Exploring musician-educators’ reflections on a collaborative cross-cultural music making encounter in Singapore

Professional musician-educators from a tertiary arts institution in Singapore collaborated on a cross-cultural performance in Beijing as part of their professional development. Through a case study, semi-structured interviews explored the music making experiences of four of the musician-educators involved: the composer, the singer, the pianist and the erhu performer. Their experiences address the concept of cross-cultural music making and its significance in professional development for musician-educators. The experiences shared by the four musician-educators illuminate challenges, tensions and some areas to further resolve and critically question regarding how cultures are engaged in the process of music-making. Through unpacking the narratives of musician-educators and how they experience interactions with culture in music making, there is the possibility to further understand diverse music making encounters in Singapore.

From street dance to hip hop

This text historicizes the concept of street dance (dança de rua) by showing distances and approaches in relation to hip hop. For this purpose, the analysis starts from the cultural history of street dance in the city of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais (Brazil), to understand the complex relationships that gave meaning and form to the practice of street dance between the 1980s and 1990s. In a first step, I investigate the various perspectives that permeate the bond between the popular dance and dance festivals, well as between the city neighbourhoods and dance clubs. In a second step, the analysis shifts to the cultural performance that allowed street dancers to migrate to the so-called hip hop dance. Analysing street dance and hip hop considering their ruptures and continuities, the text intends to contribute to studies dedicated to the presence of dance in the construction of urban identities.

Not a token! A discussion on racial capitalism and its impact on academic librarians and libraries

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to introduce the concept of racial capitalism in the context of academic libraries.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on Leong's (2013) extended theory of racial capitalism and identifies how neoliberalism and racial capitalism are tied as well as how it is manifested in academic libraries through tokenism, racialized tasks, consuming racial trauma, cultural performance demands, workload demands and pay inequity.FindingsThe article ends with some suggestions in how to address these problematic practices though dismantling meritocratic systems, critical race theory in LIS education and training, and funding EDI work.Originality/valueThe article explores a concept in the academic library context and points to practices and structures that may commodify racialized identities.

The Batwa Trail: developing agency and cultural self-determination in Uganda through Indigenous tourism and cultural performance

This article examines how Batwa—the Indigenous peoples of Southwestern Uganda—negotiate agency and cultural self-determination through touristic cultural performances held during the Batwa Trail, an Indigenous tourist attraction in Mgahinga Forest, Southwestern Uganda. I take a theoretical model that approaches Indigenous tourism and touristic cultural performances as a site of social interaction where identity and representation are negotiated. The touristic performances are crucial in articulating Batwa performance culture and as a forum where counter-narratives against the stereotypes and marginalities associated with Batwa culture are constructed. I argue that touristic performances are a strategic form of experiential and embodied practice through which Batwa identity is negotiated and expressed.

Exploring the Transformative Power of Play in African Children’s Games

The transformative power of indigenous African children’s games can be demonstrated by how they were framed by the aesthetics of play such as imitation, imagination, make-believe, repetition, spontaneity, and improvisation. Such games could be regarded as ‘rites of passage’ for children’s initiation into adulthood as they occupied a crucial phase in the process of growing up. Using the illustrative paradigm of indigenous children’s games from the Shona-speaking peoples of Zimbabwe, this paper explores the transformative power of play as a means by which children engaged with reality. The paper proceeds to argue that the advent of modern agents of social change such as Christianity, formal education, urbanization, industrialization, scientific technology, and the cash economy not only created a fragmentation of African people’s cultural past but also threatened the survival of African cultural performance traditions. Although indigenous African children’s games were disrupted by modernity, they have managed to survive in a modified form.

"So We Thought not to Lose Our Background Completely": Agency and Belonging among South Sudanese Acholi in New Zealand

<p>The members of the South Sudanese Acholi population in New Zealand are part of the burgeoning number of refugees worldwide. As such, they are at risk of having their personal experiences submerged in the stereotypical view of ‘the refugee experience’. The South Sudanese Acholi community are a small but distinct ethnic sub-community within the wider South Sudanese refugee-background population in New Zealand. One of my primary aims in this thesis is to represent the specifically-situated experiences of individuals from this group within the broader contexts of refugee resettlement. A fundamental aspect of these experiences is the ambiguous and often contradictory senses of belonging which community members describe. Using analysis of the narratives through which these individuals make sense of their resettlement experiences, I determine agency to be an important consideration in experiences of belonging and, therefore, I argue that the role of agency to belonging should be more widely recognised. In this thesis I demonstrate how various attempts by South Sudanese Acholi at cultural (re)production in New Zealand are intimately linked to the many difficulties these individuals experience in resettlement, and particularly to how these difficulties impact the development and maintenance of a sense of belonging. Analyses of individual and common factors demonstrate the importance of belonging to experiences of resettlement. This is apparent throughout all aspects of South Sudanese Acholi’s everyday lives. This thesis is organised around the interlinking nature of three aspects of everyday life: marriage, cultural performance, and discursive practices. A central unifying factor is that each of these aspects of every day experience can be understood as attempts in developing more stable senses of belonging. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation and unstructured interviews. Participant observation was primarily undertaken among the Sudanese Acholi Cultural Association (SACA), a community-organised Acholi cultural performance group. Although not exclusively the focus of this research, the members of this group comprise the basis of my research participants and their resettlement experiences form the basis for my results. A focus on participants’ stories about their lives in resettlement allows analysis of the importance of their everyday practices and perceptions to the ways in which they experience and understand their lives in New Zealand and demonstrates that the on-going interaction between their experiences as refugees and their resettlement experiences are mutually reinforcing. I suggest that if refugees’ own voices and opinions are to be accurately represented, a holistic perspective of the full range of their experiences is required. The ambivalent, multiple, and multifaceted nature of belonging described by South Sudanese Acholi individuals’ is a defining feature of their resettlement experiences. I suggest that South Sudanese Acholi attempts at performing and reproducing their customary cultural practices in New Zealand serve primarily as creative means of adapting to the conditions of resettlement in ways which allow the construction, development, and maintenance of feelings of belonging among community members. However, I also determine that lack of agency is especially important for understanding the ambivalence about belonging South Sudanese Acholi demonstrate when speaking of these resettlement experiences. I argue that behind many of the everyday actions taken by refugees are simultaneous attempts to rediscover a sense of agency and to recreate a foundation for belonging.</p>

