had the Bhundu Boys’ label were adamant they did not want –
they had heard what the plot was – to find a name which could be the section of
the record shop where their records could be found … because we were playing
records by people called Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. … I found it difficult to say, the
customer found it difficult to say, the guy serving behind the counter didn’t want
to say it. It just needed a safe box where people could flick through and find …
‘Ah, this is it!’ … but the people running the Bhundu Boys label were already
in the B’s alongside David Bowie. They didn’t want to be taken out and put into
this … and I understood. In a way, the aim was only ever to provide a starting
point, and, if a band could be promoted out into the regular racks, perfect.
RD: The Bulgarians quite liked being in that rack – they probably didn’t mind!
CG: That’s right. But one of the biggest arguments at that meeting was to find a
term that could encompass King Sunny Adé and the Bulgarian choir singers.
RD: Although Sunny Adé was before that, though, wasn’t he? He’d already had a
hit in the States by then.
CG: He had, but in America he was classified as reggae, because he was on the
Island label, and Island was reggae.
So one of the terms people came up with was World Beat, but that wasn’t
that simple, because there weren’t any beats in Bulgarian music. So I was
never happy with the term, because for me the best musical descriptions are
onomatopoeic, if that’s an adjective … like reggae, boogaloo, boogie-woogie,
rock ’n’ roll. … These terms sound like music – ‘World Music’ just sounds
like the marketing term that it always was, and I wish someone would come
up with a better word.
KR: I wonder what you think your expertise is. … Myself, I regard it in terms of a
kind of openness, an enthusiasm. What do you say to that?
CG: I think both of us would say the same … neither of us are musicologists, by
any definition. The trick is to retain the innocence that you had when you
were twelve or thirteen, and be able to put it into words. … In Robin’s case,
maybe it’s more difficult? I mean, I was a writer, a journalist, for a while. But
once I got a chance to be on the radio, that eliminated a need for trying to
explain what was great about this stuff. Play it! It was very simple.
RD: I think that, for me, the most important thing is not doing it all the time.
If I did it as a job, it would become a job. But if you’re making television
programmes by day, and then you go to a concert at night, even if you’re
writing about it … but you go with the same attitude as the rest of the audi-
ence, that’s great: ‘I’ve had a tough day, and I’m really looking forward to
seeing this.’ I think that keeps one’s enthusiasm going, and hopefully you
write about it in the same spirit as those who are going to the concert. And I
still adore going to concerts.
KR: What do you say about the point, made by many critics, that World Music has
become more homogenized, ‘globalized’, now? Some people say that there
is this increasingly generic thing called ‘World Music’, and less of an aware-
ness, it is suggested, about regional varieties and diversities of music ….
CG: I don’t think so. No, I think the range is actually getting wider all the time.
To me, one of the oddest things about World Music is that most of it is,
necessarily, performed by people from faraway countries, but very often the
recording situations in those countries are quite poor, so they need to come to
Europe to find better recording studios. And it’s not a complete coincidence
that the time when World Music really took off was when I started playing
music on the radio, 1982, 1983 … a lot of Congolese musicians came to Paris,
and found themselves in fantastic studios. They could hear themselves! That
was a novelty. Up until then, they had been in really bad situations, hardly
able to hear what they were doing, doing their best… It’s amazing how good
their records are, considering how poor the technical circumstances were. So
they come to Europe, they make records here, but the money they are making
stays in Europe, it doesn’t really go back home.
Titi Robin, who is a very interesting French musician, has an interesting

project for his next album. He’s going to go to make collaborations with
Turkish, Indian and North African musicians, and, in each case, he’s going to
make a point of going to that country, using an engineer from that country, a
studio from that country, making an arrangement with a record label in that
country, to release this album that he’s making, and at the local price. The
trouble with Western records is that they are very expensive, because they’re
going through the whole import business. So Titi has made these three sepa-
rate arrangements, and his record is going to be put out on three different
labels in each of these countries, as well as Naïve Records in France, who
have agreed to do this thing, which from their point of view risks them being
outsold in these little markets by cheaper records. But they said, well, okay –
and that doesn’t happen very often.
RD: True, but the one positive side of it, I think, is that people are … you talked
about Africans who moved to Paris to record … main stars are now begin-
ning to move back to Africa. So Salif Keita has moved back to Mali, set up
a studio there. It’s beginning to happen, a move back that way, and I think
with musicians moving back there and settling back there, rather than always
being based in the West, the flow will reverse, and the music will reverberate
around those other areas.
CG: If I could just jump in with something slightly different … When I was first
asked to participate in this conference, I thought that I didn’t have anything
to say on the subject. But then I realized that every music I’ve ever liked is
the result of some kind of migration, whether it was Elvis Presley moving
from Tupelo to Memphis long ago, or the people going up the Mississippi
to Chicago; and we’re now talking about people moving backwards and
forwards. … And it’s the music that results from people finding themselves in
a new situation, the Sound of the City … that is what music is, it’s the expres-
sion of the new situations that people find themselves in.
RD: I didn’t realize until much later that the music I was listening to in Burundi
years and years ago, which was in fact coming from the Congo, was African
music that had moved to Cuba and then bounced back to Africa again. And
so all these influences were mixed up there … and then a bit of James Brown
came in, and the rest of it … So I agree, all the great music, certainly of my
lifetime, has been caused by migrations. Even if you go to Mongolia, talking
to throat singers, they’re playing a bit of rock ’n’ roll as well … so everything
is mixed up, and that’s what makes it so exciting. And also certain rhythms,
like reggae, are now more popular in Africa than Jamaica, or much more
vibrant; and the Aboriginal community in the northern territories of Australia
are fascinated by reggae.
KR: Charlie was talking about the fact that music has always migrated, suggesting
that the transposition from one place to another is always something that
may generate creativity. And certainly Paris was a very important space for
recording. As he was making that point, I was thinking of a record produced
by Martin Meissonier, a record called Big Men, in Paris, which brings
together reggae musicians and raï musicians. And I was wondering, is this
the engineering of hybridity? Is it a constructive or positive development? I

like it very much.
CG: It depends if it sounds good. There are no general principles involved. Does
it work, or doesn’t work? I mean, Martin Meissonier is an interesting name
to bring up because he is a Frenchman who was in Paris in the early eighties,
working for a live music promoter, to whom he said, ‘Why don’t we bring
Fela Kuti over?’, and the guy said, ‘Well, how do we do that?’ And Martin
said, ‘Well, I’ll go to Lagos and find him and invite him.’ And, while Martin
was in Lagos, he heard some music coming out of a taxi window, and he put
his head in, and said, ‘What’s that?’ And he explained a little bit about who he
was, and why he was in Lagos, and the guy said, ‘This is King Sunny Adé, I’ll
take you to his house!’ So Martin duly went off to King Sunny Adé’s house,
introduced himself, found out what a big deal King Sunny was – he had had
huge best-selling albums for years there – and said to him, ‘Let me sign you,
and introduce you to Chris Blackwell at Island Records.’ And Martin then
made those first two albums that introduced us all to King Sunny Adé, which,
I didn’t know at the time, were basically new recordings of familiar songs that
Sunny had done before … just like the Wailers’ first couple of albums were
re-recordings of their famous songs.
KR: I have a grumpy side to me, related to the fact that, twenty years ago, I could
feel prestigious because, for example, I came upon an Oliver Mutukudzi
record that came directly, fresh, from Zimbabwe. Now I feel a bit deflated that
you can find almost everything on Amazon, or through fRoots or Songlines,
and there’s no cultural capital to be had anymore. Now it’s become very much
a business isn’t it?
CG: So you’re like those Jamaican DJs who used to go to America, find the R’n’B
45s they loved, bring them back to Jamaica, scrape all the information off, so
nobody knew what it was! Then they would play a record, and nobody knew
how to get it until the secret was out. I’ve always had the opposite instinct. I
just want to share the music. I just want other people to know about it.
To accept and take in the encounter

Good-enough cosmopolitanism … how does it have its existence in the world?
I think that Charlie Gillett and Robin Denselow, through their encounters with
migrating music, suggest some possible answers to this question. Of course,
they are quite different in the roles that they have assumed as long-time media-
tors of popular and migrating music. Each is insightful in his own distinctive
way. ‘To perceive’, says Heidegger (1976: 61), ‘implies, in ascending order: to
welcome and take in; to accept and take in the encounter; to take up face-to-face;
to undertake and see through – and this means to talk through.’ What better way
to conceive of what it is that wandering, anticipatory thoughtfulness entails, and
thinks to gather into existence, by way of migrating music? Heidegger’s formula-
tion seems to me to correspond not at all badly to the mode of being in the world
of Charlie and Robin. And surely this mode of being, this modality of perception
and thoughtfulness, must constitute a core element in the sensibility of what I have
called good-enough cosmopolitanism. I will try to elaborate on this now, by way

of three observations.
First, I would say that cultural, that is to say human, versatility, which in the
end is what we really have to talk about, occurs in this world through the prac-
tical experience of encounter, and of encounter’s vital necessity; involving and
depending on what you can bring to the encounter, and then what you are able
to carry away, and make use of, out of this encounter. What a person brings is a
matter of their idiom: their pitch and their momentum in the world; the way that
they stand in the world, how they move in it, how they face the world. Robin
and Charlie are, naturally, different in their idioms, as we all must be. But each,
according to his own disposition, engages with the world of music, and brings
his own qualities of thought to that engagement. Take the example, recently, of
encounter with Staff Benda Bilili. Robin Denselow, for the BBC, is in Kinshasa,
at the zoo:
Today, there are leopards and monkeys in the cramped cages, and on a patch
of grass in the middle of the zoo there are a group of polio-victims sitting
playing electric guitars in their wheelchairs. … They have very basic equip-
ment and only small amplifiers, but they sound tremendous, mixing gentle
harmony songs about their disability with rousing rumba tunes – the basis
of most great Kinshasa music – with other influences from reggae to R & B.
And when the Congolese group goes to London, Charlie Gillett has them as
guests on his radio show:
I did not truly come to terms with the group until they came to play a session
for my World on 3 programme. … The following day, I saw the band play to
a full house at the Barbican. … Finally, I began to understand the elements
of the group, which comprises three main lead singers, all wheelchair-bound,
one of whom, Ricky Likabu, is the band’s guitarist. In keeping with the
standard template for such a group, two men are designated as animateurs,
dancers who do occasionally sing but whose main function is to infect their
audience with the desire to move around. Of these two, one stands on one
leg aided by crutches and the other is wheelchair-bound and appears to be
without legs or feet until he rolls out of the chair to do a sort of crouch-dance
on deformed legs.
Charlie and Robin each bring an idiomatic quality of mind and experience,
the force of their own idiom, to the encounter, with attentiveness to the poten-
tial of their own particular capacities of engagement with Staff Benda Bilili. And
the nature of encounter is thereby enhanced: they both summon what may be
called a human supplement through encounter. Staff Benda Bilili: Look Beyond
Appearances. Très, très fort.
My second observation … What is apparent in the self-presentations of both
Charlie Gillett and Robin Denselow is the way in which the encounter with
migrating music is something that occurs, and can only occur, as a process, through
and across time. The best metaphor is the simple, and always resonant, one of the
journey, through the course of which experiences are taken up, amassed and kept.
Robin Denselow listens to and engages with Staff Benda Bilili as someone who,
let us say, remembers how he saw Bob Marley, and all the incredible political
turbulence that was going on around him in Jamaica, back in 1976 (Denselow
1989: 127–34). And Charlie Gillett might just think of these aspiring-to-record
musicians, via his encounters, in the early 1970s with the aspiring stars of Atlantic
Records (I think of his nice, picked-up anecdote of Leonard Chess: ‘A black guy
was painting the window frames, and he started singing, till the record man said,
“Hey, you’re pretty good. You could make a record.” The guy said, “I already
have,” and the record man said, “Oh yeah, what’s your name?” And the guy said.
“Muddy Waters”.’ (Gillett 1988: 68); though Charlie later said to me that he didn’t
think that this story could be true).
I pluck these tiny examples at random – there is a whole galaxy of other anec-
dotes that could be activated out of experience and memory. But there is a point,
and it is that the encounter with popular and migrating musics is an encounter
through, and then back over, time. It is about the imperative to move around in
time – and therefore across musical genres and styles. It is about an ongoing accu-
mulation of musical experiences within the continuous flow of living thought.
‘Thought is in need of memory, the gathering of thought’ (Heidegger 1976: 138).
Thought always depends upon the necessary keeping and nurturing of what has
been thought-provoking. And this act of keeping, keeping vital and lively, in order
to make way for the possibility, according to our good-enough cosmopolitan
terms, in addition to a dialogue across cultural spaces, the indispensable venture
of conversing across time, with past decades. There are prismatic forces avail-
able in memory, in back and forth directions both, to always amplify the world
of experience and awareness, to make further thought occur. I am thinking of
Charlie and Robin, then, in terms of their own characteristic trajectories. They are
not ones to trade in theories, positions, stances, on world music. The point, rather,
is that, as public mediators, they have taken their listeners and readers through
distinctive journeys, over the course of time. ‘Benevolent thought that leads us
elsewhere, reroutes us, makes us travel’ (Pontalis 2003: 67). Benevolent thought.
… It’s the journey that we seem to like so much. The journey’s sequencing of
encounters and experiences, which has always been thoughtfully, and therefore
productively, digressive. Many of us have followed Robin and Charlie over the
years. And what we like, I would say, is the feeling they convey of being always
under way. Always on to the next place, with the awareness that there will always
be a next place, unknown to any of us as yet, which will make sense in the light
of all the other past experiences – and which will help us to make new sense and
meaning, replenished sense, out of all the ones we have had the good fortune to
have already passed through. A freedom of movement, and, more than that, the
sense and the pleasure of that freedom, which is the vital supplement, affording a
freedom of movement of the feelings – picaro-style, I will say.
Social scientific approaches to cosmopolitanism invariably, and unsurpris-
ingly, unfortunately, trade for the most part in general principles and in abstract
conceptions – recognition, responsibility, difference, otherness, multiculturalism,
universalism, relativism, transnationalism, and so on. That is, of course, in the

nature of their dialect. And it is certainly one way of approaching the cosmo-
politan agenda. Not the way of Robin and Charlie, though. So, here I come to my
third observation. Thinking about cosmopolitanism by way of migrating music
affords the possibility of a different kind of access. This is not so much to do
with the elaboration and clarification and formalization of abstract criteria for
transcultural relations and conduct. It is not, that is to say, to do with thinking
about cultures – thinking on their behalf. But a matter, rather, of absorbing the
world on the basis of how we live in it. Acknowledging existence as alive, and in
act, always blossoming. And then trying to make some other kind of sense, which
is an enlarging sense, out of this force of being. Something out of an idiom, a
motivated disposition, out of a sensibility of being in the world – out of a situated,
keen awareness of the world as lived. A virtue of this mode of pitch and venture
is that it can incite a more vivid kind of thinking, thinking of a kind that we have
never really found in standard socio-political discourses. Robert Musil (1990: 31)
comes, again, to mind: ‘And there is a kind of thinking that makes us happy,’ he
says. One could pick up on many possible lines of thought here, and I will pursue
just one. The vivid world – the world of sounds, images, encounters, stories – is a
world that can offer up surprise. The experience of surprise. It is there in Charlie’s
sense of being ‘captivated’ by the sound of the music in Brixton market, and in
his point about the need to retain a certain ‘innocence’. And I see it there, too, in
Robin’s commitment to ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘spirit’, and in that he ‘adores’ going to
concerts. ‘For poetry is astonishment, admiration, as of a being fallen from the
skies taking full consciousness of his fall, astonished at things’ (Pessoa 2001a: 9).
Très, très fort! It is surely this dimension of experience that we must have regard
towards in the encounter with migrating music; and at the heart of something that
we might choose to call musical cosmopolitanism. The sociologists of cosmo-
politanism talk at length of ‘world-openness’, but their world-openness generally
exists as just one more encapsulating, and therefore inert, concept. Maybe what
Robin and Charlie convey through their everyday conversational language, and
what it tells us about their worldly dispositions (‘I’m a man of the world,’ says
Charlie – and, yes, he has indeed been, from Little Richard days onwards) may
just add something to the cosmopolitan conversation, in the good-enough sense I
am pursuing.
But don’t think that I am advocating recourse to some kind of naivety. Or,
rather, what I should say is, don’t think that I am simply advocating some kind
of naivety. For, indeed, it becomes ever more clear to me that I do have a faith
in certain modalities of naive perception, and in their intents. Surprise, astonish-
ment, wonder, admiration … (as of a being fallen from the skies). Surely what
is tunelessly sociologically designated in abstraction as ‘world-openness’ stands
in need of accordance with these motive forces of engagement in the world? For
the world simply has to be intriguing. What is there otherwise? From where else
would we receive the impulse to think? My point is that it is only out of intrigue
that thoughts can occur – thoughts, at least, that are well disposed to the world.
Worldly thoughts – let us call them captivated thoughts. I would say that it is
most certainly out of their vital capacities to sustain astonishment and admiration
that Charlie and Robin have generated so much to think about with respect to
world music and its cosmopolitan possibilities. Their innocence, always reflexive,
and of course differently pitched through the voice of each of them, is what has
permitted their evocative thoughtfulness, what I would call their good-enough
cosmopolitan thinking, to have its life. Through the ever more expansive constel-
lation of musical encounters and experiences that each of them has accumulated
and assembled over time, we have been given awareness, narrative awareness, of
more than just a serialized procession of musical performers and performances.
The context of the overall constellation may confer insight, which I think of as a
thought-provoking and ingenious, devious kind of thinking. Apperception of the
unknown, by way of the known, thereby replenishing and supplementing exist-
ence. In order always to enlarge the world … bigger than a Cadillac. ‘There’s an
erudition of acquired knowledge,’ says Pessoa (2001b: 122), ‘which is erudition
in the narrowest sense, and there’s an erudition of understanding, which we call
culture. But there’s also an erudition of the sensibility.’ Good-enough cosmopoli-
tanism is surely concerned with this third, never really discovered by sociology,
domain of erudition. And, through it, through valued sensibility, must push to
vitalize the other domains.
Rich with all you have gained along the way

I am thinking of the ‘love of beginnings’, always-fresh beginnings, as Pontalis
(1993) celebrates this love. And I take into mind, too, Cavafy’s ‘Ithaka’ (2006),
his sentiments about the beautiful journey that Ithakas may always afford:
Arriving there is your destination.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts many years,
and you moor on the island when you are old
rich with all you have gained along the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Maybe good-enough cosmopolitanism, of the kind I have been trying get at,
by way of my fortunate encounter with Charlie Gillett and Robin Denselow, is in
the end simply about taking account of what Ithakas mean? ‘Ithaka gave you the
beautiful journey.’
Or is this too idealistic?
References
Campbell, James (2001) Paris Interzone, London: Vintage.
Cavafy, C. P. (2006) The Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, trans. Aliki Barnstone, New
York: W. W. Norton.
Davis, Miles with Troupe, Quincy (1990) Miles: The Autobiography, London: Picador.
Denselow, Robin (1989) When the Music’s Over: The Story of Political Pop, London:
Faber and Faber.
Denselow, Robin (2004) ‘We created world music’, Guardian, 29 June.

Erlmann, Veit (1996) ‘The aesthetics of the global imagination: reflections on world music
in the 1990s’, Public Culture, 8: 467–87.
Feld, Steven (2000) ‘A sweet lullaby for world music’, Public Culture, 12(1): 145–71.
Gillett, Charlie (1983) The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll, rev. edn, New
York: Pantheon Books.
Gillett, Charlie (1988) Making Tracks: Atlantic Records and the Growth of a Multi-Billion-
Dollar Industry, London: Souvenir Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1976) What Is Called Thinking? New York: Harper Perennial.
Musil, Robert (1990) Precision and Soul, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pessoa, Fernando (2001a) The Selected Prose of Fernando Pessoa, ed. and trans. Richard
Zenith, New York: Grove Press.
Pessoa, Fernando (2001b) The Book of Disquiet, ed. and trans. Richard Zenith, London:
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press.
Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (1993) Love of Beginnings, London: Free Association Books.
Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2003) Windows, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Williams, Richard (2009) The Blue Moment: Miles Davis’s ‘Kind of Blue’ and the Remaking
of Modern Music, London: Faber and Faber.
10 Ports of Call
An ethnographic analysis of music
programmes about the migration of
people, musicians, genres and instruments,
BBC World Service, 1994–5
Jan Fairley
‘Hey! Great to hear you on the radio with Ports of Call. We’re in Kovalam, Kerala
with a short-wave radio in the room and the sound of waves, palms and fishermen
with their boats on the sand outside.’1 These words on a postcard sent from friends
on holiday back in 1994 brought home to me just how far one’s voice can be heard
if one is lucky enough to broadcast on radio. Radio, inconceivable without music,
is portable, and accessible in one language or another, wherever one finds oneself.
As Jody Berland has written, ‘humble and friendly, it follows you everywhere
… [yet it is] commonly referred to as a secondary medium in the broadcasting
industry, conveying the industry’s pragmatic view that no one cares whether you
listen to radio as long as you do not turn it off …’ (Berland 1990: 179).
In this chapter I will discuss Ports of Call, two series of six half-hour-long radio
programmes made for BBC World Service (WS) in 1994 and 1995 intended for
a worldwide listenership, with each programme initially broadcast three times
in a week to catch different time zones (as per WS policy at the time), and then
repeated at a later date (between six months and a year later).2 The WS is non-
format radio without commercial advertisements and therefore not delivering
listeners to sponsors. At that time it was funded not by the BBC licence fee but
directly by Grant in Aid from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Therefore
in that sense it was an ‘official’ government voice speaking by default for the
United Kingdom to the world, and so iconic of ideological discourses that settle
around such words as ‘informative’, ‘reliable’, ‘truthful’.
Made for the then BBC WS Serious Music department, the subject matter of
both series was migrating musicians, music, genre and instruments, their premise
‘the constant flow of music and musical instruments between continents following
trade and maritime routes …’, their aim ‘to create a sound-picture of living
musical traditions ….’3 The first series traced the movement of music and musical
instruments to and fro between Old and New World following global networks
involving migratory, maritime and trade routes. The second was structured on
the theme of island cultures.4 The historical point to make here is that the series
can be located within the global conjuncture of the late twentieth century, and
specifically the end of the cold war c. 1989/1990, the increasing power of unregu-
lated global capitalism and political shifts towards neo-liberalism, together with
166â•… Jan Fairley
other tendencies associated with globalization. This was also a moment when the
BBC World Service, in the wake of John Tusa’s directorship (1986–92), had a
considerably more cosmopolitan conception of global culture than even ten years
before. To bring diverse, ‘local’ popular musics to the airwaves was now very
much within the remit of BBC World Service. Significantly, the popularity of the
first series, legitimated by feedback, led to the second. As the producer wrote in
her commissioning bid, ‘judging by the correspondence from all over the world
listeners welcome the chance to hear different and unfamiliar music on World
Service.’5
Writing on radio (for instance Barnard 1989, Barnett and Morrison 1989,
Lewis and Booth 1989, Berland 1990; Grenier 1990, Hilmes 1997, Hilmes
and Loviglio 2002) has covered the powerful role of the medium in defining
national consciousness and the creation and structuring of ‘imagined communi-
ties’ (Anderson 1983). In the present chapter, of course, such communities are
understood as extending beyond the boundaries of the nation to encompass the
local and the global. Following the broad approach of this literature on radio, the
chapter will outline the basic process of making Ports of Call through a reflexive
‘auto-ethnography’, and examine how that process was embedded in the prac-
tices of programme-making and broadcasting. It will focus on four interrelated
aspects of the creation of the series: firstly, the logistical process of creating a
series; secondly, key questions of cultural capital and cosmopolitanism involved
in the role of cultural intermediary; thirdly, the relationship between script,
music and the radio ‘voice’; fourthly, participative listening, i.e. feedback from
the so-called ‘invisible’, ‘imagined’ audience. That is, in Hilmes’s terms, it will
involve ‘locating the production of radio within the matrix of opinions, feelings,
and interests within which radio developed as technology and practices, as part
of lived daily experiences, both for those who listen and for those who experi-
mented with its production. What Bourdieu has termed the cultural “field” of
radio’s origins’ (Hilmes 1997: xiii).
One main argument is that radio, and specifically these BBC World Service
programmes, not only mediates, but also constructs the ‘other’. The series involved
travel, a to-ing and fro-ing across the world ‘within a programme’, constructing
imaginary journeys, and in doing so introducing a multiplicity of ‘others’ through
music, into not only the intimate, everyday settings of the home, but also the
subjective worlds of listeners. All this was done in a ‘natural’ way (or so I hoped).
Crucially, the material was diverse, composed of local musics recorded and distrib-
uted by small independent companies working largely outside the corporate music
industry, music mostly marginal to the music industry as popularly defined. The
intention was celebratory, to provide a linked account of ‘local’ cultures through
offering ethnographic detail across geographic and cultural barriers, while always
following a certain musical logic.
Setting the scene: the trail as identity marker

The series was pre-announced on the radio by an evocative 40-second trail,
which went out in the week before and during the week of each programme. This
Ports of Callâ•… 167
was a classic radio trail, i.e. a voice over a music background. It presupposed
that, while radio can be a random ‘turn on – turn off’ experience, with listeners
catching fragments of programmes and making their own sense of them, in fact
there is, as in the industry view described by Berland (1990), a discriminating
audience who will make a date and time to listen to specific programmes.6 The
same sonic background from the trail served as the ‘top’, i.e. the opening sequence
for each programme.7 Following conventions of radio drama, it consisted of
the interlinking of three pieces of music against a background of the sound of
waves, seagulls and noises of ships in a port; its intention to trigger visual images
through the aural. Its sound embodied the ‘nostalgia’ of the imaginary world that
the programmes sought to evoke: that is, it expressed an imaginary narrative
I had in my head of someone walking along a port passing taverns, suppliers,
homes, shops, and in doing so catching snatches of music emanating from doors
and open windows as they walked by. This ‘imaginary’ was romantically, even
nostalgically, rooted in personal experience based on a lifetime of visits to many
ports, from Merseyside where I grew up and where visits to my grandmother
meant weekly travel on the Mersey ferry between Birkenhead and Liverpool;
from Valparaíso, Chile to Cádiz, Spain; from Buenos Aires to Havana, Matanzas
and Santiago in Cuba.
It was intended to evoke the histories of the tremendous, often disruptive,
historical movement of immigrants, of ports as hubs for the exchange of musical
creativity and materials, and the transnational production of a host of musical
styles (Gilroy 1993; Lipsitz 1994; Appadurai 1990; Cohen, Chapter 14 below). It
was rooted in notions of exchange, circulation, transformation and dissemination
captured in the Latin-Spanish journey trope of ida y vuelta (going and returning),
a vital metaphor used in flamenco and other Latin music forms to indicate certain
genre categories, and a term that captures the dialectic and continual dynamic of
mutual influences in music between Spain, the Americas and beyond.
To this end, with the help of a BBC Scotland engineer, the background to the
trail segued the beginnings of three favourite music tracks: Cape Verdean singer
Cesaria Evora’s song ‘Mar Azul’ (‘Oh Blue Sea’); Basque country’s Tapia eta
Leturia’s accordion trikitixa instrumental piece ‘Eutsi Goiari’; and a vocal frag-
ment of ‘Fado’, a song by Portuguese singer Maria João. The music faded in
and out as it would if one was literally walking past doors down a port street,
with movement suggested by a flowing wash of sounds associated with a port,
and involving seagulls, ships and waves which we constructed as a sound loop
in the studio.8 For the trail, a voice-over by myself as presenter announced the
series. For the beginning of each programme the sequence loop without any voice
announcement was used, to be taken down and faded under the opening sentences
of the script, or cross-faded to the first piece of music.
Given the transitory nature of radio, there is no longer a copy of the trail or any
of the programmes. In an important sense this serves to underline their ephem-
eral nature.9 The article is thereby a reconstructed account based on memories,
production paperwork, scripts and music recordings. As Hilmes has noted, ‘much
marginal radio history has been erased and has to be re-created from scripts,
paperwork, reminiscences’ (Hilmes 1997: xvi).
Logistics: the ‘bid’ process

It is one thing to have an idea for a series of radio programmes and another to get
the idea taken up officially and brought to fruition. The commissioning process
involves bidding rounds for a place in an existing slot, or a specific commission
for a scheduled space with consequent funding. This is achieved via a producer
who guides ideas in the light of their knowledge of current preoccupations and
perceived ‘gaps’ in the schedule. To get the ‘ear’ of an existing producer one has
to have broadcasting credibility, experience and, if possible, an introduction. The
series undoubtedly fitted BBC WS commissioning guidelines, while broadcasting
credibility came from my being an existing BBC freelance with a track record
(including having highlights of previous BBC commissions selected for BBC Radio
4’s Pick of the Week) and at the time presenter of a popular weekly programme.10
The initial pitch was made by letter, followed by a telephone call and then a
face-to-face meeting with Jenny Bild, then the new Senior Producer in the Serious
Music department at Bush House, World Service headquarters in London. Meeting
with Bild while in London resulted after a positive conversation in a formal bid
document which convinced commissioning editors. While often only a temporary
partnership, a sympathetic producer–presenter relationship is a huge advantage
when one considers that there is a continuum of BBC producer–presenter rela-
tionships ranging from friendly to ‘more or less convivial’. At the time Bild was
relatively new to the BBC, coming in from commercial work outside rather than
through conventional radio ranks. We made a good team, I think, and enjoyed
making the programmes. Bild went on to become Head of the Serious Music
Department.11
Source material: mapping the world

To present and produce such programmes for radio, one needs a good recording
collection and detailed knowledge of it. One of the inspiring things about creating
radio programmes is that you can play music that you love for others who are
unfamiliar with it, offering the possibility of pleasure if the music catches them
and is to their taste. A working method for compiling a programme involves
sorting through recordings, making piles of possible inclusions according to
various modes of categorization. Then, with a rough table drawn on a paper pad,
one works through each disc track by track, noting in columns alongside the disc
name a rating for each track (assessing musical details, lyrics, etc.) accompanied
by descriptive markers (track length, amount of music at the top without vocals,
instrumental solos, etc.) with musical/content notes alongside as to why they
might/might not sound right for inclusion.12
Gradually programmes emerge, building usually on an arresting ‘stop you in
your tracks’ opener for each programme, to catch people’s attention, while simul-
taneously introducing the programme theme, and so offering an idea of the music
people can expect to hear subsequently. The choice of the initial piece for the
programme sequence is key, as everything will lead from this piece, either flowing
or contrasting with it. In this way programmes follow a dynamic play between
musical and geographical moves. One searches for tracks which will flow one to
another, even with script spoken in between them. This means that the ‘top’ and
‘end’ of tracks matter at the time of selection, as they dictate subsequent segue
movements. In other words, the presenter as intermediary decides on both the
hybridity of the programme as well as its migratory moves.
Every programme must have a dynamic shape. Although the structure is linear,
involving spoken links (music, link, music, etc. – maybe seguing two pieces of
music back to back), a programme increases in intensity just as a musical perform-
ance does, and certain pieces of music, given their position, may catch the attention
more than others, as they set each other up both paradigmatically and syntagmati-
cally.13 While a programme is constructed with an ideal attentive listener in mind,
one is aware of listener distraction and also that the uneven clarity of the radio
frequency itself needs to be taken into consideration. A poorly mixed or low-
volume record may be avoided as it might not sound good on a portable transistor
radio listened to on a beach, in a kitchen, or other work or leisure setting.14
How did Ports of Call attempt to link the world?

