Culminating ERC advanced grant, The Sound of Empire in 20th c. Colonial Cultures, MusiCol’s first international symposium, “Music as Relation,” invites rethinking history through music. What does learning music tell us about empires, or collaborating in ensembles, building repertoire, and contributing to religious ceremonies and theatrical spectacles , especially when all populations are studied in tandem? We encourage approaches that valorize the agency of musicians in urban cities, despite colonial asymmetries. This includes investigating how musical practices enabled and embodied relations across differences of ethnicity, class, religion, and national origin, unveiling the dynamic nature of colonial existence. Nice, 13-15 April 2026.
MusiCol’s second international symposium, “Music and Media in 20th c. Empires,” encourages researchers to consider how recordings and music on colonial radio not only created new careers for indigenous musicians, speakers, and, in the 1950s, radio producers, but also impacted traditional, hybrid, and modern identities. Moreover, dependent on local participation while transgressing social and geographic boundaries, recordings and radio present opportunities to explore colonial governance, imperial rivalries, trade, and tastes across regions and empires. With these media, colonial coexistence was negotiated and post-colonial relationships evolved. Paris, 16-18 April 2026.
Let’s exchange, collaborate, and foster discussion with scholars from throughout the world in papers, group seminars, and listening sessions. We seek to generate interdisciplinary debate and in-depth comparative analyses across all the modern empires–—whether French, British, Portuguese, Dutch or other–to better understand the history of cultural relations in today’s diverse societies.
Papers possible in English and French. Visit this link for details and submission form: https://musicol.ucsd.edu/wp6b/
