Unstitching borders and stitching together musical rhythms: some lines for reading Também os Brancos Sabem Dançar

Abstract

In a globalised world, the arrest of an African musician in Europe is a reason to reflect on
geographical, hierarchical, cultural, identity and musical borders. All these threads weave the plot of a novel that aligns issues such as migratory flows and asylum requests with the history of music and colonial heritage and human nature. The real and symbolic borders that are presented by the various narrators expose various perspectives that bring them closer together or distance them from each other. Music also occupies a central place in this novel, showing it also as a space of freedom and identity and a favourable place for utopias.