I have already noted ways that Ports of Call is evocative of place, and movement
between places, through music and soundscape. But scripted links are important
too in encoding music, and giving a preferred message that may or may not be
decoded in a ‘preferred’ way (Hall 1980). Such information might be gleaned
from the album sleeves or booklets as well from personal research. Links might be
quite ethnomusicologically informative, yet necessarily not move beyond the kind
of information offered on a comparative specialist programme on BBC Radio 3.
A Ports of Call programme typically opens with music, played for between
30 and 50 seconds, and then taken down under the presenter’s voice for the first
introductory ‘link’ setting up the programme, which is often, but not necessarily,
longer than the others. Subsequent links take up themes, working with images
and impressions as if working different threads in a tapestry. Perusal of old scripts
bearing lots of scribbles and edits shows many changes in preparation and run-
throughs as material is edited to become more ‘lived in’.
Examination of the opening link to ‘The Sailor’s Piano: The Accordion’ (series
one, programme 5) shows it explores the way the accordion has become a key
part of ‘traditional’ music by substituting for other instruments, focusing on its
geographical reach and different aesthetics. In syntagmatic relationship with other
programmes in the series, the programme’s musical moves offer cultural hetero-
geneity and plurality, following a geographic sequence from Basque country to
Sierra Leone, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Argentina, to Finland,
its subtext tracing the routes tango has taken as this musical tradition has migrated
across the world..
The first link (spoken over the first piece of instrumental music) provides a
lot of information, introducing the accordion, the geographic embrace of the
programme, an impression of the music that will be heard, details of the actual
piece of music being listened to (without actually naming it), its tradition, musical
genre, a value judgement as to the beauty of the music, the sound of the music
again. This then cross-fades to the link to the next piece of music. By establishing
a relationship between the accordion and sailors, this link reasserts the theme of
the series. It places the listener in Freetown, home to the specific musician whose
music is about to be heard, offering brief biographical detail as well as details
from the lyrics of the piece of music that is starting under the voice even as the
information is being given.
What follows is the opening introductory link into the programme and then the
subsequent link:
Throughout the world wherever you find musicians you’ll find the accordion:
for those unfamiliar with the accordion it’s a cross between a small portable
piano and an organ powered by bellows15 – it comes in all shapes and sizes
and it’s so versatile local music is easily adapted for play – its portability and
durability make it a favourite for dance music from Colombia to Finland –
from tango to this fandango – part of a tradition called trikitixa from Euskadi
Basque country on the northern coast of Spain – trikitixa was once played on
pipes and percussive tambourine – today the pipes have been replaced by the
button accordion – the melodeon – this fandango is a Basque version of the
jota – one of the loveliest and most popular dances on the Iberian peninsula
– found today in various forms in the Americas ….
[Music with cross-fade]
Sailors from Europe carried the accordion with them to ports all around the
world. In Freetown in West African Sierra Leone – Salia Koroma started playing
accordion around 1912 – like many accordionists he taught himself by listening
and copying – here Salia plays a Mende son – it tells the story of a new dress –
which however well loved will one day be abandoned – it’s a metaphor for the
fast individual who may rely on his fastness to avoid problems – but must take
care in the long term – Salia Karoma and his accordion with Ganene Bimbe.
What one hopes to achieve through such links is compression of time and space,
the making of connections between seemingly disparate pieces of music from a
variety of standpoints, a criss-crossing of geographical and historical borders and
genre with a gamut of world musics in ‘imaginary’ relationships. Out of a huge
range of possible references, the presenter attempts to create a narrative that makes
sense of the tangled relationships that might exist between different cultures, histo-
ries, and the musicians who have produced the music. This involves touching on
aspects of power relations, hegemony, colonialism, class, race and gender.
In this way, analysis is combined with narrative: stories are told which move
geographically and musically, offering an impressionistic series of pictures for
the listener to associate with the listening experience. These become triggers
and latch-points for memory. The presenter also tries to draw in the listener by
offering overall coherence, giving enough information for listeners to understand
the geographical and historical relations at stake in the music, while perhaps being
distracted by other activities and sounds in the place where they are listening.
In terms of geopolitical history, programmes follow colonial, post-colonial and

modern pathways, and they mix ethnographic with marginal commercial record-
ings.16 My scripts are very much influenced by my personal biography: by work
and travel experiences since my late teens in Europe, notably France, Spain and
South and Central America; by a radical interdisciplinary university education
which had taken me on a passionate journey through Third World, Latin American,
ethnomusicological and popular music studies; by close working and research
over a long period with diverse musicians; by activism; by promoting music and
being a female radio and club DJ; by membership of the European Broadcasting
Union world music group. It is no coincidence, then, that each script has political
and historical points to make as well as musical ones. The programme ‘New Ports
of Call: Modern Troubadours’ (series 1/6) includes songs rarely ever heard on
radio, composed by Latin American musicians implicated in the political struggle
on the continent in the 1970s and 1980s,17 a struggle I had witnessed first-hand,
and musicians many of whom I had met personally.
Here is a script extract:
In Cuba the new troubadours took the name nueva trova – the new trova – to
describe their songs and approach – two essential names are Silvio Rodríguez
and Pablo Milanés whose songs have travelled far beyond the Spanish
speaking world – a Rodríguez classic is ‘The Blue Unicorn’ – ‘El unicornio
azul’ – that song had huge impact – it captured a generation and a continent’s
lost ideals – people embroidered the unicorn on their clothes and wrote to
Rodríguez, reported sightings of the lost beast from behind the lines in El
Salvador and Nicaragua – this is a live recording given by Rodríguez in Chile
in March 1990 soon after the return to democracy in the country
[Fade in music: ‘El Unicornio Azul’; CD Silvio Rodríguez en Chile, track 3,

Fonomusic CD1109]
The key thing I was trying to achieve through the geographic breadth of the
programmes and information provided was to make links across a vast part of the
world, specifically port and island cultures, which had so often been ignored in the
Western musical imagination.
Addressing the ‘invisible audience’: the radio voice

The presenter’s voice which fitted the BBC World Service Serious Music depart-
ment remit at the time was white, middle-class and female.18 This raises issues to
do with race and ideology, that is a ‘white’ British voice introducing and filtering
‘other’ musics through its sensibility, normalizing selected information within
a flow of different musics. For the listener it could raise issues around double
consciousness, of ‘always looking at oneself through the eyes of another’.19
Beyond the radio voice telling stories, creating a narrative, weaving a programme
together (the aim being to link the music and give people hooks to remember pieces
by), a presenter has to achieve the right tone and pace: conversational, not too fast,
not too slow, the timbre of voice not too high, not too low. Getting the balance
right is interesting, as women have fewer role models than male presenters. I am
sure my ‘radio voice’ is informed by the cultural capital mentioned earlier, by my
own ‘militant cosmopolitanism’20 gained from life experiences which admittedly
give me a passionate, often intense approach to life and thereby broadcasting.
Listening to how the various ways programmes are made enables one to distin-
guish between different ‘qualities’ in terms of timbre and texture of the same
voice. When one is about to present a programme, one focuses on having a ‘warm’,
‘friendly’ voice’ and on chatting and talking to someone (rather than giving them
information), and wanting to connect them to others through the programme. One
does not want the timbre to rise with excitement, and the margins of many of my
scripts bear scribbled notes reminding me to speak ‘low’ and ‘slow’. One’s desire
is to persuade people, catching their attention with a certain tone and quality of
voice so that they enjoy the music; while the audience may not be visible, one
has a clear sense of ‘real’ people listening. When one is first-time presenting,
producers often advise just imagining a person one knows sitting in the studio seat
opposite and talking to them.21
Ideally programmes go out ‘live’, so the voice heard is one speaking at the
moment of being listened to. However, the WS Ports of Call series was pre-
recorded and broadcast at different times in the same day across different time
zones. The prerecorded voice is never quite the same as a ‘live on air’ voice,
despite the best efforts of the presenter to emulate a live feel. True, given radio’s
lo-fi reproduction, the difference might not be detected, especially by the casual
listener. But an experienced producer or presenter listening to a programme can
usually tell the circumstances of recording, not merely of their own work, but that
of others too. This ability to know whether a broadcast is live or not is derived
from perceiving the degree of presenter self-consciousness that is manifested in
the voice. An as-live recording invariably sounds different from a true-live broad-
cast. I base these comments on comparative analysis of diverse music programmes
made during a similar time period to Ports of Call. The analysis covers the gamut
of possibilities in terms of circumstances of production, and yields a radio voice
typology. In brief, analysing the same voice presenting programmes recorded in
different circumstances reveals the different quality of that voice in terms of tone,
timbre, pace and vocal energy. For instance, it is possible to hear the difference
between what was originally a true-live programme, but recorded and rebroadcast
at different times, and a prerecorded programme presented as-live.22 The signif-
icant point here is that vocal ‘authenticity’, as represented by true-live broad-
casting, remains a kind of aural benchmark in radio.
The voice I used in Ports of Call was based on emulating the voice of someone
presenting a linked disc programme live in studio (i.e. with simultaneous broad-
cast). In this model the presenter acts as DJ and runs the control desk. A live
programme of this kind may contain glitches, with characteristic ad-libs and
improvisations which might include misreads, or studio errors (as a result of
a machine not working, or opening a CD case and discovering the disc one is
about to play has been left at home in the machine …). However, a prerecorded
programme will have all glitches edited out. Here the goal is normally an unnatural
perfection. Ports of Call falls in between. It is prerecorded, certainly, but the aim
is to achieve an as-live in-studio ambience, by means of such opening introduc-
tions as, ‘Hi there, in this week’s programme …’ – as if one was at that moment
talking directly to a listener.
While the intention is to sound live and natural, as if one is live on air, clearly
the recording has to be made without the immediacy of knowing one has a live
audience listening at that the moment (one knows one has only the producer and
engineer). Paradoxically, in these circumstances glitches such as spoken errors
can occur as, however hard one tries (too hard perhaps), a script tends to be read
more formally as one knows one is not interacting with a real, albeit invisible
audience. BBC etiquette at the time the programmes were made demanded stop-
ping to rerecord any spoken glitches, with unsatisfactory ‘takes’ being edited out
afterwards.
The general point here is that the attempt to produce a ‘natural’ mode of address
is fraught with problems, and always depends on what might be called strategies
of radio authenticity.
Feedback as participative listening

Radio as friend, reliable companion, integral to many people’s lives, people
often in isolation, or maybe partners together in a room on a beach in Kerala:
as Jody Berland suggests, listening to radio programmes creates a community in
the moment (Berland 1990: 188). It is a special kind of fragmented community,
each person listening unaware of who other listeners might be and, unless they
are listening in company, maybe not even thinking about others who might be
listening at the same time. Yet people do tell others what they have listened to,
and often recommend that they too listen to the same programme. As I know from
my own experience, people have even been known to ring others to encourage
them to turn the radio on and listen, with the instruction: ‘You will love this!’ Still,
many listeners commune with the programme and produce their own response
to it in a solitary way, each listener forming an imaginary relationship with the
programme. Lewis and Booth (1989: 66) compare the act of listening to Brecht’s
dream of connecting listeners rather than isolating them through the ‘little magic
cabinet’. This listening community of fragmented subjectivities, held together by
the experience of listening, is then able to express pleasure or displeasure through
the medium of letters; feedback which acts as a form of participative listening.
The ‘invisible’ audience can talk back.
Ports of Call elicited letters from listeners to the programme which were sent to
the World Service at Bush House. Their place of origin – Netherlands, Australia,
Czechoslovakia, Azores, Cyprus, Sweden, Portugal, London – revealed some-
thing of the geographic reach of the programmes. Listeners wrote of the pleasure
of hearing beautiful music, the experiences it triggered, and also frustration when
they spotted errors.
There were also instrumental purposes for which letters might be used. The
following list of positive quotes from letters received about the first series was
assembled by the producer as part of the strategy to secure a commission for
the second series. Most pertinently they show a cosmopolitan appreciation and
hunger for the programme’s juxtaposed content of music from around the world.
I felt unusually touched by the music played. I would give a lot to hear that
music more often. (Netherlands)
The music was attractive and you made each programme historically inter-
esting too. (Australia)
On hearing your excellent programmes, I desperately need to know where

I can get recordings of some of the music. Can you help? (Czechoslovakia)
To hear Maria Joăo and Cesaria Evora was so thrilling that mere words are
hard to find to capture this experience. (Azores)
Your recent programme was wonderful. It brought back memories of pleasant

times spent in Mozambique. And Portugal, listening to fado. (Cyprus)
Perhaps the single most powerful piece of testimony to the BBC came in a letter
published on the Letters page of the November 1995 BBC WorldWide magazine
under the title: ‘Musical calling’.
Four cheers for Jan Fairley and BBC World Service for producing and
broadcasting the informative musical documentary series Ports of Call. A
music-filled cocktail of sheer exuberance tempered by a measure of sadness
produces a desired and satisfying result. Many thanks to Jan Fairley and
everyone involved with this most brilliant effort
Gregory Hopkins, Landsborough, Australia (Fax from producer to
presenter 18 October 1995: this quote from BBC WorldWide was
circulated a month in advance of issue date, Fairley APA 1994–6)
This letter coincided with the start of the new series and the producer’s written
response to me was: ‘It obviously takes a long time for things to get through from
Australia. I wish they’d told me they were going to print the letter. It would have
been a good opportunity to flag the new series’ (Fairley APA 1994–6: 18 October
1995).
Of course many radio programmes receive listeners’ letters, and regular
programmes may receive regular correspondence from listeners, ‘locked in
dialogue with their transistors’ (Barnett and Morrison 1989: 7). 23 Letters are taken
very seriously and are always replied to on Ports of Call. There seem to be five
types of audience response, with letters often containing two or more types. The
first type offers an appreciation showing detailed listening, and often relistening,
from a cassette made while the programme was on air. In the second there might be
a request for a cassette of the programme and list of music played. In the third type
an appreciation of the programme is made, suggesting it has led to a search by the
listener for source material on CD. Fourth-type responses offer a critical listening,
and draw out cross-cultural references and links between places and songs. The
fifth type make corrections, pointing out errors in pronunciation, or occasional
script errors. BBC etiquette is to reply to each letter individually, which occasion-
ally elicits a further response.
The following letter embraces three of these category types (it is from the same
person in Australia who wrote to BBC WorldWide magazine; the extract is from a
detailed three-page letter):
I liked quite a fair percentage of the music and enjoyed your dialogue
regarding how musical influences travelled the sea lanes between the old, and
new worlds with the resultant boomerang phenomenon. I’ve had one success
only, and that was acquiring Orchestra Baobab’s CD ‘On Verra Ça’ through
an Australian mail-order folk music firm; ‘Sandstock Music’. I’ve played the
‘Ports of Call’ cassettes many, many times … and have chosen six ultimate
favourite tracks. I shall indicate which tracks towards the end of the letter …
(Australia, 21 August 1995; Fairley APA 1994–6)
Some listeners offer personal information as to who they are and why they
have a particular response. They seem to engage with the programme, bringing it
directly into their own personal lives. A British-based Algerian listener expresses
surprise that she can enjoy the music of other cultures, and requests a recording of
the programme to send to her family back home. The desire to share seems very
marked here:
I have just been listening to the program on music today (finishing at 11am)
by Jane Fairley. It has been very educational. It made me aware that some
Algerian pieces of music chosen were so close to the flamenco one. I wish I
had taped it and send it to my folks in Algeria, even if they don’t understand
English they will love all the music chosen. Thank you for such an interesting
programme. Yours faithfully…
(Reading, UK, 24 January 1995; Fairley APA 1994–6)24
As a broadcaster in English to the World Service audience one has to try to

pronounce a word as it would be said in the country of that word’s origin, although
this does not always work in the mouth of the presenter, and can sound unnat-
ural or contrived.25 For many listeners this is a key issue, as the ears of native
speakers are drawn to unnatural or mispronunciation. One letter critiqued the
pronunciation of words in the script. This was embarrassing as the pronunciation
of perceived difficult or unfamiliar words had been previously checked with the
BBC pronunciation unit and marked on the script. This negative response was by
a Portuguese listener concerned that Portuguese words were being uttered with a
Spanish pronunciation (Spanish being the presenter’s second language and which
can sometimes become a kind of default pronunciation for non-English words).
Several listeners wrote to correct errors of both pronunciation and fact:
The programme Ports of Call which I heard via World Service yesterday at
23.30 GMT, contained errors of fact and the presenter’s pronunciation of the
many Portuguese words and names involved was very poor. For example
someone presenting the music of Lusophone countries ought to know that in
Portuguese, the word conjunto is not pronounced conhunto as in the Spanish
way. … Also the Cape Verde Islands are nothing like 600 miles from the
African mainland – 350 is more like it…
(London, 15 January 1995)26
[The presenter said that Violeta Parra] sang ‘Gracias a la Vida’ at the funeral
of Norwegian Prime Minister Olaf Palme. Her general educational level is
not impressive assuming I heard right because Mr Palme was Prime Minister
of Sweden.
(Sweden, received 28 February 1995; Fairley APA 1994–6).
Sheer pleasure was underlined by one listener resident in Portugal who wrote
twice, the first time mentioning details of her personal meeting with one of the
musicians featured in the trail and first programme.
I heard the first program in your new Ports of Call series twice this past week.
Just lucky I guess! To hear Maria João and Cesaria Evora was so thrilling that
mere words are hard to capture this experience … I’m truly looking forward
to your next programs … and thank you once again for making this series,
sincerely …
(Portugal, 22 January 1995; Fairley APA 1994–6).
Following a reply, this listener wrote again, four enthusiastic handwritten pages,
offering the personal address of her musician friend, and personal biography
including an intimate anecdote (Portugal, 17 March 1995; Fairley APA 1994–6).
What is interesting about these two letters from the same person (one typewritten,
addressed to ‘Dear Jan Fairlie’ [sic]; the second one written by hand in ink and
addressed to ‘Dear Jan’) is the trust the listener feels, free to form a confessional
friendship assumed through the medium of ‘sharing’ the programme, and of liking
the same music and in this case the same musician.
Conclusions: mediating the ‘other’

These ephemeral disc programmes for an atomized audience, a fragmented
community of individuals linked only through common listening at a common
time, were of course based on my subjective aesthetic choices, endorsing what
were often unexpected, yet inspiring sounds. As I have explained, the music was
contextualized with storytelling links, an attempt to make relevant the way the
music and musicians ‘matter’ historically as well as musically. The audience
members, while invisible to me and to one another, were vocal and their critical
responses showed their dynamic engagement.
Through music, and storytelling around music, Ports of Call was in an impor-
tant sense a cosmopolitan project to dynamically bring the music of the ‘other’
to the ‘other’ in the most direct, appreciative and intimate way. By this I mean
that the music came from vernacular cultures other to the European heartland, or
the global culture industry, and that it was brought to a dispersed constituency of
listeners who would not otherwise have heard it, and who were critically affected
by the experience. The aim was to produce an imaginary migration through the
medium of radio which, at one and the same time, referenced the social and polit-
ical reality and history of the people who created such thrilling music.
Bibliography
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Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy, Theory, Culture
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Barnard, S. (1989) On the Radio: Music Radio in Britain, Milton Keynes and Philadelphia,
PA: Open University Press.
Barnett, S. and Morrison, D. (1989) The Listener Speaks: the Radio Audience and the
Future of Radio, London: HMSO.
Berland, J. (1990) ‘Radio space and industrial time: music formats, local narratives and
technological mediation’, Popular Music, 9(2): 179–93.
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production, New York: Columbia University
Press.
Fairley, J. (1989) ‘Analysing performance: narrative and ideology in concerts by Karaxú!’
Popular Music, 8(1): 1–31.
Fairley, J. (1994–6) Author’s personal archive (APA) Ports of Call, consisting of cardboard
files housing: (i) original outline, letters, bidding papers, faxes, miscellaneous production
material; (ii) research materials; (iii) scripts and music reports; (iv) listeners’ feedback.
Fairley, J. (2001) ‘The “local” and “global” in popular music’, in S. Frith, W. Straw and
J. Street (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, Cambridge: Cambridge
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London:
Verso.
Grenier, L. (1990) ‘Radio Broadcasting in Canada: the case of “transformat” music’,
Hall, S. (1980) ‘Encoding/decoding’, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis
(eds), Culture, Media, Language, London: Routledge and Birmingham: Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies.
Hilmes, M. (1997) Radio Voices, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Hilmes, M. and Loviglio, J. (eds) (2002) Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of
Radio, New York and London: Routledge, 569.
Lewis, P. M. and Booth, J. (1989) The Invisible Medium: Public, Commercial and
Community Radio, London: Macmillan.
Lipsitz, G. (1994) Dangerous Crossroads: Popular Music, Postmodernism and the Poetics
of Place, London: Verso.
Notes
â•‡ 1 Postcard sent to the author in 1994; verified by email May 2010.
â•‡ 2 This reconstructed account comes from the author’s personal archive of documents
associated with the Ports of Call series (henceforth, APA): 10 original or faxed letters,
9 out of 12 annotated scripts, and other administrative paperwork including early
outlines, commissioning bid and budget for second series.
â•‡ 3 Programme bid to Managing Editor and Editor World Service, March 1994, APA.
â•‡ 4 Bidding paperwork listed them as ‘(1) The South Pacific: Oceania (i) Polynesia Easter
Island; Solomon Islands; Vanuatu, Fiji (ii) Melanesia: Papua New Guinea; Solomon
Islands. (iii) Micronesia: Yap, Truk, Marshal and Gilbert Islands; Tonga; Cook Islands;
(2) Indonesia: Java, Bali, Sumatra; (3) The Indian Ocean: Zanzibar and Madagascar;
(4) The Caribbean: Guadeloupe, St Lucia; Cuba; Dominican republic; Bahamas,
Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica; (5) The Mediterranean: Balearic Islands; Corsica,
Sardinia, Cyprus; (6) The Far North: The Orkneys Shetland, Faroes, Iceland.’
â•‡ 5 APA, 24 October 1995: fax of letter between producer and other BBC executives.
â•‡ 6 Lewis and Booth (1989: 67); when the BBC was founded this was a strong considera-
tion (ibid.: 54, 58–9).
â•‡ 7 A trail, usually up to one minute in length, acts as a marketing ‘advertisement’ for
specific programmes and is played on radio in gaps between other programmes and
continuity announcements to give an idea of what a programme is about, and entice
listeners to tune in at the right time.
â•‡ 8 This trail has been lost and I am unable to confirm if there was a piece of Mexican or
Argentine tango music also included. ‘Mar Azul’ (Cesaria Evora), track 1, Mar Azul,
Melodie, France 79533-2; ‘Eutsi Goiari’ (Tapia eta Leturia), track 1, Trikitixa [An
Introduction] Erde Records, Germany RDCD003; ‘Fado’ (Carlos Bica, Maria João,
Xico Baiao), track 6, Maria João and Grupo Cal Viva, Sol, Enja Records ENJA 7001 2.
â•‡ 9 While personal cassette copies of most BBC Radio feature programmes on music made
in this period are held in my archive (Radio Scotland, Radios 3 and 4, World Service
– from approximately 1990 to 2003), owing to the nature of recording and transmis-
sion of the two series of Ports of Call, no copies or off-air copies were made. A 2009
search at the BBC Archive proved fruitless. Copies that did exist have been destroyed,
possibly as they contained no unique material.
10 Earthbeat, BBC Radio Scotland, Thursday evenings, 7.30 until 8.30, 1990–3.
11 The commission resulted in speedy placement in the programme schedule with imme-
diate preparation involving planning, script-writing, faxing scripts and recording
sessions at Bush House. Programmes were pre-recorded; each half-hour programme
took 45 minutes to an hour to record (allowing for edits), and if memory serves me
well, including preparation, we spent approximately four hours in the studio recording
six programmes.
12 For the second series I consulted colleague Simon Broughton (BBC Radio and TV,
editor of The Rough Guide to World Music), who lent me discs and recommended
contacts with independent disc companies in the UK and Netherlands (APA letter, 27
October 1995).
13 For a discussion of narrative in performance, see Fairley 1989.
14 See also Berland 1990: 179.
15 I used dashes in scripts to encourage my voice to maintain conversational flow rather
than hesitate or stop at commas or full stops.
16 My initial collection, begun in 1970, existed before the rubric ‘world music’ became a
part of media currency, although it was already used in (US) academia. I would dispute
the idea that ‘world music’ was a ‘colonial’ discourse invented in the UK (contra-
dicted by the early French, Dutch, German and Belgian scenes), although certainly
for the UK itself a 1987 north London meeting of enthusiasts, media and record
company personnel was of unparalleled significance. The adoption of the term here as
a marketing device got the music into the shops and the hands of a hungry public (see
Fairley 2001). Material for both series of Ports of Call (as for my BBC Radio Scotland
weekly programme, Earthbeat) came from my vinyl and ever-growing CD collection,
including ethnographic recordings received as a music critic from small independent
UK and European companies involved in the world music trade fair WOMEX (http://
www.womex.com). Once people know you have a programme they send whatever you
request and whatever they release.
17 Amparo Ochoa (Mexico), Víctor Jara (Chile), Víctor Heredia (Argentina), Atahualpa
Yupanqui (Argentina), Violeta Parra (Chile), Silvio Rodríguez (Cuba), Pablo Milanés
(Cuba), Daniel Viglietti (Uruguay), Mercedes Sosa and Milton Nascimento (Argentina/
Brazil), Lluis Llach (Catalonia), and finishing with a group of them together, ending an
Argentine Festival by singing A. Tejada Gómez and Cesar Isella’s ‘Canción con todos’.
18 Hilmes in a discussion of the ‘disembodied woman’ tracks the rise of women in early
radio (in the USA) and gender discrimination in terms of women being over-judged for
having either no personality or too much (Hilmes 1997: 142–3). It is interesting that
some women presenting world music radio on the BBC have taken the more ‘academic’
role of ‘expert’.
19 W. E. B. Dubois, quoted in Hilmes 1997: 94.
20 I owe this term to Jason Toynbee.
21 Lewis and Booth (1989: 63) describe how H. G. Wells’s first radio talk was addressed
to ‘the signalman’.
22 My typology describes five radio voice types based on different recording contexts:
three types of Studio Voice (SV 1–3); and two types of Outside Broadcast Voice (OBV
4–5). It is based on analysis of specific programmes recorded in a similar period,
analysing the voice according to aesthetics of timbre/texture/pace. In the analysis I note
that various tricks are used for documentary making to deliver a ‘natural’ ‘in situ’ voice
for links which are recorded later, a practice discontinued relatively recently because of
challenges to the BBC emanating from various programme scams which brought issues
around ‘truthfulness’ to the fore. Lucy Durán reports that, for BBC Radio 3 World
Routes programmes, anything not recorded in situ or going out live is introduced as a
‘verbal postcard’.
23 The Internet, websites, forums and ‘listen again’ facilities have of course yielded a
more diverse form of feedback.
24 Cassette taping of programmes and sharing them by sending them to friends was a
feature of the culture of the period.
25 Lucy Durán reports that pronunciation is a key bugbear for some listeners to her
current Radio 3 World Routes programme, some of whom actually resent her precise
pronunciation.
26 A detailed reply was sent, thanking the listener for their response and apologizing
and explaining why four perceived errors had occurred: guilty of falling into Spanish
pronunciation for Portuguese after talking about a Spanish piece of music; 600 kilome-
tres not miles, a ‘typographical script error’. There were more explanations, including
why we had chosen to use the descriptive term ‘Indian’ music for one piece rather than
‘indigenous’.
11 Music, migration and war
The BBC’s interactive music
broadcasting to Afghanistan and
the Afghan diaspora
John Baily
Radio broadcasting of music in Afghanistan

