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Introduction—Music practices across borders
(E)valuating space, diversity and exchange
Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros
Music practices, understood as activities connected to humanly organized
sound, extend beyond enclosed spaces both physically and metaphorically,
crossing borders of all kinds. When they cross the borders of national states
and create stable networks among musicians, fans, people involved in the
music business, etc., they can be considered transnational. Central to this
concept is the idea that members of this network are embedded in more
than one national state at the same time, combining elements of all of them
to create and experience music. Analyses of transnational music practices
(see, for example, Guilbault 1996; Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011) point to the
importance of the social space created through transnational music prac-
of sounds, performances, ways of listening, involved actors, etc. Interest-
according to the context in which they happen (see, for example, Gaudette
2013). Although the literature describes cases where it applies, we still know
little about the ways in which music practices are valued and evaluated in
transnational contexts. For this reason, we consider it important to gain in-
sight from new developments in the Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation
(SVE) (Lamont 2012) in order to better understand how space, diversity and
exchange are entangled with the valuation and evaluation of transnational
music practices.
Literature on valuation has indicated that the concept of value has sev-
perspectives of value as a verb and thus as a process and value as a noun. As
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros8
a process or verb that allows for several meanings of valuation to emerge.
Dewey makes us aware that valuing might come in the form of prizing, in
the sense of regarding something as precious. In music, this prizing could
be connected to the intrinsic value of the music based on aesthetics or the lis-
tener’s emotions. Valuing can also be used to appraise, which indicates an as-
-
tion is connected to the existence of multiple criteria and categories that are
used to judge and classify objects in comparison to each other. With Lamont,
we understand valuation as practices which give worth or value and evalu-
ation as practices that assess “how an entity attains a certain type of worth.”
(2012: 205) In our approach, we opted to use both concepts in the form of
(e)valuation. Putting the “e” in parentheses—creating “(e)valuation”—indi-
-
ue and evaluation in practice.
Inspired by these ideas, we organized a conference at the University of
Duisburg-Essen in June 2018, entitled (E)valuating Transnational Music Prac-
tices: Spac e, Diversity, and Exchange
-
interdisciplinary, comprising contributions from sociology, history, musi-
-
ume discuss a myriad of coordination modes mobilized by actors involved in
transnational music practices when faced with evaluative processes in dif-
these papers broaden the perspectives of each discipline and contribute to a
better understanding of their main topics in connection to transnationalism,
(e)valuation and music practices.
-
troduction delineates a theoretical framework to shed light on the intersec-
tion of both migration studies and the sociology of valuation and evaluation
practices—and point to its connection to both transnational aspects and (e)
music practices in the literature on migration and globalization before mov-
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 9
part, we present a short case study on the (e)valuat ion of transnational music
practices emerging from the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC).
Music and music practices
can be understood as “sound organized into socially accepted patterns.”
(Blacking 1969: 36) For Blume and Finscher (1994: 1195), “music” originally re-
-
every attempt to grasp music conceptually stresses only those aspects of the
phenomenon that are considered meaningful and noteworthy in this area.
poetic music, situating the phenomenon somewhere between science and
-
sical material) exclusively determines its discursive function. As in popular
music, there is a strong divergence between denotative and discursive func-
set of social, cult ural and aesthetic practices that are communicated through
sound (Wicke 2004: 166). Ethnomusicologists attempt to avoid the Eurocen-
trism inherent in musicology’s concept of music, speaking of musics in plu-
the world (Christensen et al. 1994: 1280). For Keller (2011), this debate reveals
that every culture sets the limits of what their representatives call music in
-
through which tacit (e)valuations become feasible.
We understand practices as “embodied, materially mediated arrays of
human activity centrally organized around shared practical understanding.”
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of music in various contexts and, at the same time, stress its performative
character as “an actual phenomenon generated by instruments, machines,
hands and actions.” (Hennion 2001: 2) As practices constitute social relation-
ships (cf. Swidler 2005: 95), music practices have to be understood as emerg-
ing within interactions. Music is created, can be played, heard, danced to,
recorded and discarded, thereby attaching or detaching people and creating
social realities. In this sense, music practices have intrinsic cognitive and
emotional dimensions (cf. Acord/Denora 2008: 230) which cannot be con-
when a subwoofer vibrates through every muscle and “smelled” when the
sweating festival crowd rocks.
