In my paper I explore how the Burrakatha underwent a process of folklorization in the immediate post-colonial period in India, due to the enactment of prohibitive legislation, repression of political dissidents, and the entrenchment of musical standards associated with classicization. The Burrakatha emerged as a prominent form of political storytelling in the Coastal Andhra region of British India in the 1940s. After independence in 1947, it was used by state and central governments to popularize welfare schemes and five-year plans, claiming to deepen democratic sensibilities. It also came to be adopted by Hindu and Christian religious institutions, making it a popular “folk” musical form practiced by musicians across the caste hierarchy. I argue that this transformation of the Burrakatha from its use to form counter-publics to being de-politicised, can help us assess how the concept of the “folk” was ambivalently situated between regional heritage and political claim-making, which will help comparatively assess processes of politicisation and depoliticisation in folkloric contexts across the world. This study will contribute to literature which is paying more attention to processes of "folklorization" in South Asia (Fiol 2017; Schreffler 2021) and will draw on archival research and oral history interviews.

In the context of Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian political climate, musicians have emerged as prominent actors in the public spectacle of political loyalty. Some of the most conspicuous participants in this spectacle are artists whose identities—ethnic, gendered, aesthetic—are marginalized, instrumentalized, or selectively embraced within the cultural politics of the current hard-right regime. Three emblematic figures in this context are İbrahim Tatlıses, a Kurdish folk icon; Bülent Ersoy, a transgender diva; and Orhan Gencebay, a central figure in the once-dissenting arabesk subculture. Through snapshots of these figures, this paper introduces the phenomenon of musical complicity in contemporary Turkey, in which artists from historically marginalized or oppositional backgrounds lend performative support to the ruling regime, complicating any straightforward reading of political expression in the cultural sphere.

Drawing on media archives—including televised performances, interviews, and social media appearances—I explore how these artists’ public personas are mobilized within the performative landscape of Turkey’s authoritarian populism. My approach is informed by post-Marxist theories of hegemonic articulation (Hall, 1986; Laclau ,1977; Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), which highlight how dominant blocs maintain power through the absorption and resignification of disparate social and cultural elements. This lens reveals that what appears as paradox is, in fact, central to the symbolic work of hegemony. Focusing on the cases of Tatlıses, Ersoy, and Gencebay, I argue that the regime’s mobilization of symbolic contradictions—ethnic, gendered, aesthetic—reveals complicity not as an exception, but as a constitutive feature of populist cultural politics.

This paper examines the role of campaign songs as powerful tools of political persuasion in Ghanaian electoral politics, arguing that their stylistic, rhythmic, aesthetic, and visual dimensions function as “musical manifestos” capable of swaying voter allegiance. In Ghana’s multiparty democracy, music is not merely an accessory to political campaigns; it is a core medium through which political messages are disseminated, party ideologies are reinforced, and emotional connections with the electorate are forged. Furthermore, this study explores how campaign songs extend beyond their lyrical content to employ genre-specific choices, rhythmic grooves, and visual aesthetics that resonate with party supporters. Using the campaign songs of the two dominant political parties—the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC)—during the 2020 and 2024 elections as case studies, this paper categorizes these songs into two broad functions: those that glorify the sponsoring party’s competence and governance potential, and those that undermine political opponents (Amoakohene et al., 2019). Through audiovisual analysis and discourse on musical semiotics, this research highlights how campaign songs strategically evoke cultural memory, national identity, and partisanship, influencing voter perceptions in ways comparable to political rhetoric in advanced democracies. By foregrounding the intersection of music and politics in Africa, this paper contributes to the growing scholarship on the performative and affective dimensions of political communication, offering insights into how sonic and visual elements shape contemporary electoral discourse in Ghana.

This presentation explores the ways that political geographies of belonging (regionalism, nationalism, transnational connections, etc.) can coalesce around relationships of intimacy, illuminating alternatives to identity-based paradigms. Using social dance music in rural Patagonia as a case study, it tracks how musically mediated experiences of convivial sociability foster conceptions of belonging and emplacement as they magnetize groups of intimates around shared practices and conjure relationships of longstanding to the forefront of social experience. It then traces the processes by which these experiences of intimate togetherness lend themselves to more formalized and abstract constructions of place and territory. Recent ethnomusicological work has shown how musical instantiations of intimacy, publicity, and counterpublicity (Warner 2005; Berlant 2000, 2008) can inform experiences of belonging (Dueck 2013; Garcia-Mispireta 2023), and while a range of scholars have noted limitations of identity over the past several decades (see for example Brubaker 2004; Diamond 2006; Ramos-Kitrell, ed. 2019), identity has proved to be an enduring paradigm for studying geographically based conceptions of belonging, even among scholars who emphasize the relational character of musical emplacement (McDonald 2013; Chávez 2016). This presentation brings these strains of the literature together to highlight the ways that musical participants construct political geographies of belonging around shared relationships outside and beyond shared identity.