Music, Identity and Cultural Diversity. A study of the functions of music in ethnic social clubs.

The aim, conduct and development of the project
The overall aim of this study is to explore how music can influence identity formation. A further aim is to investigate whether, and if so how, musical activity can serve as a means for social change among minority ethnic groups in Swedish society. The project studies the relevance of musical activity and club participation for persons who in different ways are involved with state-subsidized ethnic clubs and associations in Sweden. The central questions of the study are: What significance does music have for the participants in the clubs? And what significance do music and the club have for the participants in relation to their other social belongings and contexts?

Applying a multi-disciplinary approach (musicology, music education, ethnology, and sociology), and as a collaboration among six researchers at four institutions of higher education, fieldwork has been conducted at a number of social clubs in the three major urban regions of Gothenburg, Malmö and Stockholm. The collaboration has been shaped through regular meetings and residential workshops where the research team (in addition to the empirical work) discussed first the structure of the project and then the various disciplinary perspectives and methods, after which the concrete work of analysis began. Finally, the draft versions of articles and anthology chapters were commented upon and revised. Some key concepts for the project are musicking (Small 1998), which can be understood as a process by which people can use music to discover, shape and explore identities, and thereby express who they are; communities of practice, which emphasizes that activities within social clubs and similar contexts contain elements of learning and identity formation; and spatial context, which refers to the fact that the music-making in the clubs both takes place and occupies space, and this occurs somewhere specific.

Fieldwork was conducted at a number of social clubs in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö during 2014–2016. The empirical work was performed either by a single researcher or by several together. With reference to the project’s research questions, and after taking stock of the social clubs in each city, a number of clubs and their members were invited to participate in the study. Using participant observation, the researchers took part in the clubs’ music-making, rehearsals, concerts and recitals, as well as both private and public meetings and assemblies. Observations of situations containing musical practice have been key to studying the interactions between different stakeholders, both within the ethnic contexts – such as between different groups and clubs – and between the clubs and the wider community. Semi-structured interviews, and in a fewsome cases focus groups, were conducted with a number of people active within the clubs. These data-gathering methods were combined to give a deeper understanding of individuals’ and groups’ creation of meaning in relation to music-making.

The most important results of the project and its contributions to the forefront of international research
This project has studied culture in its broadest sense, and (1) what music means as a cultural manifestation and identity marker for the particular individual, for a group’s sense of community, and for society at large. The emphasis on “musicking” within social clubs has largely had to do with (2) cultural production, where the clubs are understand as communities of practice and musical hubs.  We have therefore been less interested in the social club as a formal organization than as a dynamic milieu created by the interplay of its members. From this perspective (3) music is understand as an interactive and relational practice that shapes and is shaped by the community (the club). (4) A large part of the clubs’ activities and musicking seems to occur in multi-minority contexts. Many members play in different constellations where they collaborate with other musicians and singers, and at other organizations and clubs, with different ethnic and national affiliations, such as popular-education organizations, cultural centres and festivals. This seems to create an inclusive atmosphere of diversity that welcomes persons with minority backgrounds as well as members of the Swedish majority. (5) Many clubs explicitly aim to promote increased community citizenship, one goal being that the cultural production in the club should help group members be recognized as legitimate Swedish citizens who, so to speak, are included in the image of being Swedish – an image that allows for different ethnic belongings.

New research questions generated within the project
The project has resulted in a deepening of the questions about the relation between cultural traditions and cultural production. The project’s transnational perspective makes it possible to investigate how people are tied to multiple places, enabling us to speak of a diasporic cultural production where we look beyond a one-sided custodianship of traditions. Other questions that have emerged concern the concept of ethnicity as a category, where the fundamental question is whether ethnicity is socially relevant, and if so, when it is relevant, and what happens to make it relevant, which also touches on questions of community citizenship. Regarding this, the following question emerged as central: How are images and knowledge about a group or national category created through cultural production? What are the implications of diasporic cultural production, and how does it come to expression? How and to what extent is citizenship related to cultural practice?

International dimensions of the project
The project and the preliminary results have been presented and discussed at the following international conferences:

Westvall, M., Lidskog, R., Pripp, O., Sernhede, O., Söderman, J. & Volgsten, U. (2014). Panel: A study of the role of music in ethnic-based associations in three Swedish cities. Nordic Network for Research in Music Education, Stockholm, Sweden, April 23-25, 2014.

Söderman J. & Westvall M. (2015). Paper: The role of music for participants in ethnic-based cultural associations in Sweden. The 9th International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education. Loyola University New Orleans, June 14-17, 2015.

Pripp O. & Westvall M. (2015). Paper: Musical dimensions of ethnic formation and co-existence. The Nordic Ethnology and Folklore Conference Copenhagen Denmark, August 18-21 2015.

The research team arranged a residential workshop at the University of Texas, Austin, in November 2015, to present the project and its preliminary results to colleagues at the Department of Music Studies at UT, as well to students.

On 4 October 2017, Maria Westvall led a seminar together with Chinese researcher Nan Qi at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte in Natal, Brazil, on the topic of Music and Migration. The results of the project were presented to researchers and students at the university.

On 11 October 2017, Westvall presented the entire project and the results to researchers, teachers and masters students at Universidade de Brasília, in Brasília, Brazil.

On 24 November 2017, Oscar Pripp and Maria Westvall presented a paper on music, migration and social clubs at the IMER conference in Örebro, at which several international scholars participated.

How has the research team disseminated results to other scholars and groups outside the academic community? What joint activities have occurred?  
Through the themes of the project, active members of clubs have become interested in the project and the questions it asks. The project has been mentioned in diverse popular-education contexts, for instance in panel discussions on musical learning and civil society led by Johan Söderman at conferences arranged by Mimer (The Swedish Network for Research on Popular Education) in 2016 and 2017. The project has been presented at the Kurdish Library in Stockholm by Oscar Pripp. It is hoped that the coming anthology, to be published by Studentlitteratur, will be used as course literature for teacher candidates, in social work within the culture sector, and in the popular-education sector. The project team has been invited to present the coming anthology at a cultural centre in a major urban region. The project has also been integrated into the team members’ various academic departments through seminars with doctoral students and senior researchers. International visiting scholars at the departments have also learned about the themes and progress of the project. The project team has also presented the project to beginning and advanced students at various institutions of higher education.