Description
Colonial archives across North Africa do not facilitate study of musical life. To locate, navigate, and interpret textual, visual and aural traces and how contexts shape meaning, I pursue research as a kind of fieldwork, characterised by “immersement” (Stoler 2009). This requires being open to messy complexity and contradictions, exploring what’s available, included and excluded, and what insights this might generate. Methodologically, I undertake contrapuntal investigation of state and private, national and municipal (especially in Tunis), European and non-European archives, alongside diplomatic, missionary, education, military, theater, recording, radio, and audio archives—as well as a comparative approach (especially in Morocco) to the categories of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, Political Affairs, Indigenous Affairs, Sultan Affairs, and Historical Monuments. Studied across the empire, this can reveal not only the power French settlers deployed in diverse ways, but also the considerable agency of local elites and, importantly, indigenous musicians, long in the shadows of history.
To facilitate future research, my ERC project MusiCol is creating an annotated, open access collection of its source materials.