National radio broadcasting came relatively late to Afghanistan. Radio Kabul, a
state institution run by the Ministry of Information and Culture, was officially
opened in 1940, with stated aims to spread the message of the Holy Qur’an, reflect
the national spirit, perpetuate the treasures of Afghan folklore, and contribute to
public education (Baily 1994). In the 1950s Radio Kabul came to have an impor-
tant role in supporting musical activity in Afghanistan. In a country that lacked
any university department of music, had no conservatories, no national sound
archive, and where music had no place in the school curriculum, the radio station
in Kabul became the centre of musical activity and creativity. It employed a large
number of singers, both male and female, instrumentalists and composers, and
ran various orchestras and small ensembles (Sarmast 2004: 312–50). It organized
music courses and in the 1960s, when tape recorders came into use, established
an important music sound archive that survived the depredations of the Taliban
and has now been digitized, thanks to the efforts of Lorraine Sakata, a pioneer of
ethnomusicological research in Afghanistan.
Broadly speaking, one can identify four strands of music broadcast by Radio
Afghanistan. Firstly, Afghan art music, which bears a strong imprint of Indian clas-
sical music, especially the singing of Sufi ghazals. Secondly, ‘traditional’ regional
musics of the various ethnic groups in the country, utilizing local instruments such
as rubabs, dutars, damburas, ghaichaks and sarindas. Thirdly, Western art music,
originally introduced by Turkish military bandmasters, using Western instru-
ments. Fourthly, and most importantly for present purposes, a new kind of popular
music created at the radio station specifically for radio broadcasting, a new kind
of music that incorporated elements of Western music. The new music used a
variety of instruments – Afghan, Indian and Western. For example, the Orkestra
Bozorg (‘big orchestra’) observed in rehearsal with a singer in 1976 consisted of:
two rubabs, two tanburs, mandolin, Spanish guitar, tulak (cross-blown wooden
Afghan flute), Boehm flute, piccolo, two tenor saxophones, clarinet, piano, string
bass (plucked), tabla, sitar and delruba (Baily 1981: 110).
With more liberal attitudes towards music prevailing in this period, there was a
trend for amateurs, often from educated middle-class and even upper-class fami-
lies, to become professional radio singers. Radio’s modernity, and the physical
Music, migration and warâ•… 181
and social separation of performer and audience, bestowed a new respectability on

amateur-turned-professional performers, male and female (Baily 1981). Perhaps
the most important of these was Ahmad Zahir (sometimes known as the ‘Afghan
Elvis Presley’), the son of a one-time Prime Minister, who was an extremely influ-
ential creator of a style of popular music that used Western instruments such as
electric organ, trumpet, flute, and Western drum kit. His songs are widely copied
and emulated even today (Baily 2007: 18:25). Amongst women singers, the most
significant is Farida Mahwash, who was (controversially) appointed Ustad (‘master
musician’) by the Afghan government in 1975. Thus, from its inception radio was
very closely linked with music and was the main medium for its propagation in a
society where hitherto it had been a scarce commodity.
This was more or less the situation as I found it during my two years of ethnoÂ�
musicological fieldwork in the city of Herat, in western Afghanistan, between 1973
and 1977 (Baily 1988). Things changed radically after the communist takeover
in 1978, which marked the start of the jihad, the war between the Soviet-backed
Afghan government and the mujahidin, supported by Western powers. Music
was high up on the agenda of the communist government, for whom music was
integral to the new socialist state, an important part of modernized civil society.
Television broadcasting started in 1978, and the new state organization Radio
Television Afghanistan (RTA) remained for some years an important centre for
musical creativity. A number of today’s leading singers achieved fame in Kabul
at that time, such as Farhad Darya, Wahid Qassemi and Amir Jan Sabori. But
as the war dragged on, many of Afghanistan’s top singers and musicians left
the country. In the Coalition era, 1992–6, broadcasting schedules were greatly
diminished and very little music was broadcast by RTA. In the Taliban period
(1996–2001) no music was allowed at all except the singing of unaccompanied
Taliban taranas (‘chants’) and other religious songs, without musical instruments.
With the fall of the Taliban government in 2001 we see the return of music to
public life (Baily 2009).
As a result of the war that began in 1978, and continues even today, several
million Afghans went into exile, large numbers to neighbouring countries such as
Pakistan and Iran, others to the USA and Canada, to Europe (especially Germany)
and smaller numbers to many other countries such as Australia (Baily 2007,
2010). People from Afghanistan constitute one of the largest and most widely
dispersed of the new diasporic communities from the later twentieth century.
Music is an important element of a shared culture that allows diasporic Afghans
to retain and experience their ‘Afghan identity’. In 2006 I held an AHRC grant to
conduct research on Afghan music in London, and to examine London’s musical
connections with Kabul, Hamburg and Dublin. Given the crucial role of radio
in the creation of a new popular music, and as I had had many opportunities to
work with the BBC Persian/Pashto Service, it was natural that I should start my
work on Afghan music in London with this section of the BBC World Service
(BBC WS). My most productive contacts there proved to be Haroon Yousofi and
his wife Amina. Both are very well-known BBC radio presenters, with their own
programmes, Studio Shomara Haft and Zamzama respectively. Both shows have
now been discontinued, a matter discussed at the end of this chapter.
182â•… John Baily
The Studio 7 programmes

Studio Shomara Haft, meaning ‘Studio Number Seven’, hereinafter referred to
as Studio 7, was a weekly live interactive radio show, technically a ‘music and
phone-in programme’. Each week a special guest was connected to the studio in
London via ISDN satellite telephone. The guest’s name was announced before-
hand on the programme’s website (www.bbcpersian.com/afghanistan), and
Afghans from across the world phoned in to indicate they would like to speak to
the week’s special guest. When the programme was broadcast, a succession of
these people were phoned back from London, and talked to the guest and to the
show’s presenter, Haroon Yousofi. Others phoned in during the programme. The
Studio 7 programmes usually included a few recordings of the artist in question,
sometimes a singer would sing over the phone, even playing the harmonium at
the same time. The programmes were broadcast on Friday afternoons, from 2.15
p.m. to 3.00 p.m. GMT, which, due to the time difference of about four hours, was
heard in the early evening in Afghanistan, prime listening time on the day of rest.
Past shows can still be accessed on the website. I attended six of these shows,
sitting in the studio just across the table from the presenter.
Haroon Yousofi is one of the best-informed Afghans about the music of
Afghanistan in a global context. He was born in Kabul in 1950, studied litera-
ture in Kabul University and was sent to Moscow State University to complete
his B.A. and M.A. degrees. On his return to Kabul he taught history of Western
literature at Kabul University. In later years he was Head of the Arts and Literature
section of RTA until leaving Afghanistan in 1990. He is well known as a writer of
satires and comedies. Besides working for the BBC he frequently serves as master
of ceremonies at concerts of Afghan music in London. He is also a professional
stand-up comedian, and used his gift for comedy in the programme. He is also a
very good amateur singer. Haroon Yousofi was as much an attraction to listeners
of Studio 7 as his guests.
Up to 2006 the programme’s guests were almost all singers, old and young, the
internationally famous and the locally famous, male and female. The only instru-
mentalist was Ustad Asif Mahmoud, the tabla player. On one occasion the guest
was the Koranic reciter Qeri Barakatullah in Kabul. On another occasion, it was
the Australian-trained musicologist Dr Ahmad Sarmast. After 2006 it appears that
a wider variety of artists, writers and film-makers were guests, but here we are
only concerned with music. Very few of the guests were resident in Afghanistan.
To give a flavour of the programme, here are excerpts from Studio 7 broad-
cast on 1 September 2006 with the Hamburg-based Afghan singer Khushal, who
played a significant role in my research. He gave a concert in Dublin in August
2006, which both Haroon and I attended, and I was able to video this particular
Studio 7 programme in the studio, with Khushal on the telephone from his home in
Hamburg. I used some of the footage in the film Scenes of Afghan Music. London,
Kabul, Hamburg, Dublin (Baily 2007). Although Khushal has lived in Hamburg
since 1975, he still serves as a musical reference point for ‘home’ amongst his
telephone interlocutors from the diaspora. He is well known amongst Afghans in
Germany as a singer and as a music teacher.
The programme commenced with Haroon addressing his listeners:
Brand new salaams to all of you dear listeners. I hope that you are all well.
Today’s guest is a singer we don’t hear much from, but he sings very well.
What nice things he does; well done to him. He was 13 years old when his
first song was broadcast on radio. I imagine you and I were not yet born, or
if we were we were not aware of him. One of his songs that was popular then
and on everybody’s lips goes: ‘I could die for your beautiful eyes.’ Do you
remember it now? He is our guest on today’s programme. He is Khushal,
whose real name is Alishah Sadozai. He’s been living in Germany for 31
years and works for their Ministry of Education. He teaches Afghan music
in a big music school. We’ll leave the rest for him to explain with his sweet
words. Hurry and call us now. Our phone number is 0044 207 8360331.
On this occasion it was not possible to get through to callers from Afghanistan:
connections with Afghanistan often proved problematic. Midway through the
programme Haroon told Khushal:
We’ve had lots of phone calls from Afghanistan, but unfortunately we cannot
call back and get connected. We had this problem last week, too. Lots of
people in Afghanistan want to ask you questions but when we call from this
end we can’t get through. God willing this problem will soon be solved.
The following is a list of the people who called, where they called from, with a
summary of their questions and Khushal’s replies. At certain points Haroon inter-
jected his own comments.
HAROON:â•‡ How many brothers and sisters do you have and are they involved in
music too?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ We are six brothers and one sister. All my brothers are [amateur] musi-
cians. My father is a poet and a lover of music and encouraged the family to
do music.
FARIDULLAH (LONDON):â•‡ During the past 31 years that you have been in Germany,
did you visit Afghanistan at any time?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Yes, I went to Afghanistan in 2002 and I had a concert that was well
attended in the Intercontinental Hotel. I have videos and tapes of that event
that I will release in the near future.
ABDUL MOHSEN (DUBAI):â•‡ What is your name and how long you have been living
abroad?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Khushal, and I have been abroad for 31 years now.
[A song is played which was composed by Khushal when he was in ninth

grade of high school. The song was later sung by Ahmad Zahir and other
singers, with different lyrics.]
AGHA MOHAMMAD (PAKISTAN):â•‡ Can you sing an old song of yours?

[In response Khushal sings over the phone his very first song, ‘Stergi da
jarsom’, in Pashto]
WAHID (NETHERLANDS):â•‡ Do you teach Afghan music in Dari [Afghan Persian/

Farsi] or in German? And, what do the Germans think about Eastern and
Afghan music?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I teach the lyrics in Dari and I transcribe the music notes [i.e. note
names] in German, because the children who are here are not familiar with
Dari. But when they sing the songs they sing in Dari. Because Hamburg is a
small city, the authorities try to help ethnic minorities. I am the first Afghan
to teach Afghan music in a German school. The Germans are very keen on
Afghan music and I organize many programmes with them.
SHILA ROSHAN (NETHERLANDS):â•‡ Where in Germany do you live? And do you
have any new CDs?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I live in Hamburg. Unfortunately I do not have a [new] CD or DVD
at the moment.
JAMAL NASIR (NETHERLANDS):â•‡ When you left 31 years ago, did you leave for
educational purposes or was there another reason for it?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I came here to study chemistry, but since I did not have much interest in
it, I decided to concentrate on music and promote Afghan music and culture.
TAHIR (GERMANY):â•‡ Can you sing us a song of your own? Also can I have your
phone number? We were neighbours in Afghanistan.
[Another song is played]
ADULLAH NAZARI (GERMANY):â•‡ I just wanted to say your style is similar to Ustad
Nashenas, which I like very much and you have a nice voice.
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Thank you.
HAROON:â•‡ Khushal has just performed in an international cultural festival in
Dublin. He was very well received and it is an honour that Khushal repre-
sented Afghanistan. Mr Saljuqi [an Afghan community leader in Dublin] was
there and from London Professor John Baily had gone there just to listen to
your voice and to visit the festival.
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I was happy to be there because of Afghanistan’s name, and also I was
happy to meet you and Professor John Baily, about whom I had heard a great
deal. I was glad to make his acquaintance.
S. M. MOSAWI (DUBAI):â•‡ Have you tutored any students and how many? Are they
Afghans or foreign?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I am not someone who has the ustad title, unlike many others who
claim to be ustads. I am just someone who wanted to promote his culture
and music and stop it from being ruined. My students are Afghans and some
Germans who are interested. I started my own private music course for
Afghans and foreigners about ten years ago in which I had 36 students. After
that I was invited by the Ministry of Education and I taught music in a college
for one year where I had 28 students. Now I am teaching in a music school
and I have 43 students at the moment.
HAROON:â•‡ Who was your ustad in music?

KHUSHAL:â•‡ My father was interested in music and twice a week people from the
Kharabat [musicians’ quarter] came to our house and played music. My ustad
was the uncle of Ustad Sarahang and Ustad Asif, Mama Sufi Qorban Ali, so I
learned music from him. Beside that my father supported me too, who knows
music as well.
AMINA (DENMARK):â•‡ Are you married yet? And how many children do you have?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I have been married for over a year now and I have a little baby son.
AMIN NIAZI (TEHRAN):â•‡ Have you done any research into Afghan music?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Yes, I have done research, and as a result of that I am teaching now. I’ve
written a book that is being edited by my father and will be published soon.
KAMAL HASHIMI (SWITZERLAND):â•‡ The song that you sang earlier, was it you who
first sang it or Mr Yonous?
KHUSHAL:â•‡ I sang that song first and then other colleagues also sang it afterwards.
Mr Yonous is a good friend of mine and we are still in touch. The song was
a copy of an Indian song and I sang it when I was really young. So as far as I
remember it was me who sang it first.
At the end of the show Haroon spoke as follows:
HAROON:â•‡ Okay Khushal, our time is up, we want to play another song of yours.
Thanks a lot for being on our programme as our guest, it was kind of you.
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Thank you and thanks to your colleagues.
HAROON:â•‡ We’re really happy. We thank our listeners who called.
KHUSHAL:â•‡ Thanks to them that they still remember us and are still interested.
Thanks a lot for their telephone calls.
HAROON:â•‡ Go and goodbye, may God protect you. I wish you all a nice day.
As can be seen from the conversations above, Studio 7 callers wanted to know
about the lives of the stars and superstars, where they were born, where are they
now, how many children they have, how they learnt their musical art. There were
questions about particular songs broadcast by RTA in the past, or to be found on
recent CD/DVD releases. When did you leave Afghanistan? Have you been back?
What did you do there? How was it? When are you coming to give a concert in
Hamburg, Rotterdam, Toronto, Sydney, London …?
Studio 7 was also a forum for discussion about the current state of Afghan
music, both in the country itself and in the Afghan diaspora. There was concern
about standards of musicianship, the lack of training opportunities and the need
for institutional support, the poetic quality of current song lyrics, and the use of
modern instruments such as the electronic keyboard. It is significant that these
discussions were mainly about Afghan popular music and expressed a concern to
get back to the music of Radio Afghanistan as it was up until about 1992, when
the last leftist government (that of Dr Najibullah) fell to the coalition of mujahidin
parties. There was little discussion of Afghan art music, or of the various regional
‘traditional’ musics associated with different ethnic/language groups.
Only a few guests had much to say about these matters and I have been highly
selective in what I present here, selecting from the Studio 7 programmes with the
following:
• Abdul Wahab Madadi, a highly versatile individual from Herat, a famous

singer of Herati folk songs, former holder of various important positions in
the music administration of RTA, and author of the book The History of Con-
temporary Music in Afghanistan. Lives in Germany.
• Dr Ahmad Naser Sarmast, holder of M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in musicology
from Monash University. Director of the newly established Afghanistan
National Institute for Music, in Kabul. Lives in Australia.
• Wahid Qassemi, well-known singer and composer, a former star of RTA.
Lives in Canada.
• Amir Jan Sabori, singer, poet and songwriter, also a former star of RTA. Lives
in Canada, records in Uzbekistan.
With the restrictions placed on music in Afghanistan during the Coalition and
Taliban eras (Baily 2009) the main centres of creativity in Afghan music became
the USA and Germany. Following the lead of Ahmad Zahir, a new kind of Afghan
dance music flourished that relied heavily on the use of the electronic keyboard,
with its built-in programmable percussion and chord-making facilities. The new
instrument enabled many musicians to function as one-man bands (Baily 2005:
227). This style of music had fed back to Afghanistan itself, tending to replace
older styles of popular music associated with Radio Afghanistan. Many Afghans
regard this is a turn for the worse, as the following comments about the current
state of Afghan music indicate.
MADADI:â•‡ Amongst millions of Afghans, we can say we have about ten great
musicians in the new generation. I am not saying that we do not have good
musicians, we do have good musicians, like Farhad Darya … Wahid Qassemi
… Najim … Shadkam … Haidar Salim … Salma … Rahim Jahani … Ehsan
Aman … And there is Amir Jan Sabori, who released a CD last year that
is in my opinion a masterpiece. The good thing about him is that he writes
his own songs and he sings so well. He is a very good poet himself. He has
written the lyrics, he has composed the songs and he has sung them accom-
panied by the Tashkent orchestra, a modern orchestra. But these kinds of
singers who have these advantages and facilities available to them are rare.
The thing is even if there are ten of them, it is not sufficient for a nation. For
a country torn apart and its singers scattered around the world, ten singers
are not enough.
SARMAST:â•‡ Despite all the positive opinions expressed by some musicians on
Studio 7, by taking a deep and broad view of the current state of Afghan
music one can draw the precise conclusion that in the same way in which the
past 30 years of war has affected different aspects of people’s lives, culture,
art and country, in the same way it has influenced our music, too. The war,
the collective exile of musicians, and the death of several musicians who
could have played a fundamental and important role in the training of today’s
musical generation, these have all had their negative effects on our music.
… [Our music] is in a disorganized and chaotic state. Like any other part of
Afghanistan’s culture, music needs serious attention and care on the part of
both governmental and non-governmental organizations.
MADADI:â•‡ [Of course] Afghan music is important for those Afghans who live in
the West… But they have lost the real Afghan music. If good Afghan music,
with the same songwriters and orchestras as there were in Kabul, was sung
by singers, then people would cry for it. People love that music. But they
don’t have it. … There are many singers from Afghanistan, hundreds of
them. There are many in Hamburg. But they have some problems. Some of
them don’t have a good voice, some who have a nice voice don’t know good
poetry, some don’t have new songs. They have the passion for singing, but
they have no guidance, no compositions and no familiarity with music. They
come with a keyboard and they make some noises to which people dance and
content themselves. … If a keyboard player knows how to play it well and
plays according to the rules [of music], then I like keyboard. What I don’t
like is for a singer to always sing with a keyboard with a loud rhythm that
deafens the ears.
SARMAST:â•‡ The creation of one-man bands, which is common practice among
Afghan musicians in the West, is now also being practised inside Afghanistan,
and forces out our very talented, skilled and good musicians who play other
instruments.
Afghan music is predominantly vocal rather than instrumental, and a good deal
of concern was expressed about the quality of new songs as judged from the point
of view of good poetry.
MADADI:â•‡ Very poor and low-grade lyrics are used [today]. The singers them-
selves usually put words together to suit their music, but it is not poetry.
Poetry has meaning, it is a big thing; it is no less important than music. In
the new music, poetry has been ruined and lost. You hear a bit of musical
interest in the new music, but you don’t hear good poetry, with the exception
of a limited number of musicians. … Some of the artists who live in some
countries have even forgotten the Farsi language. They have no knowledge,
because they cannot write Farsi poetry with Farsi alphabet; they write Farsi
lyrics in Roman alphabet. So if they are removed from their language then
they do not know the poetry.
AMIR JAN SABORI:â•‡ When we had only one radio and television station, there was a
skilled board that checked the songs in terms of quality. They decided which
song should go on the radio and which on television. We also had a literary
team who checked the poetry and lyrics. If the poem was not up to scratch,
then they would reject it and one would have to take the poem to someone for
correction. But what is damaging our music these days more than anything is
the language of music, which is poetry. Few of our musicians pay attention to
this, now they concentrate more on the rhythm.
QASSEMI:â•‡ As a songwriter myself, I am available to work with musicians,
whether they are beginners or professionals… The lyrics that I normally

choose to sing belong to Dari poets like Rumi, Bedil, Hafiz, Ashqari,
Sarwar-e-Dehqan, Nader Naderpur, Faraidun Mosheri. I don’t limit myself
to singing lyrics from one poet only. I use some contemporary poets too,
such as Raziq Sani, Naim Merzad, S. A. Muzafari, Humaira Nekhat and
many others.
As already discussed, in the past the radio station in Kabul was a crucially
important centre for musical creativity and innovation that was undermined by
the anti-music stance of the Coalition and Taliban governments (1992–2001).
Those who remembered the creative role played by RTA in the past looked to the
re-creation of such an institution in Kabul.
MADADI:â•‡Provided that we create a proper music school in Kabul, we do have

Afghan music teachers who live abroad [to staff it]. … [B]ut who is going
to invite them to Kabul? Who is going to organize something for them? The
government needs to take responsibility. … The music of Afghanistan is not
going to be saved by a handful of teachers teaching rubab and tabla in Kabul.
We need more; we need the keyboards, saxophones, violins, flutes, clarinets
and so on. Our music cannot be saved just by rubab and tabla. This is not
enough. We had people [in the past] who played the dilruba, sarang, sarinda,
sarod and sitar. Now we have nothing. All these instruments are lost.
It is worth noting the arm’s-length nature of what is going on here: on the one
hand, affirmative musical ‘curation’; on the other, a critique of tendencies that
are weakening Afghan music, most importantly the effects of the war. This is not
reactive anti-Westernization talk, but reflects the ways in which diasporic musi-
cians and commentators are concerned with the problem of keeping Afghan music
culture alive.
The Zamzama programmes

While I was aware of Amina Yousofi’s BBC WS Zamzama programme during
my research in 2006, it was not until two years later that its full significance was
brought to my attention. Late one night BBC World Service English-language
programme Outlook broadcast a feature about Zamzama, with Amina talking
about the programme and playing some excerpts from it. What I heard was a
revelation. I invited Amina to read a paper about her programme at a one-day
conference on Recent Work on the Music of Afghanistan held in London on 7
November 2008.
Here I quote from her paper, ‘The role of Zamzama music programme in the
revival of the spirit and joy of humming and singing by Afghan women’.
Zamzama means to sing or to hum to yourself. The people of Afghanistan

love music. A man in a field while riding his donkey might sing aloud a love
song. A woman cooking dinner or sewing might hum a tune to herself. On
occasions, such as weddings, ceremonies or outings, women will gather

playing the daria [frame drum] and sing songs relating to the event. This is
an essential source of our Afghan folk music.
However these musical activities were snuffed out by the previous
[Taliban] regime. The spirit and joy of music was systematically suppressed,
especially for the Afghan women. They could no longer play the daria nor
could they even own it. Music’s ember glow was now left only within
the hearts of the Afghan people. In this difficult time the BBC, through
different feature programmes, continuously broadcast music for the people
of Afghanistan and also provided them with news and art programmes.
With the previous regime gone, I launched the Zamzama programme,
which gave a platform for ordinary Afghan women to sing on the radio.
I wanted to revitalize the buried voice of women and help them express
themselves where they could be heard. With new technology, an Afghan
villager, or a woman in the mountains of Afghanistan was encouraged to
sing. They could now listen and call through the medium of the mobile
phone. Zamzama succeeded in rekindling the spirit of music and the joy it
brought to the hearts of Afghan women.
In contrast to Studio 7, this was not a live programme and there were no special
guests. Amina encouraged women in Afghanistan to contact her via their mobile
telephones. In due course Amina phoned back to talk to those who had called her,
and got them to sing for her, unaccompanied. These conversations and perform-
ances were recorded, and some of them selected for broadcast in the Zamzama
programme. A few men also participated. The programme was broadcast every
two weeks on Mondays, from 8.30 to 9.30 a.m. GMT.
Here are two clips from Zamzama as presented in the Outlook feature. The
names of the callers and the locations from where they called have been changed.
In both cases the women were from the north of Afghanistan.
Clip 1
AMINA:â•‡ Salaam. Where are you speaking from, Farahnaz Jan?
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ I’m from — in the north …
AMINA:â•‡ And are you married?
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ Yes, I’m married.
AMINA:â•‡ Farahnaz Jan, do you listen to music?
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ Yes, I listen to music, especially to the BBC. When I go to the kitchen
I take my radio [mobile telephone] with me and listen every minute I’m in
there. This is the song I want to sing.
[Farahnaz sings]
AMINA:â•‡Farahnaz Jan, thank you very much. I thought I could hear someone in
the background while you were singing. Is there anyone else with you who
would like to sing?
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ No, there’s no one around because my husband’s very strict. That’s
why I came to the kitchen as soon as my phone rang.
AMINA:â•‡ I hope your husband is not too strict.
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ Because of the situation in this country and because we’re in a village,
people feel they have to be strict, they’re so nervous about upsetting someone.
AMINA:â•‡ Your husband won’t be upset if he hears you singing on the BBC?
FARAHNAZ:â•‡ He doesn’t know my [singing] voice that well!
AMINA:â•‡ Thank you very much.
Clip 2
AMINA:â•‡ Shirin Jan, where are you phoning from?
SHIRIN:â•‡ I’m from Kunduz Province. I live with my brothers and sisters, my
parents are dead. The singer I really like is Ahmad Zahir. When I listen to
him I’m transported into another world. If I’m sad I forget my sadness. There
are lots of other singers I like but he’s my favourite. I always sing his songs
before I go to bed.
AMINA:â•‡ Do you listen to music on the radio or on TV or cassette?
SHIRIN:â•‡ On the radio. We have television here as well but because my brothers
don’t like me to watch TV or listen to the radio, I listen via my mobile phone.
I put on my earphone and listen to the BBC all the time.
AMINA:â•‡ Do you play any musical instrument?
SHIRIN:â•‡ I’d like to learn a musical instrument. If I could I’d buy one and practise
but I can’t at the moment.
AMINA:â•‡ I hope that some day you will somehow get hold of one. What about the
song, is there one you’d like to sing?
SHIRIN:â•‡ Thank you very much. I can’t tell you how happy I am. I can’t believe
I’m talking to you! I listen to your voice all the time but I never believed I’d
actually take part in the programme. I don’t think that I’m any good but when
you encourage me I feel that I’m part of a family. I’ll sing a song by Safar
Afari. I like her very much so I’d like to sing one of her songs.
[Shirin sings]
Amina explained on Outlook the tremendous response to her programme. It was

surprising to find how many women had their own mobile telephones, even in remote
areas, and that women use these to listen to the radio, through earphones if necessary.
She had thought women might be inhibited to sing because so many people could
hear their voice via the broadcast. Nevertheless, it is clear that there was still a lot
of pressure against women singing, justified in terms of a fear of adverse comments
from neighbours. Women in rural areas seemed especially interested to listen and
to participate, which Amina interpreted as due to the fact that they have more time
to listen to the radio. Some of the city girls were working, or going to school. Also
they have access to transport and spend time visiting each other. They listened to the
radio but not as much as women in rural areas. The mobile phone has opened up the
whole world to girls and women in Afghanistan, even in remote villages.
The aftermath
I was preparing my talk for the conference on Migrating Music: Media, Politics and
Style held at SOAS, 10–11 July 2009. Two days before the conference my telephone
rang. It was Haroon and Amina, both very upset. They had just heard that the BBC
had decided to axe their programmes and terminate their contracts. Amina attended
my presentation at SOAS and spoke herself to confirm the news. The conference
organizers, who had had a lot of interaction with the BBC WS in the course of their
AHRC research, were concerned, and Professor Marie Gillespie composed a long
letter to the BBC WS Management Board, signed by more than 150 academics who
attended the SOAS conference. In her letter of 17 July 2009 Gillespie wrote:
These music shows are a lifeline to Afghan audiences and to women and their
children in particular. It would be counterproductive in the extreme to deprive
Afghan audiences of programmes that enable a hitherto inconceivable degree
of public participation and involvement with the outside world. … [S]uch
programmes are not ‘mere entertainment’. They are a compelling manifesta-
tion of a diverse, transnational Afghan civil society: they evidence the many
voices that help to constitute the Afghan public sphere.
If our research on diasporas at the BBC World Service has taught us
anything over the last three years, it is that the esteem, affection and sense
of kinship that Afghan (among other) audiences feel towards certain of their
diasporic, co-national counterparts at Bush House, lies at the heart of the trust
and respect that the BBC WS enjoys.
In due course BBC WS replied that while Studio 7 and Zamzama were pionÂ�
eering programmes in their time, there were now a number of television and FM
radio stations in Afghanistan offering similar programmes, including chat shows
with Afghan singers and musicians abroad. It was important that BBC WS remain
distinctive, contemporary and relevant, and periodic changes of programming
were inevitable.
Marie Gillespie responded:
We do understand and appreciate your continuing efforts in arts and cultural

