Music and Displacement

Levi (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London, UK) and Scheding (Univ. of Southampton, UK) present essays that explore issues and questions brought about by the unwilling, sometimes violent, dislocation of people or peoples. Music lends itself to such study, perhaps because of its temporal, ephemeral nature. Ethnomusicology has long been the domain for studying the Other but primarily as related to location. Many of the essays in this book turn the tables on that Otherness, locating it not in a geographical place but instead in the displaced person or persons, who become that Other in dislocation. Though the issues the book raises originate in a music context, they reveal a great deal about migration, dislocation, and acculturation. The editors include considerations of the effect of the Nazi stigmatization and exile of Jews, the struggle of displaced philosopher Theodore Adorno to define German-ness and his subsequent renunciation of the absolute, the equating of the mind/body dichotomy with the contrast of music (mental) and dance (physical), and "displacement" of a musical work through arrangements for other instruments. This collection raises timely questions not previously examined, questions relevant to the study of music and to the study of an increasingly mobile, diverse, 21st-century society. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
The book offers a useful investigation of some of the various techniques by which scholars might consider the significant effects of displacement in the history of music....The contrasting tales of displacement and scope of methodological approaches introduced in Samson’s essay serve appropriately as a suggestive conclusion to a book that promises to introduce readers to this important and growing field of musicological inquiry. * Notes: Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association *
Eric Levi and Florian Scheding have delivered a significant contribution to the burgeoning literature on the relationship of music to place and displacement, particularly with regard to the exiled composer. Published in the Europea: Ethnomusicologies and Modernities series by Scarecrow Press, the book is salutary because it juxtaposes authors with a broad range of expertise. ... [T]his book presents timely and insightful topics that need to be addressed. . . it will no doubt become standard reading for many of us. * CAML Review *
[M]any of the themes introduced by this book deserve to be at the very heart of contemporary musicology. * Music & Letters *