Moreover, notions of origin or ancestry, ideas of the sacred, certain plac-
es, political claims, aesthetic norms or economic exchange create compound
-
evolves. It follows that music practices may interconnect people in new ways,
create new relations bet ween physical and virtual spaces, or even create new
kinds of spaces themselves. In this process, boundaries between genres and
categories are spanned, raising questions about belonging and distinction,
as Haworth (2016) demonstrates in the analysis of the category Computer
Music at the Prix Ars Electronica festival. Concerns about the local or global
status of music pract ices also emerge, expounding on the problem of borders,
2014). While occupying a marginal position in the American music market,
they have managed to become popular musicians in South Korea through
capital across borders in physical and virtual spaces leads to the emergence
of transnational spaces, formed by the interlocking of these movements
and shaped by national states which, in turn, cannot contain them (cf. Glick
Schiller 2010; Pries 2013). Music practices that cross borders are thus embed-
one of them.
or collective worry with the good “shapes the evaluative process governing
-
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 11
ceptions of good in order to rank people and things in their practices when
engaging with their material environment. In turn, this environment re-
that keeps life going. Applying this approach to the case of music, according
to actors’ preoccupation with “good music”, music practices gain meaning,
are rehearsed and brought to perfection, may be forgotten or move across
-
ferent according to the contexts in which they occur and the environments
with which actors engage. In the case of music practices that are embedded
fostering actors to engage in diverse adjustments in each environment with
-
sic practices is related to how their engagement with “good music” can be
adjusted to the concepts of “good music” in the multiple contexts in which
they act and which modes of coordination should be used to mobilize their
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ferent standards and contexts they interact with, we turn now to discuss the
relationship between migration studies, globalization and music.
Migration studies, globalization and music
-
-
ban migration and the movement from cit y to hinterland are considered local
phenomena, whereas domestic migration concerns the national level. When
peoples’ movements cross the borders of national states and connect geo-
graphically distant regions, migration gains a transnational scope. In order
to grasp immigration in its complexity, researchers focus on its forms, caus-
international migration considered it as a unidirectional and nonrecurring
movement from residence-country A to residence-country B, which could
include in some cases a second movement back to the original society (ret urn
migration). From this perspective, analyses concentrated on the sending re-
gions, where the population shrank, or in the receiving region, where the
-
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physically displaced from a culture which is familiar to them and embedded
in another culture in which they tend to be in the minority, comparative mu-
-
ments from one culture to another” (Baily/Collyer 2006: 168) that followed
migrants’ movements. Later, as ethnomusicology was in its formative phase,
research focused on “issues of acculturation, cultural change and cultural
innovation” (Ibid: 169) involving music practices.
In the last decades, however, developments in communication technolo-
gy, transport facilities and modern capitalist production relations as a result
of globalization processes have brought about new possibilities for connect-
be connected to each other through communication technologies without
-
in empirical research on immigration, and a new paradigm for these studies
emerged: transnationalism (Glick Schiller 2010: 448). As a consequence, re-
searchers observed that immigrants also moved according to their network
transit areas. In this sense, they may move forth and back again repeatedly,
giving up their statuses as immigrants temporarily, or commute between
countries. Besides, the motivation to emigrate may vary within migrants
from the same region, since the pioneers may stimulate new waves of migra-
migration may be based in social capital and have a cumulative causation (cf.
Massey et al. 1998).
From this perspective, it is possible to identify the formation of transna-
tional social spaces (cf. Pries 1996) through the analysis of multiple interlock-
ing egocentric networks (cf. Glick Schiller 2010: 455) which cross the borders
-
lationships (cf. Wimmer/Glick Schiller 2002: 301). In these spaces, there is
a compression of relatively stable social relations and networks (cf. Pries
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 13
this transnational social space are called transmigrants, since their actions,
decisions, subjectivities and identities refer simultaneously to two or more
nation-states (cf. Basch et al. 2005: 7).
notions connected to the “-national”. International refers to the relationship
between nation-states taken as single entities, considering that their bor-
ders are kept stable. Supranational builds on the same idea of stable borders
but refers to structures that are constructed above the nation-states. Postna-
tional stresses the openi ng of the border of nation-states under the pressures
grasp the borders nation-states create as a consequence of globalization
processes. From a transnational perspective, the borders of nation-states do
-
es. Still, borders are perceived in “legal regimes, policies and institutional
structures of power.” (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 23)
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tions that link multiple localities and people of various cultural backgrounds
within and across borders.” (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 34) Interesting-
them, but they can be re-enacted by migrants in their private spheres by re-
peating music practices that reinforce and respond to feelings of nostalgia
(cf. Baily/Collyer 2006: 171). In this sense, a transnational social space may
include spaces in memory.
A transnational view on the music practices of migrants sheds new light
on discussions about authenticity and identity, as Gilroy shows in his analy-
sis of the black Atlantic world (cf. Gilroy 1993: 72). Making references to jazz,
soul, reggae and hip-hop, he points to the entanglements of identities in the
case of being black and British at the same time, for example, raising ques-
tions about double consciousness and “ideas about the integrity and puri-
ty of cultures [… which concern] the relationship between nationality and
ethnicity.” (Ibid: 7) In his accounts of the historic development of black mu-
sic, Gilroy reveals how racism and resentments against migrants and their
musician of Indian descent who referenced Punjabi music, sound system
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culture and the reggae of the Caribbean as well as soul and hip-hop from the
United States to make his music.
