Alessandra Ciucci - Portrait

Alessandra Ciucci

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize
September 10, 2018–July 26, 2019
Profession
Assistant Professor, Department of Music, Columbia University
Project title
Resonances of the Rural across the Mediterranean: Music, Sound, and Migrant Moroccan Men in Italy
Project description

This project explores the significance of a specific notion of l-‘arubiya (the rural) and its role in sound among migrant Moroccan men in Italy. I posit that the sound of l-‘arubiya questions the very notion of what it means to be Mediterranean, rendering these migrants audible. The project thinks critically about discourses concerning l-‘arubiya as a socio-acoustic practice that is deeply compelling for Moroccan migrant men crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. It is an inquiry into the role of the sound of l-‘arubiya in the lives of these migrants and, to this end, I focus on two musico-poetic genres which embody such a notion of the rural: ‘aita and ‘abidat rma. This project is ultimately concerned with a complex geography of space, with the dialectical relationship between the colonial and the postcolonial Mediterranean, tradition and modernity, the rural and the marine, the Moroccan countryside and the Mediterranean—and how these dialectics emerge through l-‘arubiya in sound.