The Responsibility of the Artist: Resistance, Otherness, Exile 1926–2026 Colloquium
The theme of the colloquium is the consequences of totalitarianism for people and music communities through research and art (music), with a special focus on the Holocaust and Russian/Soviet totalitarianism, which has taken on new forms in the 2020s.
Two-day international scientific colloquium
In 21 – 22 September 2026 a two-day international scientific colloquium in Music Centre Helsinki will take place to provide viewpoints on questions of Music, Memory and European Values (MMEV) project themes. In the project, funded by the European Commission Citizenship, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme, University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy’s theme is The Responsibility of the Artist: Resistance, Otherness, Exile 1926–2026. The project examines the consequences of totalitarianism for people and music communities through research and art (music), with a special focus on the Holocaust and Russian/Soviet totalitarianism, which has taken on new forms in the 2020s.
The invited speakers of the two-day Colloquium will include Henrik Rosengren (Lund University), Susanna Välimäki (University of Helsinki), Simo Muir, Oana Andreica (The Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music), Dario Martinelli (Kaunas University of Technology), Jean-Marie Jacono (Aix-Marseille Université) and Elaine Kelly (University of Edinburgh).
Both colloquium days are concluded with the concerts. On Monday, the there will be arranged the lecture recital concert (Auditorium), and the closing concert will be arranged on Tuesday (Camerata Hall).
The colloquium will take place in the Helsinki Music Centre’s auditorium, and the Masterclass and concerts will be arranged in the Camerata Hall.
Programme on Monday 21 September 2026
Venue: Auditorium
11.00 – 12.00 Arrival and coffee
12.00 – 12.30 Welcome by Anne Kauppala and introduction of the project by Thomas Tacquet and Camille Gerbaud (Forum Voix Etouffées)
12.30 – 13.30 Henrik Rosengren (Lund University): Sven-David Sandström and Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna as an expression of Holocaust memory culture. A multiscalar perspective
13.30 – 14.45 Lunch break
14.45 – 15.30 Susanna Välimäki (University of Helsinki): Genocide and Music
15.30 – 16.15 Simo Muir: Representation of Holocaust Trauma and Emotional Reception in Yiddish Musical Performances in Sweden and Finland, 1945–1950
16.15 – 17.00 Oana Andreica (The Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music): Topoi of Nostalgia in Romanian Contemporary Music
18.00 – 19.00 Lecture recital presentations
Venue: Auditorium
Programme on Tuesday 22 September 2026
Venue: Auditorium
10.00 – 11.00 Dario Martinelli (Kaunas University of Technology): The subtle resistance of jazz during Italian fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s
11.00 – 12.00 Jean-Marie Jacono (Aix-Marseille Université): Songs against Le Pen’s neofascist party in France (1983-2022): towards a typology of lyrics and music
12.00 – 13.15 Lunch break
13.15 – 14.00 Elaine Kelly (University of Edinburgh): Ambiguous Resistance: Music and Anti-Imperial Solidarity in East Germany
14.00–14.45 Panel discussion and closing of the event
Moderator Anne Kauppala (University of the Arts Helsinki)
14.45- 15.30 Coffee
18.00
Venue: Camerata
Concert
- Erminie Blondel, soprano
- Thomas Tacquet, piano
- Anne Piirainen, clarinet
The event also consists of a Masterclass in 21 – 22 September 2026 led by lecturer Keval Shah from University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy and Irène Kudela (pianist and vocal coach). The participants of the Masterclass will be Sibelius Academy advanced students from the Vocal Music department. The Masterclass will be arranged in the Camerata Hall and it is not open for the public.
