38th European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM) 19-23 September 2023 Antonio Pasqualino International Puppet Museum Palermo – Italy (preliminary program)

Tuesday, September 19

8:30 Arrival and registration

9:00 Opening greetings

  • Massimo Midiri (Rector of the University of Palermo)
  • Francesca Piazza (Director of the Department of Humanities, University of Palermo)
  • Rosario Perricone (Director of the Pasqualino Museum)
  • Ewa Dahlig-Turek (President of the ESEM)

John Blacking Memorial Lecture

Salwa El-Shawan Castelo-Branco

I. Ethnomusicologists today: new challenges in research, methods, and communication

Session 1 – Ewa Dahlig-Turek (Chair)

10:30 Rytis Ambrazevičius (Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania), Ukrainian-Lithuanian ethnomusicological connections and the war

11:00 Tessa Balser-Schuhmann (mdw–Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Wien), A challenge of class? Musical diversity in Western art music concert halls. An example from Vienna. 

11:30 Coffee break

Session 2 – Nico Staiti (Chair)

11:50 Fulvia Caruso (University of Pavia, Italy), Culture in dialogo”. Making a website together as a mean of recalibrating our ethnography and make it more accessible

12:20 Ignazio Macchiarella (University of Cagliari, Italy), Ethnomusicology into question. The case of “a tenore” singing in Sardinia after the Unesco proclamation

12:50 Klisala Harrison (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Pirkko Moisala (Helsinki University, Finland), Approaches to “qilaat” in Greenland: heorizing positionality in ethnomusicology

13:20 Lunch

Session 3 – Ana Hofman (Chair)

15:00 Karin Larsson Eriksson (Linnæus university, Växjö, Sweden), “This collection will be a true representation of folk music from Södermanland”: the publishing of traditional music

15:30 Dan Lundberg (Stockholm University, Sweden), So that this song shall not die

16:00 Thomas Solomon (University of Bergen, Norway), Music and displacement: making sense of a terminological “mess”

16:30 Samuel Weigel (Hannover University of Music Drama and Media, Germany), Digital minyanim: Jewish musical heritage in transeuropean contexts

17:00 Felix Morgenstern (Kunstuniversität Graz, Austria), Performing Irishness in German-speaking Europe: intercultural transactions, nationalism, and “the music itself”

17:30 Coffee break

Session 4 – Ardian Ahmedaja (Chair)

17:50 Mojca Piškor (University of Zagreb, Croatia), Listening at/to the border: on the ethnomusicology of not knowing 

18:20 Oldřich Poděbradský (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic), From fantasy to fantastic folklore: new shifts of Moravian folklore music. The case of Jeden Kmen Collective 

18:50 Stefano Portelli (University of Leicester, UK) and Hélène Sechehaye (Université Libre de Bruxelles/Université Jean Monnet, Saint-Etienne), The “Gnawa Rumi” album: researching Moroccan ritual music in Italy through a collaborative recording

19:30 Sicilian Puppet Show

Compagnia Opera di Pupi Brigliadoro

The siege of Paris

Wednesday, September 20

II. Music, technology, digital revolution

Session 5 – Giovanni Giuriati (Chair)

09:00 Anna Rezaei (University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria), Stories of resistance: toward a political and cultural ambiguity in the social production of space 

09:30 Claudio Rizzoni (Soprintendenza ABAP Genova-La Spezia, Italy) and Elena Musumeci (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Roma, Italy), Historical bells heritage between tangible and intangibile

10:00 Ardian Ahmedaja (Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Wien), “O Salutaris Hostia”: music traditions in religious contexts among Albanians of Roman Catholic faith in Montenegro

10:30 Stéphane Aubinet (Postdoctoral fellow, University of Oslo), Lullabies in the digital era: anthropological perspectives

11:00 Francesca Billeri (SOAS University of London, UK), Mediatization and remediation of Khmer Lakhon Bassac Theatre on television and social media

11:30 Coffee break

Session 6 –  (Chair)

11:50 Shan Du (University of Bologna, Italy), The “Nava Durgā” on social media: auto-representation of the identity through the mediatization of performance

12:10 Marko Kölbl (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria), Nothing about us without us building a virtual community archive

12:40 Abigail C. Lindo (University of Florida, USA), Sonic junk and techno trash: how performances with recycled objects further collective environmental ethos

13:10 Nico Mangifesta (University of Pavia, Italy), Reconsidering the boundaries of sonic dialogue between gamelan and computer music in Monk (2019) by Yan Priya Kumara Janardhana

13:40 Lunch

15:00 PANEL 1

Exiled and re-exiled performance practices from African communities

Coordinator/participant: Gisa Jähnichen (Shanghai Conservatory of Music, China). Participants: Chinthaka P. Meddegoda(University of the Visual and Perfomring Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka), Rastko Jakovljevic (New York Institute of Social Sciences and the Humanities, USA), and Lin Zhi (Putra University, Serdang, Malaysia)

