Audible Pasts: Ethnomusicology and Global Music History in Dialogue
Wed 02 Apr
|University of Cambridge
As a preliminary to our conference on 'musical futures', we will be holding a day-long workshop on Wednesday, 2 April, focusing on the question of musical and auditory pasts and the disciplinary intersections between history and ethnography in music studies.
Time & Location
02 Apr 2025, 19:00 – 23:00
University of Cambridge, 11 West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9DP, UK
About the event
Global Perspectives on Maritime Song
Scholars studying maritime music often categorise its repertoire by land-borders, using landcentric terminology, frameworks, and perspectives to discuss the historical significance of maritime genres. What we are talking about when we discuss maritime music, however, are repertoires of song shaped and defined by the sea, influencing not only how and why these songs were sung, but who these songs are said to ‘belong’ to. Historically, song collectors sought to claim maritime song as part of a distinct national heritage, often ignoring cross-cultural influences, such as melodic features of African folk song and non-European pidgin lyrics. These nationalistic frameworks disregard the global nature of maritime songs, which were sung on ships across the seas by mixed-nationality crews. Despite claims of national ownership, the same maritime songs also appear in collections internationally. This can partly be explained with reference to colonialism and migration, however this does not…