Abstracts and biographies
Henrik Rosengren
Sven-David Sandström and Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna as an expression of Holocaust memory culture. A multiscalar perspective
On October 29, 1978, the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published a full-page article with the headline “Death’s ‘telephone directory’”. The article drew attention to the recently published book Le Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France (Memorial of the Deportation of the French Jews), by Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. The books is a compilation of the names of 80,000 deported and murdered French Jews. The article became a source of inspiration for the composer Sven-David Sandström and the poet Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna (Those fallen from memory). The result of Berggren’s and Sandström’s collaboration became one of the most scandalous musical works in Swedish music history during the 20th century, mostly because of the lyric’s occasionally gross pornographic allusions.
Depicting or in some way representing the Holocaust in artistic form can be controversial. Is it possible to depict the Holocaust artistically, how should it be done, and should it be done at all? In the reception of De ur alla minnen fallna, this question was brought to the forefront, partly because of the pornographic content and violent depictions. The lyricist Berggren argued for the importance of using such language to portray absolute evil, to murder children, to exterminate the Jews, but it was also this language that risked jeopardizing the entire project. The reception took on a focus other than a purely artistic one, and Berggren’s intention to portray the Holocaust was in some cases overshadowed. Criticism of the work most often concerned the language itself, but the debate also attracted views that claimed that artists should not make art out of the Holocaust, not because it is artistically impossible but because it is irrelevant.
Bio
Henrik Rosengren is an Associate Professor of History at Lund University and director of NORAH, North European Center for Research on Antisemitism and the Holocaust. He is also the director of the PhD-program National Graduate School in Historical Studies at the same university. His research focuses on Holocaust Memory and Music, German-Jewish Exile to Sweden, Music and Politics and Antisemitism. Rosengren is currently working mainly on a research project regarding the reception of art music related to the Holocaust in relation to the Nordic countries’ memory cultures 1945–2020. https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/henrik-rosengren/
Susanna Välimäki
Genocide and Music
In this talk, I aim to give an overview to the field of music and genocide studies. I will present research topics, trends and questions central to this field, and by this my purpose is to illuminate the manifold relationship between genocide and music.
Roughly, the research objects in the field can be divided into three overlapping categories: musical repertoires, musicians, and musical activities related to genocide. Besides, the research can focus on victims and survivors, or perpetrators, illuminating the complex roles music has amidst extreme instances of violence. (1) Musical works that address a genocide have been written in prisons, concentration camps, and other violent environments, as well as in post-genocide societies as sonic testimonies, memorials, trauma narratives, and resolution projects. Moreover, musical pieces have been composed for the use of perpetrators to dehumanize the target group. (2) The experiences and fates of musician victims and survivors illuminate the psychological and social functions of music in genocide settings. Yet, musicians have also worked on the side of the perpetrators, which has, for instance, prompted legal research. (3) Musical activities can be utilized by genocidal machinery as a tool of torture and humiliation. On the other hand, musical practice can serve as a form of resistance, healing, and peacebuilding.The existing studies raise various specific questions, such as the ethics of musical representation; the restoration of lost or broken musical cultures; music as propaganda and activism; and the role of musicology in genocide and genocide studies.
My talk is based on a Chapter “Genocide and Music”, which I recently wrote to the collected volume entitled The Routledge Handbook of Genocide Studies, edited by Jeffrey Bachman & John Cox (London: Routledge, forthcoming in 2026).
Bio
Susanna Välimäki, PhD, is Professor of Musicology and Discipline Head of Musicology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Their current research interests include music and social justice, cultural trauma studies, and activist and applied music research. Välimäki is a founding member of the Research Association Suoni for activist music research.They have written 5 monographs and about 90 research articles, and edited 10 anthologies, including Music, Research, and Activism (2025, co-edited with Kim Ramstedt, Sini Mononen, and Kaj Ahlsved). Välimäki’s family roots are in the historical Finnish Karelia and Ingria.