Looking at the black Atlantic perspective from the Brazilian coast, this
transnational social space also includes a “reinvented Africa” (Pinho 2004)
based on the ethno-political organization of the continent dating back to the
slave trade. Music practices such as samba reggae recall and revive cultural
identities that are, at the same time, black (African) and “baiano” (from Ba-
hia, a Brazilian state), discarding a national identity in favor of a transna-
are thus not directly connected to transmigrants but are rather built upon a
history of forced migration.
that there is a particular migrant tradition in the transnational space of the
black Atlantic that forces people to leave their home countries in response to
marginal positioning bu t also to reinforce ties to home in their host countries
through the politics of multiculturalism. It follows that soca and calypso su-
perstars lead a transnational life regardless of the country where they have
migrant status. For this reason, Guilbault (1996) argues that a transnational
,
Kenya, Mukasa Situma Wafula (Chapter 2) shows that there are transnation-
al social spaces which may not be connected to migrants at all, as in the case
with the geographic borders of a state, Kenya can be reframed as a coun-
try with several sub-nations. In the space of the festival, these sub-nations
present music practices that both adhere to and defy the Western concept of
music, being at the same time faithful to their ethnic culture and suitable
constructed a transnational social space in which migrant status does not
play any role.
1 Beyond the »World Music« Label”, February 26, 20 19 (https://ww w2.hu-berlin.de/fpm/tex t-
pool/texte/guilbault_beyond-the-world-wusic-label.htm).
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 15
should “step out of the migrant/native divide [… in order] to study and theo-
-
ences.” (2011: 22) Assuming a global power perspective, the authors plead for
suggest focusing on the connection between actors within transnational
networks of relationships and on the forms of exchange that occur in this
national and the local (Ibid: 25). Following this argument, a transnational so-
cial space becomes a space of exchange across borders which may be a coun-
try (El Kahla, Chapter 6), a city (González, Chapter 7), a festival (Lell, Chapter
3) or a trade fair (Le Coz, Chapter 4).
It follows that the focus on transnational spaces of exchange brings the
creative process involved in music practices to the foreground, not its re-
sults—whether it is conceptualized as hybrid, pure or authentic (cf. Glick
Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 22). In doing so, a transnational approach sidesteps
the problem of how to imagine the ambivalent cultural consequences of glo-
balization—as an irresistible force that tends to homogenize all aspects of
our lives, destroying the diversity of cultures and life forms (cf. Barber 1996;
-
on musicians’ transnational networks suggests that ethnic connections may
be both “a creative necessity andand
a strategic tool for surviving as a professional musician in a hugely competi-
tive commercialized scene [… becoming] discursive registers within the art-
ists’ transnational repertoire.” (Glick Schiller/Meinhof 2011: 30) In this sense,
ethnicity is only one aspect of the musicians’ links.
As Bystron and Santana (Chapter 8) show, music practices like samba,
which emerged in transnational social spaces, may keep connecting new
actors, spanning its borders to include “batucada” groups in Germany that
of scores or videos on the Internet, a shared taste for the music or a desire to
belong to the same transnational network. Apart from seeing this process
as harmful for the samba tradition, the authors reveal the diversity of music
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practices found under the category samba. A similar account of the diver-
sity of creative processes in transnational spaces of exchange is presented
and a notion of African music (with or without the participation of African
composers and musicians) highlights the idea that this transnational space
results.
However, transnational social spaces are also marked by inequalities
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musicians’ position and mobility within these spaces is the evaluation of
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social spaces that are induced by the distinct modes of coordination mobi-
lized in music practices. In order to better understand how music practices
are valuated in transnational social spaces, we turn now to the discussion of
the theory of valuation and the value of music.
The valuation and evaluation of transnational music practices
In transnational spaces, where actors with diverse national backgrounds
-
-
starts with simple comparisons of music practices but can evolve into strict
hierarchies of music’s worth. As Michelle Lamont (2012) points out from a
more general societal level, strict modes of valuation can lead to a thriving
of inequality, which the literature has described as a “winner-take-all soci-
calls the sociology of valuation and evaluation (SVE) in opposing unidimen-
sional conceptions of worth and focusing on how value can be perceived in
a multitude of ways. In this way, the SVE aims for heterarchies or plurar-
chies of worth. For Lamont, the key question is how to understand better the
processes sustaining heterarchies, ensuring that “a larger proportion of the
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 17
—appears instructive for sociological work about the valuation, evaluation
and worth of music practices. From our perspective, transnational social
results that shows the multidimensionality of value attached to music prac-
-
ation in the discussions of our anthology: categorization and legitimation.
