The annual Las Cruces International Mariachi Conference, established in 1994 with the additional name “Festival de las Américas,” was once one of the highest attended mariachi conferences at the turn of the twenty-first century. Although attendance has waned due to multiple cancelations from 2014 to 2016, the first two decades of the conference were co-sponsored and hosted by New Mexico State University—a public, land-grant university founded in 1888 and is New Mexico’s oldest institution of higher education. The events hosted included the conference workshops, the student showcase concert, and main concert. The concerts both took place at the Pan American Center, Las Cruces’s 13,140-seat arena, which New Mexico State University uses, primarily, as a sports and entertainment facility. Drawing from my experience as a participant-observer from 2002 to 2008 as well as archival research and utilizing Christoper Small’s concept of musicking and Josh Kun’s idea of audiotopias, I argue that by holding the student showcase concert and the main concert on the same stage and making them both ticketed events, the hierarchy of expert validation was obscured effectively redefining the performative space for semi-professional and student mariachi groups and vocalists. Additionally, I explore how the reinscribing of space through music both affirmed and subverted audience expectations and became a site where local, young musicians were granted prestigious visibility within their own city, thus also becoming a place for identity building.

This paper examines the All Bengal Music Conference (ABMC), initiated in 1934 in colonial Calcutta, as a site of both continuity and rupture, foregrounding its role in redefining musical sociality. This event was not merely a gathering of musicians but a crucial turning point that signalled a shift in the spatial and social dynamics of Hindustani music—from the intimate, private spaces of the salon (sangeet baithak) to the public, performative arena of the music conference. Drawing on archival materials and personal narratives, I interrogate the sociality and spatiality of the conference, juxtaposing it with its predecessor, the salon, to argue that the move from private to public spaces was not merely logistical but symbolic. The conference also marked a negotiation of power, where musicians reclaimed agency within modernity’s cultural framework, reflecting the tensions between a hereditary elite of performers, who shaped their identity through lineage and tradition, and a newly emerging public, which comprised a more diverse and nationalistically charged audience. Musicians not only adapted their art to these shifting dynamics but actively sought to shape their audiences through curated repertoires and the performance of mood (rasa) that resonated with the aspirations of a modernizing Bengal. My paper concludes by situating the ABMC within the broader context and culmination of Bengali musicology’s modernist moment, contending that the conference epitomised the intersection of music, space, and sociality, offering insights into how colonial modernity reconfigured artistic traditions and their publics.

Collective singing has long played a central role in fostering social trust, reinforcing cultural identity, and navigating crises in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions. This study examines how collective singing has contributed to both social cohesion and exclusion during periods of upheaval. From Denmark’s WWII resistance songs and Norway’s post-2011 terror attack musical responses to the Baltic Singing Revolution and contemporary Ukrainian refugees using song to navigate displacement, this research interrogates the complex relationship between music, trust, and crisis.

While ethnomusicology has long examined the unifying and identity-shaping potential of musicking, this study emphasizes its role in shaping social trust—both in terms of inclusion and exclusion. Singing can create a sense of belonging, yet it can also serve as a mechanism for delineating cultural boundaries and reinforcing social divisions. Through ethnographic fieldwork, archival analysis, and computational methods, this study investigates how collective singing has been mobilized in different historical and contemporary contexts to foster trust while also defining cultural “insiders” and “outsiders.” A key innovation is the integration of digital ethnomusicology, employing large-scale textual analysis and neural word embeddings to trace shifts in song-related discourse over time.

By incorporating contemporary case studies, including the role of singing in refugee integration, this research contributes to broader discussions in ethnomusicology about how musical practices shape social trust during crises. It offers new insights into the power of collective singing to negotiate belonging, resilience, and exclusion, providing a comparative perspective on its enduring role in shaping cultural memory and social relationships.