Person:

Shelemay, Kay

This essay discusses the study of musical communities, taking as its point of departure the growing avoidance of the term “community” within much of recent musical scholarship. After exploring factors that have been responsible for the move away from community studies, the paper details both the creation of new nomenclature and the discourse surrounding the introduction of these new terms. Based on insights drawn from musical ethnography with recent African immigrants to the United States, the paper goes on to propose a revised framework for approaching “community.” It suggests that attention to processes of descent, dissent, and affinity both elucidates music's generative role in shaping new collectivities and unsettles the notion of music as a static sonic marker of social groupings. The conclusion touches briefly on new research from the sciences that is beginning to shed new light on music's role in generating social outcomes and the potential it holds for future collaboration with music scholars across disciplinary boundaries.

Urban musical research continues to present theoretical and methodological challenges. This paper suggests a revised approach to the study of the urban diaspora community, mapping ways in which musical processes have been instrumental in shaping the cultural places central to the development of the Ethiopian diaspora community. Following cultural geography’s attention to “place-making” rather than residential proximity as the locus of community formation, the discussion tracks aspects of musical transmission and performance that have helped generate, shape, and sustain new communities among Ethiopians in the diaspora.