From Implicit Cultural Memory to Explicit Performance: An Autoethnographic Study of Jewish Musicians, Artistic Identity, and Political Contestation in International Performance
From Implicit Cultural Memory to Explicit Performance: An Autoethnographic Study of Jewish Musicians, Artistic Identity, and Political Contestation in International Performance

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how Jewish musicians negotiate artistic identity, cultural memory and public visibility in international performance contexts characterised by political contestation and rising antisemitism. Drawing on a qualitative autoethnographic methodology, the study integrates fifteen years of reflective performance journals, field notes, participant observations, professional interactions and documentary evidence collected between 2010 and 2025. These materials are analysed using thematic analysis to investigate how lived artistic experience intersects with broader social, cultural and political processes. Three interrelated themes emerged from the analysis: the politicisation of artistic identity, the transformation of implicit cultural memory into explicit public performance and the development of artistic resilience in response to exclusion, protest and institutional pressure. The findings demonstrate that Jewish musicians are increasingly required to encounter the tension between artistic expression and externally imposed political identities, often becoming representatives of contested geopolitical narratives irrespective of their individual intentions. Under such conditions, musical performance extends beyond aesthetic practice to become a site of cultural memory, ethical encounter and symbolic resistance. By combining autoethnographic evidence with theories of tacit knowledge, cultural memory, diaspora and performance studies, the article contributes to interdisciplinary debates on the relationship between art, identity and political conflict. It argues that autoethnography offers a valuable methodological framework for understanding how embodied artistic practice reveals processes of cultural transmission and identity negotiation that are difficult to capture through conventional qualitative methods. The study contributes original empirical insight into the experiences of Jewish musicians performing internationally and demonstrates how performance functions as a dynamic space in which cultural memory is continually negotiated, contested and reaffirmed under conditions of political scrutiny.

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