South African Souvenir

Quotation

«Am I allowed as a Swiss to speak about for example South African music? Or how can I speak about it?»

Biography

Dejot aka Daniel Jakob (aka Dubokaj) is a Swiss electronica producer, film composer based in the city of Bern. Follow him on Spotify, Facebook, or Instagram.

Published on December 27, 2018

Last updated on June 27, 2022

Topics

Ethics

Ethnomusicology

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Clash Of Gods – photography by Thomas Burkhalter

Photography

Thomas Burkhalter

Photography

Thomas Burkhalter

Clash Of Gods Backstage – photography by Thomas Burkhalter

Clash Of Gods at Schlachthaus Bern – photography by Thomas Burkhalter

Photography

Thomas Burkhalter

Clash of Gods

Photo Series

by Thomas Burkhalter

«Clash of Gods» is theatre, dance, DJ-set and audio-visual media collage. The performance by Thomas Burkhalter and Christophe Jaquet leads midst into the battle for cultural, political, moral interpretations and definitions of our world. Two gods clash over the state of the world. They use all means that the stage offers to overcome the others arguments: dancers, lights, sounds, language, photography, and video. At times war is total. No moral rules seem to stop these two from attacking, weakening, denigrating and ridiculing the other. Never underestimate the power of the two gods. Welcome to the theatre of our time. A reflection about the role of the researcher in today’s globalized and digitzed world. And an excursion into what James Clifford (1988) calls Ethnographic Surrealism: «Making the Familiar Strange».

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«On a reflective journey of a privileged white man. What can be your role in this redefining phase. I think your role can only be a humble one. Take the back seat and feel privileged of taking that back seat. Enjoy the view while recognizing all the luggage that you may bring with you. And if you have ways of making things visible. Ask how you can be of use. You’re not driving here. And you’re lucky to be enjoying the view. Be curious. Be open-minded. Have your eyes wide open, your ears wide open. So don’t try to come with good willing intentions because those good willing intentions are loaded with history, genealogy of violence and authoritarianism that goes beyond you. So yeah, take the back seat and feel privileged for enjoying the view.» – Jenny Mbaye

Biography

Thomas Burkhalter, PhD, is an anthropologist, multidisciplinary artist, and writer from Bern, Switzerland. He is the founder and director of Norient and the Norient Festival (winner Special Prize for Music 2025 – Swiss Music Prizes). Currently, Burkhalter's focus lies on his new music/AV duo, Melodies In My Head, and the podcast Long Take: Life as an Artist. He is a co-editor of the 2025 released book Home is Where the Heart Strives (Norient Books). Burkhalter has co-directed documentary films, including Contradict (Berner Filmpreis 2020, Al-Jazeera Witness), and created AV/theatre performances. He is the author and co-editor of several books, such as Local Music Scenes and Globalization: Transnational Platforms in Beirut (Routledge) and The Arab Avant Garde: Musical Innovation in the Middle East (Wesleyan University Press). His experimental radio feature, Gqom Edits – A Durban Visit, was nominated for the Prix Europa in 2017. Burkhalter teaches regularly at universities, leads workshops for arts institutions, and, since 2022, has produced the Norient Mixtape for Swiss National Radio SRF3. He currently serves on the board of the ERC/UKRI-funded project Beyond 1932 (King’s College London), Echographies: Journal of Sound Ethnography (Chicago/Zürich), and C:Pop – Transdisciplinary Research Center for Popular Music Cultures and Creative Economies (University of Paderborn). Burkhalter’s work combines personal and global perspectives, often in close collaboration with artists and thinkers from across the world. Follow him on Instagram, Research Gate, Academia.edu, Bandcamp, Spotify, or Meta.

Published on March 14, 2019

Last updated on May 01, 2024

Ethnomusicology

Performance

Power

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Challenging Ethnomusicology

Quotation

by Christopher Kirkley

«I would challenge that definition of what an ethnomusicologist is anymore. Or what it means to document.»

Biography

Christopher Kirkley is a musicologist and the creator of Sahelsounds.com, a project exploring the cultural and musical phenomena of the Sahel region of West Africa. The Sahel is sparsely populated by nomads and semi-nomadic herders as well as first generation urban youth on motorbikes, with cellphone memory cards and USB keys dangling around their necks. Christopher will tell us an inspring story about how field recordings, interviews, ad-hoc video, YouTube archeology and cellphone data collection come together as archival and storytelling devices for the music and sound of the Sahel. Follow him on Sahelsounds.com or LinkedIn.

Published on December 24, 2018

Last updated on June 27, 2022

Topic

Ethnomusicology

All Topics

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