Life Course, Biography, Career. the Migrant Musicians of the Orchestra Orpheus XXI (Jordi Savall)

Orpheus XXI is an orchestra which was created in 2016 by the Catalan conductor and gambist Jordi Savall through a grant of €200,000 from the European programme Creative Europe. Orpheus is part of Jordi Savall’s recurring concern to link humanist commitment and artistic practice. The orchestra is aimed at “musician refugees and migrants”[1] who are professional musicians. It allows musicians to continue to perform in exile. They enrich this activity by transmitting their knowledge to young people and children whom they meet during educational workshops.

With tools drawn from the anthropology of music and the anthropology of biographical life courses, I study the life course (parcours), the biography, the career (Zimmermann, 2013) of migrant musicians of the Orpheus XXI ensemble. The life course is concerned with the paths that the person takes in the private or public spaces, and the environments (professional, family related, institutional) that he or she crosses which shape his or her possibilities and resources but over which he or she can exercise influence. The career focuses on the world of work and analyses the path of a person in this world. Career is also a form of statutory attribution. It depends on an external authority. Biography is the construction of a narrative, the establishment of a continuity after the fact by the reflexivity of the actor to an external audience. How do musicians adjust to the structures of their new societies? and how do the structural devices – whether legal, social, administrative, cultural and familial – understand music: as a cultural tool for society? as a tool of inclusion for people who find themselves in a situation of migration?

[1] See Orpheus XXI website: https://orpheus21.eu/en/description-project/, accessed on 19.01.2023.