Évènements

Avec Elina Seye*

The circumstances of African musics and dances in Finland are quite different from most Western European countries because most of the African diaspora communities in Finland are relatively young and small. Still, there has been a number of professional African musicians living and working in Finland since the 1980s, but their immigration was more often due to their personal connections with Finns rather than general flows of migration. Despite the minimal numbers of Africans living in Finland, a lively scene of African music and dance has developed especially in Helsinki, the capital, and this scene has been characterized by collaborations between Africans and white Finns.

The lecture presents my earlier research on the history of African music and musicians in Finland, with a focus on the first generation on African immigrant musicians, and a new research project where I will study how traditional West African music and dance styles are transmitted and (re)presented in Finnish contexts. It seems that these traditions are more likely to be transmitted in multiethnic and translocal networks of professionals and enthusiasts than from an older generation of African immigrant artists to their offspring or other young people of African descent. This destabilizes the conception of music and dance traditions as ‘heritage’ passed on through generations. The plan is to broaden this research later to include also other European countries and the ways in which African traditions are transmitted and possibly transformed through social media representations.

Elina Seye (PhD, habil.) is an ethnomusicologist and dance researcher affiliated with the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her doctoral thesis Performing a Tradition in Music and Dance (2014, University of Tampere) focused on social relations and interactions in Senegalese sabar dance events, and her postdoctoral project dealt with sabar dance in different performance contexts. She has also conducted research on African music and musicians in Finland. Currently, her research focuses on women musicians in Senegal and Mali as part of the project World Wide Women – Female Musicians Crossing Borders and Building Futures that she also leads.