Projects

This research/action project mobilizes a small team of master’s students from the campus of the University of Paris West Nanterre La Défense (UPO) to apply ethnomusicology to the very city that surrounds the campus. Begun at the beginning of 2010, it uses students in the professional master’s Ethnomusicology and anthropology of dance (EMAD) in UPO’s Department of Ethnology, Prehistory, Ethnomusicology.

In a multicultural and historically rich city like Nanterre, there are certain individuals or families who carry a remarkable traditional knowledge that is often unknown to their neighbors. This project contributes to the creation of an ethnomusicological audiovisual collection of heritage music played and danced by a sub-group. Beyond the archiving of repertories and life narratives, the project has the ambition of promoting and supporting Nanterrians’ practices (through the organization of events, but also the creation of an Internet site and the filming of a web-documentary). Finally, the project permits the development of a professionalizing education inscribed in the framework and problematics of the cluster all the while establishing a link between research and the general public. It is also an opportunity to inscribe the cluster in the local area with its collection of oral archives.