Managing Musical Diversity Within Frameworks of Western Development AID: Views from Ukraine, Georgia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

Researchers have increasingly begun to critically assess local engagements with globalizing notions of civil society that have been introduced via Western-based supranational political, economic, financial, and cultural programmes (Fischer 1997; Okongwu and Mencher 2000; Yúdice 2003). Following the notion of thinking globally and acting locally, such programmes are usually set up by transnational structures such as the World Bank, UNESCO, the European Union, or global foundations such as the Open Society Institute, and put into practice by local actors, among them non-governmental organizations. This article positions music within intra-national discourses that work hand-in-hand with the political and cultural economics of Western cultural initiatives and aim to promote an understanding of pluralism in countries throughout Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Nino Tsitsishvili, Erica Haskell, and myself in Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine, respectively, this study juxtaposes the perspectives of policy makers and grant givers in Western Europe and the United States with the views of people in post-socialist conflict zones for whom such initiatives are intended. It analyses the political and cultural implications of UNESCO's declaration of Georgian polyphony as a masterpiece of intangible cultural heritage of humanity, the local effects of internationally sponsored music projects in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the role of national minority music festivals sponsored by Western philanthropic organizations in nation-building processes in Ukraine.