Music and territory from a geographical vantage

International audienceWhen geographers attend debates generally taking part among other social sciences, they are often asked what geography has got to do with it. They have to justify themselves, pointing out that geography is not a simple description of the earth, but a social science in its own right, dealing with the places and space of societies, the position of men in the world and their representations. Let us take the example of the association between music and territory. The geographer may grasp sound and the environment of sound as a source of information on the space, and see music and musical practices as geo-indicators of the organisation of places, musical policies as a form of territorial governance, etc. This will enable him to refine his knowledge of territories by helping him understand the way men appropriate them and transform them. In this article, I shall first sum up the various stages of construction of a “geography of music” as it has developed in the English-speaking world since the 1970s, by referring to publications by the geographer, Claire Guiu, and then I shall present a few examples of work carried out in France since 2006 by a network of musician cum researchers from all disciplines interested in the relationship between music and territory. Then I shall put forward some tools for analysis so as to make it possible to grasp the couple of “music” and “space” as a geographic object. The objective consists albeit in defining the specificity of geography in the study of musical phenomena, but also in offering a complementary view point to that of the human and social sciences by focussing first and foremost on the spatial dimension of music