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From Musical Activism to Musical Citizenship: Dresden’s Banda Internationale.

Mueller, Carolin
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598261276683245

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Germanic Languages and Literatures.
This dissertation examines musical activism as a mode of civic activism that opposes the recent resurgence of anti-immigrant and neo-fascist attitudes and policies in the city of Dresden, Germany. This ethnographic study, conducted from 2017-19, follows the trajectory of Banda Comunale, an association of local musicians turned activists who formed to support anti-neo-Nazi street protest marches in 2001 and expanded as Banda Internationale (BI), a pro-migrant initiative, to include musicians who came to Dresden as refugees when right-wing aggression surged in 2015/16. In this dissertation, I discuss a range of musical strategies through which the band learned to rewrite the cultural scripts of social action in Dresden. I show how engaging structurally and thematically with issues of migration through music, the band explores the manner in which people constitute themselves as claimants of rights in Dresden, where belonging and political participation are at stake. These strategies and their effects include: • the introduction of new instruments such as oud, cello and violin into Banda Comunale’s brass band structures as well as new musical repertoire from Arab and West African music meant that marginalized musicians could author song compositions • renaming the band and changing the band’s mode of internal governance helped BI resist being viewed as an “integration project” • creating participatory audience engagements with music during protests against right-wing violence meant that participants could engage in new ways of political participation in Dresden • conducting education workshops for children created effective spaces for empowerment through music to expand local knowledge of sustainable resistance and change, to establish “refugees” as organizers of social justice projects, and to re-authorize music activism as a “proper” form of political engagement and work • lobbying to create a sister city relationship between Dresden and Ouagadougou transformed musicians into advocates who create new spaces for social and equitable justice. This ethnographic investigation, informed by critical theory in citizenship, race, and migration studies, shows music functions as a platform from which people perform the city and themselves as its citizens – i.e. claimants of rights – in the space of encounter and confrontation in Dresden. The band reconceptualizes who can perform as a member of the city’s community and excluded agents feel empowered to take up space. I identified that BI musicians are musical activists in Dresden who make claims to rights by way of participatory music-making that disturbs exclusionary right-wing culture and imaginaries of migrants and refugees. I theorize the band’s approach as “musical citizenship” – a practice of making rights claims in which musical strategies trouble consolidated cultural scripts of social action. BI demonstrates the ways in which performers use music to rescript ways of operating as historical subjects in space, relations, and time, using the tools of music-making to continuously negotiate different interests and knowledges in the urban community of Dresden.
John Davidson (Advisor)
Dorothy Noyes (Advisor)
Johanna Sellman (Committee Member)
301 p.
Germanic Literature
music; activism; Banda Internationale; citizenship; scripting; performance; Dresden; Germany

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Mueller, C. (2020). From Musical Activism to Musical Citizenship: Dresden’s Banda Internationale. [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598261276683245

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Mueller, Carolin. From Musical Activism to Musical Citizenship: Dresden’s Banda Internationale. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598261276683245.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Mueller, Carolin. "From Musical Activism to Musical Citizenship: Dresden’s Banda Internationale." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1598261276683245

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1598261276683245
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.