Anthropologies in/of the Black Mediterranean

This article draws on ethnographic elements collected in the heterogeneous field of African music and dance in France and French-speaking Switzerland, as well as on a previous literature on popular travelling music and dance genres between African and European cities. It participates in an ongoing conversation about the concept of the Black Mediterranean, and insists on its relevance to analyse migrations, cross-cultural formations and postcolonial conversations taking place between some European countries and their former colonies through popular music and dance productions. Ethnography and history of travelling music and dance genres leads to approach the Black Mediterranean as both a borderland of racial violence and inequalities, and a web of cultural signs, transactions, and practices that connect the African continent and European cities. This transcontinental matrix participates in reconfiguring the representations of Africanity, Blackness and Afropeanity in ambiguous and multifaceted ways.