CfP: Musical Commemorations/Contestations in Postcolonial Contexts: Negotiating Memory, Identity, and Power

As Bad Bunny’s much-discussed Super Bowl halftime performance continues to resonate, this feels like a particularly fitting moment to announce a call for papers for a Special Issue/Edited Volume focusing on the intersections between music, dance, and cultural governance in postcolonial contexts.

Bart Vanspauwen (INET-md, NOVA FSCH), Ana María Alarcón Jiménez (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) and Livia Jiménez Sedano (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid) call for article proposals to be included in a Special Issue/Edited Volume on the intersections between music, dance and cultural governance in postcolonial contexts, entitled Musical Commemorations/Contestations in Postcolonial Contexts: Negotiating Memory, Identity, and Power.

The submission deadline is April 1, 2026.

Focus and scope
This special issue examines how musical and cultural commemorations function within the framework of – or in dialogue with – official transnational institutions designed to fortify language-based cultural systems (Lusophone, Hispanophone, Francophone, and Anglophone spheres). We are particularly interested in the programming and cultural outputs of yearly commemorative events such as ‘Semana Cultural da CPLP’, ‘Día de la Hispanidad’, ‘Journée Internationale de la Francophonie’, ‘Commonwealth Day’, and similar institutional celebrations.

From a hegemonic institutional perspective, these practices of commemoration involve the production of specific collective memories (Connerton 1989) that reproduce post-imperial and linguistic geographies. From a critical perspective, this involves a colonial gaze which emphasizes historical relations between the former colonizers and colonized, invisibilizing transnational connections, as well as circum-atlantic routes and links (Gilroy 1993, Kabir 2020).

The social categories and identities expressed symbolically in these memorials reproduce those geocultural entities created in the course of colonization, that make part of what has been called “colonialidad” by authors of the decolonial theoretical framework (Quijano 2007, Mignolo 2007, Bhambra, Gebrial & Nisancioglu 2018).

The objective is to analyze potential frictions between official and popular discourses surrounding these events as they address colonial reconciliation or continued (ethno-racial, social, linguistic) divisions in moments of cultural commemoration. We seek to understand how concepts such as latinidad, hispanidad, brasilidade, créolité, and similar identity constructs are reframed and renegotiated in these contexts, why these negotiations take place, and by whom they are conducted.

Furthermore, our aim is to inquire into the forms of cultural representation and negotiation that may be present across different postcolonial language spheres, offering new perspectives on how cultural governance works to articulate identities that either depart from or confirm received narratives of state cultures. On a broader level, we aim to examine the narratives of modern Western empires as constructions that reflect concrete social and cultural negotiations, particularly over traumas of colonialism and domination.

Potential themes
We welcome contributions that address (but are not limited to) the following themes:

• Music and dance performances and commemorative practices at official national and transnational celebrations;
• Indigenous/colonial remembering in music and dance contexts;
• Postcolonial justice, corrections, and reparations through musical expression;
• Tensions between state-sponsored commemorations and grassroots musical practices;
• The instrumentalization of postcolonial intangible cultural heritage in music and dance;
• The promotion of postcolonial diversity and affective formations through sound and dance movement;
• The interstitial connections between geographically dispersed communities within a language community;
• Popular culture and official commemorations in conflict or dialogue;
• The role of diasporic music and dance practices in reimagining transnational identities;
• Decolonial approaches to musical and dance commemoration.

Key questions
This special issue seeks to address the following questions from a comparative perspective:

• How do commemorative music and dance practices participate in political and affective economies within language-system-related contexts?
• In what ways have musical commemorations commodified transnational space through ideological framings/stagings of tradition/history?
• Which sonic, kinetic, visual, and discursive elements have been employed to reference colonial or postcolonial aspects in official celebrations?
• How are music and dance employed to evoke hospitality or other emotional renderings of reconciliation, diversity, or cultural mixture?
• How do official institutions mediate culture in regions that were colonized through musical and/or dance practices?
• What alternative commemorative musical and/or dance practices emerge in opposition to or in parallel with official narratives?

Relevance
Commemoration practices have acquired a special relevance and appeal in the current sociopolitical context of turn to the political right and how their symbols and imagined geographies take on the global scene (Appadurai 2013), involving the success of extreme-right parties in Europe and other parts of the world (Camargo 2024, Carmona, Sánchez & García 2012).

This special issue will contribute to a better understanding of how postcolonial states and transnational institutions deploy music and dance in cultural commemorations to remember or reinterpret elements that are relevant to the populations they serve or wish to appeal to. We aim to examine to what extent these cultural strategies operate to foster new national understandings and intercultural (or decolonial) competencies.

