ICTMD 2023- Theme Descriptions

1. Diaspora/Translocality in Music and Dance of Minorities

Minorities are often defined as such within a new context, due to the diaspora of communities that crossed borders. Cultural practices within the community and sustained or new relationships with the motherland (now increasingly via online platforms) produce various forms of translocality, particularly through the performing arts. This theme envisions a discussion of music and dance of minorities in diaspora and the production of translocality considering border-crossings, encounters with the ‘other’, and the cultural homogenization-heterogenization continuum within both the new setting and a global context. How is translocality produced by specific performers and ensembles; how is it maintained (or not) with adaptations to other minorities or dominant groups; how do new hybrid forms and contexts produce translocal performing arts? This theme proposes an exploration, discussion, and perhaps new conceptualization of diaspora and/or translocality for the music and dance of minorities.

2. Theoretical, Methodological, and Governmental Implications for the Study of Music and Dance of Minorities

From its inception, the Study Group pays considerable attention to the continuous refinement of theory and method to enable better understanding of social and political realities of the minorities and to maintain the influence of this specific field of study on contemporary ethnomusicology. Scholarly understanding of minorities is complex and nuanced, based on the awareness of polyvocality within each minority over the issues such as heritage production, ownership negotiation, hybridization, and “cultural defence of borders”. Researchers interact in various ways with the respective governmental bodies, which often view minorities as “clearly delimited groups, each with 'its culture’,” distinctiveness of which should be protected and promoted (Ceribašić 2007). This theme calls for presentations addressing the strategies, existing and envisioned, in accommodating these contrasting views in our work.

3. Music, Dance, and Minorities Across the Indian Ocean

The realm of the world's third largest ocean encompasses 38 countries of Africa, Asia, and Oceania. A long history of maritime contacts in this large and culturally diverse region involves both peaceful activities such as the mutually beneficial trade and armed conquests, some of them leading to centuries of colonial presence of various European nations in the region. The resulting migrations and nation-building processes affected various groups of people nowadays seen as minorities. This theme calls for presentations focused on music and dance-related issues among indigenous, migrant and other minority groups that are at higher risk of discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, race, religion, language, gender, sexual orientation, disability, political opinion, social or economic deprivation across the Indian ocean.

4. (Musical) Differences and Commonalities Between Indigenous Peoples and Minorities

We chose this theme because many Indigenous people are also minorities, but not all minorities are Indigenous. How are these boundaries between minority status and Indigeneity negotiated, changed, performed, and captured through musical practice, dance and related art forms or music and dance education and pedagogy?

5. New Research

We welcome presentations which address new research relevant to Indigenous music and dance and minority concerns.