A survey of the music of a war generation
Thomas Burkhalter
"Various social and cultural scientists1 propagate that research on cultural globalisation and localisation should focus on individuals and their thoughts and ideas, since the latter reflect theoretical concepts such as “identity”, “transnationality” and “hybridity”. My Ph.D. project “Significant Sounds – Beiruti Music between new artistic forms and local, global dependencies” focuses on music, as human ideas and visions are not expressed in words only. Musicians choose local and global forms and styles, sounds and beats to create meaning and to express their connection to different cultural, social and ideological settings. At the same time, music, as individualistic and revolutionary as it might be, is always produced, distributed and discussed within different -scapes (Appadurai 2003) of the outside world. It is produced and distributed in highly contesting finance-scapes between multinational companies, that aim to control global and local cultural markets, and independent networks, that benefit from new possibilities in music production and distribution given by multimedia and communication industries (techno-scapes). Global and local media-scapes influence music production by creating cultural tastes and standards2 and subsequently by constantly reproducing those standards with their choices. Steering happens as well through values and ideologies promoted by local and global governmental and non-governmental institutions and organisations (ideo-scapes) through funding decisions and sometimes censorship. Last but not least, in a country like Lebanon local and global ethno-scapes have an impact on musical creativity: the global world music market and the international funding bodies tend to favour local and transnational music that deals with its Arabic cultural heritage. Many authors have pointed out the concept of difference3 in their writings on cultural dialogue between the “East” and the “West”. Eng (in Shepherd and Wicke 1997: 98) even considers that “the racist love of a foreign country” [the love of difference] is strongly “linked to women and to music.” Inside Lebanon the different cultural representations of the various religious communities – from the popular, synthesised dabkeh songs praising Hezbollah or Amal leaders to the hymns for the Christian Lebanese Forces and Kataeb militias – were always a challenging factor for the national identity in this multi-confessional state. The Lebanese minister for culture, Dr. Tarek Mitri, stated in a conference on “Cultural Diversity”4 that Lebanon, on the one hand, is proud of its cultural diversity, however, on the other side this cultural diversity is a challenge for the national identity. He concluded by saying that the Ministry of Culture aims to build bridges between different artistic expressions. Does this mean that the Lebanese state and its institutions tend to favour artistic forms that melt the cultural diversities of Lebanon into one piece of art, over artistic expressions that focus on extreme positions?5 The creation of a “Lebanese music”, as I shall argue later, seems to underline this assumption. [...]"
http://books.openedition.org/ifpo/550
Photo: Sharif and Christine Sehnaoui, Fabrizio Spera and Mazen Kerbaj (from left to right) at the Irtijal-Festival 2006. By Thomas Burkhalter (www.norient.com)