We particularly want to investigate whether musical and dance commemorative strategies may help to address postcolonial interstitial spaces. This project thus envisions a strong social mission: to situate, decolonize, and preserve valuable cultural heritage, aligning with Goal 11.4 of the UN’s 2030 Agenda and Goal 16: “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development […] and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”

Submission Guidelines
Please send a title and a 300-word (maximum) abstract through the following button:

The document should also include:

• Each author’s name, email address, and institutional affiliation
• A 50-word biographical statement for each author

Timeline

• Deadline for abstract submission: April 1, 2026
• Expected publication: June 2027
• Notification of acceptance: June 1, 2026
• Full paper submission deadline: February 1, 2027

The editors are approaching relevant journals in postcolonial studies, ethnomusicology, anthropology, sociology, cultural heritage studies, and performance studies for this special issue. Depending on the response, we will also consider publication as an edited volume with a major academic publisher.

For any questions or clarifications, please contact the editors directly through the email address bvanspauwen@fcsh.unl.pt

We look forward to your contributions!

Cited references

Appadurai, A. (2013). The future as cultural fact. Essays on the global condition. London and New York: Verso.

Bhambra, Gurminder K., Dalia Gebrial y Kerem Nişancıoğlu (2018). Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press.

Camargo, L. (2024). Trumpismo discursivo. Origen y expansión del discurso y de la ola reaccionaria global. Madrid: Verbum.

Carmona, Pablo, Sánchez, Almudena & Beatriz García (2012). The Spanish Neocon. La revolución conservadora en la derecha española. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños.

Connerton, P. (1989). How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gilroy, Paul (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso.

Quijano, Aníbal (2007) “Colonialidad del poder y clasificación social” in Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel (coords.) El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. 93-126. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores.

Mignolo, W. (2007) “El pensamiento descolonial: desprendimiento y apertura. Un manifiesto”. In Santiago Castro-Gómez and Ramón Grosfoguel (coords.) El giro decolonial: reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global. 25-46. Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores.

Kabir, Ananya Jahanara (2020) “Circum-Atlantic Connections and their global kinetoscapes: African-heritage partner dances.” Atlantic Studies, 17(1): 1-12.

Related/suggested references

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Anthias, F. (2001) “New Hybridities, Old Concepts: the limits of culture.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 24(4): 619-641.

Aterianus-Owanga, A. & Santiago, J.P. (eds). (2016) Aux sons des mémoires. Musiques, archives et terrain. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon.

Baker, S., Strong, C., Istvandity, L., & Cantillon, Z. (eds). (2018) The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage. London: Routledge.

Bhabha, H. (1994) “DissemiNation: Time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation,” in The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. 139-170.

Blaagaard et al. (2023). Postcolonial Publics: Art and Citizen Media in Europe. Veneza: Edizione Ca’Foscari.

Born, G. & Hesmondhalgh, D. (2000) “Introduction: On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music,” in Western Music and its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1-58.

Brandellero, A., Janssen, S., Cohen, S., & Roberts, L. (eds). (2014) Popular Music, Cultural Memory, and Cultural Identity. London: Routledge.

Cidra, R. (2015) “Politics of memory, ethics of survival.” Ethnomusicology Forum, 24(3): 304-328.

Cohen, S. (2012) “Musical memory, heritage and local identity: remembering the popular music past in a European Capital of Culture.” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19(5): 576-594.

Feldman-Bianco, B. (2007) “Empire, postcoloniality and diasporas.” Hispanic Research Journal, 8(3): 279-290.

Grenier, Line and Jocelyn Guilbault (1997) “Créolité and Francophonie in Music: SocioMusical Repositionings Where It Matters.” Cultural Studies, 11(2): 207-34.

Guilbault, J. (2007). Governing Sound. The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics. Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Hawthorne, C. (2022). Contesting Race and Citizenship. Youth Politics in the Black Mediterranean. Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press.

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León, J. (2014) “Introduction: Music, Music Making and Neoliberalism.” Culture, Theory and Critique, 55:2: 129-137.

McMahon, C.S. (2013). Re-Casting Transnationalism Through Performance: Theatre Festivals in Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

MUSIcultures (Canada) Vol 40/1 (2013): Special Issue: Atlantic Roots and Routes, eds. B. Diamond, K. Szego, and H. Sparling.

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Tan, S.E. (2021) “Whose decolonisation? Checking for intersectionality, lane-policing and academic privilege from a transnational (Chinese) vantage point.” Ethnomusicology Forum, 30(1): 125-142.

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Vanspauwen, B. (2013) “Cultural struggles in the Lusofonia arena: Portuguese-speaking migrant musicians in Lisbon.” Afrika Focus, 26(1): 67-88.

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