In recent years, transcultural orchestras have increasingly emerged in Western Europe, initially in response to the arrival of refugees and later developing into a professional artistic field. Rooted in Western classical orchestral traditions, these ensembles incorporate diverse musical influences and reflect the cultural complexity of post-migrant societies as well as experiences of displacement and marginalisation (Sievers 2024). The negotiation of stylistic parameters in the musical practice in such orchestras can be seen as a reflection of the negotiation of multiple forms of belonging and identity construction among musicians (Präger 2024: 187). This article examines these dynamics through a case study of the Bridges Kammerorchester, a chamber orchestra based in Frankfurt am Main, whose members are socialised in diverse musical traditions. The ensemble emphasises participatory engagement in shaping its repertoire and brings together musicians with and without migration biographies. In the specific practice of composition, performance, and interaction within the ensemble, different layers of relevant belonging and a spectrum of identities – also constructed along ethnically and culturally marked categories – become visible, marked by an intrinsic ambivalence: the artistic premise of representing specific cultural markers in music meets the attempt to dissolve boundaries shaped by cultural heritage into a form of transculturality. Drawing on interviews with musicians from the orchestra and the analysis of three selected works from the ensemble’s repertoire, this paper discusses how the musicians of Bridges deal with their cultural heritage and their biographical and musical backgrounds in this transcultural community, how they position themselves in different affiliations, and how this is reflected in the ensemble’s musical repertoire. The paper argues that the orchestra’s artistic profile, involving a mixture of music traditions, has the potential to transcend existing boundaries between these traditions and the associated expectations, but still needs to draw and produce musical boundaries. The ambivalence of dissolving boundaries and performing ethnically or nationally marked music remains.

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.

Since the mid-2010s, Brazilian immigrants have celebrated carnival festivities in the streets of Brazil’s ex-metropole, Lisbon, Portugal. As the events of the blocos (carnival ensembles) began relatively small, they initially paraded using the legal status of “demonstrations” with minimal fees. By 2020, when their events had grown to attracting crowds in the thousands, the police began to categorize them instead as “commercial events.” This new status required the blocos to pay exorbitant fees despite their celebrations in public space having no profit motive, which created many obstacles for the realization of the events. Brazilian immigrants have often interpreted the differential treatment of the carnival as a manifestation of the prejudicial xenophobia they often experience in Portugal. However, the City of Lisbon was careful not to stigmatize Brazilian cultural practices, claiming that Brazilians were treated no differently from others. I argue that Brazilian immigrants in Portugal have confronted structural xenophobia, a systemic form of immigrant exclusion manifested through bureaucratic obstacles that may or may not accompany prejudicial xenophobia. When event management systems do not structurally adapt towards the goals of equity and inclusion, they can exclude the festivities of these communities, which cannot take advantage of these systems as easily as actors of the host society. In 2023, the blocos launched a campaign to make the carnival viable through protests against and negotiations with the City. This article examines how the carnival community transformed into a social movement against structural xenophobia. In a promising development, Lisbon signed an agreement in 2025 officializing the carnival and providing a firmer footing for the festivity, which represented a victory following years of campaigning and negotiation. The article takes stock of the strategies the blocos deployed to ultimately achieve this status after years of combatting the structural xenophobia that had perennially left them in a precarious position.

Since the mid-2010s, gangsterrap – a new Swedish DIY scene rooted in the international gangsta rap subgenre – has gained massive commercial success, while also being highly problematised in the public debate in the Nordic countries. This article provides an empirical case of popular music’s intersection with the rise of gun violence and urban marginality within a Nordic welfare state, emphasising how the music and the artist can be understood in terms of taking part in communities of belonging beyond national borders. More specifically, the material analysed here includes interviews with, and songs by, Swedish rap artist Yasin. The concept of digital diaspora (Ponzanesi 2020, 2021) enables a focus on how spatiality, belonging, and self-identification are created, and it can be seen as articulating new possibilities for affective, social, and political connections and rupture. Also, digital diaspora is understood as being constituted through practices reflective of intersecting power relations (Candidatu, Leurs, and Ponzanesi 2019: 34). By focusing on narratives of (non)belonging(s) and home, in this article we examine how practices of (non)belonging(s) create connections between past and present popular culture and can be perceived as a restorative and unifying tool among Somali diaspora youth, but also their parents. As a result, this article presents different sensibilities about the changing perceptions of closeness, home, and belonging in Sweden, a Nordic welfare state.