programming in the face of changing markets and ever greater competi-
tion. However, in the letter we wanted to convey to you the very special
significance of these particular programmes and particular people. Amina and
Haroon are outstanding. Amina’s ‘show’ is not repeatable by anybody else
because it is her manner, the way she can get people to open up, and SING to
the world that makes her and her programme exceptional.
In one of the final Studio 7 programmes Haroon Yousofi was the guest, with his
BBC colleague Jawad Samimi acting as host. By this time the demise of Studio
7 had been well advertised and many fans of the programme, including a number
from Afghanistan, phoned in to express their sorrow at the ending of the show and
to thank Haroon for all that he had done over the last six years.
JAWAD:â•‡ Tonight,
Haroon Yousofi, the successful and loved presenter of Studio
Number Seven, is our guest. As you know, we will soon broadcast the final
programme, so we thought it would be good to dedicate one of the last
programmes to Haroon Jan himself. So Haroon Jan, thank you very much
for accepting our invitation to come on the programme and answer questions
from your fans.
HAROON:â•‡ Thank you. I am shaking right now, because there are going to be ques-
tions, and I am very scared of exams and questions. Nevertheless, before I
answer complicated and detailed questions from the listeners, I thank all the
listeners, whom, all these years, called, emailed, sent faxes or were guests
on this programme. I hope that they have not been offended by some of the
jokes that I made over the years. I want to say that I have always, on every
programme and everywhere, felt myself to be with you and amongst you.
In the event the programme was filled not with questions but with state-
ments thanking Haroon for his contributions to the maintenance of the culture of
Afghanistan.
Conclusions
The BBC World Service’s Studio 7 and Zamzama programmes have an important
place in the narrative of the global circulation of the music culture of Afghanistan
in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It is to be hoped these programmes
will be properly archived for purposes of scholarly research. Studio 7 in particular
has much valuable information about the movements of musicians in the Afghan
diaspora.
It is clear that there were two distinct but complementary modes of diasporic
support for Afghan music here. The difference between Studio 7 and Zamzama can
to some extent be interpreted in gender terms. Studio 7 appealed to a mainly male
audience, and Zamzama to a female audience. Studio 7 was more elaborate and
expensive to maintain week after week. As a live show it involved more personnel,
with a producer and studio manager, and people ready to receive calls while the
programme was being broadcast and calling back those who wished to talk to the
guests. It enabled callers to talk to well-known performers and to participate in the
discourse about Afghan music and its past, present and future conditions.
Zamzama was a much more modest endeavour, and had very different objec-
tives. It encouraged women (and some men) in Afghanistan to phone in and talk
to Amina Yousofi, and to sing out to millions of listeners in Afghanistan, Iran,
Tajikistan, and the Persian-speaking diasporas. Amina Yousofi’s gentle voice
encouraged women in Afghanistan to put themselves forward in an unprecedented
manner. To some extent women were able to talk about their lives, and about their
feelings. Studio 7 articulated facts and figures about music and musicians, identi-
fied the problems facing the future of Afghan music, and suggested some solu-
tions. In contrast, Zamzama was about emotional experience and self-expression.
In her letter to the BBC, Marie Gillespie wrote of the esteem, affection and
sense of kinship that audiences feel towards certain of their diasporic, co-national
counterparts at Bush House. This is certainly the case with Amina and Haroon,
with their warm radio personalities. For the audience they are like friends. When
Shirin says ‘I can’t tell you how happy I am. … [W]hen you encourage me I feel
that I’m part of a family,’ that is a wonderful affirmation of trust in the BBC.
Likewise, Haroon’s ‘I want to say that I have always, on every programme and
everywhere, felt myself to be with you and amongst you,’ is an expression of
community feeling created by the BBC.
For students of music and migration the case of Afghanistan holds some salutary
lessons. The views expressed by the ‘experts’ in Studio 7 are not so much about
the damage to Afghan music culture that results from the anti-music policies of
Islamic fundamentalists, and not so much about the ‘dangers’ of Westernization,
but are a recognition of the effects of 30 years of warfare on the very institutions
that promoted music in the past. There is acknowledgement that there has been a
loss not so much of music but of musical sensibility. It is clear that musical crea-
tivity now comes from within the Afghan diaspora rather than from Afghanistan
itself. One cannot expect Kabul to function as a centre because the very institu-
tion that fostered such activity in the past – the radio station – is no longer fully
functional. It is ironic that another radio organization, namely the BBC WS, which
offered support for the renewal of Afghan music through two very effective and
popular radio programmes, should decide to axe them. But then the recent history
of Afghanistan since 2001 is a story of unsustained initiatives and unfulfilled
promises.
Acknowledgements
My research on Afghan music in London, and London’s musical connections
with Kabul, Hamburg and Dublin, was supported by a grant from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council under its Diasporas, Migration and Identities
Programme. I am deeply grateful to Haroon and Amina Yousofi for their help
with my research and for the friendship they extended to me. I thank Yama Yari
for his invaluable work as my Research Assistant and translator. I also thank
Jason Toynbee for his editorial suggestions for the improvement of this chapter.
My current research, including the writing of this chapter, is supported by a
Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship.
References
Baily, John (1981) ‘Crossâ•‚cultural perspectives in popular music: the case of Afghanistan’,
in Richard Middleton and David Horn (eds), Popular Music 1, Cambridge: Cambridge
Baily, John (1988) Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. With accompanying audio cassette.
Baily, John (1994) ‘The role of music in the creation of an Afghan national identity, 1923–
73’, in Martin Stokes (ed.), Music, Ethnicity and Identity. The Musical Construction of
Place, Oxford: Berg, 45–60.
Baily, John (2005) ‘So Near, So Far: Kabul’s Music in Exile’, Ethnomusicology Forum,
14(2): 213–33.
Baily, John (2007) Scenes of Afghan Music. London, Kabul, Hamburg, Dublin. London:
Goldsmiths.
Baily, John (2009) ‘Music and censorship in Afghanistan, 1973–2003’, in Laudan Nooshin
(ed.), Music and the Play of Power: Music, Politics and Ideology in the Middle East,
North Africa and Central Asia, Aldershot: Ashgate, 143–63.
Baily, John (2010) ‘The Circulation of Music Between Afghanistan and the Afghan
Diaspora’, in Ceri Oeppen and Angela Schlenkoff (eds), Beyond the ‘Wild Tribes’:
Understanding Modern Afghanistan and its Diaspora’, London: Hurst & Co.
Sarmast, Ahmad Naser (2004) A Survey of the History of Music in Afghanistan, from
Ancient Times to 2000 A.D., with Special Reference to Art Music from c. 1000 A.D.,
Ph.D. thesis, Melbourne: Monash University.
Part 4
Cities
Introduction
Byron Dueck
The chapters in this part explore the relationships between music and cities.
Cities are prominent nodes in the physical circulation of musicians and the medi-
ated circulation of musical styles. In part because of their centrality, they figure
frequently in narratives about migrating music and migrant musicians, while trav-
elling styles and musicians play important roles in the mythologies of various
‘music cities’. Urban hybridity is of course also a common and romantic trope,
one that sometimes obscures political and cultural specificities and economic
inequities. For this reason, it is important to explore how migrating music and
migrant musicians are connected to particular venues, populations, neighbour-
hoods, cities, as the following chapters do.
Kristin McGee’s chapter is concerned among other things with the hegemony of
New York City in international jazz circles. The author discusses a music conserv-
atory in the Dutch city of Groningen that recruits the staff for its jazz programme
from amongst the ranks of musicians active on the New York scene, and sends
talented students to New York for short residencies in their third year. Drawing
upon interviews with students and instructors, McGee examines how European
jazz musicians navigate practices and ideologies that have travelled across the
Atlantic from the United States. Students at the conservatory study and attempt
to master the bebop style – and in doing so do not only participate in a collective,
virtuosic social practice, but also affirm and further legitimize the jazz canon and its
‘great men’ (although in at least one case with some ambivalence). They continue
the jazz tradition of mentorship, as well as a long-standing emphasis on the impor-
tance of musical individuation and personal style. And they continue to affirm
New York as the epicentre of an international network of circulating jazz stars.
In this last respect some interesting tensions and contradictions are evident. Even
musicians who assert the primacy of New York nevertheless insist that European
musicians play a central role in that city’s life. Just as importantly, the Groningen
programme, which even in name acknowledges the centrality of New York (‘New
York Comes to Groningen’), has ironically become a launching pad for European
musical ventures. Musicians who met at the conservatory have in a number of
cases initiated projects that draw upon European genres and music histories and
have received funding and validation from prestigious European organizations.
And thus, even as the musicians at Groningen ratify the hegemony of New York
as the hub of a network of circulating star performers and pedagogues, and bebop
as the dominant language of this circuit, their own music and performing circuits
are shaped by institutions, audiences and styles much closer to home.
Whereas McGee’s chapter positions cities as nodes in a network of circulating
musicians and styles, Helen Kim’s might be said to focus on discourses about
urban-ness. More specifically, her chapter explores how cultural producers of
South Asian heritage living in London have in recent years embraced R & B and
rap, two genres that fall into the general category ‘urban music’, achieving wide-
spread success in some cases. Kim argues that members of the new British Asian
urban scene are engaged in the work of cultural representation. These musi-
cians and promoters actively distance themselves from a previous generation
of successful British Asian artists, criticizing them for courting a largely white
and middle-class audience. They consider themselves to work with a musical
style that is rooted in more authentic Asian working-class experience, and in
interviews they assert their credentials as working-class or otherwise legitimate
artists and agents. Occupying such categories is beset by anxieties and contra-
dictions, however. On the one hand, the urban music they perform and promote
is widely perceived as the cultural property of African-Americans (or blacks
more generally), and there is concern that British Asians may for this reason be
considered inauthentic producers of it. On the other hand, it is difficult for some
associated with the scene to claim a working-class identity, or to avow that the
music they produce addresses such an audience. In short, members of the scene
cannot always successfully inhabit the ‘urban’ identities their music ostensibly
celebrates.
Sara Cohen’s chapter is particularly concerned with the city as a material envi-
ronment. She examines music production in Liverpool from the vantage point of
the Cavern Club, a venue where the Beatles famously took up musical residency
in the early 1960s. Cohen describes the musical journeys of three groups who
performed in the Cavern Club at this time: the Beatles, a rock and roll group,
some of whose members came from relatively affluent Liverpool suburbs; the
Chants, a doo-wop group whose members came from the Liverpool 8 district,
home to the majority of the city’s black population; and Hank Walters and the
Dusty Road Ramblers, a country group whose members had close connections to
the dockside labour market. Cohen shows how the performance circuits of these
groups, while overlapping somewhat in city centre venues, were in many other
ways quite separate, reflecting class and racial divisions of the city. Thus social
differences, available performance spaces, and musical genres were to no small
extent isomorphic: there existed spaces of social and stylistic overlap but also
considerable differentiation and separation.
Cohen is concerned with circulation: how musicians move through perform-
ance circuits, how songs and styles circulate through person-to-person contact
and mass mediation, and how stories of these movements and encounters them-
selves travel. Just as importantly, she considers how some musicians, styles and
stories move more freely than others owing to social and economic factors. She
thus suggests that, even as musicians imbue their neighbours, neighbourhoods and
cities with significance through compositions and characterizations, the social and
economic structures of cities impact upon music and musicians, affecting their
musical experiences and decisions and determining to some extent the places they
can perform and the audiences they can reach. Cohen concludes by reflecting
on the continued impact of the city upon musical circulation in the present day.
Liverpool, like other ‘post-industrial’ cities, draws upon its music-cultural heritage
as a saleable attraction and uses it as a resource for community development. Here
too, larger forces help to determine which music and which stories are heard in
which contexts by which audiences, and how music history is reconfigured as
urban heritage.
Are only cities cosmopolitan?

One concern voiced during the preparation of this volume was that devoting an
entire part to the subject of the city risked privileging a site that was already much
romanticized as a cosmopolitan, hybrid site of migrating music. And indeed, just
as – in vernacular discourse – the term ‘cosmopolitan’ tends to suggest economi-
cally advantaged subjects (Toynbee and Vis 2010), it also connotes urban ones.
Accordingly it seems appropriate to consider how the chapters in this volume
qualify romantic portrayals of urban cool, on the one hand by examining musical
ideologies of the city, and on the other hand by broadening the term ‘cosmopol-
itan’ so that it does not exclude the traditional, the rural or the sacred.
Chapter 1 suggests that cities are engines of migrating music, launching
points for globally circulating styles and performers. As the chapters in this part
show, these genres and musicians are accompanied on their travels by narratives
about their urban origins. McGee documents how musicians speak of New York
City as the hub of the contemporary jazz universe, Cohen ponders Liverpool’s
international reputation as the port city from which the ‘British Invasion’ was
launched, and Kim shows how urban, working-class Asian youth are identified
as the innovators of a newer, more authentic form of Asian popular music. These
origin stories, told and retold, do a kind of performative labour, imbuing with
authority the mythologies that surround music cities. Thus, in McGee’s chapter,
jazz mythology and the discourses of contemporary jazz musicians vest New York
City with a virtually unassailable position as the capital of the jazz world. And
Cohen’s chapter discusses how the city of Liverpool has drawn upon the heritage
of the Beatles (among other musicians) in remaking itself as a site for cultural
tourism and as the European Capital of Culture in 2008.
Cohen’s chapter, together with Stokes’s in Part 1, initiates a useful intervention
in broadening the definition of ‘cosmopolitan’ away from its common associa-
tions with the urban, the novel and the secular. Cohen provocatively describes the
music of Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers, country musicians from
Liverpool, as cosmopolitan. And indeed, although country is often perceived as
a parochial genre, it is a most cosmopolitan one, not only in its sources, but in
its worldwide audiences, including in Africa and amongst indigenous groups in
the Americas and Australia (see Fox 2004: 320). Unacknowledged cosmopolitan-
isms are hidden everywhere, all the more easily ignored when they seem to be
manifestations of the traditional, the rural or the sacred. This seems almost as true
of scholarly as of vernacular characterizations of cosmopolitanism: as Stokes’s
contribution in Part 1 points out, religious manifestations of hybridity have regu-

larly been ignored in favour of secular ones.
Urban mimesis
The ethnographic accounts in the following chapters suggest again the value of
‘mimesis’ as a descriptor for various musical transfers and appropriations. The
term seems particularly appropriate for characterizing musical and embodied
kinds of copying: for instance, the Russian trumpeter in McGee’s chapter who
only learns to swing in the New York style by playing in time with other New
York players. As noted in Chapter 1, the concept of mimesis is fluid, referring both
to situations in which the advantaged borrow from the disadvantaged and vice
versa – in this sense it may improve upon terms such as exoticism and orientalism.
Kim’s chapter suggests that in some cases British Asian musicians appropriate
working-class genres from positions of relative wealth and privilege. Cohen’s, in
contrast, describes how relatively powerless Liverpool young people appropriated
the music of older, better-connected servicemen visiting from America – indeed,
in some cases, they stole it. Both of these might be understood as mimetic acts, but
moving in opposite directions across a differential in power.
The story of the Liverpool youth and foreign GIs invites a closer look, for while
it acknowledges some antagonism between the two groups, it also hints at alle-
giance. The young black Liverpudlians admired and emulated the musical abili-
ties of black servicemen from the United States, regarding it as ‘like a privilege’
to sing with them. And this suggests that mimesis also occurs in encounters where
the power differential is not quite so heightened. Certainly mimesis still involves
capturing and appropriating what is foreign, and in this sense attaining power over
it, but in this case the mimetic act seems to hold promise as a basis for musical
allegiance between black musicians from quite different cultural backgrounds.
The account of the Jamaican appropriation of American R & B in Chapter 1
comes to mind. So too does Steil’s chapter from Part 1 (which could perhaps
just as easily have fitted in the present part). As Steil explains, in the mid-2000s,
young French-born blacks appropriated the sartorial style, physical comportment,
dance moves, and even accents of blacks born in sub-Saharan Africa. As in the
aforementioned cases this mimesis suggests allegiance, here between indigenous
black Parisians and newcomers. Nevertheless, black social and musical life takes
place in the context of a larger power disparity in Paris, owing to racism and
systematic economic disadvantage. In this situation, young blacks born in France
may appropriate African movements, sounds and dress in deeply ironic acknowl-
edgement of the fact that, though born in France, they are nevertheless regarded
by many as foreign.
Cities as places
The chapters in this part provide a useful complement to those in the preceding
one, for whereas discussions of mediation tend to draw the mind towards imagi-
naries – broadcasts and recordings orient performances to audiences of distant
strangers – the subject of cities tends to emphasize the concrete and material.
It is hardly surprising that all three of the papers in this part begin with night-
club scenes: the focus on cities draws attention to venues and institutions – bars,
concert halls, churches and conservatories – and to neighbourhoods, city centres
and suburbs.1 In Cohen’s chapter, social and genre divisions correspond to spatial
divisions in the Liverpool of the 1960s. These corresponding separations are a
reminder that, although cities are often perceived as hybrid spaces of social and
cultural mixture, they can just as easily be characterized as aggregates of enclaves.
The materiality of cities is evident in another way in McGee’s chapter, but here
in the form of a network constituted through the circulation of moving musicians.
McGee’s account captures how the materiality of travel physically instantiates
jazz ideology. It is not simply that New York is presented in jazz discourse and
historiography as the global epicentre of jazz. This centrality is performatively
affirmed in the circuits of international jazz stars and pedagogues, who move
from this centre outward and back again. It is further solidified by the practices
of conservatories outside New York, which eagerly court pedagogues, performers
and workshop leaders from the jazz capital, and (in the case of the conservatory
McGee looks at most closely) send their students there to witness ‘the real thing’
themselves.
Thus we come to the final chapters of this volume, and a consideration of
migrating music and the city. The city is an appropriate subject upon which to
end since it enables a synthetic review of the three preceding themes: it is a desti-
nation for migrants, a place of stylistic fusion and encounter, and a point from
which music, and stories about it, are broadcast outward to markets and publics.
This said, it is important to keep in mind that cities are by no means the only
places where cosmopolitanism can be found, and that seductive urban hybrids can
obscure other, equally valuable scholarly objects. It is also helpful to remember
the mimetic processes by which musical styles move across cultural boundaries
and power differentials, and the emplacement of the performances, encounters
and stories that constitute the musical city.
Bibliography
Fox, Aaron A. (2004) Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture,
Toynbee, J. and Vis, F. (2010) ‘World music at the BBC World Service 1942–2008: public
diplomacy, cosmopolitanism, contradiction’, Media, Culture and Society, 32(4): 547–64.
Notes
1 This is not to ignore, as Cohen points out, that such places also have a virtuality, in so
far as they circulate through the public sphere in songs and stories. All the same, the
theme of the city focuses towards physical places and face-to-face encounters, rather
than imaginaries.
12 ‘New York Comes to Groningen’
Jazz star circuits in the Netherlands
Kristin McGee
New York is not the definition of America, I heard Americans saying. New York
is an international city; it’s a whole mixture of cultures. That is what jazz is even
though it started in the United States. And modern jazz is made out of different
genres, of different styles of music so you cannot really trace the background so
much, but you know the roots.
(Groningen guitarist George Dumitriu)
Introduction
On a Tuesday night in May 2007, students from Italy, Romania and Slovakia
occupied unofficially reserved tables adjacent to the tiny stage at Groningen’s
local jazz club, the Spieghel. Other attendees stood by the bar, chatting with horns
out, wetting reeds, and waiting for requested tunes. Murals inspired by Primitivist
art animated musty walls and depicted life-size brass instruments and African-
American jazz musicians in mid-session, exuding ecstasy or pain and conveying
the mythos of the ‘jazz act’. The real-life musicians appeared less emotive as they
skilfully yet predictably rendered standard tunes, mostly bebop: ‘Confirmation’,
‘A Night in Tunisia’, ‘Blue Monk’. Head, solo, solo, solo, trading eights, fours,
and twos, then head again – they moved through a jazz routine enacted a thou-
sand times in small clubs like this one all over the world.1 Some soloists stood
out, for instance a young saxophonist with the edgy sound and impeccable funk
timing of Maceo Parker. I took my chances with a simple blues, ‘One for Daddy-
O’, hoping to weave parts of Cannonball Adderley’s effortless solo2 into mine
without losing my place. I was nervous, taken aback by players half my age,
including Kaja Draksler, the award-winning Slovenian piano prodigy whose solo
rendered the audience speechless. Later that evening, New York-based drummer
Owen Hart, Jr. took charge of the rhythm section, radically upping the bar with his
Blakey-inspired playing. Impressed by the calibre of musicians frequenting this
university town’s weekly jam sessions, I began to follow other sessions as well
as ‘legit’ concerts led by conservatoire students and faculty at the Oosterpoort
cultural centre.
Most of the evening’s young jazzers were enrolled in a programme entitled
‘New York Comes to Groningen’ at the local music academy, the Prins Claus
Conservatoire. A recent promotional video3 conveys the programme’s pedagogical
‘New York Comes to Groningen’â•… 203
aesthetic: it unfolds in a recording studio, where New York stars warm up, then
‘woodshed’ their parts, while informalizing the ‘professional’ affair with well-
circulated anecdotes and self-deprecating jokes, casual camaraderie meeting
artistic exceptionalism. The programme not only supports world-class artists based
in New York, but facilitates touring and recording projects including programme
leader and bassist Joris Teepe’s big band, featuring many of the school’s artists in
residence. Such is the multi-faceted life of twenty-first-century world jazz musi-
cians as they adopt various roles including teacher, recording musician and travel-
ling star.
The emergence and perpetuation of the global jazz star

network
This chapter reflects upon the migrations of jazz stars and students, giving partic-
ular attention to one node in this international network: the ‘New York Comes to
Groningen’ programme at the Prins Claus Conservatoire in Groningen. Interviews
with participants in the programme document the ideologies cosmopolitan jazz
musicians articulate, the virtuosic practices they participate in, the experiences
they pursue, and the journeys they undertake. Before a discussion of these inter-
views, however, it will be useful to introduce four aspects of American jazz history
and its mythos that have an ongoing impact upon these musicians: namely the
legitimization of jazz, the construction of a jazz canon, the emergence of bebop
as a collective, virtuosic jazz practice, and the rise of New York as the centre of a
network of jazz stars. As will become evident, the American jazz myth has a great
deal of influence upon the reception and careers of contemporary jazz musicians
working and travelling in Europe.
Early international jazz circuits came into existence as musicians crossed to
Europe on luxurious ocean liners (a stunning transformation of the very different
voyages that had brought their ancestors across the Black Atlantic in the first
place). The spread of music halls further facilitated the emergence of physical and
performative networks for travelling jazz musicians from Europe and abroad. But
it was internationally networked media, and especially radio, that transformed
local jazz artists into international stars and promoted them as American royalty in
cosmopolitan European cities. The professional lives and international reception
of today’s jazz artists remain deeply informed by this legacy.
It was in Europe during the interwar period that jazz first acquired a ‘legitimate’
artistic status, as French promoters Delaunay, Panessié and Hodier prompted
American critics to recognize jazz’s merit. It soon followed in the USA. Here
legitimization incorporated ideological tenets of a new progressivism (McGee,
in press).4 Organizers such as John Hammond and Norman Grantz historicized
jazz by presenting jazz and swing bands in ‘evolutionary’ continua or as ‘jazz
retrospectives’. During the late 1940s Grantz’s highly publicized ‘Jazz at the
Philharmonic’ series canonized selective Dixieland, modern jazz, and bebop
players more effectively than any other organized jazz venture. Moreover, the
process of legitimization emphasized individualism: highly visible concert series
promoted ‘cutting’ contests of selected jazz musicians ‘pitted against each other’
204â•… Kristin McGee
in commercial contexts (in contrast to older jam sessions, which were less formal
and less soloist-centred).5
Tied up with the process of legitimization was an ideology that perceived a
teleological or progressive trajectory in jazz, and a process of canonization. In
popular and scholarly discourse, virtuosic, highly individuated bebop came to be
seen as the inevitable artistic culmination of jazz, and bebop tunes and style came
to occupy a central place in jazz practice. Recent work by social historians of
jazz (DeVeaux 1997; Gebhardt 2001; Gennari 1991; Stowe 1994) suggests that
this telic historicization, culminating in the enshrinement of bebop, was predi-
cated on a number of ideological bases. These included American exception-
alism (put simply, the idea of the USA’s special place in the world), an ideal
of authentic artistic autonomy, and an expansionism that had been transferred
from the American frontier to capitalism and the urban metropolis. Indeed, jazz
scholar Nicholas Gebhardt suggests that the historicization and reception of
Charlie Parker as a modern, creative, yet tragic metropolitan jazz musician was
immensely impacted by ideologies of the frontier, American progressivism and
the liberal capitalist dynamics of the metropolis.
Gebhardt also describes the happenstance camaraderie and musical experi-
mentation that facilitated the exploration of new musical harmonies, rhythms and
vocabularies of improvisation central to bebop. He counters the teleological and
individualistic characterizations of the style, describing it centrally as a collec-
tively virtuosic social act (Gebhardt 2001: 81). That the bebop jam session was
and is a social practice should not be forgotten, even as we acknowledge the
symbolic codification of such acts as the centre of America’s most authentic art,
and the cementing of the position of bebop in dominant narratives of jazz (with
New York-based virtuosos Parker and Gillespie its truest representatives).
Since the 1980s, a decade that saw the concurrent rise of the black middle
class and neo-conservatism (Heffley 2005: 2), Wynton Marsalis has emerged
as the most articulate and charismatic spokesperson of the new jazz traditional-
ists, largely through his dual role as international trumpet star and leader of the
Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.6 In New York, he matured into America’s jazz
ambassador, promoting ‘jazz as America’s classical music’ and inspiring count-
less young musicians with his virtuosic technique and entertaining workshops.
His vision of jazz as America’s authentic music further inculcated the ‘great man’
legacy set forth by linear narratives tracing the Armstrong–Gillespie continuum
(Brown 2004: 241).
The ‘global jazz star network’ has developed into a highly mediated circuit,
which draws much from the mythos of jazz. A crucial part of this mythos concerns
how early travelling African-American virtuosos demanded artistic, social and
racial equality in the radically transformative decades of the twentieth century.
It is no wonder, then, that New York, the centre of intercultural cohabitation and
progressive artistic engagement (but also dominant historical narratives informed
by American exceptionalism) has become the symbolic and geopolitical centre
of this global network. In the twenty-first century, New York profoundly guides
the musical paths of aspiring jazz artists who chose to continue the legacy of
improvised instrumental jazz founded upon the progressive and virile bebop
culture of the 1940s. The city is the historically predetermined epicentre of the
routes comprising contemporary international jazz star circuits. Its persistent pre-
eminence is evident in touring routes, educational pilgrimages, and the canoni-
cally informed reception of contemporary jazz artists.
In the pages that follow, I look at the relationships between global jazz star
circuits and European jazz programmes implemented during the 1980s as jazz
subjects began to surface in college curricula and feature more frequently in
high-art performance spaces. Subsequently I examine contemporary European
jazz networks in the Netherlands and their continued ideological links to the
early American jazz artists who first established transatlantic mobile identi-
ties. Contemporary scenes have moved far beyond early examples of Europeans
imitating American artists. In the twenty-first century, European jazz has evolved
highly complex networks dependent upon mass and mixed media. Yet even as it
accommodates new mobile performance sites, it reifies prestigious jazz star circuits.
As international jazz routes expand to encompass New Europe’s jazz worlds, these
networks are increasingly determined by historically embedded institutions such
as the jazz festival and the music conservatoire. Dutch educational systems have
a particularly important role in the lives of mobile European jazz stars, and reveal
jazz culture’s increasingly ‘translocal’ character (Peterson and Bennett 2004).
Jazz circuits in the Netherlands – ‘New York Comes to

Groningen’
Jazz as an academic field of study is relatively new in the Netherlands. Most
Dutch programmes were introduced in the 1990s. Originally music curricula
simply included a variety of lichte muziek (light or entertainment music) courses
intended to augment classical training. As jazz artists established profitable
performing careers in the 1980s, however, many music schools began to consider
jazz performance a viable degree. In the twenty-first century, music conservato-
ries offer courses not only in jazz performance but also in related musical genres;
the Amsterdam Conservatoire jazz programme, for instance, provides training
in styles it distinguishes as jazz, Afro-Cuban, Latin, fusion, crossover, big band,
RÂ€ &Â€ B, pop, and funk. The programme also features artists-in-residence; past
teachers include Joe Lovano, Wynton Marsalis and Bob Mintzer. Such big-name
soloists are increasingly likely to belong to a group of musicians and educators,
mostly from New York, who travel the conservatoire circuit to offer workshops,
perform with big bands, and play with local jazz ensembles.
The Netherlands music conservatories are the starting point for many young
jazz instrumentalists from within the country and further afield. Jazz students are
increasingly mobile, and many leave home countries to study jazz in reputable
foreign programmes that combine formal educational training with more casual
training at local jazz sessions. (Their mobility was foreshadowed by jazz stars
who moved from North America to contribute to music programmes all over the
world, beginning in the 1980s as universities began to adopt jazz education.)
European students studying in the Netherlands, for example, often travel to New
York to study and network with other international musicians.
Perhaps the most innovative Dutch jazz education programme was developed
by Dutch bassist Joris Teepe, who lives in New York but teaches in Groningen.
In 2001, after living, playing and teaching in New York for more than ten years,
Teepe transformed the lichte muziek offerings of the Prins Claus Conservatoire in
Groningen into a full-time jazz programme. At the time of writing, the instructors
in this programme include professional jazz musicians from New York, a collabora-
tion proudly proclaimed by the name ‘New York Comes to Groningen’. Each year,
eight internationally established jazz stars travel to Groningen four times to offer
coaching and musical advice to conservatoire students. During week-long sessions,
students attend workshops, lessons and jam sessions and follow history, theory and
composition modules; there are also lunchtime and evening concerts. The touring
and recording jazz stars mentor students and impart skills that prepare them for
a professional life of playing and touring. During the 2009/10 academic year the
programme featured bassist Joris Teepe, guitarist Freddie Bryant, pianist David
Berkman, saxophonist Don Braden, saxophonist Mark Gross, drummer Ralph
Peterson, trumpeter Alex Sipiagin and vocalist Dena DeRose, all from New York.7
Alex Sipiagin
During April 2010, trumpeter Alex Sipiagin was the programme’s guest
performer and teacher. In addition to his own solo projects, Sipiagin has toured
and recorded with revered jazz stars from the United States, Germany, France
and the Netherlands. He moved to New York from Moscow after winning fourth
prize in the Thelonious Monk competition in Washington DC in 1989. Previously,
during the early 1980s, he had studied at the Moscow Conservatoire in the clas-
sical music department, but devoting much of his free time to jazz and popular
music. In pre-perestroika Russia, young musicians typically acquired jazz media,
including cassette tapes of radio programmes and coveted copies of Western vinyl
recordings, through informal and sometimes illegal channels. Sipiagin recalled
spending hours listening to cassettes of his favourite jazz artists Lee Morgan, John
Coltrane and Miles Davis (interview at Groningen, 20 April 2010):
There was a very limited amount of jazz music there (in Russia). All we
had were cassette tapes. You know, you make copy after copy after copy,
and finally the quality was very bad. And I remember that it took me three
months to transcribe a solo of Lee Morgan from one of those tapes because
you couldn’t really hear it that well. We used to catch the Voice of America – a
jazz programme every Friday but Russian officials tried to make extra noise
… and so you try to catch this – oh I got it [Sipiagin mimics the programme’s
static noise and then breaks into laughter]
Sipiagin and his jazz companions favoured East Coast jazz soloists active during
the post-war decades; bebop (and post-bop) records were critical in instilling in
them bebop’s enduring values of individual and collective virtuosity. In addition
to transcribing solos, Sipiagin recalled intense daily musical interactions with
other aspiring jazz musicians from the Conservatoire:
(It was) mostly a jazz musicians’ community. I used to live in a student

house and we jammed on a daily basis in somebody’s room and of course
in the conservatoire we made some little jams. And at that point in Russia,
there were quite a few professional Russian jazz bands. And a couple times
a year there was a legal jam session so we had a chance to come and check
it out.
For Sipiagin, the combined activities of listening, socializing and jamming

constituted a jazz lifestyle, imparting sub-cultural values counter to the official
status of classical music (and classical music pedagogy) in Russia.
During the 1980s, American jazz stars reified bebop virtuosity and hastened
its institutional elevation and canonization through educational programmes and
concerts. This decade also witnessed the rapid expansion and consolidation of
Western media conglomerates (the ‘big six’) throughout the world. Conversely,
the engagement of Russian players with a uniquely Eastern European (cultivated)
jazz mythos was less institutionally sanctioned. It relied upon the circulation
of scarce Western media and informal and sometimes illegal jam sessions, the
mainstay of social, collective jazz practices. (The latter were tacitly tolerated by
Russian authorities despite this music’s connection to an increasingly commodi-
fied and imperializing Western culture.) During the 1980s, Sipiagin and others
adopted the intense discipline of idolized post-war bop players, and in re-enacting
these musical rituals, they initiated their own process of legitimization, quite
distinct from American processes of institutionalization and canonization.
After moving to New York, Sipiagin quickly familiarized himself with the
scene by sitting in on jam sessions and playing weekly gigs with prestigious big
bands including the Gil Evans Orchestra, the Charles Mingus Big Band and the
Zebra Coast Orchestra. His reputation as a master trumpet soloist secured, he was
invited to tour and record with Dave Holland and Randy Brecker, among other
prestigious New York artists.
It was also in New York that Sipiagin mastered his soloistic jazz timbre and
dynamic rhythmic approach. He identified New York as the only place in the
world where artists successfully execute the ‘essential’ swing feel:
New York is the only place that you swing in a certain way. It’s very hard to
explain but when I heard this certain style, just a little behind the beat but in
a perfect position – I never heard it anywhere else, only in New York. And I
really had to spend a lot of time learning how to do this. But playing with all
these guys and all these cats in the Mingus band … you really learn this very
fast. Your sense of time develops with the guy sitting next to you.
Many attribute a particular style of rhythmic swing to New York: an approach

to the quaver (eighth note) that seems, paradoxically, both laid back and aggres-
sive. Some claim that this style was introduced by Art Blakey. Musicians continue
to strive towards this slightly-behind-the-beat groove. When the entire group
plays precisely behind the beat laid down by the drummer, there is a dramatic
sense of collective virtuosity. In this way and others, New York musicians carry
on the collective, virtuosic activity invented and defined by mid-twentieth-century

