Music and culture contact. Effects of travelling and migrations on culture dynamics and individual creativity

The project intends to investigate, from different points of view and in connection with different contexts, the effects of culture contacts on culture dynamics and individual creativity. In an age characterized, more than in any other historical period, by individual travelling and dramatic mass migrations, an investigation on how these phenomena have an influence on artistic – and specifically musical – activities seems to be particularly desirable and beneficial. The research is planned in an innovative way as a cooperation (through an interplay between independent investigation, exchange of views and comparison of results) between scholars belonging to different disciplinary sectors who in their studies have all dealt with contexts characterized by a particular fertile culture dynamics in the field of music production due to travelling and migration. The five contexts taken into account are: 1. Culture dynamics and individual creativity in Malawi; 2. Music making among immigrant communities in Rome; 3. Music and culture in the Islamic courts in 8th-10th centuries; 4. Italian composers outside Italy in the 18th century: influences and feedback; 5. European composers in the United States and the Hollywood Production System. The idea is to compare social and psychological mechanisms such as change in individual artistic profile, group dynamics, the birth of new tendencies, dialectic between adaptation and innovation, tradition and change etc.