Post-war life-space and music in Bosnia-Herzegovina (original) (raw)
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This article explores the ways in which arts experiences in conflicted and territorialized settings may invite a heightened engagement with space, and what this suggests about creative experiences as a vehicle for transforming space and the (re)construction of one’s presence and place in the world. Presenting ethnographic data from two youth music projects established after the wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sri Lanka and argued from the perspective of musician-practitioner-researchers, the authors examine how musical interaction, improvisation, and performance creation enabled processes of exploring, reconfiguring, and expanding the participants’ identities and sense of place in the surrounding world. Using Tia DeNora’s conceptualization of “music asylum,” the article shows how strategies of removal and refurnishing created creative and safe spaces in which alternative lives and more complex identities could be rehearsed and conflict narratives could be revised, fostering a tem...
Scholars perceived the sevdalinka in exile as an evident expression of refugees’ Bosnian identity. Although this aspect might be important, we think that identity dimension of the sevdalinka was overemphasised. That is why we point at the appearance of the sevdalinka in Slovenia as a complex process of experiencing uncertainty and trauma of forced migration on the one hand, and youth creativity or a search for expressive freedom on the other. Hence, we aim to move focus from the refugees’ music life as collective experience to personal, highly individualised narratives. In addition, we argue that musical activities were in many aspects organised. In these activities ethnomusicologists participated, therefore the work of applied ethnomusicology, together with its practice of strategic essentialisation of music, should be discussed as integral part of refugees' music making process.
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In the phenomenon of the divided city – urban environments partitioned along ethno-religious lines as a result of war or conflict – projects seeking to bring segregated people together through community music activities face many operational and psychological obstacles. Divided cities are politically sustained, institutionally consolidated, and relentlessly territorialized by competing ethno-nationalist actors. They are highly resistant to peacebuilding efforts at the state level. This article uses an urban peacebuilding lens (peacebuilding reconceptualized at the urban scale that encompasses the spatial and social dimensions of ethno-nationalist division) to examine the work of community music projects in three divided cities. Through the examples of the Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Mitrovica Rock School in Mitrovica, Kosovo, and Breaking Barriers (a pseudonym) in Belfast, Northern Ireland, we consider the context-specific practices and discourses that ...
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Living (Critically) in the Present: Youth Activism in Mostar (Bosnia Herzegovina)
European Perspectives – Journal on European Perspectives of the Western Balkans Vol. 5 No. 1 (8), pp 48 - 63, April 2013
This paper reflects upon the conditions and implications of living in a protracted state of social and political crisis. Through these considerations, I will explore the strategies implemented by a youth organisation in Mostar that deals with the socio-political inconsistencies of the post- conflict scenario. The paper starts by unravelling the significance of the particular form of normalised crisis by discussing how the problem-solving approach to the Bosnia Herzegovina emergency created by the wars in the 90s led to the creation of a political and administrative system unable to guarantee stability. In particular, the paper critically engages with the present of Mostar, characterised by stillness, immobility, stagnancy, and the general withdrawal from a proactive engagement with politics. The specificity of Mostar as a city, where nothing seems to happen, leads to the perception that change is difficult to achieve or even to imagine. Yet, this paper is also interested in providing a glimpse of how living in a critical present empowers young activists who feel the urge to create moments of urban disruptions in which the very possibility of a more just and peaceful future could be imagined. In particular, this paper critically examines the activities implemented by Abart, a platform for art production and urban research with the aim of exploring the ways in which creative practice becomes an instrument of political intervention. Further, this paper argues that by embracing nostalgia, as a means of re-appropriating Yugoslav ideals of peace and togetherness among different ethno-national communities, young activists draw on the past to critically imagine how a different future could be built.
Community Music Interventions in Post-Conflict Contexts
The Oxford Handbook of Community Music, 2018
In the aftermath of war or violent conflict, a multinational enterprise of government and non-government agencies heaves into action, implementing programmes and strategies to address the staggering array of humanitarian, security, and physical needs, and to help rebuild the physical and social environment. While one would expect to see medical and food aid among these structured interventions, the last two decades have also seen ‘cultural aid’ in the form of music and other arts activities included in international responses to post-conflict recovery. This chapter proposes a framework for examining the intended goals that underpin organizers’ decisions to initiate a music project. The chapter outlines a typology of intentions for music interventions, and discusses the characteristics and issues common to many conflict-affected areas to which a music intervention may intend to respond, drawing on the example of the Pavarotti Music Centre, Bosnia-Herzegovina.