While categorization is a requirement for determining singular entities and
connected theoretically to the accumulation of symbolic capital as proposed
by Bourdieu (1993).
A valuable background for the discussion about heterarchies, modes of
their seminal work On justicat ion. In their study opposing a neo-classical
model of economics and economic rationalization, they show how several
model was initially comprised of six orders of worth (market, industrial,
actors’ practices and is neither qualitatively, quantitatively, nor temporar-
-
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sible, and they show how diverting orders of worth can converge and allow
for compromises.
In entrepreneurial and organizational studies interested in heterar-
evaluations that allows for creativity and, thus, for entrepreneurial success
(Stark 2011). However, despite the contingency and diversity of values, the
literature also points out that valuing through pricing—the typical econom-
ic mode of ascribing value—has become a dominant practice, ubiquitous in
realms of realit y formerly separated from this numeric form of value, as well.
Viviane Zelizer (2017) demonstrates how this market logic guided by pricing
was applied to life to assert its value in the form of life insurance. In another
2 “Forget me not ”, January 17, 2019 (http://forgotif y.com/).
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study about the pricing of children, Zelizer shows how valuations may have
changed over time from economic assets in the 19th century to economically
She thereby traces the emerging markets of child insurance, compensation
for wrongful deaths of children and the adoption and sale of children, all of
she discusses how market and moral values interact, revealing that econom-
between commercial and aesthetic valuations, where economic evaluations
may oppose artistic evaluations of “good music”.
Considering the multidimensional values of music practices with their
contingencies and diversities, it is important to highlight that value attach-
ment has much to do with particular features of “music”. Music practices in
the sense of songs, concerts, events and so on can be considered as contain-
ing singularities. Following Lucien Karpik (2010), singularities are unique
and, thus, incommensurable. Determining the value of a singular good
entails a high degree of quality uncertainty. In order to gain some certain-
ty about a singularity’s value and to legitimize it, we apply instruments or,
groups), cicerones (critics, guidebooks), rankings, appellations (labels, certi-
-
ers). Yet these devices not only assess value and evaluate, but they also give
value, as was shown with rock music and the value creation surrounding it
In the case of music practices, one device employed to attach value is the
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plistic picture of current evaluations purely based on consumer behavior.
Examples of judgement devices in music marketplaces are expensive special
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esting gimmicks, the possibility of cheap downloads of single pieces of the
album, or also subscriptions to st reaming services where the value of a single
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lists, tags, numbers of plays and the like become valuable judgement devices.
Devices for judging cultural value, also seen as a performing of rites
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ample, critics evaluate by referring to and combining subjective taste and
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 19
expert knowledge in order to justify their judgment on the aesthetic value
of a particular piece of music, album or live performance. Similarly, dis-
cussions about music among peers, distinguishing “good” from “bad music”
through arguing (Frith 2013), are means to value and evaluate music that are
action, with a result that is partly uncertain” (Hennion 2001: 1) and cannot
be explained only by reference to the social origins or aesthetic properties
of the works.
Categorization and legitimation are central as judgment devices, since
-
age of categorizing and legitimizing c an thereby be very visible, as in the case
of competition at a festival (Wafula, Chapter 2), tacitly interwoven in the
process of artistic creation (Fryberger, Chapter 1), or connected to a trans-
national network of actors (Le Coz, Chapter 4). John Blacking (1969) consid-
ers music value as inseparable from its creation and performance and, thus,
from human experience itself. However, this individualistic point of view
is connected to a social embeddedness of value, since music value emerges
from performative situations in the form of communication through what
he calls “humanly organized sound.” (Blacking 1969: 71) A key feature for
Blacking is that the composer brings together distant social elements of her
or his society like bourgeois conventions and peasant melodies, revealing
music’s ability to fuse. In a similar vein, observers who think of the value of
the music experience as “being alone together” simultaneously stress diverse
possible forms of participation in this communication (Bowman 2002). In
this sense, the notion of singularities implies that isolated items, like songs,
are not ordered vertically in value hierarchies from the start, but are rather
ordered horizontally, reinforcing the possibility of heterarchies. Each piece
-
ue and evaluation of diversity that is regularly encountered in transnational
music practices.
