Performing Critical Voice

On the Relationship of Citizenship, Belonging, and the Articulation of Contemporary Critiques

Abstract

The current age of migration and mobility has seen a rise in right-wing conservatism and renewed nationalisms, against which social and cultural movements have formed strong oppositions across Germany. Creative strategies yielded new resilience and turned the focus of debates towards new forms of democratic citizenship and new ways of signaling belonging. The production of culture has become one of the few vehicles through which effective and diverse critiques can be articulated in a manner accessible to people of different backgrounds. This account explores how the production of culture has been complicit in molding empowered speakers and critical voices from excluded communities. Drawing on my 2017/18 ethnographic study of the German brass ensemble “Banda Internationale”, this paper examines what can be learned about the formation of critical voices through music-making. I allude to the processes and practices involved in constituting a critical voice in music production, performance and activism; discuss how the practices in the band relate to the fundamental principles of immanent critique; and raise the issue that questions of citizenship and belonging are, without exception, rooted in the analysis of how voicing critique becomes possible in a climate that resists and prohibits the diverse articulation of subjectivities.