Music and Migration: A Transnational Approach

Abstract

This special issue on the theme of Music and Migration addresses the highly topical theme of migration and the vitality of “cultural diasporas” through the prism of migrating musicians and migrating musical forms. All nine original articles, including our own, engage with broader questions of how new modes of mobility and sociality are borne out of the social, cultural, historical and political interfaces between migration and music. Through a transnational, comparative and multi-level approach to the relationship between migration, movement and music, this special issue focuses on the aesthetic intersections between the local and the global, and between agency and identity. By taking music as its specific focus, the issue seeks to contribute to ongoing theoretical and methodological debates within migration and diaspora studies, including those related to transnational networks, globalization and cultural flows.