Hi. Welcome back to this module on music and identity. In a previous video Hafez has told you something about music in relation to individual identity. Here, we will discuss music influence on collective identities. And as a kickoff, let me tell you a rather funny, but also maybe tragic, story. Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in a restaurant somewhere in Turkey with four friends, all of different nationality. A Greek, a Serb, a Macedonian and a Turk. Your animated conversation is accompanied by live music, and at a certain moment, the band strikes up a familiar folk tune. A rather peculiar dispute breaks out, as each of you claim that the tune is a well-known traditional and national song that belongs to your country. Fact or fiction? This is what happened to the Bulgarian filmmaker, Adela Peeva, in the beginning of her documentary, "Whose is this Song". And what follows is a fascinating road movie through southeast Europe to find the roots of that tune. It takes Ava from Turkey to Greece, Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Serbia, and Bulgaria respectively. In most of these countries, the tune is a love song with varying domestic lyrics. But in others, such as Turkey and Bosnia, it has also been used as a war song. In each country, however, people display shock, anger or disbelief when Peeva suggests that the same tune is also claimed by their neighbors. Well, let's have a brief look at a trailer of "Whose is this Song". [MUSIC] [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN] [MUSIC] >> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN] >> [FOREIGN] >> "The Serbs can never do a song like this, they have no traditions," a young Albanian man says curtly. "It might be that the Turks took it from us," the conductor of a local Albanian orchestra replies to Peeva's remarks that the Turks regard it as their song. For [INAUDIBLE] the song is Bosnian only, forbidden during the Communist rule in former Yugoslavia. Confronted with the Bosnian version, the Serbs tell Peeva that this is theft, it is a Serbian love song. And the reaction in her home country of Bulgaria, when she suggested the song might be Turkish, is "you risk being stoned if you say that it's a Turkish song". The documentary is open-ended in its findings. Suggestions that song might have Jewish or central Asian origins are conditional, requiring federal investigation, although this will probably not serve to sooth tempers. In several of his books, the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk brings up the idea that already in prehistorical groups, sounds were important to create a proper identity. Rhythm, music, and language united the members of these earliest communities so that they formed close groups. For these nomads, bellowing together meant approximately the same thing as being able to hear and understand one another. In woods and grasslands, a primary and invisible boundary was drawn between the self and the other. How? By differentiating between group sounds, and sounds of the world around that group. With its own specific talking, mumbling, singing, drumming and clapping, the small group secured an acoustic particularity, and ascertained that it was, indeed, a group. Establishing a boundary between self and other. Isn't that exactly what creating an identity is all about? Marking a difference between something on this side and something on that side. And that something can be one person, for example my own identity as an individual human being. It can be a group, one group against another group. Or a struggle over a piece of land. It can gendered, male versus female. It can be racial, ethnical, religious, social, or economic. The "haves" versus the "have nots". It can be humans versus animals. Et cetera, et cetera. In fact, one could say that what humans do to create order out of chaos is to establish identities. However, the result is often to impose a single, drastically simplified group identity, as "Whose is this Song" makes clear as well. How can one song cause so much emotions, so much animosity, so much outspoken hatred? The documentary shows, in a rather brilliant way, what music's powers are. How music can become a source of conflict between communities, how it plays a role in the creation, as well as abolition, of collective identities. A sociologist Tia DeNora writes her music in everyday life. "Music is a medium for making, sustaining, and changing social worlds and social activities". Consistent with DeNora's ideas, literary theoretician Edward Said states that "Music cannot be separated from political and social processes. Music is a social force influencing how people conduct themselves, how they feel about themselves, about others and about situations. Music seems to be a key to identity because it offers a sense of both self and others. It stands for, symbolizes, and offers an experience of collective, social, and cultural identity. However, music does not, or not only, represent identity. It intervenes to rearrange things and bodies into identities. There's not music one side and social reality on the other, music is part of that social reality. Music makes identities out of individual bodies through sonic interventions. So to summarize, besides playing a role in the construction of a personal identity, music also functions as a tool to create collective identities. And the word create is important here, as music does not only represent already-existing identities. Through music, through solid interventions, identities are made. Now, in order to learn a bit more about this rather difficult concept of identity, the next item in this module is a short philosophical text on construction and deconstruction of identities.