bebop musicians in informal jam sessions.
I asked Sipiagin about his lifestyle as a travelling soloist with both New York
and European ensembles. He claimed that touring with prominent big bands
throughout Europe’s festival circuit gradually expanded his jazz world beyond
the USA. Sometimes bands tour up to four weeks, settling in larger cities for
week-long appearances. These kinds of tours provide steady salaries for artists
who generally do not teach. Moreover, they provide excellent exposure: the expe-
rience of travelling and touring with other musicians is considered critical for
establishing status as a ‘world jazz artist’.
Like other New York-based artists, Sipiagin claims a double identity: half New
Yorker, half Russian. By this identification he ties himself to canonized jazz solo-
ists, especially those from New York. Since the 1950s, as the repertoire of the
great post-war artists (mainly Parker, Monk and Gillespie) has increasingly come
to dominate international jam sessions, contemporary jazz artists have looked to
bebop as the standard against which to measure new talent. Sipiagin described his
particular musical sound as follows:
It is definitely modern jazz but based upon some deep traditional roots. Bebop
absolutely – that is what I studied until now and that is what I am going to
continue to study. I’m constantly learning the language of Clifford Brown,
Lee Morgan, Gillespie, all of them. It’s the alphabet of a certain language.
It’s not just that you learn once. You have to continue speaking this language
and practising every day. But the music that I try to create is different. … It is
not bebop traditional: it is based on it but I am trying to write my own music,
which is also Brazilian and sometimes classical and sometimes modern.
Bebop as a musical style continues to guide the musical training and influ-
ence the compositions of many modern artists, however eclectic. Expressing
individual creativity within the musical language of bebop continues to moti-
vate contemporary artists in the context of the music collective. Moreover, the
harmonic and rhythmic language of bebop provides a foundation for European
big bands and travelling New York jazz stars, whose collaborations extend the
dominant image of the jazz virtuoso, perhaps most prominently in concerts that
feature travelling jazz soloists supported by big bands playing standard instru-
mental arrangements.
Because of his extensive travelling, Sipiagin has come to recognize differences
between European and American audiences. He claimed
… there are some great listeners everywhere – but it is a completely different

attention here [in Europe]. I don’t know why. For example, if you go to a
jazz festival in Vienne, France, people they reserve tickets a year in advance
and they try not to miss one note of the show and they really listen. Try to
go to the Playboy Jazz Festival in Los Angeles – they are having a party,
eating chicken and drinking beer and speaking loudly during Wayne Shorter
Quartet. It says something.
Conversely the New York audiences exhibit something unique, especially

within the smaller clubs that provided the base of early jazz and bebop perform-
ances during the last century. He agreed:
I love the New York audience, you know, in a small club. It’s in New York
that I play in jazz clubs, like this Mingus band, every Monday we play the
jazz standards. Usually people who come to hear the jazz standards, they
already know in advance what they are going to hear. And so they are really
quiet and you can feel this energy. And the New York audience is so open;
you can see the emotions on their faces.
According to Sipiagin, New York audiences expect to hear a repertoire of jazz

standards and that particular swing so characteristic of the city. His remarks betray
his own biases, which envision New York as the most authentic site for jazz’s
artistic recognition. Indeed, the unofficial vernacular storytelling of jazz stars and
students parallels the official discourse of jazz histories: both portray New York’s
musical hegemony over an increasingly connected jazz world.
Performing, touring, recording and teaching provide the mainstay of musi-
cians on the jazz star circuit. The lifestyle is intense, even exhausting, but also
exhilarating, as players perform with the best ensembles in the world, inspiring
young artists in cosmopolitan jazz cities. Despite rigorous touring schedules, jazz
stars are rewarded for sharing their experiences and musical expertise. Sipiagin
confirmed this:
Sometimes I am exhausted but this kind of teaching is different from regular

teaching gigs. … You don’t have to be a professional teacher but you have
to be a musician and you have to bring experiences from your travelling jazz
life into the student’s life. All eight of us, we all travel non-stop. We come
here four times a year to share our experiences, and our lessons are more like
a masterclass: hang out, answer questions. … So this kind of teaching really
makes me look at myself in the mirror and say – what do I know? This week
is arranging week and I am not just opening a book, telling them the rules
from the book. I tell them what I experience.
For world jazz stars who also teach, the role of educator is dependent upon
status as well-travelled professional players who then impart real-world experi-
ences to students. In this scenario, students are treated more as fellow musicians
engaging in musical dialogue than as studious subordinates.
As global jazz circuits expand, artists assert their individual voices in the context
of highly qualified groups that complement their musical ideas. Sipiagin’s guest
performances stimulate intercultural collaborations while extending the tradition
of bebop and straight-ahead jazz. These collaborations result in contemporary
mediations upon modern improvised music in a uniquely European context. The
road provides the essential conduit for intercultural creativity:
Actually, travel really inspires me to play music and write music. … Not just
travel anywhere to visit anybody. I really choose what I want to do. Lately, for
example, I am doing a lot of projects with several good European jazz bands
– one from Germany, another one from France. With all those bands, we do
a CD release and we do several tours together and it is really important when
somebody hires you to be yourself. So I don’t have to change myself to adjust
to these guys because they really want to know my style and just play. Just
do what you do so you feel yourself, you feel very comfortable in developing
your own style and writing compositions once a week.
Even in the European context, Sipiagin accentuates his unique expressive qual-
ities as an individual in relation to the collective. In jazz biographies and social
histories, the identification of an individual jazz ‘voice’ (in relation to a lineage
of players) persists as a value and is central to the recognition of soloists. Traces
of this value are manifest in informal utterances during intercultural jazz collabo-
rations, but also within institutionalized curricula imposed upon jazz students.
Berliner’s research affirms the importance to musicians of both recognizing and
establishing a unique personal sound. He states (Berliner 1994: 124–5):
An idol’s personal sound is commonly the precise object of imitation for

learners. It is a clearly discernible, all-encompassing marker of an individual
artist’s identity. Tommy Turrentine considers it to be the ‘one way you can
tell an instrumentalist right away when he solos.’ Chuck Israels and his
high school friends tested each other’s sensitivity to these matters through
musical games. Although Steve Kuhn had a more ‘highly developed ear for
recognizing different jazz tunes from records, I had a good ear for timbre
and inflection and the personal marks of the players,’ Israels observes, ‘and I
could always recognize the soloists.’
As Berliner’s account suggests, jazz students learn to mimic the particular

nuanced musical characteristics (timbre, rhythmic variation, phrasing and time-
feel) of a player. Yet they are nevertheless expected to develop their own unique
sound through a process of imitation, musical socialization, and individualization.
Thus informal discourse and pedagogical practices might be seen to affirm or
complement the ideology of individualism that Gebhardt criticizes in dominant
and scholarly narratives of jazz.
Joris Teepe
According to Joris Teepe, the programme he founded in Groningen is the only
course in the world to bring jazz musicians from New York to a new site to teach
its jazz curriculum. It was Teepe’s experience touring with jazz greats Rashied
Ali, Chris Potter, Renee Rosnes and Randy Brecker that led him to value the role
of older, established musicians in his musical education and eventually motivated
him to revise the Conservatoire’s curriculum. He stated:
Basically I designed the idea, but I was teaching at one school in New York
where the teachers teach ensembles and their own instruments, but they teach
everything – history, theory, everything. So I thought if I can bring one guy
from New York who stays here the whole week who teaches everything – we
don’t need other teachers. … I have been playing with all of the best drum-
mers in the world and so for drum students here I can tell them a lot about
how to play drums. I’ve been standing next to them for the last thirty years.
In this way, Teepe privileges the jazz mentor relationship often prioritized in
historical accounts of how jazz musicians learn from each other during the collec-
tive and social activities of the jam session (Berliner 1994). Sipiagin’s reference to
New York apprenticeships with established jazz stars similarly stresses the value
of jazz mentorship (see previous section).
Jazz musicians’ professional lives inevitably encompass a number of tasks,
including arranging compositions, giving lectures, producing recordings and
mentoring younger players. Their breadth of knowledge is a resource that offers
young jazz students much more than they would receive in traditional instru-
mental music lessons.
When asked about the role that New York plays in the history of jazz, Teepe
claimed, ‘Somehow everybody got together in New York. You can’t go around
that. Even sometimes people in the scene they say – you are either in New York
or you are in the rest of the world. So if you are not in New York anymore, it
doesn’t matter if you are in Chicago or Amsterdam.’ I asked if there had been
similar attempts to incorporate well-known Europe-based jazz soloists into the
programme. He responded, ‘Like I said – either you live in New York or you
don’t. I can’t get around that fact. To me it’s a fact but to a lot of people it is not.’
Teepe’s comments reveal the complexity of Europe’s relationship to canonized
jazz paradigms. Through his relationship with New York-based jazz stars and, indi-
rectly, his role leading a Dutch jazz institution, he reinscribes the American jazz
mythos, with New York as its symbolic discursive centre. Paradoxically, however,
Groningen’s New York-centred jazz programme provides a meeting place for jazz
students from throughout the world, who network with non-American jazz artists
and eagerly establish intercultural groups. In this sense, the programme confounds
the bebop-centred mythos while articulating its prominence. Talented students
take in the New York jazz scene before pursuing careers in New Europe’s increas-
ingly connected jazz world.
Because of the emphasis upon performing musicians from New York, the
programme has recently attracted many international students. More than half
come from outside the Netherlands, encouraged by previous students who
praise the programme’s unique position in Europe. According to Teepe, interna-
tional students come from Korea, China, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland,
America, South America, Italy and Spain. As for Dutch students outside of the
province of Groningen, he claimed, ‘Not many Dutch know about it. They actu-
ally think Groningen is too far.’ In other words, jazz students in Amsterdam and
Utrecht are often not aware of the programme, perhaps because of a prevailing
attitude that the Randstad (the area including and surrounding Amsterdam) is
more cosmopolitan.
George Dumitriu
The jazz programme in Groningen describes its connection to New York in this
way: ‘ “New York Comes to Groningen” … gives students the opportunity to learn
the values of tradition and exploration that are associated with musicians on the
New York jazz scene.’ For Teepe and students in the programme, jazz teachers
are not only professional performers but also active participants in the New York
scene. To impress this fact upon students, each year Groningen sends its best
young musicians to New York for one week to discover it first-hand. During
their third year, students can also take part in exchanges with other international
programmes.
I interviewed a current fourth-year student from Romania, George Dumitriu,
who plays guitar with various jazz and jazz-fusion groups in Groningen. He
claimed that his decision to come to the city was based upon recommendations
from past Bucharest Conservatoire musicians. European jazz students might prefer
to study in New York, but tuition costs are prohibitive; the Dutch programme
offers access to New York teachers and full-time subsidized academic funding.
Dumitriu, however, eventually went to New York for his exchange semester and
found the experience intense and exhilarating. He said:
If you go [to New York] for one week you can maybe taste the beauty of it but
if you stay for a bit longer, you really get to know what is actually happening
there because there is so much energy and so much exchanging. Everything
is blooming very fast. Even if you live there not doing much, you get a lot
of it because there is so much happening. And these teachers that come to
Groningen, they always brought us this flavour of New York and it was a great
contact for us to have this vibe, to have a completely other world from here.
I asked George if, as a European musician, he felt discouraged by the essential

role that New York plays for the advancement of professional jazz careers. Is it
possible for European musicians to share the legacy pioneered by American jazz
‘greats’, many of whom first began in the small jazz clubs of New York City? He
responded:
Yes, of course it is. Jazz started in the States and that is the music that we are
studying. It’s American music and I don’t know if I would have come here if
it was only European teachers. … I mean there are great musicians that are
Europeans like Joe Zawinul [jazz pianist and fusion keyboard player]; he was
Austrian and he was one of the top musicians and famous players. He played
with and made Weather Report, you know; it is all his responsibility and there
are a lot of examples.
Of course, there are a number of successful contemporary European jazz musi-

cians including Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (Danish double bass player),
George Mraz (bassist from the Czech Republic), Jan Garbarek (Norwegian exper-
imental saxophonist) and Esbjörn Svensson (Swedish pianist and composer).
Significantly, many of them live in New York (except the late Svensson), having
built careers playing, touring and recording with other New York-based musi-
cians. Notably, European jazz students are quick to cite prominent European
jazz stars, effortlessly inventorying their various Europeanâ•‚ and New Yorkâ•‚based
projects. Through their precise knowledge, they betray a particular European
(double) consciousness: they resist essentialized notions of America’s authentic
musical culture even as they envision Europeans as part of New York’s interna-
tional jazz network.
Inevitably, Conservatoire students branch out into other cities to test their
musical ideas and launch musical careers. For example, Dumitriu plays with a
variety of projects featuring fellow Conservatoire students, including the Rebop
Unit and the DumiTrio. He also plays with the European Academy Big Band
led by German arranger/conductor Peter Herbolzheimer. Recently he contributed
to the album Turku, containing a number of compositions based upon Turkish
songs and featuring vocalist Sanem Kalfa. Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler and
her award-winning group Acropolis led the project.8
Kaja Draksler
In 2009, Groningen Conservatoire pianist Kaja Draksler won the prestigious
Deloitte Award, a Dutch honour given to musicians on the cusp of breaking into
the international jazz arena, carrying a cash prize of €20â•–000. Draksler has won
several European jazz awards, and by the age of twenty-three she had already
been commissioned to write and perform works with the Slovenian Philharmonic
Orchestra and the Radio Big Band of Slovenia. She has also recorded seven CDs
and performed in several international touring projects, including Acropolis,
Katarchestra, Orpheus and Eurydice, Turku, and the European Movement Jazz
Orchestra.
I talked with Draksler about her influences as a jazz musician and her experi-
ences in Groningen and New York as a student. She identified Thelonious Monk
as an important influence but was reluctant to highlight any particular place, style
or player:
For now it is still too equal, all these influences. One of the biggest influences
is Monk from the older players, but you know every player has influences
from other players. So if your influence is Keith Jarrett, he was influenced by
somebody. If your influence is Herbie Hancock, he was influenced by Oscar
Peterson. If you take more modern guys, they always already have influences
from other people. I guess I have influences from jazz but mostly I listen to
other music. … I listen to classical or more avant-garde music and it could
be called jazz, but I don’t know, maybe just ‘improvised’. It is really hard
because of these big names: if you say I just listen to this guy, then you are
listening to all of the other guys who are in front of him.
Draksler’s comments convey an eclecticism valued by many younger jazz

improvisers whose musical backgrounds encompass a multitude of musical
styles accessible in the digital age. She incorporates a wide array of genres into
her musical projects, ranging from big-band swing to Turkish folk song and
contemporary classical music. Draksler’s reluctance to claim the most virile of
canonized male players in her cast of influences may suggest bebop’s exceed-
ingly masculinized representation in musical practice and in social histories that
persistently promote a lineage of male jazz virtuosos from Armstrong to Gillespie.
Nevertheless, the teleology of influence (from player to player), as articulated in
Berliner’s many interviews of jazz musicians as well as in the words of Sipiagin
and Teepe, reinscribes bebop’s core value of musical mentorship followed by the
crafting of one’s individual sound. For younger musicians, however, and probably
more so for women, a variety of musical genres including classical music invari-
ably provide additional inspiration for modern improvised music.
Cross-cultural jazz collaborations are becoming more commonplace within
Europe. These are sometimes informally arranged through spontaneous musical
creations amongst fellow international students. In other cases, European jazz
groups are explicitly sponsored by the most prominent intercultural agencies.
In 2007, Draksler was invited to perform with the European Movement Jazz
Orchestra by the cultural ambassadors of the European Union Council. Members
were solicited from the council’s presidential countries: Slovenia, Portugal and
Germany. The group received funding from the EU to tour several countries.
Draksler and the group’s other musicians enjoyed the tour so much, they decided
to continue working together. In order to promote the group, the band recently
recorded their first CD. She described the origins of the group as follows:
We are an independent big band, but we started out as a European Union

project and so we had three tours – different countries: Germany, Slovenia,
Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Belgium. … We played concert halls like the Berlin
Concert Hall. It was big: every concert was in a festival or in a concert hall.
It was very professionally organized because they had a lot of money and a
lot of people with influence. They put us together. It was just by coincidence
that we stayed together as our own group. … Last year we played on the
fiftieth jazz festival in Ljubljana. And then this year we are doing this record
in Portugal.
The group’s website (www.kajadraksler.com) emphasizes the rising promi-

nence of the European jazz scene as well as the influence of diverse European
musical styles upon the group’s sound:
In this orchestra, elements which seem incompatible at first sight, such as

Portuguese fado, Slovenian poetry and German ‘Blasmusik’ (marching
music), are united in a thrilling European mixture which draws from both
traditional and more contemporary sources, yet never loses its musical cohe-
sion. Originally planned to be a one-off project, the European Movement Jazz
Orchestra has, within only one year, developed into a highly unique body
with an unmistakable voice whose international language and spirit has made
it a true gem of the European jazz scene.
In the twenty-first century, intercultural European jazz groups successfully

navigate the most prominent European sites within the global jazz star network.
Jazz artists meet at music conservatoires or in jam sessions and establish groups
which then tour the rapidly growing jazz festival circuit. The European Movement
Jazz Orchestra’s rapid success highlights the growing desire by European audi-
ences to support innovative young groups based in Europe that incorporate ‘tradi-
tional’ and local musical influences in modern compositions.
The musical ‘eclecticisms’ exhibited by younger European jazz groups suggest
a new relationship to the American jazz mythos. While New York continues to
attract international musicians, younger jazz musicians exploit distinctly European
jazz institutions and more informal jazz networks to establish translocal musical
identities. Draksler and Dumitriu both perform in groups that extend beyond the
bebop jazz paradigm, incorporating folk, classical and pop influences. In 2010,
European jazz festivals feature increasingly eclectic programming, a clear indi-
cation of a transition away from the bop-centred practices of an older genera-
tion to the newer undertakings of younger jazz groups, electronic jazz ensembles,
and DJs who unproblematically mix established genres and sounds with contem-
porary beats. Nevertheless, the mythos of New York as pre-eminent jazz city
profoundly guides the educational pilgrimages of young European musicians,
however eclectic and cosmopolitan their musical repertoire.9
Conclusion
In the post-industrial era, New York has acquired the status of world jazz city, a
fact profoundly shaping the professional, educational and creative lives of trav-
elling jazz musicians. In the Netherlands, the legacy of the jazz canon and the
continued mobility of stars on the global jazz circuit determine the paths of young
musicians as well as the variety of music genres featured in prestigious festi-
vals and national concert halls. Well-funded collaborations between local stars,
nationally subsidized orchestras, and the highly visible New York giants betray
the continued hegemony of the American jazz canon. But these relationships also
complicate the cultural imperialism thesis and its one-dimensional cultural trajec-
tories from the ‘West to the Rest’, especially as new media, eagerly adopted by
a younger generation of migrating jazz students participating in Europe’s hybrid
economies (Lessig 2008), increasingly enable the emergence of new jazz publics.
The range of mixed-jazz styles adopted by younger intra-European jazz groups
and featured in social networks and in public performance outlets suggests a
growing eclecticism, which in European contexts attests to the ‘emanzipatory’
calls (Heffley 2005) of earlier collectives rallying against the commodified and
homogenizing practices of the American music industry. But, again, as European
jazz has become ‘legit’, sanctioned by state funding bodies and conservatoire
artist-in-residence programmes, it is clear that jazz’s prior mythos (most promi-
nently revived during the 1980s within neo-traditional streams) continues to
impact contemporary European jazz scenes. This is perhaps most evident in the
ongoing promotion of New York-based jazz stars and the academic institutionali-
zation of bebop.
In Groningen, the translocal character of jazz scenes is epitomized by the

transnational relationships between mobile New York-based teachers and their
students, who refine their skills in New York but often return to Europe to live
and work. These musicians traverse and reaffirm long-standing jazz routes. They
also sustain instrumentally based ‘straight-ahead’ jazz, upholding bebop’s legacy
of collective virtuosity, which continues to thrive in contexts that include pres-
tigious European jazz festivals and well-funded cultural centres. A wide variety
of European scenes manifest on one hand an increasing mobility and on the
other hand a deference to American jazz history. This is particularly evident in
Groningen, the Netherlands’ northernmost metropolis, where jazz stars, students,
and local musicians migrate to participate in the global jazz star circuit.
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Notes
1 I thank Byron Dueck and Celia Cain for their close and thoughtful readings of this
chapter. I am especially grateful for Dueck’s clear and thorough revisions. I also thank
Joris Teepe, George Dumitriu, Alex Sipiagin, and Kaja Draksler for their insights about
jazz in Groningen.
2 From Adderley’s Somethin’ Else (1958, Blue Note BST 81595).
3 ‘New York Comes to Groningen’ video on the Prins Claus Conservatoire website, online
<http://www.hanze.nl/home/International/Schools/Prins+Claus+Conservatorium/
Programmes/Bachelor+Programmes/Jazz/> (accessed 2 July 2010).
4 ‘Concerts Keep Cats in Cakes! Musicians Turn to Halls to Tide Them Over Dance Biz
Lull’, Down Beat, 9 (April 1947): 1.
5 Ibid.
6 In New Orleans, the Marsalises acquired the status of jazz nobility, especially after
young Wynton graduated from New York’s Juilliard with honours in jazz and classical
studies.
7 Beyond the year-long cycle of selected New York artists and teachers, individual
soloists also travel to Groningen. They may visit for two days, offering workshops
and masterclasses during the day and performing as featured soloist with student
jazz ensembles or professional jazz combos in the city’s many jazz venues. The latter
include the Oosterpoort cultural centre and smaller jazz clubs such as the Spieghel and
the Eetcafé Smederij.
8 See music examples on Kaja Draksler’s home site <http://www.kajadraksler.com>
(accessed 17 July 2010).
9 In a forthcoming chapter (McGee, in press), I examine the role of the more eclectic
Dutch electronic jazz music collectives that tour jazz circuits, festivals and dance clubs.
This article suggests a second stream in European jazz creativity, one which is highly
mediated, mobile and deeply influenced by dance and popular music.
13 ‘Keepin’ it real’
Bombay Bronx, cultural producers
and the Asian scene
Helen Kim
Introduction
Sometime after midnight on a cold, clear Tuesday evening, I emerged from the
dark basement of the Notting Hill Arts Club, a small and somewhat run-down
venue in the midst of an upscale west London neighbourhood. Inside, a packed
club night called Bombay Bronx was in full swing. I was approached by a young
man who held out a glossy flyer advertising ‘Kandy Nights’, a new Saturday event
held across the city in east London. The flyer’s smooth finish and tasteful colours
suggested a more upmarket, ‘mainstream’1 R & B night starkly different from the
DIY ‘indie’ mix of Bombay Bronx. As it turned out, the young man, Gee, was
the principal promoter of this new night. I introduced myself as someone doing
research on the Asian music scene and clubs in London. Gee nodded, saying,
‘Yeah, Bombay Bronx – good place to meet people in the scene. This is where
everyone hangs out.’ He then said, ‘Listen, you gotta talk to this guy.’ He shouted
out to someone behind me. A man loped over, and Gee introduced him as one of
the ‘biggest producers of Asian hip-hop music in London’. He was polite, shook
my hand and said his name was Mentor. I handed him my card and he got in touch
with me a few days later.
In the span of five minutes, I had met two important figures within a group
of artists and producers who see themselves as part of a community I call the
London Asian urban music scene. The terms ‘Asian’ and ‘urban’ merit a brief
explanation. ‘Asian’ refers to the diasporic South Asian community of Indian,
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan ethnic heritage. The ‘urban’ category of
black popular music includes hip-hop, R & B, dubstep, grime, drum and bass,
garage and many other subgenres, but members of the Asian urban scene mainly
perform hip-hop and R & B. Bombay Bronx, as Gee pointed out, was the central
night for members of this scene to meet one another. Just as importantly, so far as
this chapter is concerned, it was an alternative creative space for London’s Asian
artists to speak from their particular and diverse locations, and in doing so chal-
lenge essentialist notions of a homogeneous, singular British Asian identity.
The Notting Hill Arts Club, home until quite recently to the Bombay Bronx
night (the night is on hiatus at the time of writing), is a bare basement space
devoid of the usual outdoor signs indicating its whereabouts. Inside it is small
and dark, split into two main sections by a wall and staircase. The section behind
‘Keepin’ it real’â•… 219
the wall includes a dance floor, a stage and a DJ booth tucked away in the corner.
When the club is packed and the dance floor full (as is common) people take to
the stage to dance. While movement in the club is often quite fluid, the dance area
tends to be a space for people who enjoy the music and company but who are not
professionally linked to the scene. The other main section incorporates a round
bar, usually a bustling hub of activity, a lounge area including booths and chairs,
as well as a standing area where people can mingle and talk. This was where those
who were part of the Asian ‘industry’ networked when I conducted the research
for this chapter.
One Tuesday night, I spotted Nihal and Dom, the promoters of Bombay Bronx,
there. Wearing flat baseball caps and shiny trainers, they epitomized the impec-
cable west London hip-hop style, at once playful, casual and expensive. The two
promoters were never alone but rather constantly surrounded by people. They
greeted women with polite handshakes and offered male friends the hip-hop hug,
clasping hands, pulling each other in close and slapping backs. Nihal was the chief
promoter of the Bombay Bronx night, and is also host of his own prime-time BBC
Radio 1 show featuring new British Asian music. He is perhaps the most recog-
nizable face within the UK Asian music scene. I recognized at least three artists
who sought him out for conversations during the course of the evening. Dom is a
London promoter of hip-hop and special events as well as the front office manager
of the Notting Hill Arts Club and the co-creator with Nihal of Bombay Bronx. He
has been involved in the entertainment and music industry for over twelve years,
and is a recognized figure on the London urban music and club scene.
At the time I did my research, Bombay Bronx night represented the cutting edge
of the Asian urban music scene, and was a meeting place for cultural producers
whose work was informed by critical discussions about the links between music
and identity. In the chapter that follows, it is the starting point for an explora-
tion of the broader field of Asian urban music, and in particular how members
of the scene negotiate issues of identity, representation and ‘authenticity’. These
issues are mediated here through the narratives of some of the cultural producers
who gathered together each month at Bombay Bronx, as well as through my own
ethnographic observations.
Within sociology and popular music studies, contemporary forms of British
Asian cultural production have not received much attention, even though Asian
diasporic artists such as Jay Sean2 and M.I.A. have achieved mainstream success
in both the UK and the USA. Certainly, earlier forms of British Asian musical
expression such as bhangra and the ‘Asian Underground’3 have been discussed
through textual and theoretical analyses (see Ballantyne 2006; Baumann and
Banerji 1993; Dudrah 2002; Dawson 2007; Gopinath 1995, 2005; Sharma et al.
1996a). But this chapter offers a brief ethnographic introduction to some of the
most recent manifestations of British Asian popular culture, taking an empirical
approach that focuses on how British Asian identities are actually experienced,
taking into account the ambivalence, messiness and inconsistency that are part of
everyday life.
Youth cultures have traditionally been constructed around the notion of differ-
ence and ‘resistance’ to dominant values; this has remained consistent to youth
220â•… Helen Kim
culture studies even after the decline of CCS’s influential ‘subcultural’ theory
(Bennett 1999; Frith 2004; Nayak 2003; Kahn-Harris 2007). As Frith notes,
contemporary theorists still ‘hanker for evidence of resistance and transgression’
(2004: 176). Paul Gilroy (1993b) and others (see Sharma 2003) have discussed
how it is minority diasporic music cultures that are often burdened with the
assumption of ‘radical’ or ‘resistant’ perspectives. Yet diasporic youth cultures
offer different ways of viewing and understanding the world: not simply ‘resist-
ance’ but also complex negotiations of power and racial and class hierarchies,
often characterized by contradictions and ambivalence.
The music on the London Asian music scene includes a diverse range of musical
genres including bhangra, R & B and hip-hop, as well as what might be called
‘hybrid’ sounds. ‘Hybrid’ sounds generally come into being when producers take
bhangra and Bollywood beats and instrumentals and fuse them with ‘urban’ music
such as hip-hop and R & B. The use of Asian instrumentation, including tabla,
sitar, and dhol drum, is common. In some cases, however, the ‘Asian’ in ‘Asian
music scene’ refers not to the sounds produced but rather to the ethnicity of the
artist. As already noted, I refer to the ‘Asian urban music scene’; others call it the
‘desi beats’ scene, ‘desi hip-hop’, ‘post bhangra’ or quite simply ‘Asian music’.
Stuart Hall (1992) once wrote that all cultural production lies within repre-
sentation. Put another way, representation is intrinsic to the ways in which we
know ourselves. Minority cultural producers4 have ambivalent and contradictory
positions that ‘are often dislocating in relation to one another’ when it comes
to representing their fellow marginalized subjects (Hall 1996: 31). Asian artists,
while negotiating for a wider and more complex understanding of ethnic identi-
ties, feel an equally strong pull to reinstate essentialist notions of what constitutes
Asian and diasporic identities. So, even as they create new sites of production that
present open and pluralistic versions of Asian identity, these sites often revisit and
recycle ‘authentic’ notions of ‘Asian-ness’ that valorize particular class locations,
heteronormative relations, and gender divisions. Thus, within these different,
open sites a politics of identity is being enacted and negotiated: what it means to
be an ‘Asian’ artist and make ‘Asian’ music is open to continual contestation, a
site of ongoing struggle. Within this negotiated field, cultural producers occupy
positions of power as figures who represent others who are often in subordinate
positions. Class locations help determine who can speak and who get silenced, a
subject that is briefly addressed at the end of this chapter.
Further, there is a wider struggle over the representation of ‘ethnic’ artists
within the wider ‘mainstream’ music industry. The mainstream is where many
Asian artists want to be, although they understand that it is not often open to
them. Many musicians are aware that the label ‘Asian’ often signifies a certain set
of stereotypical ‘Orientalist’ images, sounds and brands – difference reified for
the purposes of mass consumption – and that anything beyond these symbols is
largely ignored as it does not fit into mainstream structures of identification5 (see
Sharma 2003; Sharma et al. 1996a; Saha n.d.; Murthy 2007). Hall (1996) warns
us that the struggle to move beyond a singular framework of fixed identity is never
neat or easy. Asian artists negotiate these stereotypes in a variety of complex and
ambivalent ways that involve the use of ‘strategies of authenticities’ that contest
as well as appropriate these stereotypes (Kalra and Hutnyk 1998). As Michael

