Trust in music: Musical projects against violence in northern Colombia

Colombia's protracted civil war is characterized by cycles of pervasive distrust and violence. The people I work with are involved in projects across the north of the country aimed in part at breaking these cycles. In this dissertation I offer an applied ethnographic analysis of the dynamic relations between local forms of trusting, music making and (non)violence. While I recognize music's impact is sometimes minimal or negative, I focus on projects with demonstrable positive impact as part of my commitment to the struggles of my interlocutors. My account is comparative, describing individuals and groups from different towns, sub regions, and positionalities within the conflict, and engaging with similar but contrasting musical styles and projects. I show that musical practices in which participants aim to maximize the breadth of participation (the number of people engaged) tend to foster thin trusting across a broad radius of people, whereas musical practices aimed at the maximum depth of experience of a reduced number of performers tend to generate thick trusting among reduced pools of people. Peacebuilding requires both thin and thick trusting, but the latter can preclude broad organization. I consider festivalization of the musical practices I describe as a means of constructing a parallel peace. While partly successful it can reproduce in miniature some of the violences associated with clientelistic coercive trusting. I present one national project as an exemplar of best practice. The Legión del afecto works to generate an imbricated peace through radically inclusive projects in which young people practice and champion both thick and thin trusting, and peaceful living together, using a wide range of musical practices as part of an integrated, reflexive methodology. My arguments are based in, and seek to finesse, semiotic and phenomenological accounts of music as social life.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Musicology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2018

Author dc:creator

• Middleton, Ian Thomas

Contributors dc:contributor

• Turino, Thomas
• Solis, Gabriel
• Silvers, Michael
• Hertzman, Marc

• Trust
• Music
• Colombia
• Violence
• Nonviolence
• Peacebuilding
• Tambora
• Gaita
• Ethnomusicology
• Phenomenology
• Semiotics

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2018 Ian Middleton

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/101511

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/101511