The "Global Niches" transdisciplinary research project is to formulates a theoretical and methodological approach for the adequate analysis of the increasingly complex practice of multi-local music production on the basis of case studies of musicians from formerly colonized countries and their networking partners in Switzerland. The project explores links between aesthetic, sociocultural, technological and economic aspects.
The transdisciplinary research project “Global Niches: Music in a transnational world” explores music as a multidimensional phenomenon, providing deep insights into social, political and cultural processes and structures of the globalized world. The research is conducted on a sample population of musicians from formerly colonized countries and their networking partners in Switzerland. The range of musical genres extends from non-academic computer music, electroacoustic music, and noise and sound art to urban club music styles (Nortec, Kuduro, Baile Funk, Kwaito). The research examines the strategies adopted by these musicians and their networks from multi-local perspectives. It makes links between aesthetic, sociocultural, technological and economic issues, and examines interrelationships between musicians, music and context. In the interplay between empirical investigations and musical analyses, answers are sought to the following key questions:
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How exactly is music produced and distributed in an increasingly digitized and globalized world?
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What musical and non-musical spheres of activity impact music production – the transnational zeitgeist in the specific musical genre, or the exchange of ideas on the local musical scene? Or financial, political, cultural and technological conditions and constraints in the person's home or adopted country?
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What action options do musicians use and create from these fields of activity? And how are these interrelationships reflected in the musical product?
The “Global Niches” project originates at the Zurich University of the Arts (Institute for Cultural Studies), as a close collaboration with the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology (ICST), the Institute of Music at the University of Oldenburg, the Institute for Popular Music and Media at the University of Paderborn, and the degree programme in Cultural Anthropology of Music at the University of Berne.
This broadly networked research venture combines the empirical techniques of social and cultural studies with the methodologies of popular music and sound research. For empirical investigations of the musicians' networking partners abroad, the project draws on the expertise of researchers from Africa, Asia and Latin America (and specialists on these regions). This research is a response to calls from a number of specialists in cultural studies and social sciences for a transnational macro-ethnography that does not stop at national frontiers, and maps transnational fields of interaction.
The end result is a number of articles published in academic journals and compilations.
The first project phase runs from December 2010 to May 2012, and the second phase from September 2012 to March 2014.