David Verbuč received his PhD in ethnomusicology at UC Davis in 2014, and is teaching ethnomusicology and popular music classes at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He specialises in the following topics and areas of research: ethnography of popular music places and communities in the US, ethnographic and autoethnographic study of music in socialist and postsocialist Slovenia, archival and ethnographic research of Romani and Sinti musicians in north Slovenia, methodology/ethnography, music anthropology of place/space, music and economy.

Für trans* und nichtbinäre Personen bedeutet Elternwerden, mit komplexen Hürden und Diskriminierungen konfrontiert zu sein – etwa hinsichtlich der rechtlichen Anerkennung, der gesundheitlichen Versorgung oder im sozialen Umfeld. Jenn Stoll widmet sich der Frage, wie sich Repronormativität im Rahmen unterschiedlicher Wege des Elternwerdens konstituiert und wie trans* und nichtbinäre Menschen dies navigieren. Aus einer cis- und heteronormativitätskritischen, intersektionalen und durch den New Materialism inspirierten Perspektive bietet die Analyse eine nuancierte und kritische Auseinandersetzung mit den normativen Strukturen des Elternwerdens und geht der Frage nach, was es für reproduktive Gerechtigkeit braucht.

Im Beitrag wird die Rolle von Musiklehrkräften im Kontext der Digitalisierung des Musikunterrichts untersucht. Durch leitfadengestützte Interviews mit sechs Lehrkräften und die Anwendung von Mapping-Techniken werden soziale Welten, diskursive Spannungsfelder und Positionierungen sichtbar gemacht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen komplexe Beziehungsgeflechte zwischen Lehrkräften, Technologien und institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen sowie den Einfluss nicht-menschlicher Akteur*innen auf das Forschungsfeld. Die Ergebnisse verdeutlichen Spannungen zwischen pragmatischer Tool-Nutzung und didaktisch-konzeptioneller Orientierung sowie zwischen individueller Eigenverantwortung und systemischer Unterstützung. Eine entwickelte heuristische Positionsmap systematisiert Fortbildungsbedarfe entlang dieser Achsen und dient als Grundlage für differenzierte Fortbildungskonzepte, die auf die heterogenen Bedarfe von Lehrkräften zugeschnitten sind.

Der Beitrag untersucht die Einführung von iPads im Musikunterricht einer Sekundarschule aus einer soziomaterialen Perspektive. Auf der Grundlage einer mehrjährigen Begleitung wird mit Verfahren der Situationsanalyse aufgezeigt, wie die Digitaltechnologien – insbesondere die App GarageBand – in bestehende Fachkulturen, Dingordnungen und Unterrichtsroutinen eingebettet werden. Die Analyse offenbart, wie im Musikunterricht der Digitalisierungsprozess oft an alten Dingen, vertrauten Routinen und fachimmanenten Ideologien, wie dem Klaviozentrismus und einer Liveness-Norm, scheitert. Zugleich ergänzt ein alternatives Verständnis unterrichtlichen Musiklernens das handwerkliche Reproduzieren und Selbstüberwinden in Präsenzdarbietungen um die Klangarbeit beim explorativ-selbstständigen Erfinden und Produzieren präziser Aufnahmen. Die Ergebnisse werden hinsichtlich der Debatten um Digitalisierung in Schule und Musikunterricht diskutiert.