The Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation

This anthology's breadth and (literal) heft (with thirty-eight chapters, an introduction, and a guide to organization titled “Pathways and Trajectories,” totaling more than eight hundred pages) is an exciting indication that many scholars and archivists are engaging with musical repatriation. Though the volume may be of most interest to those leading repatriation projects, it also addresses a range of issues applicable to other research areas, such as preservation, sustainability, memory, power, agency, collaborative/community-centered research, curation, open access, privilege, advocacy, transmission, pedagogy, commodification, institutionalism and governmentality, censorship, policy, and law. As the editors indicate, it is not meant to be a comprehensive look at repatriation but rather a collection of themes and ideas (xlv)—an exploration and archive of some of the approaches to sound repatriation in the early twenty-first century. These themes and ideas are examined through diverse case studies from Africa (Mali, Guinea, Algeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Egypt, Rwanda, and South Africa); Europe (Ireland, Romania, and Bosnia, as well as a chapter addressing multiple European countries); Asia (Afghanistan, China, and Bali); North America (Canada and the United States); the Caribbean (Haiti); South America (Peru and Brazil); and Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Micronesia, and Samoa). Unfortunately, the majority of the authors are Americans based in American institutions working with musics outside of their own cultures; although those holding these spaces of power are responsible for redress, the strength of several chapters by researchers working with their own communities demonstrates that greater diversity in authorship would have deepened and allowed for more nuanced discussions of sound repatriation.This anthology's greatest strength is its focus on relationship; as the editors note, it aims to avoid “the historically transactional nature of returning archives” (xliv) in favor of understanding repatriation as one step in building an ongoing commitment to community. Gunderson further explains that repatriation can be understood “as a continual, sustained process that unfolds during the research from its inception—a conversation, a dialogue between research associates about traditions and performance practice, a give and take between researchers and communities they work with, or an evocation activity that helps flesh out songs and stories about songs submerged or perceived as lost” (180). This centering of relationships emerges from an understanding—at least among some of the authors—that a long-term, relational approach to repatriation is “good for the archive” (McMurray 623), good for communities and performers (Herbst 349), and good for research (Iyanaga 263). At the same time, it is clear in many of the chapters that the relational approach responds to the intangible aspect of sound archives: though archived musics are (often) captured on tangible cylinders and tapes, the recordings themselves did not remove the music from the community (though this does not justify the recordings); rather, it was colonialism and the power imbalance at the core of collection-oriented research that disrupted the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. As such, if the repatriation of sound archives is understood as redress, it may require engaging with “existing and potential networks or relations” so that the music can return to circulation (Seeger 145).The book's form, disappointingly, does not mirror the commitment to community engagement and relationship-building that many of the authors demonstrate in their projects. The longish articles often using dense academic language, the outrageous price (currently at $190, making it accessible only to institutions—and only to some institutions—and to researchers with significant research funds), and the lack of an open-access digital component position this volume as primarily intended for those working within well-funded academic or government institutions. It is gratifying to see the joy and the meaning so many of the projects discussed have for the communities involved, and many of the authors demonstrate valuable ways of engaging beyond academia. Why not reflect this approach by centering community-engaged research dissemination? The case studies would undoubtedly provide insight and know-how to communities wishing to initiate their own repatriation projects, but this book is unlikely to reach such an audience. Though the internet is not equally accessible to all, an open-access, multilingual website would have served as a better platform to share this research, either instead of or in addition to the book, perhaps providing accessible project overviews and guides to potential problems and solutions. Because of this, the collection ultimately brings into relief how academia continues to prioritize knowledge dissemination to those with access to academic training and academic and/or government positions and fails to return research to communities—the very thing that repatriation is supposed to address.The anthology also leaves lingering questions about what constitutes sound repatriation, suggesting that the concept has lost at least some of its meaningfulness within music studies. (A similar critique that will not be detailed here concerns the insufficient discussion of words such as patria/homeland, Indigenous, and archive, among others, and insufficient scrutiny of terms such as collecting, expedition, and “my discovery” [Wissler 118].) Many of the anthology's chapters, however, do define repatriation clearly and with nuance. For example, Seeger's definition ties the concept to power and the (re)circulation of musics (145), while Gray's definition insists on centering restorative justice (723). Yet some chapters do not seem to be describing repatriation at all, but rather decolonization, collaborative writing/antiableist approaches to research and publishing, diversification of pedagogical content and approaches, political propaganda, and curation of media consumption. A discussion of practices aimed at reviving American Civil War-era bands by white men who wish to “remasculinize” (Ozment 462) feels particularly malapropos positioned alongside other articles (e.g., Gray and T. Reed) that address the return of music to communities under centuries of direct attack by colonial governments. Can both instances really be considered “repatriation”? Perhaps it is through a collection such as this one that differences in how terms are used and understood become audible. Dividing the work into sections with introductory chapters and providing a concluding chapter could have done some of this work, an approach the editors chose to forgo. Nonetheless, this anthology might serve as a starting point for more careful use of the term repatriation and its sister concepts of decolonization and rematriation.

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