Simo Muir
Representation of Holocaust Trauma and Emotional Reception in Yiddish Musical Performances in Sweden and Finland, 1945–1950
Oana Andreica
Topoi of Nostalgia in Romanian Contemporary Music
A complex emotion that involves longing for idealized past moments invested with meaning, nostalgia lies at the foundation of countless musical works. Romanian art music has cultivated a distinctive relationship with it, often tied to memory, landscape, folklore, and exile. A central source of inspiration is traditional music and strategies include pastoral tunes, dance patterns, free rhythm, specific ornamentation, improvisatory style and modal inflections, employed by composers not as direct references and quotations, but as means to create distance and the sense of collective memory. Consequently, Romanian composers often blur the boundaries between art and folk music, embedding nostalgia in the musical substance rather than confining its role to mere decoration. Also connected to displacement, particularly in the twentieth century, nostalgia becomes the premise for writing music that evokes a sensibility of loss for a past, which neither the composers nor the listeners could have known or experienced. The folk traditions that composers seek to reconstruct stand in discontinuous connection to their present and the purpose is to evoke not memories, but the idea of a lost world and its sharp, sometimes even brutal, contrast with contemporary life.
In this paper, I aim at searching for specific musical gestures, as well as structural and formal patterns used by Romanian contemporary composers to evoke nostalgia. For historical reasons, my focus will be the repertoire of the second half of the twentieth century.
Bio
Oana Andreica is an assistant professor of Musicology and Musical Semiotics, head of the Doctoral Studies Council at the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca and director of the Centre for Research in Central and East European Music. She regularly participates in national and international conferences and her list of publications includes articles, interviews and concert reviews, as well as edited collective volumes, the most recent Music as Cultural Heritage and Novelty, released by Springer in September 2022. Her articles can be read in various journals, such as Contemporary Music Review, Studia Musicologica, Roczniki Humanistyczne, Musicology Today, Musicology Papers, etc. She published the monograph Artă şi abis. Cazul Mahler (Art and Abyss. The Case of Mahler) in 2012 and Ghid (incomplet) de concert [(Incomplete) Concert Guide] in 2021. Currently, her research focuses on topic theory and Romanian contemporary music.
Dario Martinelli
The subtle resistance of jazz during Italian fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s
This keynote explores the complex and often contradictory relationship between jazz and the cultural policies of Fascist Italy, particularly after the racial laws in 1938. While the regime officially condemned jazz as a foreign influence, the music nevertheless found ways to circulate within the Italian entertainment industry, sometimes even achieving a degree of institutional acceptance. Jazz players began to mediate between American swing idioms and the Italian melodic tradition, creating a hybrid style that could pass, at least partially, within the boundaries tolerated by the regime.
During the years Orwellianly monitored by the ministry of propaganda, jazz performances and recordings were frequently restricted on ideological grounds, while numerous popular songs – called canzoni della fronda – were censored for allegedly containing anti-fascist undertones. Yet paradoxically, some works escaped scrutiny, and often became examples of artistic resistance: the quiet yet meaningful act of sustaining a musical language officially discouraged by the regime. The lecture invites a broader reflection on how popular music can negotiate ideological constraints, transforming stylistic choices themselves into forms of cultural, and ultimately political, resilience.
Keywords: Artistic resistance, Jazz, Fascism, Italy, Swing.
Bio
Prof. Dr. Dario Martinelli (1974) is a Full Professor in History and Theory of Arts at Kaunas University of Technology, Adjunct Professor in Semiotics and Musicology at the University of Helsinki and Adjunct Professor in Semiotics and Communication Studies at Lapland University. As of 2026, he has published 20 authored monographs and ca. 200 among edited collections, studies and scientific articles. Besides his affiliations, he has been a visiting professor in numerous academic institutions, and has been a recipient of several prizes, including, in 2006, a knighthood from the Italian Republic for his contribution to Italian culture.
Jean-Marie Jacono
Songs against Le Pen’s neofascist party in France (1983-2022): towards a typology of lyrics and music
Many French songs have responded to the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right party, the Front national (FN). Founded in 1972, this neofascist party became the Rassemblement national (National Rally) in 2018 under his daughter Marine, who has reached the second round of the presidential election twice (2017, 2022 — 41% of the vote), following in her father’s footsteps in 2002. This party could see its candidate elected in the next election, in 2027. It holds numerous seats in parliament and won control of dozens of cities in the most recent municipal elections, in 2026.