Herzfeld (1997) points out, the use of stereotypes is not limited to the powerful.
Those who are in marginal positions often use them as ‘on-the-ground essential-
izing’ strategies that simultaneously and ambiguously manifest both oppression
and resistance.
From Bombay to the Bronx: making space for the Asian

music scene
D-Boy, an urban music producer who produced two hit singles in 2009 for a well-
known British bhangra artist, often attended Bombay Bronx. He characterized
the club night as the creative meeting centre for the London Asian urban music
scene’s cultural producers (interview, September 2009):
Bombay Bronx would be the … hub of Asian ‘creatives’ in London, be they

film-makers, or music producers, and even [visual] artists. It’s a centre of
where … a key figure within the music industry promotes a night to bring
together everyone within the music industry under one roof …
The important position of the night was in large part due to Nihal’s role as
a facilitator and intermediary (he referred to himself as a ‘shop window’) who
brought different creative people together, and identified new and interesting
artists, sounds and talent. Nihal is what Bourdieu (1984) would call a ‘tastemaker’
because of his power to influence people’s tastes in music through a range of
means, from ‘underground’ live nights to ‘mainstream’ radio.
Bombay Bronx was a fluid and dynamic space with an ever-changing roster of
music. Dom observed (interview, July 2009):
We’ve tried to incorporate more bands, we’ve tried to incorporate more in

[making quotation marks with his fingers] ‘real’ music, and less straight
hip-hop and that appeals to a broader range of people. When we started it
was the sort of the middle of that bhangra moment that Asian music was
happening and we were starting to see American hip-hop sampling traditional
Indian music forms and there was a couple of big American tunes and the
bhangra scene was very strong. And now, Bombay Bronx pretty much plays
modern Asian R & B and hip-hop because that’s what the Asian audience is
interested in.
Bombay Bronx moreover had a pivotal position as a showcase for new talent
within the Asian urban music scene; indeed Jay Sean, a popular British Asian
RÂ€&Â€B artist, launched his long-awaited single there. In short, Bombay Bronx was
an extremely successful night for the Notting Hill Arts Club. Dom confirmed this
when he said ‘ It’s probably got the widest, it’s the most known it’s ever been now,
Bombay Bronx. It’s probably by a long way our busiest Tuesday.’
Bombay Bronx not only aimed to reflect what was of the moment within urban
music; it also attempted to capture the hybrid, diasporic urbanness of contemporary
Asian music. I interviewed Nihal during a particularly noisy session in the stairwell
of the Notting Hill Arts Club. Shouting over the music, he said (October 2008):
Just walking the streets of London … Someone once said that the absolute
precursor of creativity is diversity. If that’s the case, then London must be the
most creative city on earth … the diversity is there; you can’t live in a bubble.
Listen to that [live music playing in the background] there’s an Indian guy
playing a reggae song in a London club to mostly Asians.
Bombay Bronx’s description of its night invoked a sense of the oscillating

tensions between ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ within Asian urban music:
There’s a clash going on as Asian bad boys and desi divas blend [A]sian
flavas and New York City swagger. As rap beats smash against each other,
tabla players weave in and out of the beats. Bombay Bronx is the home of the
brown funk, the black beats and the Asian lyrical diaspora.6
This tracing of diverse, migrating trajectories shows how people’s sense of

belonging and identity can involve much more than ‘roots’ in a place, including
also the ‘routes’ (Gilroy 1993a) by which it was reached. These ‘routes’ are
signalled on the one hand through African-American elements such as hip-hop
music and terms (‘flavas’) and on the other hand through Asian components such
as the tabla. The reference to ‘brown funk’ is especially indicative of the connec-
tions being established between South Asian identity and African-American
music. Bombay Bronx’s promoters and publicity mapped London’s multicultur-
alism – its diasporic populations and migrating music cultures – onto Bombay
Bronx, positioning it as the entryway to the messy, cacophonous and pleasurable
dissonance of London’s streets and neighbourhoods.
Yet Nihal and Dom had differing opinions on what elements of the Bombay
Bronx night they considered most important, and this reveals variance in how
they thought about difference, multiculture and conviviality within the spaces of
the club, particularities that probably reflected their own professional goals and
obligations. They had different concerns over the direction of the club night and
particularly the clientele to which they catered. Nihal was interested in fostering
an ‘alternative’ space oriented to people who were part of the London Asian urban
music scene. For instance, in an interview with Sunny Hundal of Asians in Media
magazine (2005), Nihal was quoted as saying:
I’ve wanted to do a rap night that reflected Asian-ness, that played Bhangra
and R&B but in a different environment, and the Notting Hill Arts Club is the
perfect place for that.
However, Dom, as manager of the Notting Hill Arts Club, was uncomfortable
with having a predominantly Asian crowd at Bombay Bronx. He said:
He [Nihal] just wants to play that music, it’s his music, it’s what he wants to
hear and it’s what he wants to party to, but I have a sort of wider remit, you
know, my role is promoter of the club, and I want it to broaden out and like
I said before, appeal to a wider range of people and I want their music to be
exposed to a wider range of people, you know. If you just play Asian music to
Asian audiences, then you’re going to be stuck on a never ending treadmill.
His remarks suggested that he wanted to capitalize on Bombay Bronx’s Asian

‘hybrid’ aspects by not limiting it to an Asian crowd. His position as a club
manager means that he faces the practical challenge of encouraging as many
people as possible to come to the club, which means greater profit for it through
the increase in sales of alcohol, door fees and coat check charges.
Nihal, Dom and the Notting Hill Arts Club website presented Bombay Bronx
as a cutting-edge, hybrid space of postmodern urban culture, yet in doing so argu-
ably engaged in a form of diasporic commodification. While a thorough discus-
sion of commodification requires a much deeper analysis than space allows here,
it can be remarked that Bombay Bronx’s hybrid space might be understood as
one of the routes by which Asian music moved ‘from the street to the super-
store’ (Kalra et al. 2005). I am mindful of John Hutnyk’s (2000) critique of the
export and commodification of ‘exotica’ made in relation to the overly celebratory
accounts of South Asian crossover ‘hybrid’ sounds. Stuart Hall (1992) reminds us
that, within the contemporary conjuncture, difference is celebrated and fetishized.
Commodification turns Asian music into repackaged cultural artefacts made
‘palatable’ for mass consumption (Kalra et al. 2005). So, for instance, in 2006
Universal Records India released a Bombay Bronx compilation album that prom-
ised the ‘phattest desi hip-hop bhangra blast’, repositioning Bombay Bronx as a
brand to promote the album. This compilation appropriated certain characteristics
of Bombay Bronx (it used the name of the popular night and its principal promoter,
Nihal) and repackaged them as an attractive commodity for a global market.
Sanjay Sharma (1996) argued that, when major labels repackaged the work of
Asian artists such as Bally Sagoo in the late 1990s, they effectively stripped away
the specificities of South Asian production in the interests of appealing to a global
consumer market. In so far as the Bombay Bronx compilation takes its constituent
songs out of the context of the club night, it divorces them from a context of
Asian sociability and arguably reduces them to generic ‘party tunes’. In doing so
it perhaps also dilutes the political and social significance of the Bombay Bronx
night and its contributions to London Asian cultural production.
Bombay Bronx was thus a site for various encounters. It was a place for people in
the Asian industry to meet each other and network, but it was also a space of meta-
phorical, syncretic interactions between black and Asian diasporic music cultures.
These musical meetings were in turn readily packaged for postmodern consumption.
Breaking ties: establishing new identities

I move on now to explore how members of London’s Asian urban music scene
have defined it in opposition to the ‘Asian Underground’. Through Bombay Bronx
and other avenues, scene members have aligned Asian music with hip-hop music
and style and distanced it from earlier associations with London’s ‘underground’
and ‘alternative’ scenes.
The sounds of the Asian Underground were considered exciting and original,
and the music press hailed these bands as the voice of a new generation by, and
for, British Asians. One reviewer hailed Asian Dub Foundation’s music as a
‘rich cultural stew’ and commented upon the band’s ‘radical edge’ (Evans 2003).
Rolling Stone reviewer Josh Kun called Asian Dub Foundation ‘musical coloniza-
tion in reverse’ and characterized their lyrics and music as full of ‘noisy uprising’;
he remarked that it was ‘impossible not to get swept up in the rush’ (Kun 1998).
Talvin Singh won the Mercury Prize for ‘Best Album’ in 1999.
But Nihal unequivocally drew a line between the Asian Underground and the
current scene.
It’s dead, [Asian Underground] finished, it’s over. No Asian wants to be

described as the Asian Underground …
For him, the Asian Underground represented the past, now irrelevant. He added:
N: I think it’s worth understanding that the majority of Asians didn’t know
anything about the Asian Underground. Asian Underground wasn’t FOR
Asians, it wasn’t really.
H: But of Asians –
N: It was FROM Asians, but it was, it was a niche. Talvin Singh made abstract
dance music, he didn’t make three-minute pop songs … you know. It was
very highbrow, you know, it wasn’t street music, it was highbrow, I think
it was anyway, you know. The majority of people that you meet that made
that music, they were middle-class people, they’re not working-class people,
they’re not hood rats, they’re not ghetto kids. … So, it’s this assumption I
think often that the Asian Underground meant that, you know, all the Asian
people were listening to Nitin Sawhney, Black Marsh and Shri, Joi, and they
weren’t, because I worked for Outcaste Records, right, so I saw who we
were selling records to and who we were targeting, and we weren’t targeting
Asians.
Thus Nihal was critical of the Asian Underground’s bid for appeal outside the
Asian ‘majority’, by which he meant a wider (whiter) and middle-class audience.
Nihal invokes a distinction between the ‘authentically’ Asian working-class audi-
ence forgotten in the Asian Underground hype and the white middle-class audi-
ence that comprised the main market for their music. He offers an alternative
definition of ‘Asian music’ in which the term refers to music made for Asians,
not just by them (on ‘Asian music for Asians’, see also Sharma 1996, Saha n.d.).
Nihal’s distinction between ‘for’ and ‘from’ is a significant way of drawing
boundaries around what constitutes Asian music, and notably excludes the bands
and artists of the ‘Asian Underground’. Nevertheless there were musicians such
as Apache Indian and Bally Sagoo who emerged during this period and earlier
who achieved success but do not fit so easily into the authentic–inauthentic
dichotomy. Les Back (1996) has written about the significance of these musical
fusions to an ‘intermezzo’ culture of intertwined diasporic connections.
Meanwhile, Nav, a DJ, radio host and head of productions at Internet radio
station Desihits.com, was of the opinion (interview, August 2009) that
You only need to go to a Nitin Sawhney concert to realize that if you can
find more than 10 per cent of the audience being Asian then there’s obvi-
ously something’s changing. Every Nitin Sawhney, Talvin Singh – Talvin
Singh’s slightly different, but any Nitin Sawhney and even Talvin Singh,
I’ve gone to see that guy, and I know him … it’s all white people, listening
to that music. It’s all very Hoxton, Shoreditch, Shepherd’s Bush Empire, you
know, Cargo, these kinds of venues, not traditionally aligned with the British
Asian scene.7
His remarks link Asian artists such as Nitin Sawhney and Talvin Singh with a
white, middle-class audience, counterpoising their ‘boutique’ niche tastes with
those emerging in the British Asian urban scene. He suggests that many Asian
youth tended not to identify with the picture of ‘Asianness’ presented by the bands
of the Asian Underground.
Nihal downplayed the importance of the Asian Underground and highlighted
the importance of hip-hop to the sounds and style of Asian urban music:
You know, I had this argument with someone the other day and they were
saying to me that without the Asian Underground, Jay Sean and Raghav
and all those guys wouldn’t have had the opportunities and I – I think that’s
wrong, I don’t think that’s the case. I think it was black music that brought
those acts through and a growing confidence.
Furthermore, he positioned Bombay Bronx as the site of this innovation by

using the story of hip-hop’s origins across the Atlantic as a metaphor for Bombay
Bronx’s own syncretic ‘birth’. The night became the central site in the Asian urban
music scene by fusing different elements, in much the same manner as contem-
porary Asian music is constituted by drawing upon a variety of transnational
syncretic practices. Nihal said:
So to me the whole idea behind Bombay Bronx was me imagining what it

was like to be in New York in the 70s when hip-hop went from being an
uptown thing to be a downtown thing, mixing with the art crowd, and it
became this kind of weird mixture. … It’s that whole mixture of a thing and
that’s what Bombay Bronx, that’s why I called it Bombay Bronx, because it’s
like Bombay meets the Bronx, the Bronx being the birthplace of hip-hop and
Bombay being the centre of Bollywood and so much music that comes out
of India …
In many cases scene members talked about how they grew up with the sounds of
hip-hop. It was hip-hop’s distinctly urban outlook that offered these members an
alternative mode of identity. They could participate in a larger hip-hop community

that offered a sense of solidarity more meaningful to them than the ethnic affili-
ation they shared with the Asian Underground. Many of the cultural producers
interviewed cited hip-hop as an early and enduring inspiration. Nihal explained:
Hip-hop is just part of my growing up. Hip-hop music was part of me; the first
real music that I got into was hip-hop music.
Mentor, an Asian urban music producer and DJ from London who is also a
radio host on urban channel BBC Radio 1Xtra, talked about his first love, which
was hip-hop, and how it informed his own career (interview, November 2007):
I grew up with the West Indians so I used to hear a lot of reggae music, and
obviously hip-hop was big back in the early 90s as well when I was growing
up, when I was a teenager as well, and and for me that was a big influence.
You know, a lot of the American stuff, and the UK stuff too.
Nav also identified an urban demographic of Asians who aligned themselves

with a youth culture inflected by hip-hop:
When I first created the Br-Asian stage at Glasto [Glastonbury Festival] in

2004, guess who I called: I called the Asian Underground guys [but addi-
tionally] I took the hip-hop acts, I took them [the hip-hop acts] in, because
for a long, long time … the general British public, their perception of Asian
stuff [was] either the Asian Underground sound or Bollywood and cheesy,
Cornershop stuff, right? I needed to change that because I wasn’t happy
with that. There’s a whole demographic that they’re missing. You go to
Birmingham, Manchester, London, Glasgow, Coventry, Leeds, even some
parts of Bristol, and you see this whole urban crowd.
Like Nihal, Nav draws upon the concept of the working-class urban Asian
audience, but he goes a step further by claiming that hip-hop is the authentically
representative site of this audience. The opinion that the Asian Underground was
not for Asians is a loud declaration that not all Asians are alike. It furthermore
reclaims ‘Asian’ for a decidedly less highbrow audience, construing the Asian
Underground not only as ‘middle-class’, but additionally as inauthentic insofar
as it colludes with white middle-class tastes. By defining themselves in oppo-
sition to the Asian Underground, cultural producers assert that they are coun-
tering white, middle-class, hegemonic space. They resoundingly reject the Asian
Underground’s representations of Asians in favour of different narratives that
incorporate stories they feel have been drowned out by the Asian Underground’s
fame and success.
On the other hand, these new narratives bring their own limitations because they
reflect a continued investment in the idea of a particular version of Asian-ness,
or a particular set of Asian experiences, that is more worthy of representation:
namely working-class, urban perspectives. The Asian Underground’s ideology
and politics are rejected not because they happen to reflect just one version of
being Asian, but because they are seen as inauthentic depictions of British Asian
diasporic life.
Nevertheless, cultural producers regard the Asian investment in hip-hop
authenticity with some ambivalence: they consider it problematic in part because
hip-hop has long been characterized, including by African-American scholars,
as an expression of an ‘authentic’ and exclusively African-American expressive
music culture (see Gilroy 1993a, 1994; Mitchell 1996, 2001). Even when it is not
seen as something African-American, it is often perceived as a musical genre to
which blacks have a particularly primary claim. Thus Asian hip-hop artists contin-
ually confront the belief that hip-hop is a form of expression that they cannot
‘properly’ appropriate for themselves.
Here, for instance, is what MC and actor Riz MC, who identifies himself as a
hip-hop artist outside of the Asian scene, said about Asians and hip-hop (inter-
view, April 2008):
It’s like basically, Asian kids copying black kids, and it still happens. Afro-
Caribbeans, like in London, are always kind of running things on street level;
they were the ultimate underdogs to some extent. …
The idea of the black ownership of hip-hop is underpinned by the belief that
culture comprises reified objects and entities that can be owned and ‘copied’. Some
cultural producers seem to perceive a lack of authenticity in Asian hip-hop owing
to racial and class differences: they suggest that hip-hop is a site of black, working-
class authenticity. Here is how Dom characterized the Asian relation to hip-hop:
I see a lot of connections between the black struggle and the way that Asians
are trying to do it, but it … feels less sincere, I think, because it’s not their
music. Hip-hop is not their music. The way that Asians, uh, first-generation
Asian immigrants approached this country, they have a different approach
and they value education very highly, and they value hard work … and I
think this generation of Asians, the third and fourth generation, are very well
off, well educated and very media-savvy. And they would like some of that
rebel spirit of black people to rub off on them. … They want to tap into an
anti-establishment struggle for acceptance but in an attractive, appealing way.
Dom’s explanation reveals his own ambivalence about what he considers a form
of Asian cultural appropriation of a traditional black music form. He perceives
certain ‘inauthentic’ uses of hip-hop both within the Asian scene and on a broader
scale. He implies that the comfortable class position that many London Asians
occupy makes them ‘inauthentic’ as hip-hop artists, and that this devalues their
contributions to musical culture. All of this suggests that cultural producers lay
claim to hip-hop authenticity with some trepidation. Despite the efforts of some
artists to align themselves with London’s hip-hop scene, there is no guarantee that
people will consider them as aligned in this way.
Moreover, while many claimed that hip-hop was an inspirational form of
music and spoke of the dimension of hip-hop culture with which young Asians
could relate, it is simultaneously the most successful form of global commercial
music. As Watts and Orbe (2002) note, ‘African American cultural forms are
still the standard bearer of pop cultural fashion.’ Thus, hip-hop and black urban
music are not always appreciated for their subversive potential or critical social
commentary, but rather because they are current and edgy and might help Asian
kids acquire greater respect from white, black and other Asian youth. There is a
knowingness to this ‘copying’, an understanding that hip-hop authenticity is a
performance.
Banerjea and Banerjea write that, in the 1980s, the prevailing opinion of Asians
held by white British emphasized these values, ‘odour, passivity, squareness,
weakness and weirdness’ (1996: 113). The point here is that blacks and Asians
have been racialized in radically different and uneven ways across different fields
and at different moments. This is particularly evident if we look at the distinct-
ness of attitudes towards black and Asian cultural production (Alexander 2002;
Song 2003).
Banerjea and Barn write that white masculine discourses around ‘cool black
subjectivity’ rarely attempt to hide their distaste for perceived Asian ‘effeminate-
ness’ and in fact are reliant upon such absolute conceptualizations for their legiti-
macy (1996: 200). Thus, ‘coolness’ is deeply racially and culturally coded. Often,
‘coolness’ and ‘culture’ have a kind of inverse relationship. Asian artists are
marked as having ‘too much’ culture, and this is often perceived to work against
the acquisition of ‘coolness’ or subcultural capital. Asian cultural production is
still outwardly perceived, according to mainstream UK standards, as being ‘tradi-
tional’, culturally ‘backwards’, and pre-modern. It is accordingly not awarded
with cultural capital. In contrast, US and UK black youth culture is thought to be
‘global, creative, cutting-edge, infinitely marketable culture-of-desire’ (Alexander
2002). Thus, many young Asians, aware that other kids considered hip-hop cool,
learned that by adopting hip-hop mannerisms, dress and outlook they too could
invest in and gain some cultural capital.
The racialized binaries of coolness are also evident in how certain genres of
Asian music such as bhangra are positioned as ‘traditional’, cultural and fixed in
contrast to the ‘modern-ness’ and ‘edginess’ of hybrid urban music.8 Traditional
Asian music often gets discursively constructed as familiar, staid, boring and
limited. It could be that such a dichotomy is responsible for the hierarchy evident
at London’s summer Mela, a festival celebrating South Asian culture held every
year in Ealing since 2003. Increasingly, it is the urban acts that receive top billing,
and that are awarded prominent exposure on the main stage as well as a separate
side stage. Each year, the music line-up at the Mela has seen an increase in the
ratio of ‘urban’ artists to classical artists.
In this section, I have suggested that the Asian urban music scene has emerged
in opposition to the bands of the Asian Underground, particularly such artists as
Talvin Singh and Nitin Sawhney, in part because of their perceived connection
to an ‘inauthentic’ white middle-class music culture. The contemporary London
Asian urban music scene, in contrast, pursues connections to the worlds of hip-hop
and R & B. Nevertheless, here too participants in the scene raise questions about
authenticity: namely whether Asians or middle-class people have a right to

appropriate genres that many associate with black and working-class identities.
Contemporary Asian cultural producers thus participate in a politics of identity
and in their discourses draw upon charged concepts of class identity and racialized
perceptions of ‘white’, ‘black’, and ‘Asian’ music and culture. Moreover, as the
following section shows, these agents mobilize these ideas in strategic utterances
that performatively establish their legitimacy as artists.
‘Keeping it real’ – realness within the Asian scene

Discussions amongst cultural producers demonstrate how critical it is not only
to identify and determine who ‘real’ Asians are, but also to position oneself as a
legitimate representative who inhabits qualities determined to be authentically
‘real’. These cultural producers’ public personae rely upon the cultivation of a
‘realness’ that is again often rooted in particular configurations of class and privi-
lege. So, for instance, Nihal’s description of Riz MC characterized him as some-
thing of an anomaly or outsider, given his educational and class background. In
doing so, Nihal may have been suggesting that he and others like him were more
legitimate representatives of the Asian scene:
N: So, I mean, for instance, now you’ve got someone like Riz MC, who does
a track which is lyrically, the most subversive thing I think a British Asian
artist has ever done, because as well, it’s a really good song. And, it created a
lot of hassle, it got on Channel 4 news, you know. I think the sum amount of
attention he got for that, it’s probably more attention than Fun-da-mental got
in their whole career.
H: I guess, yeah, I mean, in interviewing Riz MC, you know, he’s quite vocal and
very articulate in his political views –
N: He went to a private school, he’s educated at Oxford, he’s not a working-class
boy –
Riz MC, on the other hand, asked whether Asian cultural producers with promi-
nent positions in the media really remained in touch with what was currently
going on in the scene. In doing so, he positioned himself as more authentic than
figures such as Nihal (whether or not he had him in mind when he made the
following statement):
I guess like, there’s different kinds of Asian scenes, at different levels, I mean
at grassroots level to like the media elites. There’s a large extent to which the
London, the London scene, in so far as it’s a visible scene, is driven from a
more top-down thing, by like, more people in the media and a certain cabal …
there’s the top-down thing, there’s the thing of it being passé, there’s the thing
of it having changed, it’s not as raw and … there’s too much self-awareness
about the whole thing …
Riz MC’s comment draws on constructions of the scene that oppose small,
underground, grass-roots, unselfconscious music practices to a formal, institu-

tionalized mainstream. And thus the two cultural producers draw upon different
ideas of ‘real’: as grass-roots in one case and working-class in the other. There is
of course some overlap between a grass-roots, organic scene and one rooted in
working-class marginalization.
Still, however important grassroots connections are to an artist’s ‘realness’,
independent means of distribution can only go so far. What is worthy of note
in this case is that well-placed media figures of the sort Riz identifies in the
preceding quotation have played an important role in his success as an artist.
Nihal and Bombay Bronx supported Riz and gave him his first opportunity to
perform live. Further, Nihal supported Riz’s debut single, ‘Post 9/11 Blues’, on
his show on the BBC Asian Network when Riz was a struggling artist who was
not yet signed to a distribution label. Initially radio stations banned the airplay
of the single because they considered it ‘politically sensitive’. Later, after the
support of the Asian Network and Nihal, he was invited to perform on the
BBC Electric Proms and has since gone on to become a successful actor. Thus,
despite the suggestion that media figures are out of touch with ‘on the ground’
music practices and cultures of young Asians, the influence and connections of
at least one such well-placed person played a central role in the publicization
of his music.
On the other hand, Nihal’s role as a key figure within the scene is also inflected
by his role as a DJ and radio host of a mainstream Radio 1 show. Because he is
the face of Asian urban music to a wider ‘mainstream’ audience, Nihal’s connec-
tion to a ‘real’ working-class Asian audience can be called into question. Media
figures bring attention to new artists and get them airplay and access to record
labels. Nihal’s role in giving this scene greater exposure means that he has
become instrumental in the ‘mainstreaming’ of British Asian cultural produc-
tion. In doing so, he and others have helped to transform what was, at first, an
organic music scene into a more formal, organized business industry. Indeed,
although the scene may have originated in response to the middle-class affili-
ations of the Asian Underground and its apparent orientation towards a white
niche market, its own audience is growing older and taking up middle-class
lifestyles, habits and values. In 2007 the BBC Asian Network conducted a UK
‘university’ tour with R & B artist Jay Sean as the headlining act. Prestigious
universities such as King’s College London provided venues. A significant fan
base for new Asian urban music seems to be emerging amongst elite university-
educated students, and this perhaps undercuts claims regarding a ‘real’ Asian
working-class audience.
While both Riz MC and Nihal make some investment in the concept of
working-class Asian authenticity, they both seem to employ essentialized notions
of identity when it suits them, and shift meanings around to suit their needs.
As performers they must take on the ‘burden of representation’ (Mercer 1990),
whether or not they resist it. What is interesting is that, as cultural producers
within a scene constructed around particular narratives of urban marginalization
and poverty, they advance claims that may not necessarily coincide with their own
social backgrounds and circumstances.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have highlighted some of the key concerns of cultural producers
within the Asian urban music scene. I have also discussed how the making of
Bombay Bronx as a site for different encounters between groups highlighted the
complex interplay of difference, diasporic culture and its commodification.
The success of the Asian Underground is a story located at a particular point in
the history of British Asian youth and popular culture. The contemporary cultural
producers interviewed for this chapter set forth different narratives, drawing upon
other experiences as artists and as British Asians growing up in London. They
fight to create new accounts that better articulate their own, often invisible, expe-
riences: of being urban and working-class and loving hip-hop. However, these
narratives also inscribe essentialist ideas about Asian authenticity, valorizing
certain Asian experiences as more genuine and authentic than others.
The path towards accepting the complexity and nuance of identity production
is difficult, and Stuart Hall (1992) reminds us that there are ‘no guarantees’ for
the future in such identity work. Internal differences in terms of class, history and
experience can create tensions around what it is to be Asian, and this is reflected in
the politics of the scene. Setting fixed boundaries around who belongs in the scene
can lead to the simplistic reinscribing of essentialist characteristics onto Asian
identities. Nevertheless, it is evident that the cultural producers interviewed in
this chapter are creating a space that allows for those difficult issues to be worked
out with all the nuance that questions of production bring to issues of identity and
belonging. Asian cultural producers, through multiple strategies, are communi-
cating the sense that being Asian, an artist, or both, is never as straightforward and
unproblematic as has sometimes been depicted.
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Notes
1 The concept of the mainstream is articulated in different ways by cultural producers
within the Asian music scene. Any fixed definition of it is spurious because of the
increasingly blurry distinction between a mainstream and alternative or ‘independent’
scenes (this problem of identification has been much studied and debated; see for
instance Hesmondhalgh 1998, 1999; Kruse 2003; Negus 1999). While the concept of
a mainstream is in many ways problematic, and it deserves a much greater level of
analysis than afforded here, the term in this instance contrasts the Asian scene with the
broader music industry, often understood as white and middle-class in terms of both
audience and industry.
2 Jay Sean was signed to CashMoney Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group,
in 2008. He is arguably the most successful artist to come out of the Asian urban music
scene, and has had two hit singles. His first US single, ‘Down’ featuring rap artist Lil’
Wayne, topped the US Billboard Chart Hot 100 in 2009. A second single, ‘Do You
Remember’, was listed as #10 on the Hot 100 in 2010.
3 The Asian Underground was the informal label attached to a group of club night gather-
ings such as the famous Anokha night at London’s club Blue Note started up by artist
Talvin Singh. Later, the ‘Asian Underground’ label came to refer to a distinctive genre
of Asian dance music associated with artists such as Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney, and
Asian Dub Foundation.
4 I am referring to cultural producers based primarily in London who are the key
DJs, MCs, artists, producers, club promoters and media figures of the Asian music
scene.
5 As Murthy (2007) argues, music can be exoticized or orientalized as a way for indi-
viduals to experience ‘something mystical’. The Asian electronica and underground
scene in London, part of the ‘Asian Kool’ wave within popular culture, was commonly
represented and reified by images of tigers, elephants and Buddhist or Hindu reli-
gious iconography. Even the genre term ‘Asian chill-out’ was a reference to exotic,
orientalized images of South Asia. See also Hutnyk (2000), who provides an in-depth
discussion and critique of how cultural forms such as Asian dance music can become
desirable ‘exotica’, commodified as the next ‘flavour of the month’.
6 Online <http://www.nottinghillartsclub.com/> (consulted July 2009).
7 Art galleries, music venues such as Cargo, and trendy bars and restaurants are concen-
trated in the London neighbourhoods of Hoxton and Shoreditch. Deep is linking the
Asian Underground with areas of London, and with venues within these areas, that
appeal to a white, affluent, culturally elite audience.
8 This is despite the fact that bhangra, while originating from the Punjab region, is also
very much a diasporic formation developed in the UK. Thus it is a syncretic practice
that is as much a ‘fusion’ of different elements as any other genre of popular music
(see Dudrah 2002, 2007; Gopinath 1995; and Back 1996 for insights into bhangra as a
diasporic South Asian cultural formation).
14 Cavern journeys
Music, migration and urban space
Sara Cohen
This is not a programme about the Beatles … but rather about the place the Beatles
came from and the people they left behind. The place of course is Liverpool, to my
mind the strangest of all the cities of the North. Not the nicest, for ‘nice’ is hardly a
term that one can apply to Liverpool, but hard drinking, hard living, hard fighting,
violent, friendly and fiercely alive. Indeed, if one had to sum up the so-called
Liverpool Sound in one word, the sound that has swept south and become the
musical sensation of this year, I’d use the word ‘vitality’, sheer, staggering vitality,
and this is characteristic of the whole background of Liverpool. … This is really
the place where it all started about four years ago, in this steaming, smoky, sweaty
cellar known as the Cavern. The lights are turned down so low that you can hardly
see, and the volume is turned up so high that it is hard to hear the actual tune, but
at the very least the atmosphere is intensely alive and exciting.
(presenter’s introduction, Beat City, 1963)
This chapter uses a case study on the Cavern Club, and the so-called ‘Liverpool
Sound’ of the early 1960s, to explore the relationship between music, migration
and cities. The first of its three parts introduces the Cavern and media representa-
tions of the club as a place of musical migration, hybridity and creativity. It also
introduces three groups of musicians who performed at the club during the early
1960s, including the Beatles, whose residency there made it famous. The second
part positions the Cavern Club in relation to the movements, memories and jour-
neys of those musicians. In doing so it highlights the agency of musicians in the
transformation and circulation of musical styles and the creation of musical land-
scapes that characterize cities. The third part of the chapter positions the Cavern
Club within a wider political economy and broader landscapes of music, move-
ment and memory. This enables some general conclusions about the relationship
between music, migration and cities, and how this relationship is shaped by a
politics of musical style, mediation and urban space.1
Musical styles, cities and material urban environments:

