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MUSICS ABROAD
SPEAKER: Ulrike Präger, Paris Lodron University of Salzburg
Ulrike Präger discusses current musical practices of and with migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and post-migrants, who, based on war and persecution, fled in the past years from their home countries in the Arab World to Germany. These individuals' (musical) voices sound—often together with voices from the host society—in adapted operas, ensemble and choir concert performances, and plays on the streets and the web, narrating migration experiences as sound experiments and musical fusions. In analyzing and describing such musical practices and performances, Ulrike focuses on alteration, adaptation, merging, the changing functions of repertoire, as well as the medialization and reception of these musical expressions. She further discusses these "migrating musics" considering Germany's increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies, as expressed in an ever-changing "welcoming culture." To better hear these voices, she engages with performance ethnography, which—as an ethnographic methodology and an artistic-social act—potentially translates liminal voices and experiences into a "post-migrant" musicking aesthetic.
Ulrike Präger is a senior scientist at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, co-publishing and authoring a compendium titled Handbook Music and Migration: Theories and Methodologies. She recently taught at the University of Chicago, and also is an instructor in Boston University's Online Education Program. Her research lies at the intersections of ethno/musicology and migration studies, focusing on how and why sonic phenomena, such as musical practices, repertoires, and sonic objects, act as nuanced tools for investigating interrelations between mobility, place, sociality, and political expression. She is currently working on a project titled Publicity and Representation: Music in Medializing and Politicizing Post-Migration. Her research was recently supported by a fellowship from the University of Konstanz. Before the Salzburg position, Ulrike taught at the University of Illinois, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and was tenured faculty at the Academy for Social Pedagogy in Munich, Germany, where she oversaw the music studies program. Ulrike also performs as a soprano soloist and chorister with ensembles in Europe and the United States. She holds a Ph.D. in Musicology/Ethnomusicology from Boston University and degrees in Voice/Voice Pedagogy and Music and Dance Pedagogy from the University Mozarteum Salzburg.
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