“Songs against the FN” span all musical genres. Famous French singers (P. Perret, Ph. Katerine, M. Fugain, B. Biolay), rockers (Bérurier Noir, Darcy), and rap groups (IAM, Supreme NTM, Diam’s) have spoken out against the FN. What do the lyrics say? Are they intended to protest or to mobilize anti-fascists against this party? The rhetorical dimension is significant. It is shaped by passionate statements that express fear, emotion, and the presence of a specific addressee (“Marine” by Diam’s), as well as by provocative gestures during concerts. What role does the music play in these songs? Is it merely there to underscore the impact of the lyrics? Does it help foster resistance against a party that is complicit with the current presidents of the United States and Russia? Finally, are there still songs hostile to this party at a time when it is attracting many right-wing voters? Political and social contexts play a significant role.
We will attempt to develop a typology of the lyrics and music of these anti-fascist songs from 1983 to 2022. The question is also whether these “songs of social protest” have been an effective tool for mobilization against this far-right party.
Bio
Dr. Jean-Marie Jacono is assistant-professor emeritus in musicology at Aix-Marseille Université (Aix-en-Provence, France). His research focuses on the sociology of musical works in 19th-century Russian music and popular music (Francophone rap and French chanson). He also deals with semiotics and musical signification. He was several times co-director of the International doctoral and postdoctoral seminar directed by prof. Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki). In 2015, he co-founded the network Les Ondes du monde (The waves of the world) with P. Abbrugiati and J. July, which has already organized five international conferences on chanson (biennials). Among his publication: Cartographier la chanson contemporaine (2019, co-dir.), Chanson pour – chanson contre (2024, co-dir.), focused on the relationship between popular music and politics. He is currently dealing with Mussorgsky’s music and rap within the changing city of Marseille.
Elaine Kelly
Ambiguous Resistance: Music and Anti-Imperial Solidarity in East Germany
Musical resistance in the context of the Cold War has tended to be examined through the frameworks of domestic opposition and dissent that pitted citizens against state socialist regimes. Considerably less attention has been given to the discourses and practices of resistance that united citizens and regimes in anti-imperial solidarity. From the mid-1960s artists mobilized across the socialist Bloc to express their support for fights against political oppression in Vietnam, in South Africa, in Chile, and elsewhere in the Third World. The resulting solidarity art has often been dismissed as inauthentic—a conformist affirmation of state rhetoric rather than something grassroots, spontaneous, and voluntary. This stance neglects, however, the very real ethical imperatives that prompted socialist artists to act in anti-imperial solidarity, and the meaning that this action could hold for solidarity recipients. In this talk I will work through the ambiguities of the music that was produced under the auspices of anti-imperial solidarity in East Germany between the 1960s and 1980s, exploring how musical tropes of resistance could, on the one hand, validate repressive domestic politics and older colonial modes of racial othering, and, on the other hand, help to forge anti-colonial solidaristic bonds.
Bio
Elaine Kelly is professor of music and politics at the University of Edinburgh. She has written extensively on intersections between music, culture, and politics in the German Democratic Republic and post-Wende East Germany. Her publications include Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2014), Art Outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture (Brill/Rodopi, 2011; edited with Amy Wlodarski), and Confronting the National in the Musical Past (Routledge, 2018; edited with Derek B. Scott and Markus Mantere). Her most recent work, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, explores the global contexts of socialist solidarity, and will appear in her forthcoming book Music and Anti-Imperialist Solidarity: East Germany and the Third World.
Registration
The organizers welcome everyone interested, and attendance is free of charge. The language of the event is English. The event is free of charge, but requires pre-registration.
