US EPA

7495507 

Journal Article 

Musical work in the Tunisian protectorate: Paul Frémaux, Antonin Laffage, and evolving colonial identities 

Pasler, J 

2020 

106 

1 

45-88 

English 

This article examines colonial culture from the perspective of Antonin Laffage and Paul Frémaux, the first French Conservatoire-trained musicians to emigrate and settle in Tunis. As performers, conductors, and composers, they used their multiple talents not only to nurture French musical life, but also, through collaborations with amateurs and professionals from diverse communities, to build alliances, including with rivals, the Italians, crucialfor long-term peace in the protectorate. Their survival strategies and musical "pluriactivity" reveal both the demands of colonial life and the entrepreneurial creativity therein supported Together they created a quartet to perform French contemporary music and Tunis's first music school, Laffage a music publishing firm to publish local compositions and distribute his study of Arabic music, the first ethnomusicology in Tunis. In this contentious "France en formation," their complex and dynamic practices point to the agency of musical work under colonialism, from breaking down the opposition of colonizer and colonized to promoting new forms of "European " identity. © 2020 Societe Francaise de Musicologie. All rights reserved.