LA BARRE, Jorge de (2010), “Music, city, ethnicity: exploring musical scenes in Lisbon”, in CÔRTE-REAL, Maria de São José (ed.), Migrações Journal - Special Issue Music and Migra- tion, October 2010, no. 7, Lisbon: ACIDI, pp. 139-156 Music, city, ethnicity: exploring music scenes in Lisbon Jorge de La Barre* Abstract This paper discusses the various ways in which music and cities interact, in a context of increased inter-connectedness betwe- en the local and the global. On the premises of the existence of a so-called ‘global culture’, cities tend to reinvent themselves by promoting various (and eventually competing) self-definitions. In the case of Lisbon, this tendency is accompanied by a seemingly increased desire to connect (or re-connect) with the Lusophone world, eventually informing Lisbon’s self-images as an inclusive and multicultural city. In this process, new forms of ethnicity may gain visibility in the marketing of Luso-world music (or world mu- sic as practiced in the Portuguese-speaking countries). At the ho- rizon of imagined cities as ‘transcultural megacities’, music tends to gain agency in the promotion of senses of place and belonging, in and to the city. Keywords Circulation, symbolic ethnicity, emotional communities, invention of tradition, memory of place, transculturalism. * PhD in Sociology at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, As- sociate Researcher at the Instituto de Etnomusicologia, Faculdade de Ciên- cias Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (
[email protected]). Migrações _ #7 _ October 2010 139 Music, city, ethnicity: exploring music scenes in Lisbon Jorge de La Barre The processes of the internationalisation of culture within the space of metropo- lis are increasingly visible.1 Likewise, the values transmitted and reflected by the- se processes (cultural diversity and openness, hybridism, transculturalism,...) are increasingly legible.