The registration is open until 9 September 2026.
Two-day international scientific colloquium
In 21 – 22 September 2026 a two-day international scientific colloquium in Music Centre Helsinki will take place to provide viewpoints on questions of Music, Memory and European Values (MMEV) project themes. In the project, funded by the European Commission Citizenship, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme, University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy’s theme is The Responsibility of the Artist: Resistance, Otherness, Exile 1926–2026. The project examines the consequences of totalitarianism for people and music communities through research and art (music), with a special focus on the Holocaust and Russian/Soviet totalitarianism, which has taken on new forms in the 2020s.
The invited speakers of the two-day Colloquium will include Henrik Rosengren (Lund University), Susanna Välimäki (University of Helsinki), Simo Muir, Oana Andreica (The Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music), Dario Martinelli (Kaunas University of Technology), Jean-Marie Jacono (Aix-Marseille Université) and Elaine Kelly (University of Edinburgh).
Both colloquium days are concluded with the concerts. On Monday, the there will be arranged the lecture recital concert (Auditorium), and the closing concert will be arranged on Tuesday (Camerata Hall).
The colloquium will take place in the Helsinki Music Centre’s auditorium, and the Masterclass and concerts will be arranged in the Camerata Hall.
Programme on Monday 21 September 2026
Venue: Auditorium
11.00 – 12.00 Arrival and coffee
12.00 – 12.30 Welcome by Anne Kauppala and introduction of the project by Thomas Tacquet and Camille Gerbaud (Forum Voix Etouffées)
12.30 – 13.30 Henrik Rosengren (Lund University): Sven-David Sandström and Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna as an expression of Holocaust memory culture. A multiscalar perspective
13.30 – 14.45 Lunch break
14.45 – 15.30 Susanna Välimäki (University of Helsinki): Genocide and Music
15.30 – 16.15 Simo Muir: Representation of Holocaust Trauma and Emotional Reception in Yiddish Musical Performances in Sweden and Finland, 1945–1950
16.15 – 17.00 Oana Andreica (The Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music): Topoi of Nostalgia in Romanian Contemporary Music
18.00 – 19.00 Lecture recital presentations
Venue: Auditorium
Programme on Tuesday 22 September 2026
Venue: Auditorium
10.00 – 11.00 Dario Martinelli (Kaunas University of Technology): The subtle resistance of jazz during Italian fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s
11.00 – 12.00 Jean-Marie Jacono (Aix-Marseille Université): Songs against Le Pen’s neofascist party in France (1983-2022): towards a typology of lyrics and music
12.00 – 13.15 Lunch break
13.15 – 14.00 Elaine Kelly (University of Edinburgh): Ambiguous Resistance: Music and Anti-Imperial Solidarity in East Germany
14.00–14.45 Panel discussion and closing of the event
Moderator Anne Kauppala (University of the Arts Helsinki)
14.45- 15.30 Coffee
18.00
Venue: Camerata
Concert
- Erminie Blondel, soprano
- Thomas Tacquet, piano
- Anne Piirainen, clarinet
The event also consists of a Masterclass in 21 – 22 September 2026 led by lecturer Keval Shah from University of the Arts Helsinki Sibelius Academy and Irène Kudela (pianist and vocal coach). The participants of the Masterclass will be Sibelius Academy advanced students from the Vocal Music department. The Masterclass will be arranged in the Camerata Hall and it is not open for the public.
Abstracts and biographies
Henrik Rosengren
Sven-David Sandström and Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna as an expression of Holocaust memory culture. A multiscalar perspective
On October 29, 1978, the Swedish daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published a full-page article with the headline “Death’s ‘telephone directory’”. The article drew attention to the recently published book Le Mémorial de la Déportation des Juifs de France (Memorial of the Deportation of the French Jews), by Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. The books is a compilation of the names of 80,000 deported and murdered French Jews. The article became a source of inspiration for the composer Sven-David Sandström and the poet Tobias Berggren’s requiem De ur alla minnen fallna (Those fallen from memory). The result of Berggren’s and Sandström’s collaboration became one of the most scandalous musical works in Swedish music history during the 20th century, mostly because of the lyric’s occasionally gross pornographic allusions.