Diversity has been a constant companion especially in world music, hip
hop and electronic music, but recently also in classical music. Diversity is
almost considered to be a value in itself, supported in international cultural
world regions. However, especially historically, we see how the evaluation of
diversity has been an issue due to unequal power relations in transnational
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spaces, causing discrimination (Gonzalez, Chapter 7) and passiveness to-
wards preservation (El Kahla, Chapter 6). In this line of thinking, diversit y of
music practice might hardly be more than a consumer-friendly multicultur-
Santana, Chapter 8), and its forms can vary so strongly that it can lead to new
forms of homogenization under new categories.
Focusing on the (e)valuation of exchanges that underlie the diversity of
one hand, (e)valuation of exchange focuses on the economic relationship be-
tween sellers and buyers, raising questions about product availability, range
the other hand, (e)valuation of exchange refers to relationships between mu-
-
-
ing especially how collaborations between diverse music actors gain from
transnational backgrounds and how the appropriation of symbols, creation
of styles and formation of communities are part of this process.
In this sense, (e)valuation of diversity and exchange point to identity and
identity building. As the example of identity-building for Christian youth
through Christian heavy metal music (Moberg 2007) shows, communication
among peers as a judgement device based on taste may lead to the formation
unfold with a focus on local identity construction, as in the case of Singa-
pore (Kong 1997), or on the construction of transnational identity, as in the
case of a Vietnamese identity emerging between nostalgia and political re-
sistance (Valverde 2003). In these examples, the national borders are crossed
to create a transnational space for music practices. However, there is also
a backlash against it in projects of nation branding (Gienow-Hecht 2016),
which aim to reposition the nation in transnational spaces using music as a
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lized by national states and cities, which encourages festival visitors to take
part in cultural tourism and attaches values to sites, cities or communities,
reframing spaces through music, and since it happens in very localized and
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 21
culturally embedded settings, fostering attention to their liveness (Lange/
Bürkner 2012).
An example of this complex and intertwined process of (e)valuation of
space, diversity and exchange in transnational music practices will be dis-
cussed below in a short case study on the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Eurovision Song Contest—A transnational music practice
In the following, we discuss the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) as one exam-
ple of the role played by space, diversity and exchange in yielding both value
and categories to evaluate transnational music practices. As a music contest
between nation-states and based on a supranational European connection
great case for what we understand as a transnational music practice as well
as a very good match for a music pract ice going beyond the usual assumption
of music as a mainly audible sensation. Far more than that, it is an interwo-
-
ent nature of the contest, the event is also of high interest from the perspec-
tive of evaluation. As a short case study, this example aims to introduce the
the opportunities for analysis it opens up. We thus shed light on a couple of
interesting aspects.
In general, we want to discuss the ESC as an event construing transna-
nutshell, the ESC could be seen as an international contest between (alleged-
ly) national actors that forms a transnational media event with worldwide
is connected to recent developments in practice theory that go beyond a mi-
-
-
nomenon like the ESC can be viewed as a practice itself. However, that does
not mean that there are plentiful further practices as noted above in con-
nection to the ESC, together establishing a web of practice (Schatzki 2005b).
In this way, we will take a look at evaluation practices that are part of the
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contest and betting practices that have been a valuable asset in the contest
for decades.
literature depicts this contest as a large-scale media event (Dayan/Katz 1994),
comparing it to contemporary sports events or, historically, to the World
is very controversial. Hardcore fans celebrate ESC-parties, but many critics
deny the aesthetic and artistic quality of the participating songs in general.
In any event, someone who grew up in Europe is very likely to be at least par-
tially informed about the event, since it is an important topic of media cover-
age. A lot of historical narratives are connected to it, fostered by media for-
mats like Eurovision’s Greatest Hits, which values particular performances.
exact format has changed slightly over time, yet the main threads remain:
each participating nation-state sends a song to the competition, with a vot-
ing system determining a winner at the end. Starting with seven nations in
participating in 2018. Chronologica lly, music takes the central position at the
ESC in its recurrent and schematic composition, yet there are several prac-
tices accompanying the contest that are interwoven with the singular pieces
evaluation practices at the end of the show take hours and last as long as the
musical part, building a climax towards the end that is hardly connected to
any of the music. Interestingly, betting practices are strongly connected to
the event, with media coverage very casually speaking about favorites for the
bookkeepers. Also, practices of fan culture and tourism need to be added,
depicting a colorful picture of linked practices that together can be called
the ESC.
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testants are nominated on a national basis with one representative per na-
-
tually being chosen as a winner. Also, national symbols are omnipresent in
the symbol of a nation somewhere—despite the performances themselves,
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 23
2010). Still, research has shown how ambiguous the ESC’s relation to the “na-
-
ers stress an interrelation between the national and international (Mitrovic
-
-
dom in the public and is evaluated as playing an important role in building
belonging for this group in relation to the transnational concept of Europe.
