Performances, presentations, and workshops of African musics are a classical modality of promoting exhibitions related to Africa, hosting workshops as part of the didactic initiatives of (mostly ethnographic) museums, and fostering intercultural dialogue in schools. In Yugoslavia, these initiatives started in the 1960s. They saw the engagement of students from various African countries studying in the socialist Federation thanks to the cultural exchanges promoted by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In independent Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia these kinds of events resumed in the 2000s, after the 1990s marked by a focus on national issues, and involved performers of African origin based in these countries as well as musicians from abroad. This paper looks at the interaction of official policies, institutions’ projects, and the individual agency of Black performers involved in these forays into African musics. Discussing the Yugoslav era – marked by official anti-colonialism and international brotherhood – in relation to the post-Yugoslav time – when social integration and reflection on museums’ role are at the fore, the influence of governmental stands on these initiatives by public institutions and non-profit associations as well as the latter’s projects are analyzed. At the same time, the forms of involvement, engagement, and agency of African performers and instructors are explored in the way they mold a musical image of Africa that is both significant for African individuals and meaningful for local audiences. Despite different contexts and eras, some tropes in the representation of Africa through music and dance recur, while others emerge as counter-current.

The interest in African musics in Serbia goes back to the late period of Yugoslavia, but the discovery of “real” African music based on more substantial cooperation between Serbian and African musicians started in the 2000s, after political changes in Serbia reopened the country to the international context. Some Serbian musicians expressed an interest in “African rhythm” as associated with the imaginary timeless and archaic identity of the continent; however, contrasting the pre-2000s approaches that were seldom rooted in direct observation, the new generation also explored the legacy and living practices of ‘African drumming’ by learning to play the instruments in West Africa and elsewhere in the global North, thus building a specific cultural capital within the local world music scene. This paper looks at the transformations of a loose community of players focused on the djembe, who chose this instrument as a powerful symbol of Africanness and tool for intercultural translation. The first case study features late multi-instrumentalist Veljko Nikolić (“Papa Nik”), a versatile musician whose band/project Institute relied on different world traditions, including African ones, as the source of inspiration by employing benevolent stereotypes and pursuing experimentation and “artistic freedom”. The second case study focuses on the group Djembija and some related performers and projects. A Belgrade-based musical community teaching traditional West African rhythms and techniques on djembe and dunun, Djembija’s work and collaborations gave rise to a cultural hub where the ideas of escapism and intercultural dialogue are explored by evoking both “real and imaginary” Africa.

Despite the small numbers of Africans living in Finland, a lively scene of African music and dance started to develop already in the 1980s in Helsinki, and the activities have since spread out to other cities. Similarly, the diversity of African musics practiced in Finland has increased along with the numbers of African immigrants and other people of African descent as well as the global flows of musical productions and influences. In this paper, I focus on the spaces where traditional West African musics and related dances are practiced in Finland, whether concerts, dance performances, celebrations, or music and dance classes. For the greatest part, these spaces are not exclusive to people of African descent but there are also many white Finns who actively engage with these music and dance practices. In my previous research, I described the collaborations of African and Finnish musicians using Homi Bhabha’s concept of “Third Space” to describe the ideas of “Africanness” emerging from these collaborations that are often not linked with Blackness and Otherness, unlike in other social spaces in Finland. However, when more people with different ethnic identities and varying experiences of the music and dance practices in question are present, such a “Third Space” is less likely to form. In my ongoing research, I look at how traditional West African musics and dances are (re)presented in the various spaces where they are practiced in Finland and what kinds of positionalities and interpersonal relations influence the participants’ views on these practices.

Because of the Dublin Regulation on asylum in the EU, many irregular migrants are forced to stay in Italy for several years, waiting for regularization or expulsion. Coming from a long route of deprivation, they have to live in an alienating condition, in a suspended time and space. Music can have a strong role in isolation or socialization, and even release. In the frame of an ongoing project about musical belonging and sonic citizenship of migrants in Italy, I met two refugees who are musicians. One comes from a family of lungsi, specialized drummers of Mampurusi population, and is now a cultural mediator and musician. The other one is a professional musician from a Gambian family of jalil. Both were able to resume playing only after an extended period in Italy as asylum-seekers. The former by creating a group that blends different African traditions, the latter by remaining in the family tradition, albeit with some external influences. Since Adelaida Reyes Shramm’s work (1986), much research has been conducted on refugees, but only recently a focus on the precariousness of irregular migrants has emerged (Hikmet Öğüt 2015). Following this approach and considering these two musicians from their position of asylum seekers to that of refugees, I examine how music can be a tool to affirm their role in Italian society and how the status of refugees and practicing their music in Italy had an impact on their repertoires and style.