War in our times: A militant agenda for migrant musics

The world’s refugees and migrants are a global force on the move, engaged in a quest for some kind of social justice.

As such they have a historically determined “composition”, and they encounter an equally “composed” barrier of the forces ranged against them. Viewed globally they constitute warring armies on the move, each with their own specificities according to time and location. Of necessity, their engagements involve developing forms of tactics that could be defined as military.

For twenty years I have been working at SOAS on migrant musics (cross-border movements of musics and song) and on political-musical activism among refugee and migrant communities. This has developed into a consistent activist practice of the “posse” at SOAS where our musicians operate in a “no borders” perspective. Operating under the broad heading of Radical Ethnomusicology we find ourselves as active participants in that war.

I shall discuss work that we have done in the jungles of Calais and Dunkerque, in Kurdistan, and elsewhere, in which music, song and dance are defined as a fundamental human right. I shall also outline a recent research project on the genre of “Harraga” songs, the songs of the migrants who make the crossings from North Africa to Europe in small boats.

No registration is required for this event.

About the speaker

Ed Emery is a research associate in the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies (CMDS, SOAS).