‘Who Is British Music?’ Placing Migrants in National Music History

Abstract

In 2013, trucks and vans were driving across London, bearing the message ‘In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest.’ These mobile billboards declared the number of arrests that had taken place ‘in your area’ in the previous week and provided a number to which people could text the message ‘HOME’ to initiate voluntary repatriation. In 2016, Theresa May, who had organised this scheme as home secretary, became prime minister, following the upheaval caused by the country's plebiscite to leave the European Union. One of the main strands of argument of the successful ‘Brexit’ campaign centred on the ‘deep public anxiety . . . about uncontrolled immigration’ and promised to reduce numbers of immigrants to the country. This desire to control the nation's borders continued to dominate the official soundscape of Britain's government. At the 2016 annual Tory conference, May endeavoured to draw clear lines on issues of belonging, territory, citizenship, and the fuzzy notion of British values, discursively excluding not only migrants, but also anyone with an international(ist) outlook from the national debate: ‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world’, she posited, ‘you are a citizen of nowhere.’

Mapping the music of migration: Emergent themes and challenges

“…This does not simply entail showcasing migrants’ different relationships with and uses of music. In line with Scheding’s (2018: 445) argument that music research can widen the debate on migration by exploring ‘the impact of highly creative migrants and migrant communities’ on local and regional cultures, some of the stories presented in the app offer opportunities for understanding how migration facilitates transnational musical flows and transformative creativities.…”

“…His song ‘Pannekake’ [Pancake], written and sung in Norwegian, is a playful and energetic narration of how to make and enjoy what the participant himself originally knew as crêpes . This evidences Scheding’s (2018: 445) point that migrants bring their music and cultures with them to new places, thereby diversifying local cultural contexts and exploring new hybrid musical expressions. Through his music, the participant suggests, he passes down his knowledge about life in the present day and preserves it for future generations.…”

“…Especially during a time when migration is most often discussed in relation to refugees and regional crises, there is a risk that scholarship on migration replicates unproductive ideas about migrants by participating in a hierarchization of which people, situations and experiences are the most deserving of attention (Cabot, 2019: 262). Through the MaMuMi project, we have attempted to do the opposite – namely, to encourage a discourse on migration that is not ‘restricted solely to economic, legal, and narrow political concerns’ (Scheding, 2018: 445). By placing music at the centre of our engagement with migrants’ stories, we have sought to broaden common understandings of migratory experiences, direct attention to cultural heterogeneity, and de-exceptionalize displacement.…”

“…(Gardner, 2022: 83) In the MaMuMi project, we were keen to gauge how the storytelling and the sharing that had characterized these academic research projects might work in the different spaces where our NGO partners were working, what potential there might be for conversations prompted by music and whether these moments of exchange and sharing might be applied as a tool for fostering intercultural exchange and furthering integration. Acknowledging Scheding's (2018) point that 'migrants might be in the nation, but not be fully part of the nation' (p. 442), we wanted to explore the potential of music to alleviate this situation on some level.…”

“…This article adds to the existing scholarship on music and migration (e.g. Scheding, 2018;Stratton, 2014;Western, 2020) by presenting and reflecting on the work undertaken in the project 'Mapping the Music of Migration' (MaMuMi), 1 which ran from 2019 to 2021. The project comprised partners from seven European countries and focused on storytelling about music and its potential to enable intercultural exchange and counter negative stereotypes.…”