My Body Was Left on the Street

Displacement, relocation, dissociation: each of these terms elicits images of mass migration, homelessness, statelessness, or outsiderness of many kinds, too numerous to name. This book aims to create opportunities for scholars, practitioners, and silenced voices to share theories and stories of progressive and transgressive music pedagogies that challenge the ways music educators and learners think about and practice their arts relative to displacement.

Displacement is defined as encompassing all those who have been forced away from their locations by political, social, economic, climate, and resource change, injustice, and insecurity. This includes:

- refugees and internally displaced persons;

- forced migrants;

- indigenous communities who have been forced off their traditional lands;

- people who have fled homes because of their gender identity and sexual orientation;

- imprisoned individuals;

- persons who seek refuge for reasons of domestic and social violence;

- homeless persons and others who live in transient spaces;

- the disabled, who are relocated involuntarily; and

- the culturally dispossessed, whose languages and heritage have been taken away from them.

In the context of the first ever book on displacement and music education, the authors connect displacement to what music might become to those peoples who find themselves between spaces, parted from the familiar and the familial. Through, in, and because of a variety of musical participations, they contend that displaced peoples might find comfort, inclusion, and welcome of some kinds either in making new music or remembering and reconfiguring past musical experiences.

Contributors are: #4459, Efi Averof Michailidou, Kat Bawden, Rachel Beckles Willson, Marie Bejstam, Rhoda Bernard, Michele Cantoni, Mary L. Cohen, Wayland “X” Coleman, Samantha Dieckmann, Irene (Peace) Ebhohon, Con Fullam, Erin Guinup, Micah Hendler, Hala Jaber, Shaylene Johnson, Arsène Kapikian, Tou SaiKo Lee, Sarah Mandie, David Nnadi, Marcia Ostashewski, Ulrike Präger, Q, Kate Richards Geller, Charlotte Rider, Matt Sakakeeny, Tim Seelig, Katherine Seybert, Brian Sullivan, Mathilde Vittu, Derrick Washington, Henriette Weber, Mai Yang Xiong, Keng Chris Yang, and Nelli Yurina.