APPLIED ETHNOMUSICOLOGY IN THE PROCESS OF THE POLITICAL RECOGNITION OF A MINORITY: A CASE STUDY OF THE AUSTRIAN ROMA

Abstract

Applied ethnomusicology has a special relevance for studies on music and minori ties.' What constitutes this relevance in particular cases was the focus of a ple nary panel discussion at the 38th World Conference of the ICTM in Sheffield in 2005, which explored cultural, social, political, and economic issues pertinent to the musical life of minority groups within the context of a larger (majority) soci ety. Panel participants addressed the topic from the perspective of their individual research fields and the different minority groups they have worked with: Adelaida Reyes provided the example of refugee camps, Stephen Wild of the Rom ceremony of Australian Aborigines, and John O'Connell of a Song for Peace by a Kurdish singer. The aim was to contribute to discourses on applied ethnomusicology in the light of theoretical and methodological insights gained through studies of music and minorities. My discussion here focuses on Roma with whom I have been conducting a long term research project.2 In this article, I look particularly at the role of ethnomusi cological research on Romani music as it related to the Austrian political arena. First, though, in order to clarify the specific situation of Romani music research in European music studies, one shaped by a mainly derogatory approach in the past and by new strategies of empowerment in the present, I will briefly outline some aspects of applied ethnomusicology in Romani music studies. I believe that reflection on the results of our work is an important aspect of ethnomusicology, especially in research on the music of minorities, and I also want to address through these reflections the problems that can arise in the application of ethnomusicologi cal findings. In the process initiated in 1989 of claiming political recognition in Austria, the public presentation of Romani traditional music contributed enormously to prov ing that a group of people who had been discriminated against and who formerly were merely seen as a social minority were in fact an ethnic one, with a distinct cultural heritage of their own. Several research projects by Austrian scholars on the music of the Roma formed the basis for activities in the broadly conceived field of applied ethnomusicology, yielding results in the areas of cultural mediation, politi