From a structural perspective, introduction, performance and evalua-
-
poral distribution of broadcasting time in minutes in the main parts of the
event looking at three events from three decades:
Table 1: ESC structure
Phase / Event Brighton, 19744Dublin, 19815Jerusalem, 19996Moscow, 20097Lisbon, 20188
Introduction 7 (6,4%) 8,5 (5,6%) 15,75 (8,1%) 13 (6,6%) 16,5 (7,2%)
Performance 68,5 (62,4%) 83,5 (55,4%) 103,75 (53,5%) 98 (50%) 112,5 (49%)
Evaluation 34,25 (31,2%) 58,75 (39%) 74,5 (38,4%) 85 (43,4%) 100,5 (43,8%)
Total 109,75 150,75 194 196 229,5
Source: d ata gathered by author s based on videos on YouTube
3 We determined the broadcasting length by the length of a YouTube-Video of the whole
event. The du ration of each par t was measure d by hand. All time spe cications have been
transcrib ed to minutes. As intro duction we under stood the time fr om the beginning of the
video until t he rst perfor mance. Performanc e is the time from t he start of the rst to the
end of the last contest per formance. Evaluation is the period from the end of the last per-
formance unt il the end of the video.
4 “Eurovision Song Contest 1974”, February 18, 2019 (https://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=D-
GOq rXzE I9Y&t= 4551 s).
5 “Eurovision Song Contest 1981”, February 18, 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=G-
f7l2hVXp08& t=5530s).
6 “Eurovision 1999”, January 16, 2019 (https://ww w.youtube.com/watch?v=Am4C1i-
I46F0&t=7157s).
7 “Eurovision Song Contest 2009 Final”, January 15, 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=c6JCuOzSyUk).
8 “Eurovision Song Contest 2018 - Grand Final - Full Show”, January 16, 2019 (https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=4AXTB-iShio&t=7740s).
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros24
Describing this table, we learn that t he distribution of broadcasting time and
the broadcasting time of the event have changed dramatically throughout
the last decades. However, the underlying structure of the event has proven
amount of time invested in the introduction has surely increased. Since the
early days of the competition, the most time has been distributed to the per-
the evaluation part has become of nearly equal temporal importance and has
parts of the show today are roughly the same length as the musical perfor-
we even observe that the evaluation and introduction together used up more
broadcasting time than the musical performances. Looking at the numbers
provided here lends the impression that “non-music” parts are gaining im-
-
tends temporally, which has to do with the increasing number of partici-
four hours in 2018, underlining the notion that is has become a large-scale
media event.
Going into more detail about the single parts of the show and its diverse
-
picting the host country. Following this, the competitors enter the arena,
-
performer and her or his country, the so-called “postcard”, is shown before
starts with the opening of the telephone lines used to vote for one’s favorite
-
the telephone lines are closed, points are allocated from two perspectives of
and usually hours-long evaluation process is divided into expert judgments
and public opinion (Haan et al. 2005). Although this separation has obtained
for quite a while, it is only since 2016 that the jury and the public each award
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 25
up to twelve points, thereby doubling the pool of available points. Before that,
there was one combined evaluation.
and have been changed several times. Between 2008 and 2018, a total of
-
motion of countries belonging to a common cultural space, and the changes
in evaluation were aimed at broadening the transnational diversity of the
-
-
tion for what they call a persistent hegemony within the contest. With Sim-
Bloc” ignoring each other more or less when it comes to distributing points.
However, for instance an “Eastern Bloc” which could be of importance in
with the goal being to balance the judgment device.
During the preliminary stages of the contest, evaluations are of similar
importance and show an interesting connection to Wafula’s depiction of
the Kenya Music Festival in this book. In many participating nation-states,
events took place that, at least in the case of Germany, arose suspicions that
participants were recruited based on federal state heritage. From 2005 to
2015, the Bundesvision Song Contest used a smaller level of “national” to de-
-
the main sponsors of the European Broadcasting Union, Germany, France,
, even
if they do not take part, underlining the idea that the Broadcasting Union
enters with two evaluations: one from a professional jury and one from the
9 “Biggest change to Eurovision Song Contest voting since 1975”, February, 7, 2019 (https://
eurovision.tv/story/biggest-change-to-eurovision-song-contest-voting-since-1975).
10 “Rules”, February 7, 2019 (https://eurovision.t v/about/rules).
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros26
participating public through calls to a hotline. Even countries that do not
-
center of the whole event.
Very interesting transnational exchanges take place, especially during
if their evaluation is ready. However, to facilitate the entertaining aspects
of this rather boring and standardized practice, or to extend the broadcast-
-
alternatively interesting way in English, which is usually neither the spokes-
-
verse national patina, for instance by saying some words in the host nation’s
to national clichés. We would argue that doing so leads to the emergence of
short transnational dialogues, especially when these speech acts are broad-
casted throughout more than 40 countries.
