How do Syrian musicians performing with German musicians and for German audiences selectively alter their music to accommodate Western musical sensibilities? How do encounters between Arabic and Western musical traditions generate new aesthetic expressions for both Syrian and German musicians? This study addresses these questions through a case study of the Syriab Ensemble, a group of Syrian and German musicians performing diverse musical styles. While existing research has examined Syrian popular music in Germany and musical practices in refugee contexts (Brunner 2022, Pistric 2020), little attention has been paid to the strategies Syrian musicians use to adapt to new cultural and professional environments, or to the ways Arabic musical practices shape German performers’ approaches. As an Arab scholar and ‘ud player, I offer a perspective often underrepresented in European-dominated scholarship. Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork, including performance observations and interviews, this study explores how Syrian musicians reshape their repertoires for German audiences and how German musicians learn to engage with maqam-based music. Musical examples from the ensemble’s repertoire are compared with performances from Syria to assess the effects of migration and intercultural collaboration. The analysis focuses on harmonization techniques, maqam theory, rhythm, genre, style, and performance context. I argue that the ensemble’s musical practices reveal complex processes of negotiation, adaptation, and reciprocal exchange rather than one-sided assimilation. By highlighting these dynamics, the study contributes to broader debates in ethnomusicology, world music analysis, and minority music studies, emphasizing migration as a site of creative transformation and mutual influence.

This paper focuses on musical exchange between Germany and the Mashreq region from the 1950s until present time. The emphasis is on music exchange and “music diplomacy” (Davenport 2009) that emerged through long-term interaction at the personal and institutional level in the second half of the twentieth century. These forms of music transfer manifested themselves in the diverse exchange and migration of musicians, texts and objects (Fosler-Lussier 2010). Taking into account formal and informal cultural and knowledge exchange, selected musical actors and institutions are examined as examples of the driving forces behind these interactions. Although music diplomacy between Germany and the eastern Mediterranean region has a long history (Öğüt & Prieske 2024), it has only been researched to a limited extent to date. In my paper, I argue that state-funded institutions like the German Goethe Institutes or German schools in the Eastern Mediterranean act as cultural hubs for international music networking. In countries where there are few state-funded cultural activities, these German institutions play an important role in the local music scene, promoting music in line with Germany’s cultural policies. These processes of music diplomacy and exchange in the Mashreq region are being researched for the first time using archival sources on German and Arab music diplomacy as well as interviews with musicians and former government staff. By combining methods of historic musicology with field research in the Mashreq and Germany, the research highlights the history and continuity of German-Arab cultural ties that are often unknown or have been forgotten.

Who is recognized as a composer - and why does the category so often appear gender-neutral until women enter it?

This paper interrogates the cultural construction of “composer” through a comparative analysis of Germany and South Korea, examining how musical authority is historically produced, institutionally maintained, and discursively marked. Drawing on archival research, institutional histories, and contemporary discourse analysis, the study shifts attention from the recovery of marginalized figures to the normative assumptions embedded in the category itself.

In German art music traditions, canon formation and aesthetic ideologies of autonomous authorship have consolidated a masculinized model of compositional authority that remains structurally unmarked. In Korean contexts, the position of historical figures such as gisaeng complicates Western-derived distinctions between composition, performance, and authorship, revealing alternative configurations of musical agency that have not consistently been integrated into modern art music historiography.

The persistent labeling of “female composer” exposes the asymmetry of recognition and raises broader questions about how musical value and legitimacy are assigned. By situating naming practices within broader regimes of cultural validation, this paper argues that “composer” is not a neutral descriptor but a historically contingent category shaped by power, pedagogy, and canon formation. Rethinking who gets to be called a composer invites a reconsideration of musical authority and the epistemological foundations of ethnomusicological scholarship.