Crossing Borders in Music and Research
Helsinki, Friday, September 9th 2022
Tieteiden talo (House of Sciences and Letters), Kirkkokatu 6, room 504
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
This seminar aims to bring together researchers and musicians whose work involves crossing national, cultural, social and/or musical borders. Musicians cross borders in artistic encounters, but also researchers in the field of ethnomusicology commonly participate in the musical practices of their research collaborators. The World Wide Women project team has noticed that border-crossing raises similar questions for musicians and researchers, especially as they seek to enter respectful research and work relationships with their collaborators. We have found that ethically and politically accountable research and/or artistic practices involve thinking hard about the various ways in which global and local power structures such as racism, gender ideologies, cultural appropriation, and access to resources affect one’s work. However, rather than focusing on problems caused by structural inequalities, our desire is to learn from the insights that the participants have gained during their research and/or artistic projects.
Presenting the project at the ”Women, Music and the World” seminar
Written by Nina Öhman
The World Wide Women team presented the project publicly for the first time on November 13th 2021 in the Etnosoi! seminar ”Women, Music and the World.” At the seminar, the team members talked about their own projects and showed related video clips or played music. The presentations centered on female musicians and the crossing of different kinds of boundaries. The seminar gathered about 30 listeners into the Maijansali hall of the Central Library Oodi; their participation demonstrated the interest of the audience towards research on women’s musical life.

As a whole, the team’s presentations emphasized music’s great importance as a means of self-expression for women around the world. For many female musicians and their audiences, music is not just a “decoration” of everyday life, not just entertainment (although it can also be that), but musical activities give them a possibility for expressing a social stance, for encaging in activism and for creating visions of a better future.
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