music & air travel

Um grupo de modelos fazem publ i cidade às corridas Martini Racing nas escadas de um avião Boeing B-707 da TA P, em 1976.Foto encontrada em www.sabado.pt - Memórias do Aeroporto d

“Soundtracking your flight: TAP Portugal’s music programming and the sensuous production of portugalidade and lusofonia” is an ongoing project that investigates the role of music in air travel. My colleague Bart Vanspauwen and myself are taking Portugal’s flagship air carrier (TAP Portugal) as a case study to investigate how national airlines of former colonial powers have historically resource to music to produce and circulate particular discourses of national and cultural identity. Notions of empire, mobility, nationalism, cultural diplomacy, and “postcolonial melancholy” are central to this project, which involves extensive archival work as well as in-depth interviews with present and former TAP’s personnel.