the Cavern Club
The Cavern first opened in 1957 as a jazz club situated in the barrel-vaulted cellar
of a Liverpool city centre warehouse, and it soon became popular with young
236â•… Sara Cohen
people interested in bohemian culture. Jazz bands performed live at the club on
a regular basis, and eventually skiffle bands also began to play there, although
the club’s owner was not too keen on skiffle, an improvised style of country,
blues and jazz-influenced folk music. He was not keen on rock ’n’ roll either, a
style often referred to as ‘beat music’ and described as a ‘weaving together of
elements from distinct US styles: rhythm and blues, country, folk, gospel and
blues’ (Negus 1996: 144, citing Frith 1983; Gillett 1983; Longhurst 1995). Under
new ownership, however, the Cavern became a key venue for rock ’n’ roll and beat
groups, most notably the Beatles, who performed live at the club on 292 occasions
between 1961 and 1963.2 The group’s residency at the club is commonly regarded
as having enabled them to refine the musical skills they developed during their
prior residency at the Star Club in Hamburg, providing a basis for the further
transformation of their musical style from skiffle to a unique version of rock ’n’
roll, and for their development from amateur to professional musicians, and from
local to national and international notoriety. Just six months after their last appear-
ance at the club the Beatles set off to tour the US and spearhead what became
known as ‘the British invasion’.3
The Beatles thus made the Cavern Club a focus for media attention. Their
connection with the club has been represented through countless publications,
films, documentaries and websites, and through stories told and retold by Beatles
fans, biographers and entrepreneurs. One example of this is a 1963 film called
Beat City. As he states in the above quotation taken from the start of the film, the
film’s presenter, Daniel Farson, journeyed to Liverpool to investigate the origins
of the Beatles and the new style of rock ’n’ roll or ‘beat’ music known as ‘the
Liverpool Sound’, and to tell a story about music and place. The film features
scenes of urban dereliction and represents Liverpool as an exotic, violent port city,
a place of migration and a mix of social groups and ethnicities, including Irish
and Afro-Caribbean. The Cavern Club is introduced as a noisy, damp cellar, and
excerpts of performances there by local beat groups are inter-spliced with those
in other local venues featuring Irish folk and country music, doo-wop singing
and jazz, thus suggesting a mix of styles and traditions influencing the Liverpool
Sound.
Whilst the Beat City film now seems rather old-fashioned, by representing
Liverpool and the Cavern Club as harsh, edgy, uncomfortable places, but also as
the origin of extraordinary musical sounds and styles, it provides an example of
how cities and material urban locations are commonly, if sometimes ambivalently,
celebrated and romanticized as places of musical migration, hybridity and innova-
tion. The following discussion presents a different and more complex account of
the relationship between music, cities and migration. It does so by positioning the
Cavern Club along the journeys of three groups that performed there during the
early 1960s, and within stories and memories of those journeys and the musical
styles involved.4
Cavern journeysâ•… 237
Three groups and their Cavern journeys and stories
The Beatles
Throughout their residency at the Cavern Club the Beatles performed at many
venues in Liverpool and beyond,5 but Beat City illustrates the symbolic signifi-
cance of the Cavern in stories told about the Beatles and their musical journey.
These stories are recycled, traded and circulated as part of the international
market for Beatles-related products (Tessler 2009). They conventionally feature
the Cavern Club as ‘the place where it all began’, and as the site of the group’s
first encounter with their future manager Brian Epstein, which changed the
course of their career, helping them move on from Liverpool to global success.
Recalling this occasion (on 9 November 1961), Epstein is quoted as saying that
he was ‘immediately struck by [the Beatles’] music, their beat, and their sense
of humour on stage – and, even afterwards, when I met them, I was struck again
by their personal charm. And it was there that, really, it all started.’6
Despite such descriptions of the Cavern Club as the site and point from
which the musical journey of the Beatles began, stories of the group’s journey
to that club are also well known. Members of the group grew up in south
Liverpool, and three of them – Lennon, McCartney and Starr – had performed
at the Cavern Club with skiffle groups during 1957/8 when Lennon was stud-
ying at the Liverpool School of Art. Their career under the name ‘The Beatles’
began in 1960 with a residency at the Star club in Hamburg, and a year later
they were back in Liverpool and the Cavern Club, where they often performed
on stage with skiffle and jazz groups, although by 1962 the club was domi-
nated by rock ’n’ roll.
Stories about the Beatles commonly involve well-worn tales and myths of
how rock ’n’ roll travelled to Liverpool from the USA not only through the
radio, but also through records brought into the city through the transatlantic
crossings of local sailors. John Lennon, for example, has described how he tuned
in to stations such as Radio Luxembourg to hear early US rock ’n’ roll as well
as US rhythm and blues and gospel-influenced groups such as the Drifters, the
Dominoes and the Coasters. He is also quoted as saying, ‘Liverpool is cosmo-
politan, and it’s where the sailors would come home with blues records from
America.’ The city, he added, ‘has the biggest country and western following
in England besides London. … I heard country and western music in Liverpool
before I heard rock and roll’ (quoted in Wenner 1987: 102). More recently, Paul
McCartney (2002) has referred to the ‘melting pot of music’ in Liverpool, and
how the Beatles combined US musical influences with British vaudeville, music
hall and Irish song. In the nineteenth century, Liverpool was a destination of
mass Irish migration, and members of the Beatles were of Irish descent. Yoko
Ono alludes to this on the sleeve notes of John Lennon’s album Menlove Avenue,
where she writes: ‘John’s American rock roots, Elvis, Fats Domino and Phil
Spector are evident in these tracks. But what I hear in John’s voice are the other
roots, of the boys who grew up in Liverpool, listening to Greensleeves, BBC
radio and Tessie O’Shea.’
The Chants
The Chants were one of several black doo-wop vocal harmony groups from the
postal district of Liverpool 8, where most of Liverpool’s long-established and
highly diverse black population was (and still is) concentrated. Members of the
group were born of West African seafaring fathers and white Liverpool-born
mothers, and like the Beatles they were influenced by 1950s North American
rhythm and blues as well as by musical styles such as gospel, a cappella and soul.
They and other local black musicians of a similar age have told us stories of how
records by US groups such as the Flamingos, the Ravens and the Miracles were
brought to the African and Caribbean clubs and community centres of Liverpool
8 by black American servicemen stationed at the Burtonwood military airbase
situated 10 miles east of the city, and how those men impressed and inspired local
black youths with their confidence, style and musical knowledge and skills:
the American GIs always had lots of records. We couldn’t buy the records off
them, but we used to nick [steal] ’em anyway. The GIs used to bring guitars
and stuff and start playing at parties. Many times we’d say, ‘What’s this guy
doing in the army?’ Excellent voices and singers. It was like a privilege to sit
in with them and sing a few harmonies here and there.
(member of vocal harmony group the Valentinos,
personal communication 1991)
The Chants’ first official public performance was at the Cavern Club in 1962.
They had auditioned at the club earlier that day following a previous chance
encounter with the Beatles at a Little Richard concert. They passed the audition
and, performing on stage at the Cavern that night, they were accompanied by the
Beatles. The symbolic significance of that moment – of local black musicians being
backed by the Beatles, has since been much dwelt upon in stories told by members
of the Chants and other Liverpool-born black musicians. In fact the Chants were
the only local black group to perform alongside the city’s beat groups. They were
eventually managed by Beatles manager Brian Epstein and later signed to Pye
records in London, but they did not achieve the commercial success they desired.
They have blamed this on a UK music industry that at that time had little experi-
ence of dealing with black musicians, and have expressed frustration at the way
their black doo-wop style was ‘whitened’ by London-based record producers. One
of the group’s members explains, ‘They used to record The Chants like a white
pop band, which we weren’t,’7 whilst according to a fan of the group
their style and aesthetic ran contrary to the music business and the musical
forms of the day. We had local talent who themselves were fusing gospel,
[a cappella], and producing driving R’n’B when the overall musical culture
of the UK was narrow and insular. … In the UK, there were no Motown,
Stax, Atco equivalents, so Black artists were given material to record that was
contrary to their own musical aesthetic, yet blue-eyed White boys were given
R’n’B records to cover.8
Moreover, racial tensions and levels of unemployment were higher in Liverpool

8 than in other local neighbourhoods, and musicians have commented in the early
1960s and since on the area’s social and cultural isolation from the rest of the
city. Many city centre clubs operated, on either a formal or an informal basis, a
so-called ‘colour bar’, which meant that they prohibited entry to black audiences.
One member of the Chants recalls the group’s walk down to the Cavern Club for
the above-mentioned audition, and how he had to persuade the rest of the group
to accompany him because the club and surrounding area were not places they or
other black people usually frequented (Ankrah, personal communication 2009).
For some local black musicians we spoke to, the Cavern was, like many other
local music venues at that time, a ‘site of whiteness’ (Doss 1999: 195) described
by one musician as ‘a shiny beacon of apartheid’.9
Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers

One of Hank Walters’ favourite anecdotes is about the time he first met John
Lennon at the Cavern and told him he did not much like his music and the Beatles
would not get anywhere unless they ‘got on with it and played country’. During
the early 1960s the Cavern was not really known as a country music venue, but
the country band Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers performed there
on various occasions. Hank likes to describe country music (often referred to
at the time as ‘country and western’) as a ‘diamond with many faces’ – a mix
of styles that had travelled to the USA from Britain, Ireland, Germany, Africa
and elsewhere, and at the start of the 1960s Liverpool was home to around forty
country groups. For Hank, however, his encounter with Lennon at the Cavern
marked the beginning of the decline of local country music as the groups lost
their younger audiences to rock ’n’ roll (McManus 1994: 12–14, 16). It also
marked the beginning of a split between the so-called ‘purists’ who played an
old style of country music, and a new wave of young bands producing a style
that fused country with rock ’n’ roll. Hank and the Dusty Road Ramblers were
in the former camp and rejected the new style of country in favour of the tradi-
tional and authentic.
Members of the group were second-generation immigrants from North
Liverpool and an area of Irish and Welsh settlement close to the waterfront and
dockside labour market. Some of them, like many other country musicians, told
us of their strong seafaring connections and related stories that pointed to the
influence of sailors on local country music. Hank, for example (who worked in
full-time dock-related employment) had grown up listening to country music
because his grandfather had a collection of Jimmie Rodgers records acquired
during shipping trips to America.10 He and his fellow musicians also described
to us how during the 1950s and 1960s the decline of Liverpool’s port activity
had led, along with North Liverpool post-war redevelopment initiatives, to the
closure or demolition of many local country music pubs, and the splintering
and displacement of the communities that had provided their main audiences
(Cohen 2007).
Urban musical styles and the movements and memories of

musicians
The Cavern journeys and stories of the Beatles, the Chants, and Hank Walters and
the Dusty Road Ramblers have only been briefly touched upon, but they neverthe-
less help to highlight the agency of musicians in the creation and circulation of
musical styles. As will become more evident in the sections that follow, they also
suggest how musicians interact with material urban environments through move-
ment and memory to produce shifting landscapes of music that characterize cities.
Just as importantly, they suggest an alternative to celebratory media accounts of
cities and musical migration: an exploration of the relationship between migrating
musical styles and cities that moves beyond binaries such as mixing and division,
the exceptional and the mundane, the innovative and the traditional.
Mapping the journeys of urban music-making

The Cavern Club was situated at the centre of Liverpool, close to the city’s
marketplace and the junction between its north and south, and near the main
bus terminals. It was one of many venues in which the Beatles, the Chants and
Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers performed and their regular spatial
journeys converged. Mapping these journeys and venues helps to represent the
Cavern not as an exceptional site and point of origin, but as just one nodal point
along the regular, performance ‘circuits’ of these musicians.11 Like many musi-
cians, members of all three groups started their journey as performers with public
performances in their home neighbourhoods before moving on to venues in the
city centre and further afield. The map in Figure 14.1 features the Liverpool
venues that all three groups performed in most frequently during the early 1960s,
although during that period all three also performed outside the city in the north-
west region, the rest of the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
The map shows that the Beatles, like other local beat groups, criss-crossed
Liverpool to perform largely in suburban ballrooms and dance halls. The Chants
and Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers occasionally performed along-
side the beat groups at some of these venues. However, the Chants also performed
in the community clubs and centres of the Liverpool 8 area, as did other local
doo-wop and soul groups, whilst Hank and other country musicians performed in
a cluster of traditional pubs and social clubs in the north of the city. So although
it focuses on the routes of individual groups, the map nevertheless indicates
the micro-topographies of particular musical styles, similar to Laing’s mapping
of dance, folk and beat music in the Manchester area (2010). It thus indicates
performance circuits that were distinguished by style but overlapped and inter-
sected at certain points to suggest encounters between styles, although this very
much depended upon the particular venues and contexts involved.
The map draws attention to spatial journeys involved with musical perform-
ance; the significance of such journeys emerges in the kinds of oft-repeated stories
and anecdotes illustrated earlier. They included stories of the Chants and their
walk down to the Cavern from Liverpool 8 and the racial boundaries it marked
Kirkby
B
nM
fto
Se
Bootle
Anfield
Everton
The LIVERPOOL
Cavern Kn
Liv ow
er sle
po yM
ol B
M
Toxteth B
M e r s e y s i d e
Dingle
W
Woolton
irr
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km
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0 1 2 3
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Beatles er
Chants se
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Dusty Road Ramblers
Figure 14.1â•‡ Musical routes of the Beatles, the Chants and the Dusty Road Ramblers
out; stories of Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers, and of disappearing
North Liverpool venues and communities; and stories of the Beatles that chart
the band’s journey to the Cavern via a series of legendary places and events.12
These stories position the Cavern Club within the biographical journeys of all
three groups, and help to illustrate the social and symbolic significance of music
performance venues. Such venues have provided meeting points – sites of social
and musical encounter through which the career trajectories and musical styles of
musicians are shaped and transformed, and a focus for popular music mythology.
In Beatles stories the Cavern Club is significant as the site of their encounter
with Epstein and a meeting point between local and global success. In stories
of the Chants, the club marked the group’s first major public performance and
an encounter with the Beatles that shaped their subsequent and uneasy engage-
ment with the music business. For Hank, the club was the site of an encounter
with Lennon that symbolized an emerging division between rock and country, and
a choice and tension between musical purity and hybridity that had shaped the
subsequent musical journeys of him and his fellow musicians.
Thus, whilst the Cavern Club featured along the spatial and biographical journeys
of these three groups, and in stories about those journeys, it also featured in stories
of their journeys through musical style. These included accounts of the discovery
of particular musical styles not just through particular records, jukeboxes and radio
stations, but also through migration and the transatlantic crossings of sailors and
servicemen – both highly symbolic figures in local narratives of place. Examples
of these were the stories of the sailors and migrant communities that had shaped
country music, as well as the ‘ordinary’ working-class communities that the music
spoke for and to; stories of the African-American servicemen and black US musi-
cians who had influenced local doo-wop groups; and stories of the US and Irish
influences on the Beatles and so many other local groups. Such stories were drawn
upon to explain the development and distinctiveness of local popular music styles.
They show how these styles helped to create a sense of tradition and shared expe-
rience by providing a vibrant repository of collective memory inscribed with the
buried narratives of, and dialogues between, social groups (Lipsitz 1990: 159), and
a meaningful map through which individuals and groups could locate ‘themselves
in different imaginary geographies at one and the same time’ (Hall 1995: 207 on
diaspora; Cohen 1998). The repeated telling and circulation of these stories helped
to foster local cultures of remembering, and diasporic identities and imaginations
that influenced how particular musical styles were practised and understood.
In the Liverpool of the early 1960s, country, rock ’n’ roll and doo-wop harmony
singing were generally imitative of US styles and involved the performance of
songs by US composers. Yet groups like the Beatles, the Chants and Hank Walters
and the Dusty Road Ramblers were drawn to those styles partly because they
were able to connect them to their own particular social situation and adapt them
accordingly via storytelling, lyrical and musical variations and the occasional new
composition (or more in the case of the Beatles). Moreover, the styles of those
groups continually changed throughout the course of their musical careers, and
a few were able to develop and further hybridize these already hybrid styles and
create something relatively new. Brocken (1996: 14), for example, analyses the
US popular songs performed by the Beatles early on in their career, and argues
that the group developed a taste for comparatively obscure rhythm and blues and
Motown music that was unique within a British context, whilst much has been
written about how the band eventually combined US influences with those from
elsewhere to create their own distinctive style.
Urban musical landscapes

The Cavern journeys and stories of the Beatles, the Chants, Hank Walters and
the Dusty Road Ramblers highlight landscapes created through musical prac-
tice: first through a regular series of routes and events that formed circuits of
live performance; and secondly through a performance of memory based on

those circuits and involving stories, anecdotes and myths connected to particular
performance sites. The sharing and circulation of these memories contributed
to the creation of collective identities associated with particular musical styles,
and the fame of the Cavern Club meant that stories about that site were particu-
larly well rehearsed and mediated, with the same anecdotes continually recycled
through conversation and interview, websites and books. The club appeared as a
land- and soundmark in those stories, and as a narrative device and point of depar-
ture for tales of urban mobility and migration. Much like the performance routes
of these musicians, which extended way beyond the city, those tales expanded
local musical landscapes. They connected the Cavern Club and Liverpool to
musical styles and social groups associated with other parts of the world, such as
Ireland and the US, and positioned them along the transatlantic routes of musical
styles, migrants, sailors and servicemen. They also connected them to previous
historical events and eras and accounts of continuity and change.
Groups like the Beatles, the Chants and Hank Walters and the Dusty Road
Ramblers also shared stories of the city through songs, thus creating landscapes in
music. These songs drew on their spatial and biographical journeys to provide a
musical mapping of movement and memory, characterizing material urban envi-
ronments through sounds, lyrics and associated visual images, and through the
conventions of musical style. After leaving Liverpool, for example, members of
the Beatles composed several nostalgic songs based on memories and journeys
of their Liverpool childhood, including songs such as ‘Penny Lane’, ‘Strawberry
Fields Forever’ and ‘In My Life’, which were about the leafy and relatively
affluent suburb of south Liverpool where Lennon and McCartney met and grew
up. Daniels (2006) has pointed to the pastoral imagery in these songs, images
influenced by progressive and psychedelic rock and quite different from the
scenes of urban blight and dereliction featured in the Beat City film.
The Chants composed a song about the Liverpool 8 community centre in
which they used to rehearse, and one of the group’s members later devoted an
entire album to the Liverpool 8 area as part of a soul group he founded with
three other musicians. Entitled 4 from 8, the album involved a more politicized
soul music that had emerged from US Civil Rights and Black Power movements,
with a sleeve image that represented Liverpool 8 as a site of dereliction lying in
the shadow of the city’s Anglican cathedral. According to the group’s founder,
‘Growing up black (in Liverpool 8) gives you different experiences than if you
were white and from a middle-class area,’13 and the group wanted to reflect those
experiences in their music, which displays little of the nostalgia in the Beatles
songs about Liverpool. Meanwhile Hank Walters went on to compose a couple
of sentimental and nostalgic songs about his north Liverpool neighbourhood of
Everton, which by the end of the 1990s was officially categorized as one of the
most deprived neighbourhoods in Europe. He later produced an album of local
country music (City with a Heart) intended to raise funds for that neighbour-
hood, whilst also preserving what is described on the album sleeve as ‘Liverpool’s
own unique Country Music Culture and Heritage’. The sleeve features a sketch of
Hank gazing northwards over what appears to be a busy dockland scene.
Music, migration and urban change

I now want to broaden out gradually from the micro-focus on the Cavern Club
and its position within highly localized landscapes of movement and memory, and
allow the club to stand in for Liverpool, a place much larger in scale. This shift
from performance venue to city will enable a more focused discussion on music
and urban migration.
A politics of style, memory and urban space

Whilst the journeys of musicians and musical styles can be mapped through dots
and lines of movement and flow (as illustrated by the above map of performance
circuits in Liverpool), the stories and memories of the journeys help to flesh out
these maps and bring to life their patterns and clustering. Stories of the Chants, for
example, point to boundaries and edges by describing music and door policies in
operation at the Cavern and other local venues that served to keep out black musi-
cians and styles, and licensing regulations and policing policies that restricted
and confined their music activity within the Liverpool 8 area.14 Meanwhile stories
of Hank Walters and the Dusty Road Ramblers dwell on the country music pubs
along the city’s dockland areas, and the loss of many of these venues following
the shrinking of port activity and planned programmes of demolition in neigh-
bouring residential areas. The port had brought Liverpool great wealth, but it had
depended upon a large and unskilled workforce, and brought into the city desti-
tute immigrants fleeing from hardship elsewhere. These circumstances shaped the
geography of the city, producing distinctive patterns of local settlement, strong
neighbourhood identities, and striking spatial divisions of class and culture.
They produced a strong territorialism that existed alongside an emphasis on local
cosmopolitanism (Belchem 2000: 63).
Musicians thus create musical landscapes that characterize material environments,
which in turn characterize the musical landscapes. Changes in the wider political
economy have an impact on how material environments are structured and organ-
ized, and on factors affecting the spatial and biographical journeys of musicians as
well as their journeys in musical style. For example, Hank Walters and the Dusty
Road Ramblers clung on to traditional, ‘authentic’ and ‘pure’ country music in oppo-
sition to a newly emerging country/rock hybrid. In doing so they embraced stability
and continuity in the face of social and musical change, whilst at the same time cele-
brating a hybridity that was already embodied in the traditional and that connected
with their cosmopolitan sensibility. Members of the Chants, meanwhile, connected
US rhythm and blues and doo-wop to a sense of black pride and identity and resented
(and later resisted) industry attempts to further hybridize and ‘whiten’ it.
These examples help to explain the politicized soul album about Liverpool
8 produced during the mid-1970s, and the nostalgic images of the musical past
promoted in the country album of the late 1990s. They highlight a politics of
musical style in which, as Stokes points out (2004), choices and variations in
musical sounds, structures and instruments mark important political as well
as social and aesthetic distinctions; serve different interests; and help to forge
alliances and alignments across social, cultural and geographical borders.

Thinking of musical hybridity in terms of strategies (ibid.) such as these helps to
move beyond exoticizing media accounts of hybridity, such as that promoted in
the Beat City film.
Music, heritage and urban restructuring

The Cavern Club has been positioned along the spatial, biographical and musical
journeys of musicians, but it is important to note that music venues have their own
biographies and journeys. As Massey points out, seemingly static entities of sturdy
bricks and mortar are in fact fluid and in flux, comprising an ‘intense multiplicity
of trajectories’ (2000: 226). Beat City told of a voyage to ‘discover’ the place that
had produced the new Liverpool Sound, and represented Liverpool and the Cavern
Club as strange, exotic others against a background of urban decline and deepening
economic crisis. It took another twenty years before public and private agencies in
Liverpool (re)discovered the Cavern Club as a basis for the promotion of Liverpool
exceptionalism and economic restructuring. The Cavern Club had been demol-
ished in 1973 but, following the murder of John Lennon in 1980, the site where it
had once stood became a shrine of mourning, and the Beatle’s connection with the
club began to be exploited by urban developers and tourist entrepreneurs. Amongst
other things this involved the building of a replica club close to the site of the
original and another replica in the local Beatles Story museum, and the develop-
ment of a Cavern Quarter incorporating the Cavern Walks shopping centre and two
Cavern ‘Walls of Fame’. The new Cavern Club became a focal point for tourist
maps of Beatles Liverpool but continued to operate as a live music venue and was
eventually franchised and taken to other parts of the world, hence the existence of
Cavern Clubs in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Adelaide and elsewhere.
The Cavern thus became the focus of organized efforts to brand and regenerate
urban space. Its transformation into a Beatles heritage site somewhat obscured
its position as a point and moment along the musical journeys and trajectories
of other musicians and musical styles, but provoked alternative, revisionist and
contested stories of the club. Memory is a social and political practice and musical
landscapes are spaces not only for remembering but also forgetting. Brocken, for
example, writes of the hidden history of the Cavern as a jazz and skiffle venue
(2010); Hank Walters positions the club in his story of the decline of local country
music and promotes that music as an alternative local heritage; and members of
the Chants question the exclusion of black musicians from historical accounts
of the Liverpool Sound and the claim that the Cavern was ‘the place where it all
began’, arguing instead that the roots of the Liverpool Sound lay elsewhere in
local black clubs and neighbourhoods.
The trajectory and transformation of the Cavern Club reflects, to some extent,
that of Liverpool more generally. Since the global economic crisis of the 1970s,
culture has been used to remodel cities across the UK and beyond as part of a
wider process of social and economic restructuring governed by the politics and
economics of neo-liberalism (Harvey 1990; McGuigan 1996; Robins 1991; Miles
and Hall 2003). City policy-makers have been rethinking and rebranding such
cities as centres of cultural tourism, heritage and consumption. In Europe, culture

has been used as a resource not just for physical and economic development but
also for community development and social inclusion. Thus in January 2008 an
event was staged to launch Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture, a
title that marked the city authorities’ embrace of culture-led urban regeneration,
and efforts to characterize Liverpool as a ‘modern cosmopolitan and premier
European city’ (Tessa Jowell, UK Minister for Culture, 2006).
The Capital of Culture launch event combined images of high and contempo-
rary art and transnational popular culture (with Ringo Starr as the headline act),
and was staged against a backdrop of historical architecture and a transforming
cityscape with buildings going up and coming down. The event thus provided a
platform for the demonstration through spectacle of cultural diversity. It posi-
tioned Liverpool at the heart of European and global routes and flows, as open
to a diverse mix of groups and cultures, and thus as an exceptional site of crea-
tivity, multiculturalism and local distinctiveness (images that have something in
common with the Beat City film).15 Yet the similar positioning and branding of
other cities has raised questions about sameness, and concerns about a process of
city cloning somewhat similar to the cloning of the Cavern Club.
Conclusion: landscapes of music and migration

