Dominant forms of humanitarian governance privilege food, medicine, and shelter as crucial forms of aid. The sponsorship of music programs by humanitarian organizations and donors, then, indicates an expansion of the humanitarian mandate and the increasing reach of its institutional power (El-Ghadban & Strohm 2013, Fassin 2011, Shao 2023). This paper critically assesses varying ideological orientations regarding music and its role in humanitarianism (Beckles Willson 2013, Copeland 2020), with a focus on music programs for Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Amman, Jordan. Drawing on interviews with music teachers and administrators, I argue that humanitarian music programs are sites where humanitarian norms are contested, negotiated, and also legitimated. The discussion considers three approaches to program design: the first, psychosocial support, explicitly attempts to discipline participant behavior through musical training as a measure against a variety of perceived threats, from bullying to terrorist recruitment. Music therapy, the second approach, aims to medicalize musical practices but must contend with societal expectations regarding music as a form of performance. Both of these approaches legitimate the expanding humanitarian mandate through psychological and biomedical discourses. The third approach, professionalization, instrumentalizes music for financial livelihood while participating in local, authorized heritage discourses (Smith 2006, Yúdice 2003). While these practices are largely divergent, they all grapple with material restraints, donor expectations, and, in the Jordanian context, concerns regarding the Islamic permissibility of music. Overall, this paper offers a framework for disentangling the motivations, assumptions, and norms that come to bear on music activities in humanitarian settings.

In 2023, The newly elected Thai government issued a soft power policy as a means to improve the country’s economic situation and compete with other countries in Southeast Asia. Realizing that they can be benefit from using Thai cultures, the government put together the nation’s soft power strategy committee to ensure success in the global attraction of Thai-ness that brings more money to the country.

Eleven selected Thai cultural industries, including music, arts, food, film, fashion, tourism, etc., became tools in exercising the soft power of Thailand. While the end goal is a success, the process and the presentation, however, were built on other’s pop culture that are not Thai, creating an interculturalism of soft power transference, raising the questions of soft power identity overlapping and ambiguity. The research aims to examine and analyze selected Thai soft powers presentations in the performing arts industry that have major impact on a global scale, including Thai singer Laliza Manobal from the Korean group Blackpink; Thai rapper, Danupha Khanatheerakul, also known as Mili, who performed at the Coachella festival; and one Thai contemporary dancer, Pichet Klunchun, who presented a Khon masked dance drama at many famous international platforms. The analysis engages in the following factors: performance and cultural elements and its impact on Thai cultures and economics. The result brings the clarification of identity retention along with pros and cons in each artist’s strategies in creating soft power of Thailand.

In the 1950s, the Chinese government organised a number of unique national and local music and dance performances and tours, including the First National Chinese Opera Festival in 1952, the First National Folk Music and Dance Festival in 1953, the Touring Chinese Folk and Classical Music Troupe in 1954, the First National Music Week in 1956, and the First National Quyi Festival in 1958, the Summer festival of Harbin, the Spring festival of Shanghai and the Yangcheng Music and Flower Festival. My doctoral dissertation is based on these nearly forgotten musical events. I contend that the holding of these artistic events has had a significant impact on China in a variety of ways. Domestically, they played a significant role in the collection and investigation of Chinese music, as well as its processing and adaptation, transmission, and development, and they also contributed to the unity of people from all walks of life and the promotion of art education, and cultural exchange became an important method of diplomatic work. This paper will be based on the domestic and international contexts faced by China in the 1950s, and will employ interviews with artists directly or indirectly involved in musical activities, as well as disciplinary methods such as sociology, anthropology, and applied ethnomusicology.I want to review the history of contemporary Chinese music development, summarise the experiences and insights gained from organising large-scale cultural activities, investigate the pluralistic relationship between music, art, and politics, and promote the development of Chinese music in the new era.

Though the concept of the permanent campaign—the idea that politicians are constantly in campaign mode—isn’t new, the advent of social media has further blurred distinctions between governing and preparing for the next election. Playlists, memes, political songs, and user-generated content constitute and fragment political discourses, extending campaigning beyond the remit of party insiders to social media elites and partisans. This presentation presents a case study of the campaign songs that featured in Canada’s 2019 federal election. Unlike the two previous Canadian federal elections, which saw politicians transform licensed songs into rally anthems, curate Obama-inspired Spotify playlists, and mobilise Web 2.0 technologies to extend the reach of their campaigning, 2019 featured a return to more ‘traditional’ campaign songs, either commissioned or pre-existing, that communicated and contained key political messages. We focus particular attention on the Conservative Party of Canada’s decision to commission an original campaign song, calling upon songwriter Jim Vallance (Aerosmith, Michael Bublé, Bryan Adams) to write “Get Ahead.” While the impetus was to both target and expand their voter base while avoiding legal complications of licensing existing songs, unforeseen challenges accompanied this original work. Through this example we consider how these songs function in an era characterised by rampant partisanship and normalised social media usage. As voters in at least 64 countries head to the polls in 2024, this case study offers context for unravelling the complex interactions of sound, politics, elections, and old and new medias in the negotiation of political discourses.