Through talk and performance, participants in the genre of jazz manouche articulate Manouche (Fre... more Through talk and performance, participants in the genre of jazz manouche articulate Manouche (French Romani/“Gypsy”) ethnoracial identities. This article takes a semiotic approach to exploring how ethnoracial differences are perceived sonically and reified through language about jazz manouche guitar technique. By analyzing interlocutors’ sensory descriptors such as power, rawness, and even the feeling of ethnoracial identity itself, this article reveals continuities between individual sonic perceptions of race and ethnicity and broader semiotic ideologies about race and ethnicity. These discourses can serve or compromise Manouche interests as they naturalize ideas about social difference.
This article explores how music professionals promote interdiscursive oppositions between musical... more This article explores how music professionals promote interdiscursive oppositions between musical aurality and musical literacy to unsettle the terms of their racialization. For many French Manouches (a subgroup of Romanies/“Gypsies”), music is a source of pride, profit, and public recognition. Manouche musicians often valorize their own sensorially centered pedagogical approaches in distinction to music literacy as espoused by French schools and conservatories. In doing so, they link notions of expressivity, naturalness, and ethical behavior to their Manouche identity in contrast to White French society. They construct parallel contrasts between Black and White musicalities in the jazz world to convey their value as racialized musicians, pointing to transnational formations of race and White supremacy. Because French color-blind policy constrains speech about race and racism, advocacy for an aurally centered approach to music pedagogy becomes a way for speakers to denounce the discrimination Manouches face as racialized subjects. For these musicians, self-exoticization is a multifaceted tactic to develop a market niche, to prove themselves as good neoliberal subjects, and to disrupt the racial logics that render such alterity both an asset and a burden. Their discourse remains powerful even if, in practice, some make use of the very music-theoretical frameworks they critique.
Django Reinhardt: Swing de Paris, an exhibition that took place at the Cité de la musique in Pari... more Django Reinhardt: Swing de Paris, an exhibition that took place at the Cité de la musique in Paris, depicted the life and environment of famed Manouche (French Romani/”Gypsy”) guitarist Django Reinhardt. In this article, I explore how the exhibition performed a spatialized centre-periphery model of citizenship that both reflected and reinforced Manouche marginality in relation to broader French society. I argue that museum exhibitions generate and harness place-oriented narratives to reinforce hegemonic conceptions about ideal citizens. In marking out an ethnoracially segregated imaginary of swing-era Paris, the exhibition reproduced stereotyped ideas about Manouche exoticism and inadaptability to urban modernity. These narratives are not exceptional, but are part of a long-standing project to define national belonging in terms of a normative white identity. As such, they are symptomatic of a much broader problem of state-sanctioned racism in France that is denied through claims to ...
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2019
Based on the music of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, jazz manouche is a popular genre that... more Based on the music of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, jazz manouche is a popular genre that emerged during the late twentieth century. This article examines the historical development of jazz manouche in relation to ideologies about ethnoracial identity in France. Jazz manouche is strongly associated with French Manouches, the subgroup of Romanies (“Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. In the decades following Reinhardt’s death in 1953, some Manouches adopted his music as a community practice. Simultaneously, critics, promoters, and activists extolled the putative ethnoracial character of this music, giving rise to the “jazz manouche” label as a cornerstone of both socially conscious and profit-generating strategies. Drawing on analysis of published criticism, archival research, and interviews, I argue that ethnoracial and generic categories can develop symbiotically, each informing and reflecting ideologies about cultural identity and its sonic expressions. Jazz manouche grew out of essentializing notions about Manouche identity, while Manouches have been racialized through reductive narratives about jazz manouche. In this case, an investigation of genre formation can inform understandings of ethnoracial identity and national belonging.
The Culture of the Slow. Ed. Nicholas Osbaldiston. Palgrave-MacMillan: Basingstoke, Hampshire., 2013
As a social movement that relies on an ethic of pleasure as the source of commitment, Slow Food i... more As a social movement that relies on an ethic of pleasure as the source of commitment, Slow Food is, in many senses, a realisation of what Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) termed the dominant morality of modernity: emotivism – that is, the utilitarian assumption that only personal preferences can determine virtue. As he argues, this value orientation eliminates the possibility of developing a substantive morality, while also fostering conformity (since preference is rarely unambiguous, and so leads to anxious perusal of the preferences of others for reassurance). To its credit, Slow Food has attempted to offset these possibilities by proclaiming that authenticity and tradition provide objective sources of virtuous enjoyment. Believers then must search the world for gustatory pleasures that are proven to be authentic. But who decides the reliability of such proofs is left in the air. This move escapes the trap of solipsism but falls into another: reification.
