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Music in Conflict studies the complex relationship of musical culture to political life in Palestine-Israel, where conflict has both shaped and claimed the lives of Palestinians and Jews. In the context of the geography of violence that characterizes the conflict, borders and boundaries are material and social manifestations of the ways in which the production of knowledge is conditioned by political and structural violence. Ethical and aesthetic positions that shape artistic production in this context are informed by profound imbalances of power and contingent exposure to violence. Viewing expressive culture as a potent site for understanding these dynamics, the book examines the politics of sound to show how music-making reflects and forms identities, and in the process, shapes communities.
The ethnography is based on fieldwork conducted in Israel and the West Bank in 2011-2012 and other excursions since then. Author has "followed the conflict" by "following the music," from concert halls to demonstrations, mixed-city community centers to Palestinian refugee camp children's clubs, alternative urban scenes and even a checkpoint. In all the different contexts presented, the monograph is thematically and theoretically underpinned by the ways in which music is used to culturally assert or reterritorialize both spatial and social boundaries in a situation of conflict.
List of contents
Introduction 1. The everyday practice and performance of nation making and resistance in Palestine: Al Kamandjâti music conservatory 2. Coexistence, multiculturalism and pluralistic citizenship in Israel: the Jaffa Arab-Jewish Community Center (AJCC) 3. Music and the politics of spatiality and temporality in Palestine: checkpoints, occupation bureaucracy, subjectivity 4. On music, politics and social justice: Israel’s J14 social protest movement and its imaginings of “home” 5. Strangers in their homeland: on the lives and musics of Palestinian citizens of Israel Epilogue
About the author
Nili Belkind is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Caribbean and Middle Eastern musics. The writing of Music in Conflict was supported by consecutive postdoctoral fellowships.
Summary
Music in Conflict studies the complex relationship of musical culture to political life in Palestine-Israel, where conflict has both shaped and claimed the lives of Palestinians and Jews.
