Full Description
Forced migration has led to the creation of unique spaces within varying contexts where music is made, shared, and experienced. Music Refuge charts over eight years of research to uncover the musical lives of those seeking asylum and refuge in 'host' countries. This book explores how migration, mobility, and emplacement become entangled through musical interactions, focusing on how people seeking asylum create musical spaces. Through music, asylum seekers discover alternate forms of identity that resist categorizations, nationalisms, monocultures, and fixed geographies. Moving away from refugee and asylum-seeking tropes that rely on narratives of victimhood, Music Refuge foregrounds agency and the claiming of space while living within and through asylum seeking systems.
Ailbhe Kenny documents the voices of those seeking asylum within multi-sited contexts and frames their music making as spaces for "becoming" and "belonging". She bridges research in migration studies and music education, offering a fresh perspective and in-depth understanding of adults and children living through asylum-seeking systems within Europe and beyond. The result is a cogent and timely exploration of music as belonging, refuge, and ultimately, hope.
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
1. Music-Making and Asylum Seeking
Interlude: A Broken Clarinet
Interlude: A Concert Dress and Shoes
2. Seeking Asylum, Living Asylum
Interlude: Change My Reality
Interlude: Liberation in the Melodies
3. Why Music?
Interlude: The Singing Barber
Interlude: As If I Grew Wings
4. Belonging and Becoming with Music
Interlude: Who is Madonna?
Interlude: My Personal Playlist
5. Musical Spaces and (Dis)Placement
Interlude: Beauty in the Struggle
Interlude: Clear Without Words
6. Closing and Opening
References
Index
