Composing Aid (eBook)

Music, Refugees, and Humanitarian Politics

Oliver Shao (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023
216 Seiten
Indiana University Press (Verlag)
9780253067678 (ISBN)

Infos

Composing Aid is unique to the book market for the following reasons: • It humanizes people that have experienced forced migration during a period of increasing xenophobia. • It elucidates the ways forced migrants have drawn on their cultural resources and made claims to rights amidst the debilitating conditions of a long-term refugee camp. • It challenges dominant criteria for evaluating what constitutes a successful musical aid project. • It offers a critical perspective on the benefits, limits, and consequences of arts-based humanitarian interventions. • It offers a provocative rethinking of conventional research methods in ethnomusicology through its focus on activist research.

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Music and arts initiatives are often praised for their capacity to aid in the rehabilitation of refugees. However, it is crucial to recognize that this celebratory view can also mask the unequal power dynamics involved in regulating forced migration.
 
In Composing Aid, Oliver Shao turns a critical ear towards the United Nations-run Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, one of the largest and oldest encampments in the world. This politically engaged ethnography delves into various cultural practices, including hip hop shows, traditional dances, religious ceremonies, and NGO events, in an urbanized borderland area beset with precarity and inequality. How do songs intersect with the politics of belonging in a space controlled by state and humanitarian forces? Why do camp authorities support certain musical activities over others? What can performing artists teach us about the inequities of the international refugee regime?

Offering a provocative contribution to ethnomusicological methods through its focus on activist research, Composing Aid elucidates the powerful role of music and the arts in reproducing, contesting, and reimagining the existing migratory order.

Autor

Oliver Shao is Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Inhalt

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Belonging
After Relief
2. Pleasure
3. Labor
For Protection
4. Immobility
5. Security
6. Peace
Conclusion: Re-Composing Aid
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 12.9.2023
• Reihe/Serie: Activist Encounters in Folklore and Ethnomusicology
• Reihe/Serie: Activist Encounters in Folklore and Ethnomusicology
• Verlagsort: Bloomington
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 150 x 150 mm
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Musiktheorie / Musiklehre
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Pop / Rock
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Schlagworte: activism • belonging • Dance • East Africa • Ethnomusicology • Folklore • forced migration • Hip-Hop • kakuma • Kenya • refugee camps • Religion • Song • Sound
• ISBN-13: 9780253067678 / 9780253067678