From a transnational perspective, the contest’s ability to expand and
thereby incorporate further geographical spaces that have just recently be-
geographic space similar to that of the European Union. However, the ESC
did not stop at what is considered Europe geographically, but incorporated
further cultural spaces especially through the recurrent entries of Israel. In
1980, even Morocco was allowed to enter the competition one time. In this
way, the ESC resembles UEFA, the European Football Association, with its
practice of incorporating non-European members like Israel or even Georgia
or Kazakhstan. Still, the ESC has not stopped here, but recently allowed Aus-
tralia to take part in the competition, justif ying this extension by noting that
very unique and transnational construction of a European competition.
Baker (2008) argues that the transnational audience of this event combined
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 27
with its contest nature is pressuring the participants into representing a na-
in that reading by the need to convey messages connected to a nation with
-
ing (Dinnie 2015) is a recurring topic in studies about the ESC (Miazhevich
2010; Jordan 2014; Pajala 2012; Vuletic 2018) and is even depicted as a diplo-
matic tool (Boric/Kapor 2017). Paul Jordan (2014), for instance, describes the
contest in Estonia as “a modern fairytale”, looking at the role of the ESC in
European identity politics and the connection between nation-branding and
nation building, which the Song Contest has promoted particularly in the
cases of post-Soviet countries.
Some important transnational aspects of the music practices can be un-
language; however, this seems to be the “transnational” thing to do. While
the organization of the ESC wanted to foster—even with force—the use of
a more transnational stance towards writing songs. At the moment, partic-
ipants are allowed to sing in whatever language they want to sing. In 2016,
for instance, this led to 33 out of 36 participants singing in English, with the
exceptions of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which sang in their re-
spective native languages, and Austria, which sang in French. With respect
to transnational exchange, using only one main language might be evaluat-
ed as a perfect match, with an obvious loss in diversity.
Usually, all long shots from the mult i-purpose hall show a confusin g image of
and the fans of the teams are usual ly separated from each other leaving them
-
orful and more importantly indistinguishable scene, thus lending the event
-
could argue further, referring to our dimensions, that within and especially
through the crowd of national supporters, a transnational space emerges.
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros28
Furthermore, we would like to understand the astonishingly relevant
listed in order according to their wagering odds. In these environments, the
nation-states completely lose their national identity, are stripped of any na-
tional particularity and become mere calculated variables in a game of prob-
-
with the worst odds, just because one comes from there, does not a sound
wager make). Yet the environment itself creates a market based on calcula-
tions (Callon/Muniesa 2005).
While all these short glances at the music practice of the ESC require
deeper consideration, we believe that they already point to how our concep-
confusing dimensions belonging to the (e)valuation of transnational music
practices like the ESC.
The structure of the book
-
music practices in contemporary art music is the central concern of Annelies
Fryberger’s article Valuation in a reversed economy: e case of cont emporary art
music in France and the United States. Calling attention to the fact that trans-
nationalism in this context is construed by keeping national borders very
clear, Fryberger concentrates her analysis on the praxis of French and Amer-
ican composers, mainly in the way they show disinterestedness to econom-
ic values. Her analysis is based on Bourdieu’s concept of reversed economy,
-
mented by the discussion of production volume and position taking in this
her analysis is the fact that, although contemporary art music is considered
-
ation are equally important and vital to asserting the value of contemporary
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 29
art music also include the discourses and talks on a composer’s productivity,
Another way of discussing valuation of music practices is presented by
Mukasa Situma Wafula. Departing from a conception of ethnic community
as a nation, Wafula analyses the Kenya Music Festival (KMF) as a space in
which the interactions and musical e xchanges between ethnic nations can be
Culture, Creativity and
Practice: (E)valuating the Kenya Music Festival as a transnational music space
focuses on the history of the festival—conceived as a transnational space—
including its content, community and its integrated discourse. In the con-
text of the KMF, transnational music practices appear both in the creative
interactions among members of Kenya’s 43 ethnic communities and the fes-
all possible groups, from children visiting nursery schools to university stu-
sizes, elocution, performances of instruments, among others, reveals the
idea that the winner takes all and reveal how heterarchies in values and eval-
uation can be experienced.
If Wafula focuses on the organization of a festival, Peter Lell inverts the
perspective to incorporate audience experience in the transnational spaces
of world music festivals in his chapter “Come and expose yourself to the fan-
tast ic music from around the world”: Experiencing World Music Fest ivals. Basing
-
are central to evaluating audience experience in these contexts: music ex-
oticism, exceptionalism in visual appearance, visible happiness, the idea of
reveals that t hese evaluative aspects emerge in connect ion to music practices
that are beyond audibility, embedded in the exchange among participants,
the standardization of diversity in these transnational spaces which were
paradoxically created to celebrate diversity itself.
