The Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation (2009Cooperation ( -2018 was launched to "stimulate the performing arts in Sri Lanka, thus contributing to the peace and reconciliation process" in the aftermath of almost three decades of civil war between the Tamil minority and Sinhala majority populations of the island. Funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the project had many local and international stakeholders, from artists and civil society organisations, to government institutions, to a general public eager for enrichment through arts and culture. But despite high engagement and financial investment, the achievements of the SLNMC were generally unremarkable and short-term. This article argues that competition and incompatibility between stakeholders within the SLNMC were major reasons for the project´s equivocal legacies. We analyse stakeholder investments in the SLNMC through the lens of Boltanski and Thevenot's theory of justification (2006) and their conceptualization of worlds of legitimation ('Economies of Worth'). Our findings indicate that while artistic practices have promising compatibility and complementarity with social goals like reconciliation, the accommodation of political interests, donor agendas, and domestic pressures can undermine the possibility of artistic-social projects reaching a higher common good.
This article presents findings from the Sri Lanka Norway Music Cooperation (SLNMC, 2009-2018) launched immediately after a twenty-four year long civil war in Sri Lanka. The project responded to a stated need of rebuilding a fractured society and re-establishing relations between Sinhala and Tamil populations of the island. The SLNMC comprised school concerts and public concerts, music education, heritage documentation and digitalization, in addition to skill training for musicians and technicians, festival organizers and other actors in cultural life. The article offers a critical phenomenological approach to the concept of harmony, where both phenomena of musical and socio-cultural harmony are displayed and discussed in relation to each other. I set out to investigate whether harmony in the SLNMC was a taken for granted, ´dead metaphor´ or an actual creative and impactful tool for implementing musical activities in a post-war context. Theoretically, my point of departure is Howell’s conceptual investigation of harmony in multicultural musical projects (Howell, 2018) and specifically in the South-Asia context (Howell, 2019). I have combined elements from her framework with Sykes (2011 and 2018a) as well as insights from my own research data to present a schema of three musical and three socio-cultural definitions of harmony paired and discussed in relation to each other. In conclusion, I argue that attention to various types of musical and socio-cultural harmony can cast new light on existing art for reconciliation-practices as well as generate fresh and fertile views on how to conceive, implement and assess such initiatives in the future.
There are many possible readings of a music project taking place in a territory under occupation. By paying attention to the context, values and interests of actors involved in the Music Collaboration between Palestine and Norway (2002-2017), this chapter uses Boltanski and Thévenot's framework of justification to examine possible narratives of the project. Three main narratives stand out, namely, a civic, inspirational and (development) industry one, all of which are tightly interwoven. KEYWORDS Palestine | music | multi-agency collaboration | legitimacy | international development SAMMENDRAG Det finnes mange nyanser og mulige tolkninger av et musikkprosjekt som foregår på okkupert territorium. I dette kapitlet brukes Boltanski og Thévenots legitimeringsteori for å analysere musikksamarbeidet mellom Palestina og Norge (2002-2017). Tre fremtredende narrativer, som alle er sterkt sammenvevde, diskuteres i teksten: musikk som palestinsk motstand, musikk som inspirasjon og musikk som et verktøy i internasjonal bistand.
Solveig Korum (b. 1984) is a doctoral researcher at the University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts, in Norway. She is also connected to the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo. She holds a MA degree in Asian and African studies from the University of Oslo and Dakar, majoring in History. She has been employed at the international department of Kulturtanken (Arts for Young Audiences Norway, formerly Rikskonsertene-Concerts Norway) since 2008. 2 Bindu Subramaniam (b.1983) is an Indian-American music educator, author, singer/songwriter and entrepreneur. She has a master's degree in law from London University, a master's certificate in songwriting and music business from Berklee Music, a Montessori diploma, an MPhil, and is currently working on a PhD in Music Education at Jain University.
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 temporary transformation of space that is captured in metaphors like bubble, refuge, and sanctuary.
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