Culture Work as Care Work: Music Education and Refugee Resilience at the Simrishamn Kulturskola
Carrie Ann Danielson
Florida State University
This paper explores the intersection of community-based music programs and care for Syrian refugee children and youth in Sweden, focusing on the Simrishamn Kulturskola, a public arts school in the Skåne region that has been uniting refugee and local youth for the past decade. Since Sweden’s 2015 refugee influx, which brought over 200,000 asylum seekers, including many unaccompanied minors from Syria, community-driven arts programs have become essential emotional and social support systems, complementing national policies that primarily address material needs. Through fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork over the course of seven years, including work with participants, teachers, and policymakers, this paper examines music education—particularly group guitar and songwriting for Muslim girls—as both culture work and care work.
Drawing on frameworks from applied ethnomusicology, feminist care ethics, and community music, this paper argues that the music programs at the kulturskola serve as vital spaces for resilience and healing. Using Joan Tronto’s (1993) ethics of care—attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness—it demonstrates how these programs create emotional support and social solidarity for refugee youth. Additionally, the paper engages with the concept of “culture work” (Cederström & Frandy, 2022) to explore how these programs foster a sense of belonging, agency, and cultural adaptation. In a climate of rising anti-immigrant sentiment, Simrishamn’s music education exemplifies the transformative power of culture as care, offering refugee youth a space to navigate identity and belonging in the face of displacement.
Rehearsing Community: Queer Choral Musicking and the Politics of Care
Charlotte Olivia Stewart-Juby
Carleton University
Community-based queer choirs have become popular fixtures in various cities across North America since the 1970s. In Canada, Ottawa has played a key role in the queer choral movement, as it is home to three of the country’s first queer choirs, including In Harmony, a lesbian-founded choir that has been active since 1991. While much research on this movement considers the political and personal impact of these choirs’ performances (Balen 2017; Cockayne 2019; Steers 2021), this paper shifts focus towards the space of the rehearsal room. Using a queer-feminist approach, I examine the tensions between utopian narratives of the movement and its associations with homonormativity and institutionalism (MacLachlan 2020). Drawing on recent ethnographic fieldwork and participation with In Harmony, I build on recent theorizing of queer musicking (Lambe 2021; Jennex & Marsh 2021; Klotz 2021) to conceptualize the rehearsal room as a potential queer site of temporal distortion (Munoz 2009) where members may rehearse community, collaboration, and resistance. In the context of the ongoing existential threats to queer and trans rights and lives, I ask if the queer choral rehearsal room has the potential to offer transformative care for its members in times of crisis.
From ethnomusicology to health sciences research: The importance of lived experience in the design of patient-oriented interventions
Theresa Allison
University of California, San Francisco
The health sciences have become increasingly interested in mixed-methods study design, particularly in the areas of implementation science and community-engaged research. Early studies used only limited qualitative methods, such as post-intervention interviews or focus groups. More recently, however, scientists have begun to recognize the value of lived experience to the design of patient-centered and relationship-centered interventions to support social well-being and other aspects of quality of life. In ethnomusicology, we have long understood the importance of centering lived experience in our studies of music. In this paper I argue for the importance of ethnomusicology in the design of scientifically rigorous studies of social well-being. To illustrate the power of music ethnographic study design, I focus on older adults living with dementia and their care partners. Dementia, a life limiting syndrome caused by Alzheimer’s or other neurodegenerative diseases, is associated with significant loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of multiple medical issues including increased mortality. Music opens a window to understanding deeper issues of identity, relationships, and sources of meaning even when people living with dementia can no longer speak coherently. Longitudinal ethnographic attention to music as part of daily life enables us to identify which activities impact social well-being and which are feasible for care partners. Drawing on four music ethnographic studies conducted in a nursing home (2006-08) and home settings (2018-2020, 2021-2024, 2024-present), I demonstrate how music ethnography yields the foundational knowledge needed to design feasible and effective interventions to support social well-being.
Aztec Dance Spaces: Healing and the Ethics of Scholarship in a Fraught Moment
Kristina Nielsen
Southern Methodist University
Aztec dance has gained popularity since the 1970s in the United States. Though it draws on the Aztec and popular imagery of pre-Hispanic culture, contemporary Aztec dance took its present form through nationalist projects in Mexico City in the twentieth century. In the United States, Aztec dance has become connected to broader conversations about Indigenous identities and border experiences, and its growth at the end of the Chicano Movement in the early 1970s linked it to political activism in the US. As I explore in my forthcoming book, there are significant lines of nativism and indigenismo within Aztec dance that complicate narratives that portray it as a vehicle of Indigenous liberation. That said, despite the many warranted critiques of nationalism and indigenismo in ethnomusicology and anthropology (Brading 1989; Tarica 2016), the rallying nationalism of Aztec dance has provided tangible community benefits to many dancers, pointing to fine lines that must be navigated in contemporary critiques––especially in light of a new round of threats. In this paper, I reflect on the challenges of writing about the border and border trauma at a time where the threats of state violence towards individuals in the Aztec dance community have escalated precipitously. In particular, I consider the ethical questions of writing about nativist strategies within Aztec dance at a moment where communities are in the crosshairs of governmental entities. How does one balance intersectionality, including the nationalist erasure of Indigenous Mexican identities, in this moment where nativist strategies easily gain appeal?
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