Musicking pathways out of exclusion: music lessons as a site of practicing alternative ways of being

This paper discusses the role of music lessons in the everyday life as experienced by refugees sheltering in reception centres. Drawing on ethnographic material, its aim is twofold. First, it shows how engaging with learning and teaching music in-group acts as a site of navigating the multiple exclusions (social, spatial, and so on) experienced as a result of being in limbo that the status of asylum seeker entails. Second, it elaborates on the forces that come into play shaping the frame and the interactions occurring in the context of the music lessons, that facilitate the emergence of socialities and modes of being that contrast and antagonise the ones fostered by persistent exclusions.

Finnegan has coined the notion of ‘pathways’ (1989) to highlight people’s conditional coexistence as occurring at the intersections of mutual interests and habits, and the decisive effect that this temporary sharing of time and (musical) practice can have in the directions in which they will move, literally or metaphorically speaking. Turino has contended that the realisation of a musical practice lies at the intersections of the ‘Possible’ and the ‘Actual’, emphasising the potentiality embedded in the interactions occurring in this context (2008), and highlighting the transformative power that these may have in bringing upon societal change (2016). Kenny grounds further this potentiality in the habitual processes underpinning the so-called ‘communities of musical practice’ (2016).

Considering these discussions, the paper focuses on people, who, while embodying exclusions, they actively carve their own alternative pathways via musicking.