Jocelyne Guilbault

Interpreting world music: a challenge in theory and practice'

This article focuses on the issue of meanings in ‘world music’ practices. The main questions addressed are how such musical cultures take on meanings, and what meanings are constructed by such cultures. As Deborah Pacini has indicated, the term ‘world music’ in this case does not refer to a musical genre. It is used, rather, ‘[as] a marketing term describing the products of musical cross-fertilisation between the north – the US and Western Europe – and south – primarily Africa and the Caribbean Basin, which began appearing on the popular music landscape in the early 1980s’ (1993, p. 48). From 1985, the expanding ‘world music’ umbrella has come to include practically any musics of cultures of non-European origin.

Créolité and francophonie in music: Socio-musical repositioning where it matters

ABSTRACT This article deals with the contemporary cultural practices associated with two of the most salient socio-musical articulations of the creolite and francophonie movements: zoulk from the Caribbean and the popular mainstream from Quebec, respectively. It aims to examine how socio-musical practices can make a significant contribution to singular political or literary movements such as creolite and francophonie, and to explore how distinct musics, when viewed as integral parts of complex cultural and political configurations, can be instrumental in providing means for setting into motion new forms of social relations, networks and alliances, thereby creating alternative yet limited fields of possibilities and prescriptions. After analysing the genesis of creolite and francophonie as both objects and instruments of discourse, we move on to examine the socio-musical terrains where these movements have unfolded. Our discussion then focuses on the narratives of alliances that zouk and the Quebecois main...