Festival Activism

For decades, festivals have been important sites of inquiry for folklorists and ethnomusicologists alike as celebrations of culture. Moving beyond traditional discussions of staged culture and multiculturalism, however, this edited volume explores how festivals may be mobilized as strategic forms of direct action.
Festival Activism is a diverse collection of case studies from scholars, performers, and arts administrators, all of whom deftly argue that festivals do more than simply celebrate culture; they also shape culture, creating new forms of aspirational community with direct political effects. Specifically, this volume addresses the many ways festivals provide resources for imagining and enacting social change, alternative citizenship, and long-term political transformation, revealing how performers, participants, and organizers encounter and challenge the myriad forms of violence that frame their worlds.
With its emphasis on activism, direct action, and social justice, Festival Activism points toward a new paradigm in festival research, one that focuses on decolonial and justice-oriented methods to illuminate festivals' latent political potential.

David A. McDonald is Associate Professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University Bloomington. Since 2002, he has worked closely with Palestinian refugee communities in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and North America. While trained in ethnomusicology, he has published widely on Palestinian popular culture, focusing specifically on the dynamics of trauma, violence, exile, and media. He is author of My Voice Is My Weapon: Music, Nationalism, and the Poetics of Palestinian Resistance. He is an editor of Palestinian Music and Song: Expression and Resistance since 1900 and At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice.
Andrew Snyder is Research Fellow in the Ethnomusicology Institute—Center for Studies in Music and Dance at NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal. He is author of Critical Brass: Street Carnival and Musical Activism in Olympic Rio de Janeiro and Postcolonial Intimacy: Brazilian Music and Carnival in Portugal (forthcoming). He is an editor of the Journal of Festive Studies, HONK! A Street Band Renaissance of Music and Activism, and At the Crossroads of Music and Social Justice. He is also a trumpeter and guitarist who plays a wide variety of popular music styles.
Jeremy Reed is an independent public humanities researcher. He received his PhD in ethnomusicology from Indiana University. His work focuses on festivals and the public sphere in the Middle East.