Depicting or in some way representing the Holocaust in artistic form can be controversial. Is it possible to depict the Holocaust artistically, how should it be done, and should it be done at all? In the reception of De ur alla minnen fallna, this question was brought to the forefront, partly because of the pornographic content and violent depictions. The lyricist Berggren argued for the importance of using such language to portray absolute evil, to murder children, to exterminate the Jews, but it was also this language that risked jeopardizing the entire project. The reception took on a focus other than a purely artistic one, and Berggren’s intention to portray the Holocaust was in some cases overshadowed. Criticism of the work most often concerned the language itself, but the debate also attracted views that claimed that artists should not make art out of the Holocaust, not because it is artistically impossible but because it is irrelevant.
Bio
Henrik Rosengren is an Associate Professor of History at Lund University and director of NORAH, North European Center for Research on Antisemitism and the Holocaust. He is also the director of the PhD-program National Graduate School in Historical Studies at the same university. His research focuses on Holocaust Memory and Music, German-Jewish Exile to Sweden, Music and Politics and Antisemitism. Rosengren is currently working mainly on a research project regarding the reception of art music related to the Holocaust in relation to the Nordic countries’ memory cultures 1945–2020. https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/henrik-rosengren/
Susanna Välimäki
Genocide and Music
In this talk, I aim to give an overview to the field of music and genocide studies. I will present research topics, trends and questions central to this field, and by this my purpose is to illuminate the manifold relationship between genocide and music.
Roughly, the research objects in the field can be divided into three overlapping categories: musical repertoires, musicians, and musical activities related to genocide. Besides, the research can focus on victims and survivors, or perpetrators, illuminating the complex roles music has amidst extreme instances of violence. (1) Musical works that address a genocide have been written in prisons, concentration camps, and other violent environments, as well as in post-genocide societies as sonic testimonies, memorials, trauma narratives, and resolution projects. Moreover, musical pieces have been composed for the use of perpetrators to dehumanize the target group. (2) The experiences and fates of musician victims and survivors illuminate the psychological and social functions of music in genocide settings. Yet, musicians have also worked on the side of the perpetrators, which has, for instance, prompted legal research. (3) Musical activities can be utilized by genocidal machinery as a tool of torture and humiliation. On the other hand, musical practice can serve as a form of resistance, healing, and peacebuilding.The existing studies raise various specific questions, such as the ethics of musical representation; the restoration of lost or broken musical cultures; music as propaganda and activism; and the role of musicology in genocide and genocide studies.
My talk is based on a Chapter “Genocide and Music”, which I recently wrote to the collected volume entitled The Routledge Handbook of Genocide Studies, edited by Jeffrey Bachman & John Cox (London: Routledge, forthcoming in 2026).
Bio
Susanna Välimäki, PhD, is Professor of Musicology and Discipline Head of Musicology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Their current research interests include music and social justice, cultural trauma studies, and activist and applied music research. Välimäki is a founding member of the Research Association Suoni for activist music research.They have written 5 monographs and about 90 research articles, and edited 10 anthologies, including Music, Research, and Activism (2025, co-edited with Kim Ramstedt, Sini Mononen, and Kaj Ahlsved). Välimäki’s family roots are in the historical Finnish Karelia and Ingria.
