Musical Delineations of a PostNational Space for National Struggle: Hazara, Kurdish, and Baloch Cases

In cases where the logic of the nation-state has proved inhospitable or irrelevant to a self-designated national community, musicians often play a crucial role in firmly articulating coherent cultural identities that take on a national character within a post-national landscape. Drawing on three separate bodies of ongoing research, respectively centered on Kurdish, Baloch, and Hazara cultural milieus and evolving musical repertoires within them, I argue in this article that we can discern strategies and processes that go beyond simply manifesting a cultural character through distinctive musical aesthetics and vernacular tendencies but endeavor to situate the represented population, its cultural outlook, and—crucially—its intentions within a space of international visibility. In doing so, and in the absence of state departments or a seat at the United Nations, musicians engage in a form of cultural diplomacy that relies on their ability to fashion and disseminate musical encapsulations of the goodwill, resolve, adaptability, and resourcefulness of the people they represent, gesturing outward to a more holistic vision of human society. Each case I consider centers on unfolding narratives of deterritorialization and displacement related to circumstances that disrupt the community’s claim to a right to broader recognition and threaten cultural erasure.