Hani, one of the 55 ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China who reside in Yunnan Province, trace their origins to migration from the Tibetan Plateau through the Sichuan Basin to the Ailao Mountains. This film mainly focuses on one of the Hani Haba repertoire during the Kuzaza Festival (矻扎扎节), also known as the Sixth Month Year (六月年), one of the three major festivals of the Hani people. Due to the lengthy narrative of ethnic musical epics, Hani Haba faces a challenging survival situation that serves as Hani’s music and memory. By the end of the 20th century, Chinese scholars had completed collecting Hani folk music in Yunnan, establishing the Hani musical archives. Through interviews with the only Beima (clergy), Ma Jian Chang, and the villagers of Aichun Village, one of the soundtracks is a 10-minute Hani Haba, which can only be sung by Beima during the Sixth Month (Hani calendar), highlighting the dynamic nature of oral traditions in preserving cultural identity across generations. More broadly, this film aims to use music to convey oral narratives, maintaining the coherence and continuity of minority groups’ culture in our rapidly changing world and within local intangible heritage dynamics.

In 2013, North Macedonia’s national public broadcaster Macedonian Radio Television (MRT) selected Macedonian singer Vlatko “Lozano” Lozanovski and Macedonian-Romani singer Esma Redžepova to represent the nation in the Eurovision Song Contest as a duo. Their song “Imperija” (“Empire”) imagines the world as one large empire, united by the power of music. However, it was widely received by Macedonians as an endorsement of the then-ruling nationalist party VMRO-DPMNE’s Skopje 2014 project, designed to give the nation’s capital Skopje a classical aesthetic through the construction of new government buildings and erection of monuments depicting historical figures from the Macedonian region. In this paper, I argue that Redžepova, the singer and humanitarian known as the “Queen of the Gypsies” (Silverman 2012), aided the North Macedonian government in promoting their imperialist agenda by posturing herself, a famous representative of Europe’s most impoverished racialized migrant community, as a figurehead of this “empire” united by music. Despite VMRO-DPMNE’s complicated treatment of Roma, Redžepova endorsed their brand of Macedonian nationalism developed in opposition to European integration, and notably amid their candidacy for EU accession, through this collaboration. Moreover, “Imperija” was met with fierce criticism from Greeks and Bulgarians upset with North Macedonia’s geopolitical claims regarding the region’s imperial history. While ethnomusicological literature on Roma has focused on narratives of resistance, acts of worldmaking, and formations of new subjectivities among Roma (Helbig 2023; Lie 2021; Costache 2018), I ultimately demonstrate how narratives of belonging among Roma have been commodified by national governments for nation-branding strategies targeting global audiences.

How does sound (mal)function to mediate, interpellate, and distribute authority and power? This paper expands on existing, albeit limited, scholarship to examine the strategic implementation of Nazi radio propaganda during WWII through Irland Redaktion, an Irish-language station founded and operated by the Schutzstaffel (SS). By analyzing a series of broadcasts that emphasized Ireland's colonial history and nationalist sentiment while avoiding overt Nazi rhetoric, the paper examines the nuanced, format-specific strategies used in an attempt to foster a sympathetic Irish neutrality untethered to Nazi social or race-based ideology.

This research underscores the complexities and challenges of sonically disseminating propaganda in a foreign context –– especially, in Ireland’s case, given the limited access to radio technology among the Schutzstaffel's target audience in the deeply anti-crown Gaeltacht –– and offers insights into the broader implications of such efforts on national identity and political alignment in an otherwise "neutral" space. The paper additionally suggests avenues for further investigation into the long-term impact of sonic wartime propaganda on Ireland’s political climate and collective memory, highlighting the delicate interplay between manipulation and resistance in the propagation of ideological narratives.

To be released 2025/26, length 60 mins., English/Xhosa/Zulu with subtitles.

Against the history of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, WE ARE NOT AFRAID explores music’s critical role as resistance for political prisoners held in apartheid prisons over three decades (1960-1990), especially at Robben Island (the notorious prison which held Nelson Mandela for 18 years) and the Johannesburg Women’s Jail at the Old Fort. Narrated by former political prisoners, with historical archival footage of key historical moments from the apartheid era, it shows how music performance – from indigenous African genres like isicathamiya, maskanda and mbaqanga to Cape jazz, migrant work songs, freedom songs, Western classical, rock, reggae and Indian ragas – provided resistance, critique, community, therapy, memory and identity for political prisoners, transcending political, linguistic and ethnic differences to unite an oppressed people against a common enemy. Women’s narratives and songs expose the deadly gender-based violence that underlay structures of state violence and express their fight against both racial and gender oppression and dehumanizing prison experiences, which differed sharply to a male-centered struggle world. Through these remarkable resilient individuals, new testimonies and music, the film touches on broader questions about cultural expression as advancing social change and the uses of music by individuals suffering and protesting the violation of human rights under oppressive patriarchal regimes at the intersections of music, resilience, power, violence, gender, race, trauma and human rights.

Excerpt:highlights that touch on the film’s main themes.Introduction:ethical approaches to ethnographic research/media-making in trauma-related research, the importance of documenting crimes against humanity.