Simo Muir
Representation of Holocaust Trauma and Emotional Reception in Yiddish Musical Performances in Sweden and Finland, 1945–1950
Oana Andreica
Topoi of Nostalgia in Romanian Contemporary Music
A complex emotion that involves longing for idealized past moments invested with meaning, nostalgia lies at the foundation of countless musical works. Romanian art music has cultivated a distinctive relationship with it, often tied to memory, landscape, folklore, and exile. A central source of inspiration is traditional music and strategies include pastoral tunes, dance patterns, free rhythm, specific ornamentation, improvisatory style and modal inflections, employed by composers not as direct references and quotations, but as means to create distance and the sense of collective memory. Consequently, Romanian composers often blur the boundaries between art and folk music, embedding nostalgia in the musical substance rather than confining its role to mere decoration. Also connected to displacement, particularly in the twentieth century, nostalgia becomes the premise for writing music that evokes a sensibility of loss for a past, which neither the composers nor the listeners could have known or experienced. The folk traditions that composers seek to reconstruct stand in discontinuous connection to their present and the purpose is to evoke not memories, but the idea of a lost world and its sharp, sometimes even brutal, contrast with contemporary life.
In this paper, I aim at searching for specific musical gestures, as well as structural and formal patterns used by Romanian contemporary composers to evoke nostalgia. For historical reasons, my focus will be the repertoire of the second half of the twentieth century.
Bio
Oana Andreica is an assistant professor of Musicology and Musical Semiotics, head of the Doctoral Studies Council at the Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music in Cluj-Napoca and director of the Centre for Research in Central and East European Music. She regularly participates in national and international conferences and her list of publications includes articles, interviews and concert reviews, as well as edited collective volumes, the most recent Music as Cultural Heritage and Novelty, released by Springer in September 2022. Her articles can be read in various journals, such as Contemporary Music Review, Studia Musicologica, Roczniki Humanistyczne, Musicology Today, Musicology Papers, etc. She published the monograph Artă şi abis. Cazul Mahler (Art and Abyss. The Case of Mahler) in 2012 and Ghid (incomplet) de concert [(Incomplete) Concert Guide] in 2021. Currently, her research focuses on topic theory and Romanian contemporary music.
Dario Martinelli
The subtle resistance of jazz during Italian fascism in the 1930’s and 1940’s
This keynote explores the complex and often contradictory relationship between jazz and the cultural policies of Fascist Italy, particularly after the racial laws in 1938. While the regime officially condemned jazz as a foreign influence, the music nevertheless found ways to circulate within the Italian entertainment industry, sometimes even achieving a degree of institutional acceptance. Jazz players began to mediate between American swing idioms and the Italian melodic tradition, creating a hybrid style that could pass, at least partially, within the boundaries tolerated by the regime.
During the years Orwellianly monitored by the ministry of propaganda, jazz performances and recordings were frequently restricted on ideological grounds, while numerous popular songs – called canzoni della fronda – were censored for allegedly containing anti-fascist undertones. Yet paradoxically, some works escaped scrutiny, and often became examples of artistic resistance: the quiet yet meaningful act of sustaining a musical language officially discouraged by the regime. The lecture invites a broader reflection on how popular music can negotiate ideological constraints, transforming stylistic choices themselves into forms of cultural, and ultimately political, resilience.
Keywords: Artistic resistance, Jazz, Fascism, Italy, Swing.
Bio
Prof. Dr. Dario Martinelli (1974) is a Full Professor in History and Theory of Arts at Kaunas University of Technology, Adjunct Professor in Semiotics and Musicology at the University of Helsinki and Adjunct Professor in Semiotics and Communication Studies at Lapland University. As of 2026, he has published 20 authored monographs and ca. 200 among edited collections, studies and scientific articles. Besides his affiliations, he has been a visiting professor in numerous academic institutions, and has been a recipient of several prizes, including, in 2006, a knighthood from the Italian Republic for his contribution to Italian culture.
Jean-Marie Jacono
Songs against Le Pen’s neofascist party in France (1983-2022): towards a typology of lyrics and music
Many French songs have responded to the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s far-right party, the Front national (FN). Founded in 1972, this neofascist party became the Rassemblement national (National Rally) in 2018 under his daughter Marine, who has reached the second round of the presidential election twice (2017, 2022 — 41% of the vote), following in her father’s footsteps in 2002. This party could see its candidate elected in the next election, in 2027. It holds numerous seats in parliament and won control of dozens of cities in the most recent municipal elections, in 2026.