Through talk and performance, participants in the genre of jazz manouche articulate Manouche (Fre... more Through talk and performance, participants in the genre of jazz manouche articulate Manouche (French Romani/“Gypsy”) ethnoracial identities. This article takes a semiotic approach to exploring how ethnoracial differences are perceived sonically and reified through language about jazz manouche guitar technique. By analyzing interlocutors’ sensory descriptors such as power, rawness, and even the feeling of ethnoracial identity itself, this article reveals continuities between individual sonic perceptions of race and ethnicity and broader semiotic ideologies about race and ethnicity. These discourses can serve or compromise Manouche interests as they naturalize ideas about social difference.
This article explores how music professionals promote interdiscursive oppositions between musical... more This article explores how music professionals promote interdiscursive oppositions between musical aurality and musical literacy to unsettle the terms of their racialization. For many French Manouches (a subgroup of Romanies/“Gypsies”), music is a source of pride, profit, and public recognition. Manouche musicians often valorize their own sensorially centered pedagogical approaches in distinction to music literacy as espoused by French schools and conservatories. In doing so, they link notions of expressivity, naturalness, and ethical behavior to their Manouche identity in contrast to White French society. They construct parallel contrasts between Black and White musicalities in the jazz world to convey their value as racialized musicians, pointing to transnational formations of race and White supremacy. Because French color-blind policy constrains speech about race and racism, advocacy for an aurally centered approach to music pedagogy becomes a way for speakers to denounce the discrimination Manouches face as racialized subjects. For these musicians, self-exoticization is a multifaceted tactic to develop a market niche, to prove themselves as good neoliberal subjects, and to disrupt the racial logics that render such alterity both an asset and a burden. Their discourse remains powerful even if, in practice, some make use of the very music-theoretical frameworks they critique.
Django Reinhardt: Swing de Paris, an exhibition that took place at the Cité de la musique in Pari... more Django Reinhardt: Swing de Paris, an exhibition that took place at the Cité de la musique in Paris, depicted the life and environment of famed Manouche (French Romani/”Gypsy”) guitarist Django Reinhardt. In this article, I explore how the exhibition performed a spatialized centre-periphery model of citizenship that both reflected and reinforced Manouche marginality in relation to broader French society. I argue that museum exhibitions generate and harness place-oriented narratives to reinforce hegemonic conceptions about ideal citizens. In marking out an ethnoracially segregated imaginary of swing-era Paris, the exhibition reproduced stereotyped ideas about Manouche exoticism and inadaptability to urban modernity. These narratives are not exceptional, but are part of a long-standing project to define national belonging in terms of a normative white identity. As such, they are symptomatic of a much broader problem of state-sanctioned racism in France that is denied through claims to ...
Journal of the American Musicological Society, 2019
Based on the music of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, jazz manouche is a popular genre that... more Based on the music of legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt, jazz manouche is a popular genre that emerged during the late twentieth century. This article examines the historical development of jazz manouche in relation to ideologies about ethnoracial identity in France. Jazz manouche is strongly associated with French Manouches, the subgroup of Romanies (“Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. In the decades following Reinhardt’s death in 1953, some Manouches adopted his music as a community practice. Simultaneously, critics, promoters, and activists extolled the putative ethnoracial character of this music, giving rise to the “jazz manouche” label as a cornerstone of both socially conscious and profit-generating strategies. Drawing on analysis of published criticism, archival research, and interviews, I argue that ethnoracial and generic categories can develop symbiotically, each informing and reflecting ideologies about cultural identity and its sonic expressions. Jazz manouche grew out of essentializing notions about Manouche identity, while Manouches have been racialized through reductive narratives about jazz manouche. In this case, an investigation of genre formation can inform understandings of ethnoracial identity and national belonging.
The Culture of the Slow. Ed. Nicholas Osbaldiston. Palgrave-MacMillan: Basingstoke, Hampshire., 2013
As a social movement that relies on an ethic of pleasure as the source of commitment, Slow Food i... more As a social movement that relies on an ethic of pleasure as the source of commitment, Slow Food is, in many senses, a realisation of what Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) termed the dominant morality of modernity: emotivism – that is, the utilitarian assumption that only personal preferences can determine virtue. As he argues, this value orientation eliminates the possibility of developing a substantive morality, while also fostering conformity (since preference is rarely unambiguous, and so leads to anxious perusal of the preferences of others for reassurance). To its credit, Slow Food has attempted to offset these possibilities by proclaiming that authenticity and tradition provide objective sources of virtuous enjoyment. Believers then must search the world for gustatory pleasures that are proven to be authentic. But who decides the reliability of such proofs is left in the air. This move escapes the trap of solipsism but falls into another: reification.
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