The Cavern case study and the shift of emphasis from the Cavern Club to
Liverpool, provide a basis for some concluding points concerning music, cities
and migration.
First, they suggest that musical migration is a social, cultural and highly medi-
ated process that can also be described in terms of movement and memory.
Migrants take musical influences, instruments and traditions with them as they
travel from one place to another; and, independent of this, music is disseminated
through music and media industries and technologies. Cities have been centrally
positioned along these migratory routes as nodal points within global networks of
trade, industry, transportation and communication technologies, and thus places
that people have commonly travelled to and from and where music and media
businesses have clustered. Stories of these migratory journeys and the events,
places and experiences involved, are also mobile and transportable, and narrated,
performed and disseminated through speech, music, visual and moving images,
and the mass media.
The Cavern journeys and stories point to the active role played by musicians in
the migration and transformation of musical styles. In this respect musicians have
been described as ‘cosmopolitans’: ‘highly mobile and positioned at important
interstices in heterogeneous urban societies, they forge new styles and commu-
nities of taste, negotiating cultural differences through the musical manipula-
tion of symbolic associations’ (Waterman 1990: 9). The Cavern stories provide
examples of musicians encountering US popular music through the mass media
and social interaction, and of their fascination with the newness of the musical
styles involved and the tales of migration they embodied. The stories thus connect
micro-musical journeys and communities to those on a larger, translocal scale, as
well as the musical past and present, and show how musicians took up and trans-
formed musical styles as part of their spatial and biographical journeys.
Finnegan emphasizes the agency of musicians in her classic study of amateur
music-making in the English town of Milton Keynes (1989), in which she
reconceptualized the notion of musical styles as bounded and separate ‘worlds’,
describing them instead as ‘pathways’ forged by musicians. The seminal work
of social theorists such as Appadurai (1996), Gilroy (1993) and Clifford (1992)
moves more explicitly away from fixed and bounded notions of culture, and like-
wise adopts a language of mobility – of travel and flow or ‘scapes’ – to describe
culture in a context of contemporary globalization. As a highly mobile cultural
form, music provides an excellent example of this process. Musicianship is
commonly spoken and written about using metaphors of mobility: musicians go
out on the road and on tour; musical sounds are disseminated around the world by
the music and media industries; and descriptions of those sounds are suffused with
metaphors of movement (Lashua and Cohen 2010).
Although the Cavern stories and journeys are not about migration as such, they
nevertheless suggest that musical migration can be described not just in terms of
unidirectional movement but also in terms of circulation. By being continually
recycled, circulated and shared, migration stories, like the stories of the Cavern,
help to sustain musical cultures and identities and shape geographies of belonging,
involving attachments to particular neighbourhoods, cities and diasporic commu-
nities. Some of these stories may be circulated on a commercial basis for tourism
and place-marketing purposes, as illustrated by the stories that romanticize the
Cavern Club as the origins of the Liverpool Sound and celebrate its Beatles connec-
tion. Like most histories these stories are selectively constructed, connecting music
to particular groups, places and moments and, in doing so, disconnecting it from
others. In addition, migration stories may be connected to a repetition of events
that influences how those events are remembered. Thus musical styles have been
described in terms of regular and repeated circuits of live music performance around
venues in Liverpool, including the Cavern Club, but they are likewise circulated
around cities that have been destinations for particular migrant groups and, subse-
quently, hubs for the transnational production of particular musical styles.16
Yet whilst musical migration can be described in terms of movement, memory
and the agency of musicians, the Cavern journeys and stories highlight constraints
on this process. They illustrate, for example, how musicians’ access to urban space
can be restricted by social, political and legal factors and policing strategies; how
musical memory is hierarchical and contested, hence the dominance of particular
music heritages and the exclusion of others; and how processes of stylistic trans-
formation wrought by musical migration can be described in terms of aesthetic,
social and political strategies (Stokes 2004). Cavern stories were shown to serve
different groups and interests, whether musicians and local community groups,
the tourism and heritage sector, or city authorities concerned to use culture as a
resource for urban regeneration. The celebration and romanticization of popular
music as hybrid flow, and of cities as cosmopolitan and culturally diverse, can
sometimes obscure these complexities and the relations of power involved.
Urban musical migration is thus a political process that involves a politics of
style, mediation and urban space, and is shaped by a wider political economy. Yet
the Cavern case study suggests that musical migration is also a material process,
with material environments playing a central role in how migrating musics are
practised, experienced and interpreted, and that ‘landscape’ could thus be a
useful concept for the study of music, migration and cities. The Cavern journeys
and stories illustrate how musicians interact with material urban environments,
‘scaping’ them out and characterizing them through regular and routine music-
making practices to create shifting musical landscapes. Performance venues
emerge through this process as part of the land and musicians’ physical and meta-
phorical journeys through and across it, but also as sites of collective memory,
mythology and social interaction.
This emphasis on landscapes of movement and memory combines Finnegan’s
‘pathways’ with Appadurai’s description of ‘scapes’ as ‘deeply perspectival
constructs’ and (following Benedict Anderson) ‘the building blocks’ of ‘imag-
ined worlds’ (1996: 33). At the same time, however, the notion of landscape also
suggests a terrain that must be negotiated, where movement and memory are not
necessarily easy or straightforward. Thus the Cavern case study shows not only
how musicians create shifting, multi-layered musical landscapes that characterize
cities, but how those landscapes are in turn characterized by cities. The visual
image of a palimpsest connects these landscapes with the above-mentioned notion
of circulation, suggesting landscapes ‘scaped’ out of the material environment
but then erased and ‘scaped’ over again through repeated journeys, circuits and
stories so that the earlier markings are often still visible. Whilst there may be more
appropriate musical metaphors to describe this process, the palimpsest image
nevertheless conveys a sense of musical landscapes that change over time and are
remembered yet also forgotten, layered and separated yet also interconnected. In
this sense the concept of landscape helps to ‘articulate’ (Hall 1996) the relation-
ship between music, migration and cities.
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Notes
â•‡ 1 The chapter draws on archival and ethnographic research conducted in Liverpool for
a series of research projects, including a two-year project (2007–9) on popular music
and the characterization of urban environments. I would like to thank the Arts and
Humanities Research Council (Landscape and Environment Scheme) for funding that
project; our two project partners, English Heritage and National Museums Liverpool;
and Dr Brett Lashua, who worked with me on the project.
â•‡ 2 These figures are repeated across numerous Beatles-related websites, such as <http://
www.strawberrywalrus.com/cavernclub.html>.
â•‡ 3 A phrase used to refer to the commercial success of British bands in the US during the
mid-1960s.
â•‡ 4 The term ‘journey’ will be used to refer to both literal and metaphorical movement.
â•‡ 5 Websites on the Beatles include those listing every live performance of the band,
such as this site focusing on their performances between 1957 and 1966: <http://www
.wirtschaft.tu-ilmenau.de/~weigmann/1_live.html>.
â•‡ 6 Online <http://www.brianepstein.com/brian2.html> (accessed June 2009).
â•‡ 7 Online <http://www.alwynwturner.com/glitter/real_thing.html> (accessed June 2009).
â•‡ 8 Online <http://prince.org/msg/8/291783> (accessed June 2009).
â•‡ 9 A 1968 report cited by Strachan (2010: 87) notes that many black youths in Liverpool
felt insecure when they moved outside of the Liverpool 8 area, and there was wide-
spread ‘evidence of hostility to [people of] colour in white downtown areas’ of the city.
10 Jimmie Rodgers is one of the best-known performers of early traditional country music.
11 Defined by Laing (2010) as ‘a group or network of venues at which bands or artists play
in sequence’.
12 Such as the South Liverpool church fete where John and Paul first met, the art school
crowd that John belonged to and that attracted George, and the Hamburg period that
offered intensive training in live music performance.
13 From a videoed interview displayed as part of The Beat Goes On exhibition at Liverpool
World Museum (July 2008 to November 2009).
14 For accounts of long-standing racism in Liverpool see Small (1991), Meegan (1995:
73), Parkinson (1985: 15) and Gifford et al. (1989: 82).
15 A subsequent series of music events took place throughout the year, including major
events, such as the Paul McCartney concert which was broadcast across the world, but
also smaller-scale events promoting stories of other local groups and styles, including
country and doo-wop.
16 Thus Jamaica, London and New York have been centrally positioned within the jour-
neys and development of reggae music (Connell and Gibson 2003: 181), whilst New
York also emerged as a centre for the production of salsa through the circulation of
musical styles and influences within a pan-American context.
Index
access 131, 134, 162, 165, 247 BBC World Service 132–3, 155, 165, 181,
adults 113, 117, 118, 120, 123 189
Afghanistan 132–3, 180–1, 190 Beatles, The 236, 237, 240, 241f
African music 4–5, 158 bebop 204, 206, 208, 214
agency 76–7, 235, 247 Benjamin, W. 31
Ait Abbou (Morocco) 40 Bennett, A. 80, 87
Akin, Fatih: Gegen die Wand/Duvara Bennett, Tony: If I Ruled the World: Songs
Karşı 32 for the Jet Set 118
Algeria 28, 44 Berbers 42, 46–7
All-India Radio 141 Berland, Jody 165, 173
alterity 7, 12, 73 Bilan, E. 96, 107
Anthropology Through the Looking Glass Bineshpajooh, Shahkar 99
30 Bisso na Bisso: Racines (Roots) 57
Appadurai, A. 12, 38, 59, 114 Black Atlantic 31, 59
appropriation 7, 21, 75, 76 Blue Moment, The 150–1
aptness 73–5 Bombay Bronx 218–19, 221–3, 231
Arab music 28, 41–2 Bôscoli, Ronaldo: ‘O Barquinho’ 114
Asian Dub Foundation 224 bossa nova: Brazil 113; France 118–23;
Asian musicians 223–4 Girl from Rio, The 122–3; globalization
Asian Underground 224, 225, 226, 231 73, 116–17, 124; ‘O Barquinho’ 114
attitudes 81–2, 180 Braudel, F. 30
audience: Afghanistan 181; Asian Brazil 75, 112, 113, 114, 121–2, 123
musicians 225; cities 199; country music Brazilian Cocktails 117–18
239; hip-hop 226; jazz 208–9; Ports Breyley, G. 97, 105
of Call 171–3, 176; Studio 7 182, 192; British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Zamzama 192 133, 165
authenticity: Asian musicians 220; Asian Bruun, S.: Jee jee jee: Suomalaisen rockin
Underground 226; bossa nova 115; historia 84
dance 22; dancers 55; danse afro 61–6,
67; ghettoes 61; hip-hop 227, 228; capitalism 123, 165–6
innovation 66; London Asian music 219, Cauchi, Andrew: Lilek Biss 34
229–31; national identity 86; New York Cavern Club: Chants, The 238; decline
City 209; ‘O Barquinho’ 116; rap 78; 245; importance 241–2; Liverpool
urban music 198; voice 172–3 198–9, 235, 240; memory 243; racism
authority 61–6, 199 244; Walters, Hank 239
Ay, Mehmet Emin 23; Nur’ül Hüda 32 censorship 74, 88, 99
Chambers, Iain: Mediterranean Crossings:
Baker, Geoffrey 86, 94 The Politics of an Interrupted Modernity
Barouh, Pierre 121–2; Samba Saravah 30
120–1; Un homme et une femme 115, Chants, The 238–9, 240, 241f, 244, 245
123; Vivre pour vivre 115–16 church choirs 139, 143
BBC Empire Service 135–6 cities 197, 198–9, 201, 235, 246, 248
252â•… Index
civil society 13, 96, 106, 181 Indian 142; Iranian 96; London Asian
Clark, Beresford 135–6 music 218; mobility 129; music 39;
collaboration 59, 98–9, 210, 214, 215 music genres 92; youth culture 220
Collyer, M. 38–9 digital media 40, 49, 50, 214
colonialism 10, 136–7, 171 Dis l’heure d’afro-zouk 58
commissioning 173–4 Dis l’heure de zouk (‘Zouk dealer’ or ‘It’s
commodification 223, 231 zouk time’) 58
communications 26, 40, 46–7, 190 Dis-Orienting Rhythms 31
Communist Manifesto, The 3 diversity 147, 166, 222, 246
communities: country music 239; migrants Dom 219, 221–3, 227
31; music 92, 146; radio 166, 173; Draksler, Kaja 213–15
technology 46–7, 49 Droit Chemin 58–9
connections 1, 25, 45 Dumitriu, George 202, 212–13
consumption: adults 112–13; bossa nova Dusty Road Ramblers 240, 241f, 244
120; globalization 92, 119; London
Asian music 223; music 25, 38, 45–6, eclecticism 213, 215
48; patterns 59; as resistance 95; world economy 157–8
music 117–18 ‘Ekhtelaf (Inja Tehrane)’ (‘Difference
control 5, 95, 107 (This is Tehran)’) 100
cosmopolitanism: cities 199–200; ‘Eläinrääkkäystä’ (‘Cruelty to Animals’)
democracy 133; good-enough 153, 159, 78
163; music 118, 151–2, 162; Netherlands, Elling, R. C. 99, 103
The 211; Ports of Call 176–7 encounters 131, 151, 160–1, 201, 223
Costello, Daniel Rae 143 Epstein, Brian 237
country music 199, 236, 237, 239 ethnicity 78, 220, 236
coupé-décalé 22, 56–7, 58, 59 Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the Musical
creativity 180, 209–10, 235 Construction of Place 45
cultural identities 59–60 ethnomusicology 30, 93, 150, 180
cultural industries 4, 76 Europe: culture 246; jazz 197–8, 203,
cultural politics 34–5 209–10, 211; jazz collaborations
cultural power 10 214–15; multiculturalism 1; music 3
cultural practices: Afghanistan 133; danse European Movement Jazz Orchestra
afro 66; Finland 80; migrants 30, 56; 214–15
music 14; preservation 7 European music 136, 140
culture: cities 245–6; coolness 228; Exon, Frank 136
cosmopolitanism 133; ghettoes 107; experiences 21, 39, 162, 242
globalization 177; Morocco 43; music
181; politics 42; Ports of Call 171; Fabrice 55, 64
urban regeneration 247 Fairley, Jan: Ports of Call 165
curriculum 210–11 Farson, Daniel: Beat City 236
feedback 173–6
Daara J Family 1, 2, 3 Fiji: Bollywood music 145; church
Damn The Band (DTB) 81 choirs 143; Fiji Arts Club Choir 143;
dance 22, 57, 81 Fiji Broadcasting Co. Ltd 136; Fiji
danse afro 22, 55, 61–6 Broadcasting Commission 141; Fiji
‘Dasta Bala’ (‘Hands Up’) 96 Broadcasting Corporation Ltd 144;
Deev: ‘Dasta Bala’ (‘Hands Up’) 96 migration 131; music 137–9; radio 130,
Denselow, Robin 154–9, 161; Guardian, 135–6, 140–1
The 1; When the Music’s Over: The Finland 74–5, 78, 79–81, 84–5, 86–7
Story of Political Pop 152 Fintelligens: ‘Voittamaton’ (‘Unbeatable’) 78
devotional music: Ay, Mehmet Emin 32; France 55, 58, 118–23, 158
blessings 23; hymns 137, 145; Lilek Biss Franco, Jess: Girl from Rio, The 122–3
34; Ramayana 138; Taliban 181 Frith, S. 39, 49, 220
diaspora: Afghanistan 133, 181, 192–3;
African music 10; Asian Underground Gegen die Wand/Duvara Karşı 32
227; Bombay Bronx 222–3; cultural genre 2, 3, 39 see also music genres
practices 59; Fiji 136, 146; identity 247; geography 11, 169–71, 244
Indexâ•… 253
Germany 32, 184 musicians 220; construction 38, 48;

ghettoes 60, 61, 74, 103, 107 ethnicity 78; hip-hop 225–6; Liverpool
Gholami, M. 96, 107 242; London Asian music 223–9;
Gillett, Charlie: Making Tracks 152; migrants 4, 31, 49, 247; migration 35;
mediation 161; Migrating Media multiple 39, 46, 47; music 92, 146, 219;
conference 150; Sound of the City, The music genres 83; musicians 215; Nass
152–3; world music 154–9; World on 3 el Ghiwane 42; national 86, 88; politics
160 229, 231; rap 93; reconfiguration 94;
Gilroy, Paul 220; Black Atlantic 31, 59 Sipiagin, Alex 208; urban music 198
Gimbel, Norman: Un homme et une femme If I Ruled the World: Songs for the Jet Set
119 118
Girl from Rio, The 122–3 Île-de-France 55
Glamorous Chicks 56, 62, 63–5 imaginaries 22–4
Glass House, The 100–6, 107 immigrants 44, 56, 58, 239
Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside immigration 1, 13, 14, 32, 58, 89
the USA 93 Indian music 137–9
Global Pop 7 indigenous communities 6, 74
globalization: bossa nova 73, 112, 124; innovation 11, 22, 66, 236
capitalism 165–6; consumption 92, 119; instruments 1, 3–4, 8–9
culture 177; hip-hop 93, 228; identity interaction 145, 182
94; jazz networks 203–5; labour 29; Internet 57, 95–6, 98–9, 129, 145
mobility 12, 114; music 3, 59, 113; intimacy 26
music migration 5; ‘O Barquinho’ 116, Ipupa, Fally: Droit Chemin 58–9
123; religion 21; world music 157 Iran 94–100, 108
Godsell, Philip 7–8; Winnipeg Tribune 6 iskelmä 83
Groningen 197, 202, 216 Islam 31–2, 95
Gross, J. 44, 93 It’s All Love 58
Guanavou, Yaminiasi 130, 139–40
Jamaica 9, 10, 11
Hall, Stuart 220, 223, 231 Jangale Asfalt (The Asphalt Jungle) 98
Hausmylly 81, 83 jazz: bossa nova 117; Cavern Club 235–6;
Herzfeld, Michael 221; Anthropology Europe 197–8; Fiji 140; Finland 83;
Through the Looking Glass 30 France 150–1; Netherlands, The 205–6;
Hichkas: ‘Ekhtelaf (Inja Tehrane)’ New York City 197, 202; Sipiagin, Alex
(‘Difference (This is Tehran)’) 100; 206–10
hip-hop 106; Jangale Asfalt (The Jee jee jee: Suomalaisen rockin historia
Asphalt Jungle) 98; ‘Tripe Ma’ (‘Our 84, 85
Everyday’) 98; ‘Ye Mosht Sarbaz’ Jobim, Antonio Carlos: Brazilian Cocktails
(‘Bunch of Soldiers’) 98 118
hip-hop: Asian musicians 224; audience Jones, Jack: Without You 119–20
226; authenticity 227; Bombay Bronx Jones, Tamiko: Man and a Woman, A 115
225–6; Cuba 94; cultural practices 80; Jordan 55, 62–3, 64, 66
Daara J Family 1; Fiji 142–3; ghettoes
103; Iran 96–100, 108; Koli 100–6; Kassovitz, Matthieu: La Haine 60
London Asian music 218; mobility 92; Kaye, Buddy: ‘Little Boat’ 114–15
mockery 83; politics 107; popularity Kaysha 59; It’s All Love 58
104–5; Racines (Roots) 58; suomirap 84 Khushal 182–5
historiography 81, 89, 112 Koli 97, 100–6
history 3–5, 79 Kusela, Jean-Pierre: ‘Saattokeikka rap’
History of Finnish Music 84 (‘Escort job rap’) 83
humour 78, 82, 86, 88
Hutnyk, J. 223; Dis-Orienting Rhythms 31 La Haine 60
hybridization 113, 116, 123, 158–9, 220, 223 Lai, Francis: Un homme et une femme 115,
hymns 137, 139, 145 123; Valley of the Dolls 122; Vivre pour
vivre 115–16, 118
icons 24, 122 landscapes 242–3, 244, 248
identity: Afghan diaspora 181; Asian language 42, 76
254â•… Index
legitimacy 203–4, 207, 229 146; musical reshaping 73; musicians

Lelouche, Claude: Man and a Woman, A 120 1; racism 31; resentment 29; social
letters as feedback 174–5 imaginaries 25–6; soundscapes 24, 29
Lilek Biss 34 Migrating Media conference 150
Lindfors, J.: Jee jee jee: Suomalaisen migration: from Afghanistan 181; cities
rockin historia 84 235; fears 14; from Fiji 142; geography
Liverpool: Cavern Club 198–9, 235, 240; 11; jazz 203–5; labour 60; to Liverpool
Chants, The 238; Dusty Road Ramblers 237; Malta 29; mediation 246; mimesis
239; European Capital of Culture 2008 6–8; music 236, 244–6; popular music 150
246; Liverpool Sound 236; music styles Mikkonen, Jani 81, 85, 87
242; rock ’n’ roll 237; songs 243; urban mimesis 2, 6–8, 17n4, 73, 76–7, 200
restructuring 245–6 Mimesis and Alterity 7
London Asian music 218, 221–3, 228, Mintoff, Dom (Prime Minister, Malta) 28,
229–31 29
loyalty 61, 66 Mitchell, T. 87; Global Noise: Rap and
Luoto, S.: Jee jee jee: Suomalaisen rockin Hip-Hop Outside the USA 93
historia 84 mobility: bossa nova 119; culture 247;
diaspora 129; globalization 12, 114;
Ma 6-T va crack-er 60 hip-hop 92; jazz 205, 216; migration 151
‘Ma Mard Nistim, To Zan Bash’ (‘We are modernity 117, 118, 123, 125n3, 180–1
Not Men, You be Women’) 104 modernization 113
Madadi, Abdul Wahab 186–8 Mohamed 38, 39, 40–8
Maghrebi students 43, 44, 48 Monavvary, N. 96, 107
Magic System 56, 57–8 Morocco 23, 38
Making Tracks 152 movement 2, 240–3
Malta 28, 29, 33f, 34 Mowlaei, Mohammad Mehdi 97
‘Man and a Woman, A’ 115, 119, 120, 122–3 multiculturalism: Finland 80, 85, 86–7;
Mann and a Woman, A 115 immigration 1; London Asian music 222;
Mann, Herbie: Mann and a Woman, A 115 migrants 31; popular music 144; rap 78
Mariamou 63–5 Murti, Krishna 130, 139
Marsalis, Wynton 204, 205 music: Afghanistan 180–1; circulation 192;
Marx, Karl: Communist Manifesto, The 3 communism 181; cosmopolitanism 118;
mass mediation 14, 26, 34, 94–6, 198 Fiji 146; Finland 80; homogenization
MC Kemppainen: ‘Rappilan hätävara’ 83 7; indigenous communities 6, 8; Iran
MC Nikke T. 81, 83 95; migrants 92, 246; migration 168–9;
McMurray, D. 44, 93 politics 193, 244; styles 1; translations
media: adults 123; Cavern Club 235; 8–11
digital 40; Fiji 140; formats 45, 48; jazz music genres: Andalusi 28; bebop 204, 206,
203, 205; music 2, 44, 113–14, 129, 208, 214; Berbers 47; chaabi fassi 42;
134; radio 41; resources 146–7 church choirs 143; cities 197; country
mediation: contemporary forms 4; music 199, 236, 239; coupé-décalé 22,
Gillett, Charlie 161; jazz 204; mass 3; 56–7, 58; doo-wop 238; encounters
migration 130–1, 246; music 2, 38, 134; 161; gnawa 42; hip-hop 96–100, 109n1,
technology 26; world music 132 142–3, 218, 227; hymns 145; Indian
Mediterranean 30 music 137–9; iskelmä 83; jazz 83,
Mediterranean Crossings: The Politics of 203–5, 235–6; meke 137, 139, 143, 145;
an Interrupted Modernity 30 migration 146; n’dombolo 22, 58; R & B
meke 137, 139, 143, 145 218, 238; raï 21–2, 23, 43–4; Ramayana
memory 39, 240–3 138, 142, 145; rap 1–2, 74, 142–3; rock
Menescal, Roberto: ‘O Barquinho’ 114 ’n’ roll 83, 236; sharqi 47; suomirap 78,
Mentor 226 84; suomirock 83; urban music 41, 198;
migrants: BBC World Service 165; cities world music 154–9; zouk 57
201; devotional music 138; experiences music history 30
21; identity 247; imaginaries 22–3; music migration 248
increased numbers 4; intimacy 26; music styles 242
Malta 29; mediation 2; music 246; music traditions 142
music consumption 38; music genres musical culture 31–2
Indexâ•… 255
musical genres 7 popular music: Afghanistan 180, 185;

musical practices 31 cosmopolitanism 152; cross-cultural
musicians: agency 235; cities 197; 143–4; Fiji 140, 142; historiography
collaboration 59; memory 240–3; 112; Iran 94–6; Liverpool 246;
migration 203; New York City 207–8; migration 150; regeneration 247; Steve
paperwork 1; routes in Liverpool 241f Allen Show, The 112
Musil, Robert 151 popularity 104–5
musique afro 23, 55, 56–60 portable media 129
Ports of Call: audience 171–3;
Najafi, Shahin: ‘Ma Mard Nistim, To commissioning 168; cosmopolitanism
Zan Bash’ (‘We are Not Men, You be 176–7; ethos 167; Fairley, Jan 165;
Women’) 104 feedback 173–6; geographic linking
Nass el Ghiwane 23, 42–3, 47–8 169–71; source material 168–9
National Front (France) 60 post-colonialism 79–81
Nav 225, 226 power 73, 76–7, 89, 146, 200, 247
n’dombolo 22, 58, 59, 68n6 ‘Premier Gaou’ 56
Nelki, Gordon 152–3 prestige 55, 61, 65, 66
Netherlands, The 205–6 Prévos, André J. M. 86
networks 203–5 Prins Claus Conservatoire 202–3, 206
New York City: audience 209; Dumitriu, pronunciation 175–6
George 212; importance 215; jazz 197, public spaces 21, 22–4, 26, 32
204–5, 211; Sipiagin, Alex 207–8 public spheres 130–1
New York Comes to Groningen 202–3,
210–11 Qassemi, Wahid 186–8
Nihal: Asian Underground 224; Bombay
Bronx 219, 221–3; creativity 222; hip-hop R & B 11, 198, 218, 238
226; legitimacy 229; Riz MC 230 Racines (Roots) 57
Notting Hill Arts Club 218–19, 221 racism 31, 44, 60, 93, 244
Nur’ül Hüda 32 radio: access 165; Afghanistan 180–1;
communities 166; feedback 173; Fiji
‘O Barquinho’ 114, 116, 123 130, 135–6, 147; importance 144–5;
Olomide, Koffi: Quartier Latin 58 jazz 203; media 41; mobile telephones
Omid-e Mehr project 100–6 190; music 129; popular music 142;
pronunciation 175–6; rock ’n’ roll 237;
Pääkköset 81, 84; ‘Eläinrääkkäystä’ world music 155
(‘Cruelty to Animals’) 78 Radio Australia 141
pageant 33f Radio Fiji 140–1, 144
Pahlavi, Shah Mohammad Reza (Shah, Radio Kabul 180, 188
Iran) 95 Radio Pakistan 141
Paris 22, 43 raï 21–2, 23, 43–4, 48
parody 86–9 Ramayana 138, 142, 145
Passi: Dis l’heure d’afro-zouk 58; Dis rap: Fiji 142–3; Finland 74–5, 78; German-
l’heure de zouk (‘Zouk dealer’ or ‘It’s Turkish 32; humour 86, 87; Iran 99;
zouk time’) 58; Racines (Roots) 57–8 Iranian 74; London 198; mockery 83;
perception 159–60 music genres 1–2; parody 87–8; racism
performances 3, 240–1, 243 93; Turkey 94; women 101
performers 181, 198 ‘Rappilan hätävara’ 83
permits 99, 103 Raptori 81, 84
Perrachi, Leo: Brazilian Cocktails 117–18 realness 56, 60–2, 229–31
Pieterse, J. N. 113 reflexivity 73–5
politics: Asian Underground 226–7; refugees 4, 29
civil society 13; Fiji 141–2; hip-hop regulation 17n4, 74
107; identity 229, 231; landscapes relationships 46–7, 73, 89, 124
244; language 42; mediation 132–4; religion 21, 31, 34
multiculturalism 144; music 193; Ports religious music 21, 29
of Call 171; social comment 96; urban resistance 219–20
music 247–8 resources 146–7
256â•… Index
Reveal 100 technology: access 134; availability 107;

Richet, Jean-François: Ma 6-T va crack-er colonialism 8; communications 26,
60 123–4; coupé-décalé 57; development
Rio de Janeiro 116–17 4, 48–9; Fiji 142; Internet 96; media
Riz MC 227, 229–30 144; mediation 2, 92; music 2, 39, 147;
rock ’n’ roll: Cavern Club 236; radio 135, 166; reproduction 5; satellite
infantilization 83; Iran 97; Liverpool television 96; transformations 22
237; rap 85; ska 9; translations 11; youth Teepe, Joris 206; New York Comes to
culture 112, 117 Groningen 210–11
Rouicha, Mohamed 40 Tehran 74, 93, 99–100
Rumba 82 therapy 100–6
Russia 206–7 transculturation 113
transformations 22
‘Saattokeikka rap’ (‘Escort job rap’) 83 translations 2, 8–11, 73, 74, 75–6, 77
Sabori, Amir Jan 187–8 ‘Tripe Ma’ (‘Our Everyday’) 98
Sakata, Lorraine 180 Turkey 31–2, 33
Salo, M.: Jee jee jee: Suomalaisen rockin
historia 84 Un homme et une femme (A Man and a
Samba Saravah 120–1 Woman) 115, 120, 123
Sarmast, Dr Abdul Naser 186–8 urban music 198, 218, 228, 240–3, 247–8
satellite television 96 urban restructuring 245–6
Senegal 1, 3 urban space 244–5, 247
Sharma, A.: Dis-Orienting Rhythms 31
Sharma, S. 223; Dis-Orienting Rhythms 31 Valley of the Dolls 122
Sipiagin, Alex 206–10 venues 241
ska 9, 10 VIPs 56, 62–3, 64, 66
social class 97, 106 Vivre pour vivre 115–16, 118
social comment 96, 99, 107 voice 171–3
social imaginaries 22–3, 131, 132 Voice of America 141, 206
social interactions 24–5 Voice of Egypt 40
Solomon, T. 94 ‘Voittamaton’ (‘Unbeatable’) 78
song network 114, 115, 116, 122
songs 113, 187–8, 243 Walters, Hank 239, 240, 241f, 245
Sound of the City, The 152 war 181, 188, 193
Soundi 82 Watts, E. K. 228
soundscapes 24, 29, 33–4 When the Music’s Over: The Story of
South Pacific 137 Political Pop 152–3
Staff Benda Bilili 160–1 Williams, Richard: Blue Moment, The 150–1
Star Club (Hamburg) 236 Without You 119–20
status 61–2, 63, 66, 88, 95, 106 women 101, 188–90, 192
Steve Allen Show, The 112 world music: consumption 117–18;
Stokes, Martin 39, 49; Ethnicity, Identity cosmopolitanism 152; Denselow, Robin
and Music: the Musical Construction of 153; discussion 153–9; Gillett, Charlie
Place 45 152; Mann, Herbie 115; mediation 132;
structure 76–7 migration 131; origins 156
Studio 7 133, 182–8, 191–2
styles 1, 2 ‘Ye Mosht Sarbaz’ (‘Bunch of Soldiers’) 98
suomirap 78, 81, 83–4, 88 young people 59–60
suomirock 83 Yousouf, Amina 132–3
Swedenburg, T. 44, 93 Yousouf, Haroon 132–3, 182–8
youth culture 117, 219–20, 231
Taliban 181, 189 YouTube 45
Tamba Trio 114
Taussig, Michael 11, 73; Mimesis and Zamzama 133, 188–90
Alterity 7 Żebbuġ (Malta) 33–4
Taylor, Timothy: Global Pop 7 zouk 57, 68n4

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Migrating Music

Jason Toynbee is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies in the Department of

Editorial Advisory Board

Series titles include:

Culture, Class, Distinction (2009)

Material Powers (2010)

The Social after Gabriel Tarde (2010)

Milk, Modernity and the Making of the Human (2010)

Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy (2010)

Creative Labour – Media Work in Three Cultural Industries (2010)

Migrating Music (2011)

Inventive Methods (forthcoming)

Rio de Janeiro (forthcoming)

Edited by Jason Toynbee

ISBN 0-203-84175-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN: 978-0-415-59448-6 (hbk)

List of contributors xii

â•⁄ 1 Migrating music 1

â•⁄ 2 Migrant/migrating music and the Mediterranean 28

â•⁄ 3 ‘My own little Morocco at home’: a biographical account

â•⁄ 4 ‘Realness’: authenticity, innovation and prestige among

â•⁄ 5 Ridiculing rap, funlandizing Finns? Humour and parody

â•⁄ 6 Hip-hop Tehran: migrating styles, musical meanings,

â•⁄ 7 Un voyage via barquinho: global circulation, musical

â•⁄ 9 Migrating music and good-enough cosmopolitanism:

10 Ports of Call: an ethnographic analysis of music

11 Music, migration and war: the BBC’s interactive music

12 ‘New York Comes to Groningen’: jazz star circuits in the

13 ‘Keepin’ it real’: Bombay Bronx, cultural producers and

14 Cavern journeys: music, migration and urban space 235

John Baily is Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths College,

culture industries, and normative notions of gender and race in performance

Daara J Family. Interviewed by Newsweek, Faada Freddy, one of the founding

Political economy and history

of slaves transported in the Middle Passage, has become a kind of ‘primary’

Migration and mimesis

homogenization, a process sometimes lamented as Westernization or cultural

cases the copy undergoes further transformations and developments in response

1 The plucked ud is brought to Spain by invading Muslims;

important than the work of maintaining a relationship of emulation with African-

Why migrating music now?

knowledge. Following pitched battles in the social sciences and humanities, a

Berlant, L. (2008) The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in

Imaginaries, public spaces, and social intimacy

To Naples one might add, surveying recent literature,4 Marseille, Barcelona,

Stokes, M. (forthcoming) ‘New Islamist Popular Culture in Turkey’, in K. Salhi (ed.),

YouTube has become my window on Morocco and listening to music is an impor-

Music is central to the diasporic experience, linking homeland and here-land

As Mohamed talked to me about the music he has consumed, how he has

pan-Maghrebi identity whilst also negotiating the complex socio-political situ-

The first migration: from village to medina

What I remember vividly as a child is my mother, weaving her magic carpet9

I remember certain things vividly. For example on Fridays I used to go to my

embodied and therefore somehow connected them (and Morocco as a country)

I remember people listening to Cairo and Damascus. There was so much

The hints of ambivalence in Mohamed’s account of ‘propaganda’ point to a

The second migration: from Fez to France

Migrating to the present: moving to London and the

No longer determined by what he can find in the Parisian or Moroccan market

As Mohamed’s understanding and appreciation of many of the genres of

By choosing to listen to this type of music in his adulthood, Mohamed is able

Nass el Ghiwane, as discussed above, are iconic of multiple Moroccan identi-