“Songs against the FN” span all musical genres. Famous French singers (P. Perret, Ph. Katerine, M. Fugain, B. Biolay), rockers (Bérurier Noir, Darcy), and rap groups (IAM, Supreme NTM, Diam’s) have spoken out against the FN. What do the lyrics say? Are they intended to protest or to mobilize anti-fascists against this party? The rhetorical dimension is significant. It is shaped by passionate statements that express fear, emotion, and the presence of a specific addressee (“Marine” by Diam’s), as well as by provocative gestures during concerts. What role does the music play in these songs? Is it merely there to underscore the impact of the lyrics? Does it help foster resistance against a party that is complicit with the current presidents of the United States and Russia? Finally, are there still songs hostile to this party at a time when it is attracting many right-wing voters? Political and social contexts play a significant role.
We will attempt to develop a typology of the lyrics and music of these anti-fascist songs from 1983 to 2022. The question is also whether these “songs of social protest” have been an effective tool for mobilization against this far-right party.
Bio
Dr. Jean-Marie Jacono is assistant-professor emeritus in musicology at Aix-Marseille Université (Aix-en-Provence, France). His research focuses on the sociology of musical works in 19th-century Russian music and popular music (Francophone rap and French chanson). He also deals with semiotics and musical signification. He was several times co-director of the International doctoral and postdoctoral seminar directed by prof. Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki). In 2015, he co-founded the network Les Ondes du monde (The waves of the world) with P. Abbrugiati and J. July, which has already organized five international conferences on chanson (biennials). Among his publication: Cartographier la chanson contemporaine (2019, co-dir.), Chanson pour – chanson contre (2024, co-dir.), focused on the relationship between popular music and politics. He is currently dealing with Mussorgsky’s music and rap within the changing city of Marseille.
Elaine Kelly
Ambiguous Resistance: Music and Anti-Imperial Solidarity in East Germany
Musical resistance in the context of the Cold War has tended to be examined through the frameworks of domestic opposition and dissent that pitted citizens against state socialist regimes. Considerably less attention has been given to the discourses and practices of resistance that united citizens and regimes in anti-imperial solidarity. From the mid-1960s artists mobilized across the socialist Bloc to express their support for fights against political oppression in Vietnam, in South Africa, in Chile, and elsewhere in the Third World. The resulting solidarity art has often been dismissed as inauthentic—a conformist affirmation of state rhetoric rather than something grassroots, spontaneous, and voluntary. This stance neglects, however, the very real ethical imperatives that prompted socialist artists to act in anti-imperial solidarity, and the meaning that this action could hold for solidarity recipients. In this talk I will work through the ambiguities of the music that was produced under the auspices of anti-imperial solidarity in East Germany between the 1960s and 1980s, exploring how musical tropes of resistance could, on the one hand, validate repressive domestic politics and older colonial modes of racial othering, and, on the other hand, help to forge anti-colonial solidaristic bonds.
Bio
Elaine Kelly is professor of music and politics at the University of Edinburgh. She has written extensively on intersections between music, culture, and politics in the German Democratic Republic and post-Wende East Germany. Her publications include Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic (Oxford University Press, 2014), Art Outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture (Brill/Rodopi, 2011; edited with Amy Wlodarski), and Confronting the National in the Musical Past (Routledge, 2018; edited with Derek B. Scott and Markus Mantere). Her most recent work, funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, explores the global contexts of socialist solidarity, and will appear in her forthcoming book Music and Anti-Imperialist Solidarity: East Germany and the Third World.
Registration
The organizers welcome everyone interested, and attendance is free of charge. The language of the event is English. The event is free of charge, but requires pre-registration.
The registration is open until 9 September 2026.