Home and Belonging in Music

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Homeland is a concept that is as iridescent as it is diffuse, and one that is also constantly in flux. Its multiperspectivity makes it as easily a useful object for ideologies as for subjective or collective experiences of meaning; it is as much a place of longing as an object of hatred, inclusive as exclusive, German as global, and shapes people and communities as well as practices, media, and historical narratives. Home can be taken along and lost, it can be located real or virtually, it can be contoured spatially or temporally. Last but not least, the process of (new or alternative) home can also succeed through participation in other homes. In this context, music plays a decisive role. Accordingly, the main seminar wants to trace the socio-politically (once again) topical concept of home in musical phenomena throughout history until today. The focus will be on musical settings of homeland subjects in popular and serious music as well as the appropriation of music in homeland definitions and contexts.