Cape Breton, Canada, 1-5 August 2018

POSTPONED TO 2019! Exact new dates will be announced in due course.

Migration and mobility are increasingly matters of widespread public concern, particularly in light of recent refugee crises, starkly changing economic realities for migrant workers, and quickly intensifying challenges facing immigrants both documented and undocumented. This ICTM Colloquium will create a space for scholarly dialogue on the musical dynamics of migration and encounter in communities around the world. The Colloquium will focus on songs and musical practices that are often part of the experiences of migration, whether through narrativizing, memorializing, or as a mode of expression, social interaction, knowledge-sharing, or otherwise. Rather than attend solely to recent transnational movements of people and music cultures, we also aim to learn about the role and experiences of indigenous groups as well as migrant and settler groups, as part of a broader context of mobility and migration.

Some questions we will engage include: To what extent are musical subjectivities constituted by and constitutive of creative worlds in motion? In what ways does migration shape compositional strategies and musical senses of place? How do mobility systems––from pathways, to waterways, to railways, to roadways––enable or constrain musical agency? What are the influences of migration on musical imaginaries, relations, practices and lived experience? How does musical (or sound) praxis/life/activity shape the social life and experience of migration? In which ways music affects relationships between those who move and those who are left, or choose to remain, behind? In the process of problematizing the interplay of mobilities and musical life (and livelihoods), we also aim to bring intersections of post-colonial and globalization theory into focus.

ICTM Colloquia are small-scale scholarly gatherings based on invitation. The speakers are ICTM members and selected guests who have conducted research on the Colloquium's theme. All activities of the Colloquium will take place, pending approval of funding.

Colloquium Committee: Kaley Mason (Lewis and Clark College), Marcia Ostashewski (Centre for Sound Communities, Cape Breton University), Svanibor Pettan (University of Ljubljana).

Keynote lecturer: Beverley Diamond.

The Colloquium will be complemented by several events involving local communities and resources in the week prior to and during the Colloquium. Information about the Colloquium and related events can be found on the projects pages of the website of the Centre for Sound Communities at Cape Breton University, or by contacting Local Arrangements via email.

Website: soundcommunities.org
Email: marcia_ostashewski@cbu.ca
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