| Title: |
The Sounding Body and the Diasporic Experience:: Migration and Musicking in the City |
| Authors: |
Bithell, Caroline; Fay, Richard; Gagatsis, Alexander |
| Source: |
Bithell, C, Fay, R & Gagatsis, A 2025, 'The Sounding Body and the Diasporic Experience: Migration and Musicking in the City', Paper presented at The Migrant Body in South-South Migrations, Manchester, United Kingdom, 15/12/25 - 16/12/25. < https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/british-academy-conferences/migrant-embodied-experiences-south/ > |
| Publication Year: |
2025 |
| Collection: |
The University of Manchester: Research Explorer - Publications |
| Subject Terms: |
intercultural musicking; Diaspora; Manchester music histories; klezmer; jazz |
| Description: |
This paper grows out of our research into the politics and aesthetics of musical encounters that cross geographic borders and transcend ethnic identities, and into the musical transformations that emerge in the spaces between macro-level geo-politics and micro-level local dynamics as once-local sounds are translated to distant communities where they are not merely listened to but actively remade. In this paper we listen to multiply-displaced migrant bodies in Manchester, UK, as we explore how the migrant body – as carrier of musical memory and creative potential – enters into dialogue in and with new urban spaces. In the industrial city, bodies were physically remade and unmade. The body that engages in diasporic and intercultural musicking, however, has the capacity to readjust itself in more optimistic ways as it rehearses different ways of being in the world. Sounding bodies mark out alternative zones of contact and rules of engagement, transcending visual markers constrained by stereotypical socio-political categories. In this parallel cultural economy, music has the power to transform disadvantage, dislocation, oppression and threat into hope, resolution, affirmation and opportunity. We zoom in on our own practice-based research with klezmer and jazz. The performance project ‘Amid the Mirk Over the Irk’ reimagined past musical encounters between Jewish and Irish migrants who, fleeing pogroms and famine, settled on the banks of the River Irk in Victorian Manchester or Cottonopolis. The schools-based project ‘Hear Me Now!’ explored how the history of jazz migrations meets with the soundscape of the 21st-century multicultural city and, in so doing, affirms the migratory journeys and musical heritage of those who now call Manchester home. |
| Document Type: |
conference object |
| Language: |
English |
| Availability: |
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/publications/1ab0372c-d0ac-4924-8fc7-a3e46ebfe241; https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/british-academy-conferences/migrant-embodied-experiences-south/ |
| Rights: |
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.1987F564 |
| Database: |
BASE |