"So We Thought not to Lose Our Background Completely": Agency and Belonging among South Sudanese Acholi in New Zealand

<p>The members of the South Sudanese Acholi population in New Zealand are part of the burgeoning number of refugees worldwide. As such, they are at risk of having their personal experiences submerged in the stereotypical view of ‘the refugee experience’. The South Sudanese Acholi community are a small but distinct ethnic sub-community within the wider South Sudanese refugee-background population in New Zealand. One of my primary aims in this thesis is to represent the specifically-situated experiences of individuals from this group within the broader contexts of refugee resettlement. A fundamental aspect of these experiences is the ambiguous and often contradictory senses of belonging which community members describe. Using analysis of the narratives through which these individuals make sense of their resettlement experiences, I determine agency to be an important consideration in experiences of belonging and, therefore, I argue that the role of agency to belonging should be more widely recognised. In this thesis I demonstrate how various attempts by South Sudanese Acholi at cultural (re)production in New Zealand are intimately linked to the many difficulties these individuals experience in resettlement, and particularly to how these difficulties impact the development and maintenance of a sense of belonging. Analyses of individual and common factors demonstrate the importance of belonging to experiences of resettlement. This is apparent throughout all aspects of South Sudanese Acholi’s everyday lives. This thesis is organised around the interlinking nature of three aspects of everyday life: marriage, cultural performance, and discursive practices. A central unifying factor is that each of these aspects of every day experience can be understood as attempts in developing more stable senses of belonging. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation and unstructured interviews. Participant observation was primarily undertaken among the Sudanese Acholi Cultural Association (SACA), a community-organised Acholi cultural performance group. Although not exclusively the focus of this research, the members of this group comprise the basis of my research participants and their resettlement experiences form the basis for my results. A focus on participants’ stories about their lives in resettlement allows analysis of the importance of their everyday practices and perceptions to the ways in which they experience and understand their lives in New Zealand and demonstrates that the on-going interaction between their experiences as refugees and their resettlement experiences are mutually reinforcing. I suggest that if refugees’ own voices and opinions are to be accurately represented, a holistic perspective of the full range of their experiences is required. The ambivalent, multiple, and multifaceted nature of belonging described by South Sudanese Acholi individuals’ is a defining feature of their resettlement experiences. I suggest that South Sudanese Acholi attempts at performing and reproducing their customary cultural practices in New Zealand serve primarily as creative means of adapting to the conditions of resettlement in ways which allow the construction, development, and maintenance of feelings of belonging among community members. However, I also determine that lack of agency is especially important for understanding the ambivalence about belonging South Sudanese Acholi demonstrate when speaking of these resettlement experiences. I argue that behind many of the everyday actions taken by refugees are simultaneous attempts to rediscover a sense of agency and to recreate a foundation for belonging.</p>

Development of a Scale to Measure Followers’ Satisfaction With Leaders Applicable in Cross-Cultural Studies

This study examined the cross-cultural performance of a new scale to measure followers' satisfaction with their leader. The scale was designed to give a generalizable measure of followers' response to their leader's behavior, one which is applicable across various leader-follower relationships and in different cultures. Using a diverse global sample of experienced followers who were familiar with their current leaders, the results supported the scale's utility. It performed well in all cultures, with good reliability and both convergent and discriminant validity. The scale offers a brief, widely applicable measure to advance the cross-cultural study of leadership.

Of People and Protest: Spiritual Resistance in Newar Hymns

The spiritual and the political at times merge together in the formation of powerful voice of protest in quest of social harmony. This is also seen in Newari cultural landscape. Newari hymns present that the collective imagination poetically transcends beyond the earthly domain of control of authority and social structures, revolting against the prevalent social order. The paper studies two historical Newari hymns “Shitala Maju” and “Bijaya Laxmi” from the perspective of the cultural resistance. When the hymns that are still sung as integral cultural performance in social life of the Newari settlements are analysed to examine the nature of their spiritual quest, the hymns, in the form of devotional poetry, emerge as a sharp critique of the then power structure. This paper argues that the Newari hymns raise the voice of people against the atrocities of both the state and/or the King in the form of spiritual resistance in its inner core though such poems externally display devotion as their primary ethos.