University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

0000-0002-5901-8518

60781dab-1457-4af9-be16-b15448110e14

Christidis, Ioannis

2026-06-11T06:46:07Z

2026-06-11T06:46:07Z

2026-05-27

This article investigates how Syrian political and protest songs contribute to enactments of insurgent, precarious, and transnational citizenship across the trajectories of the 2011 Syrian uprising, forced displacement, and resettlement in Europe. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research, combining online documentation of performances from the protests in Homs with hybrid fieldwork in refugee camps in Thessaloniki, Greece, and among Syrian diasporic communities in Vienna, Austria, it traces the heterochronic political life of three songs: “Jannah, Jannah, Jannah,” “Bi-ḥuzn wa-al-rīḥ taṣfar min warā al-bībān,” and “Ṣabāḥkun Ḥurriyyah – Roja û Azadî be.” Although each song emerges from a distinct political moment, their trajectories illuminate interconnected ways in which protest music mediates political agency across contexts of brutal repression, restrictive border regimes, and diasporic reconfiguration. By examining the discursive, sensorial, affective, and performative registers of these songs, and the multi-layered continuities that link them, this article shows how individuals who identify as Syrians sustain political agency and generate alternative imaginaries of political belonging and citizenship in response to the multiple forms of political exclusion they encounter. Finally, it calls for a politically attuned and ethically committed practice of listening, a politicizing mode of response that not only recognizes musical expressions by marginalized and disenfranchised individuals and groups as sites of political agency, but also positions ethnomusicologists as responsive agents rather than detached observers.

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Made available in DSpace on 2026-06-11T06:46:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mm.2026.46 .pdf: 10265323 bytes, checksum: 6c8cc4d3da6fd09d6673edfc67c37d1f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2026-05-27

https://doi.org/10.52413/mm.2026.46

https://dspace.mdw.ac.at/handle/123456789/27510

en

2791-4569

Music & Minorities (M&M)

CC-BY-NC-4.0

Migration

music and refugees

protest song

Syrian revolution

musical acts of citizenship

Echoes of the 2011 Syrian Uprising in Europe

Music, Protest, and Acts of Citizenship

text::journal::journal article::research article

mdwPress

Christidis, Ioannis

Publication

2026-06-11T06:46:07.212Z

false

yes

Vienna

Special Collection "Music, Migration, and Belonging in 21st-Century Europe"

5

University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna