Martin Rempe

Cultural Brokers in Uniform: The Global Rise of Military Musicians and Their Music

The article assesses the role of the military in the global dissemination and exchange of music in the long nineteenth century. It shows that, first, Western military music and its instrumentation were influenced by cross-cultural encounters, primarily with the Ottoman Empire. Second, I argue that educational professionalization and instrumental standardization were important vehicles for the global rise of the military band beyond its original purpose. Third, tracing the transnational careers of some German military musicians will make evident that competition with respect to national prestige, rising imperialism, and the increasing commercialization of musical life were crucial features of the spread of military musicians all over the world, making them cultural brokers not only of military music.

Cultural Brokers and the Making of Glocal Soundscapes, 1880s to 1930s

In September 2014, the European Network in Universal and Global History hosted the Fourth European Congress on World and Global History at the École normale supérieure in Paris. Of themore than 150 panels dealing with all imaginable aspects of modern global connectivity, there was but one dedicated to the field of music, out of which this special issue grew. It is no exaggeration to state that global history has been a largely silent undertaking so far, interested neither in music nor sound more generally. Few historians care (or dare) to address music and the arts as an integral part of social analysis, let alone the political or economic dimensions of musical life. Those who have done so have very rarely explored the transcultural repercussions. A good many musicologists, for their part, have been more accustomed to look beyond the aesthetic qualities of their subject to its wider social and cultural context. Most scholarly efforts, however, centre exclusively on western classical music, and are more reluctant to investigate the global reach of other musical styles and their significance for the history of transcultural contact in general. Finally, ethnomusicologists, whose historical inquiries embrace everything but classical music, see the latest wave of globalisation and the rise of the world music discourse as an opportunity to gain new significance. As Bruno Nettl puts it in his interview for this issue, the field has become “more a part of the modern world, of modern living.” Indeed, the recent call for an “historical ethnomusicology” as a new subfield within the discipline is indicative of its dominant orientation towards the present in the last twenty-five years or so. Against this backdrop of considerable neglect in the humanities, the present special issue aims to bring the field of transcultural and global musical relations to the fore. On the basis of rich empirical material, the six authors featured here not only hope to draw readers’ interest to the global history of music and inspire further research. They also argue, each in their own way, that a musical lens provides fresh insights into the history of global cultural exchange. Highlighting cultural brokers, soundscapes, and the rise of global musical entanglements from the 1880s to the 1930s, this special issue Itinerario, Vol. 41, No. 2, 223–233.

Entangled Industrialization. The EEC and Industrial Development in Francophone West Africa

Industrialization played a significant role as a development strategy in the global, post-colonial development-discourse during the ‘first development decade’ heralded by the United Nations in 1961. Whereas colonial powers such as France and Great Britain had remained rather reluctant with respect to state-led industrialization in their colonies, modernization theorists and development economists considered a planned and comprehensive industrial policy a key factor for staging growth. Clark Kerr’s Industrialism and Industrial Man, published in 1962, was only one of numerous studies that reflected, and at the same time guided, government strategies in the ‘North’, as well as in the ‘South’ in their efforts to overcome ‘backward’ or ‘traditional’ social structures of the developing countries. Thus, in the era of decolonization, industrialization became not only a key concept with which to foster social change, but also a strategy of global convergence: it was assumed that through industrialization, nation-states all over the world would sooner or later converge to one model of society, what Walt Rostow called ‘the age of high mass consumption’.1

From Development Business to Civil Society? Societal Actors in Development Cooperation

In March 2005, Siim Kallas, then Vice-President of the Commission and responsible for Administrative Affairs, Audit and Anti-Fraud, in a speech at the European Foundation for Management in Nottingham, made no secret of his aversion to the involvement of non-governmental organizations in European integration: ‘Many NGOs rely on public funding, some from the Commission. Annually the Commission channels over 2 billion Euros to developing countries through NGOs… Currently, a lot of money is channelled to “good causes” through organisations we know little about. Noble causes always deserve a closer look. In the Middle Ages the forests of Nottingham were famous for the courageous Robin Hood, the “prince of thieves” who tricked the Sheriff of Nottingham and stole from the rich in order to help the poor. One may regard this legendary figure as an early NGO. His cause seemed noble, but his ways to redistribute wealth were not always quite transparent.’1