Historically, the study of collectivities and the notion of community as the center of such collectivities has been central to ethnomusicological studies. However, at least since the 1990s, the notion of community is being reconsidered to address the need to analyze processes of cultural heritage transmission and musical practices that are both an expression of a particular social group and a part of larger processes that can generate or maintain new collectivities. This is particularly relevant in 21st c. societies in which communication technologies and a constant (trans)national migratory flow are ever present. No longer we can think of communities fixed to geographical spaces but rather displaced and articulated by diasporic phenomena. Such conditions recall the need to study music in new social conditions and in a new global musical ecosystem.
Then, if traditional music is considered a fundamental tool in the construction of human groups and the individual as part of the group, and is generally thought as tied to place and space, how can it continue to be part of present-day mobile communities? How may it change when communities are displaced and physical boundaries of cultural interaction are blurred?
In this paper, I elaborate on such questions as well as on the importance of traditional music as basic to the articulation and reconfiguration of communities' cultural heritage and collective memory. Does the musical experience construct a mobile community in performative environments that travels with the community itself and forces us to think of communities not tied to place and space? Particularly, my work examines the celebration of All Saints in the town of Tempoal, Veracruz, as an example of a community cultural expression deeply celebrated in both its place of origin and transnational scenarios.