16:40 Coffee break

17:00 PANEL 2

(Not only) For the pandemic. Solutions for the advanced use of traditional music resources

Coordinator/participant: Ewa Dahlig-Turek (Polish Academy of Sciences). Participants: Arleta Nawrocka-Wysocka (Polish Academy of Sciences), Jacek Jackowski (Polish Academy of Sciences), and Ewa Łukasik (Poznań University of Technology)

18:40 ESEM General Assembly

Thursday, September 21

9:00 Guided Tour through Palermo 

19:00 Workshop on Sicilian traditional instruments

20:00 Sicilian traditional supper at the Museum

Friday, September 22

III. Free papers 

Session 7 – Ignazio Macchiarella (Chair)

09:00 Ilaria Meloni (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy), “Wayang #dirumahsaja”: new digital scenarios of Javanese shadow puppet theatre and the urgency of updating research methodologies

09:30 Christopher L. Ballengee (John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland), Choorile and kantráki: Indian Caribbean music in the secondary diaspora in Europe

10:00 Laura Ellestad (University of South-Eastern Norway, Kongsberg), Performing Norwegian American: the construction of identity through interplay with music subcultures and global cultural flows in the Upper Midwest

10:30 Karin Eriksson (University of South-Eastern Norway), Embodying traditions: exploring gendered spaces in traditional dance and music in Norway and Sweden 

11:00 Mats Johansson (University of South-Eastern Norway, Kongsberg), Intonation practices in Scandinavian traditional music: towards an alternative analytical model

11:30 Coffee break

Session 8 – Sergio Bonanzinga (Chair)

11:50 Ian Russell (University of Aberdeen, UK), Humble harmonicas and homely spaces: understanding the performance role of mouth organs, jews harps, and melodeons in North-East Scotland

12:20 Zuzana Jurková (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic), «Leperiben! / Remembering!» Romani musical remembering in today’s Prague 

12:50 Shireen Nabatian (Graduate Student, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA), Translocal networks of Iranian musicians in Istanbul

13:20 Andrew Snyder (Universidade Nova, Lisbon, Portugal), Postcolonial intimacies and citations in the Brazil’s Street Carnival of Lisbon

13:50 Lunch

15:00 PANEL 3

Ethnomusicology in the crossfire: navigating political conflict in ethnomusicological minority research 

Coordinator/participant: Isabel Frey (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria). Participants: Benjy Fox-Rosen, Ursula Hemetek, and Kai Tang (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna)

16:30 Coffee break

16:50 PANEL 4

Womens agency through music: three case studies

Coordinator/participant: Blanche Lacoste (University of Saint-Etienne, France). Participants: Thea Tiramani (University of Pavia, Italy) and Sara Antonini (University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy)

18:00 Films screening

– Hopa lide: an ethnomusicological documentary on (and with) Slovak Romani musicians (50 min extract from original 90 min, 2020) by Petr Nuska (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Borsov and Vltavou)

– Mussem (50 min extract from original 88 min, 2021) by Antonio Baldassarre (Independent researcher, Italy)

Saturday, September 23

9:30 PANEL 5

“What’s the purpose of it?”: locating the ethnomusicologist as a promoter and producer of socio-cultural values and applicability in times of change

Coordinators/participants: Serena Facci and Giuseppe Giordano. Participants: Alberto Annarilli, Eleonora Betti, Francesca Cireddu, Simona D’Agostino, Luciana Manca, and Eustache Ntambwe Makoyo (University of Rome Tor Vergata)

11:15 Coffee break

11:35 PANEL 6

Networking, sharing knowledge, and singing together. Notes from the “Network of UNESCO Cultural Spaces” Erasmus+ Project

Coordinator/participant: Velika Stojkova Serafimovska (Institute for folklore “Marko Cepenkov”, Skopje, Macedonia). Participants: Joško Ćaleta (Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research, Zagreb, Croatia), Marco Lutzu (University of Cagliari, Italy), and Diego Pani (Istituto Superiore Regionale Etnografico, Nuoro, Italy)

13:15 Lunch

15:00 Roundtable

«ECHOFRIENDLY»: developing acoustemological models and ICT tools for soundscape preservation and ecoacoustic quality assessmentCoordinator/participant: Domenico Staiti. Participants: Silvia Bruni, Lorenzo Chiarofonte, and Nicola Renzi (University of Bologna); Ilario Meandri and Camila Degen (University of Turin)

16:30 Film screening

«Solčence zahaja» [The Sun is Setting] (58 min, 2019) by Ana Hofman (Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

17:30 Coffee break

17:50 Film screening

Forging the music: from Ancient World to contemporary Sicilian blacksmiths (about 40 min, 2023) by Sergio Bonanzinga (University of Palermo, Italy)

18:30 Concert

Sound of Sicily