Roundtable: Music and Belonging – Potentials, Challenges, and Preliminary Conclusions

 

In this roundtable, the ethnomusicologists Juniper Hill, Ulrike Präger and Britta Sweers are invited to a conference round-up discussion. Based on their own research experiences and perspectives each discussant will present a short input regarding the potentials and challenges of the perspective of belonging/s in music studies in general, and in music and migration studies in particular. Taking these inputs as a starting point, the following discussion will particularly review questions and aspects that arose throughout the two days of conference.

 

Britta Sweers: Diaspora and Belonging: Contradictions and Challenges

Britta Sweers is Professor of Cultural Anthropology of Music at the Institute of Musicology (since 2009) and was Director of the Center for Global Studies (2016-2020) at the University of Bern (Switzerland). She was president of the European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (2014-2021) and is currently president of the Swiss Ethnomusicological ICTM branch CH-EM. Besides the transformation of traditional musics in a global context or music and nationalism, her research has been focused on soundscape research. This included SNF-founded projects, such as City Sonic Ecology and Sound, Density and the Environment, as well as publications like Climate Chance, Music, and the North (ed.; 2019). Sweers is co-editor of the European Journal of Musicology and of the Equinox book series Transcultural Music Studies.

 

Juniper Hill: Challenges and Connections: Diverse Experiences of Post-Migrant Musicians in Germany

Juniper Hill is an alumna of Wesleyan University (1998) and UCLA (2001, 2005). Her publications include the books The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (OUP 2014) and Becoming Creative: Insights from Musicians in a Diverse World (OUP 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters exploring the transformation of traditional musics, the development of creativity, and intercultural dynamics. On these topics, Juniper has conducted field research in Germany, South Africa, Finland, the US, and Ecuador. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Volkswagen Foundation, the European Research Council, Fulbright CIES, and Fulbright IIE, among others. She is currently professor and chair of Ethnomusicology at the Institute of Music Research at the University of Würzburg.

 

Ulrike Präger: Belonging and (Non-) Belonging: Rethinking Musical Impact for Migration

Ulrike Präger is Assistant Professor of Music at the University of Louisville. She has also taught at the University of Chicago, the Chicago College of the Performing Arts at Roosevelt University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research lies at the intersections of ethnomusicology, musicology, and migration studies, focusing on how and why sonic phenomena act as nuanced tools for investigating interrelations between mobility, place, sociality, and political expression. In her previous postdoc position at the University of Salzburg, she authored and co-published a compendium titled Handbook Music and Migration: Theories and Methodologies, which was published in German in summer 2023 and in English a couple of weeks ago. She is also currently working on a monograph titled Sounding 21st-Century Post-Migration. Ulrike also performed for decades as a soprano with ensembles in Europe and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Musicology/Ethnomusicology from Boston University and degrees in Voice/Voice Pedagogy from the University Mozarteum Salzburg and Music and Dance Pedagogy from the Mozarteum’s Carl Orff Institute. Ulrike lives in Chicago in a musical household with her 5-year-old son Raphael, who loves to conduct his colored and cut-out paper instruments, and her husband David, a musicologist and trumpeter.