Musical Evolution and The Other: State-Sponsored Musical Evolutionism in the USSR and the Conundrum of Post-Soviet Crimean Tatar Indigenous Music

In the Soviet Union, logics of teleological evolutionism undergirded the Communist party-state’s interventions into many aspects of Soviet life, including the realm of “folk music.” In this presentation, Maria Sonevytsky, Assistant Professor of Music at UC Berkeley, will draw on the example of the Soviet institutionalization of a Crimean Tatar folk orchestra to demonstrate how Soviet musical evolutionism ordered and constrained vernacular musical practices in ways that have had long-term political consequences, especially with regard to the politics of post-Soviet indigeneity. This event will take place on Youtube Live.