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros30
Entering the global connections of the world music market, Sandrine Le
Coz discusses in her chapter From desire for recognition to desire for indepen-
dence: World music ltered in the market economy how transnational networks
of actors and their decision-making across borders form the basis of valua-
tion processes in music practices. She stresses the relevance of transnational
spaces like markets, exhibitions or fairs for valuation processes and follows
-
termediaries, their practices of objectif ying and thus legitimizin g valuations
of certain music, and how their methods of interpersonal linking lead to a
in the transnational world music market. However, going beyond this per-
sonalized market, she further discusses which changes in valuation occur
when the world music market goes digital and becomes more and more de-
pendent on transnational platforms’ evaluations.
e invention of Afr ican art
music: Analyz ing European-Afr ican classical cross-over projects deals with trans-
national exchange in classical cross-over projects that involve musicians and
composers from Europe and Africa. Comparing “Pieces of Africa” by the Kro-
nos Quartet, “Lambarena” by Hughes de Courson and Pierre Akendengué,
“Mozart the Egyptian” by Hughes de Courson and Ahmed El Maghraby, and
“Zulu music meets Mozart” by MoZuluArt, the author depicts in detail the
creation process of four important classical crossover productions from the
last 30 years. From an ethnomusicologist’s perspective, he is interested in
backgrounds had on these transnational production environments and how
Furthermore, he looks at the impact of these productions on the respective
-
gle to meet on what the author calls “eye-level” between Western and Afri-
can artists and music traditions, but also how an opposing example might
provide ways for a genuine transnational exchange, leading to a successful
fusion of African and Western classical music as well as to that creation of
sustainable careers.
in rethinking some historical moments. In his contribution Contemplating
musical life in Tunisia under the French protectorate: e society and challenges,
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Introduction—Music practices across borders 31
the ethnomusicologist Alla El Kahla develops an historical perspective on
-
od of the French protectorate and discusses how this changed music practic-
es. In his chapter, El Kahla gives hints for future research to come and argues
that an explicit ethnomusicologist perspective can aid our understanding
perspective suggests how diverse music practices in transcultural environ-
-
ical perspective with only marginal references to music practices, El Kahla
depicts a colorful picture of musical diversity and exchange between various
-
gists interested in a historical perspective on transnational music practices.
A similar account of how historic analyses connect with a transnational
perspective on music practices is presented by Daniela Anabel González in
the chapter e consc truction of an Italian dia sporic identity in the city of Buenos
Aires at the turn of the 19th century. Directly approaching the question of im-
migrants and their identity formation in the receiving country, she focuses
-
ent strategies of appropriation and resistance to build their identity in the
symbolic arena of popular art and music expressions at the turn of the 19th
century. Particularly interesting is that neither of them, Argentinians nor
Italians, are presented as representatives of essentialized cultures, but as
members of very diverse groups which are constantly negotiating their iden-
tities. If Buenos Aires indeed was a transnational space with a high num-
ber of foreign newcomers, with Italians constituting the largest group, the
exchanges between its inhabitants resulted in a variety of music practices
of the Italian elite tried to distinguish themselves through the creation of art
magazines that celebrated their intellectual tradition. Among the popular
classes, in turn, there were more hybridization processes in which a new lan-
guage came into being, namely the cocoliche (a mixture of Italian and Span-
ish). Creole people and Italians disputed its use as means to deride the other
case about the adjustments that music practices go through when engaging
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Glaucia Peres da Silva & Konstantin Hondros32
Closing the book, Janco Boy Bystron and Chico Santana, in their con-
tribution Brazilian grooves and cultured clichés, introduce a methodological
discussion that departs from nationally framed clichés in and about music
-
ian and German percussion groups, they take a look at a transnational music
they aim for a method that elaborates the musical macro- and microstruc-
tures subsumed under the term samba and investigate how these structures
rhythms, they inquire whether an interactionistic concept of identity is con-
nected to the repertory of a samba group. Examining the macrostructure in
the creation processes of samba, they distinguish between samba rhythms
that are recreated from traditional styles, those developed innovatively and
those that are newly invented but played on samba instruments. Developing
a methodology for the analysis of transcultural processes in musical practic-
es based on three main dimensions (visualization of samba rhythms, audi-
tive perception, and corporal conversion), the authors suggest a multidimen-
sional set to approach transnational music practices analytically.
in transnational music practices in deciding which modes of coordination
to mobilize in their practices and how values, valuation and evaluation are
parts of this process. In this way, this book contributes to an interdisciplin-
ary dialog on the (e)valuation of transnational music practices in their entan-
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