Directions in Baltic Music Scholarship Beyond the Post-Soviet

• In Event: Social and Cultural Impacts of Baltic Music

Abstract

This paper uses our co-edited book Baltic Musics Beyond the Post-Soviet (University of Tartu Press, 2024) as a point of entry into new scholarship on Baltic musics and sounds that move along decolonizing paths. We explore what happens as processes of return, restoration, and revival characterizing post-Soviet life give way to new urgencies and realities. We ask: What happens as generations less impacted by direct experiences of Soviet occupation and coloniality create sounds and scholarship beyond the post-Soviet? What chronologies and imaginaries emerge as the post-Soviet is decentered? The idea of Baltic musics has long been contested as an artifact of coloniality and occupation. At the same time, musicians, scholars, instruments, and sounds have long circulated within the Baltic Sea region, creating networks of sonic and scholarly collaboration across historical and ideological differences. Despite being impossible to pin down, the post-Soviet has served as the latest unifying frame for the ruptures and continuities that connect Baltic musics. But what are the limits of the post-Soviet in Baltic musical life and scholarship? What lies beyond the post-Soviet? Our interdisciplinary approach incorporates historiographic and ethnographic, cultural studies, and arts-based research methodologies alongside Baltic musicians’ reflections on their musical practices. Music’s intrinsic connections to temporality, identity construction and performance, embodiment and affect, and the political allow us to encounter what comes beyond the post-Soviet at a variety of scales, ranging from small Baltic communities to globe-spanning social and artistic movements.

Short Bio

Jeffers Engelhardt is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Amherst College. He teaches courses in ethnomusicology focusing on community-based ethnography, music and religion, voice, and analytical approaches to music and sound. His research deals broadly with music, religion, Estonia, European identity, and media. His books include Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christians and Secular Enchantment in Estonia (Oxford, 2015) and the co-edited volumes Resounding Transcendence: Transitions in Music, Religion, and Ritual (Oxford, 2016), Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred (Fordham, 2020), and Baltic Musics Beyond the Post-Soviet (Tartu, 2024). His current book project is Music and Religion (Oxford), and he is Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of Music and Religion.

Katherine Pukinskis is a composer-scholar whose work explores storytelling and voice—tracking how words and ideas travel in music, across the world, and over time. Pukinskis has had works premiered by eighth blackbird, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Akron Symphony Chorus, and the Spektral Quartet, as well as by members of Ensemble Dal Niente and the Chicago Symphony Chorus. Commissioning ensembles include the San Antonio Symphony, Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh, Akropolis Reed Quintet, Heritage Chorale, the Esoterics Choir, Mägi Ensemble, and Nuorten Kuoroliitto (Helsinki Finland). Dr. Pukinskis’s scholarly research revolves around notions of cultural identity, diaspora, traditional folk and choral music, and activism, with particular emphasis on Latvia, as well as contemporary American art song and musical theater. She has presented her original compositions and research in conferences, invited keynotes, and lectures across the United States and Europe. Pukinskis is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Theory at Carnegie Mellon University.

Authors

• Jeffers Engelhardt, Amherst College

• Katherine Pukinskis, Carnegie Mellon University