Colloque pluridisciplinaire - Berceuses, Histoire(s) et conscience
While numerous collections of lullabies from many countries exist, as do many recordings, scholarship concerning the analysis or the uses of the lullaby are, even today, very rare. In the field of ethnomusicology, Constantin Brӑiloiu’s work on Romanian music was followed by a number of studies on national or regional repertoires aiming to identify common musical characteristics, but without focusing specifically on lullabies.
The purpose of this colloquium is to question what lullabies reveals about the histories, movements, but also the traumas of different cultures and peoples, in a transhistorical and transdisciplinary perspective. What do lullabies teach us about the sometimes partial or fragmentary history of circulations and migrations? What is the importance of these repertoires in the oral transmission of the history of peoples? Is there a “cathartic” function of lullabies dealing with traumatic episodes? What are the effects of lullabies, their words, and the voice of their interpreter on the child’s brain in the process of appeasement aimed at falling asleep?
Beyond these two days of meetings, the project aims to encourage scientific exchange in a multidisciplinary dynamic that brings together musicologists, artists, historians, ethnologists and ethnomusicologists, sociologists, linguists, neuroscientists, psychologists, and therapists on a national and international level with a view to broader reflections and subsequent publications.
Proposals for papers may fall within, but not be limited to, any of the following areas:
A. Circulations and cultural transfers
B. The transmission of traumatic memory
C. What science tells us about lullabies
D. Performative and literary lullabies
E. Constitution of a corpus