Seite - 33 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Birgit Abels | Musical Atmospheres and Sea-Nomadic Movement Among the Sama Dilaut 33 cial, and affective frames they leverage.10 This, however, may be precisely the analytical concept’s forte, as the methodological implication of this is self-evident: It forces us to attend to the par- ticular, rather than the abstract. “[B]oth the philosophy of music and musical aesthetics have faltered over this point” (Kramer 2016, 11), just as a great deal of mobilities theorizing has attempted to homogenize the contingent nature of social worlds of movement when attention to ethnographic details seems the only valid methodical choice to prevent us from missing the complexity of the phenomena under investigation (Vannini 2009, 8) and the nonfixity of boundaries (Braidotti 1994, 36). But “[t]here is no such thing as music. There is no pheno - menon that corresponds to a single concept of music. Music is a prolific acoustic field of fa- mily resemblances. [… M]usic in the abstract can exemplify ideas, but not interrogate them” (Kramer 2016, 11). By contrast, bringing singular instances of music, such as the Regatta Lepa, into a conversation with concepts such as mobility and atmosphere does allow for a productive exploration of the particular interconnectedness of music, mobility, and atmosphere in this musical instance. I hope I have demonstrated that thinking mobility and atmosphere through music and music and atmosphere through mobility allow for a musical exploration of space that would not have been possible without the analytical affordances of atmosphere. Playing tagunggu’ during the Regatta Lepa is an atmospheric practice of the rendering of both space and Sama Dilaut spatiality that’s tangible through sound. Sound doesn’t necessarily “have” place; ever-moving, it instead pervades space, fertilizing the matrix that envelops that which becomes meaningful in the process. It is not, therefore, the topology of sound that is of primary rele- vance when it comes to place-making. It is sound as movement. Hence, perhaps, the idiomatic expression “sounding out” a place. Atmosphere is the missing link to understanding how place comes about: as a relationship within which a sensation of meaningfulness vis-à-vis the individual is becoming tangible as felt-bodily commotion, resonating with interpretive frames and cultural figurations, as I have shown above. In the case of the Regatta Lepa, the Sama Dilaut spatiality rendered tangible through tagunggu’ is experientially affirmative of the Sama Dilaut’s cultural framework, which, in turn, hinges on the idea of mobility. But if movement is the key factor here, then this does not mean that the findings of my analysis are only relevant for nomadic spatialities, even if they emerge particularly clearly in instances where music as movement finds repercussions in space as movement. In fact, one might even be tempted to argue with Isabel Stengers (1987) that mobility is one of the most “nomadic concepts” in postmodern epistemology, i.e. an epis- temological position allowing for multiple interconnections and transmigrations of ideas (cf. Braidotti 1994, 23). Relating to space through music-making, music as a place-making practice is effective through the atmosphere that allows those partaking in the music to feel that place, both sensually and felt-bodily – whether their lifestyle is nomadic, sedentary, or something in- between. This means that Jensen’s suggestion that movement, as an analytical category, forces us to re-frame “subjectivity […] in such a manner that it avoids the sedentary pitfall of inward looking, and thus static notions of meaning and identity” (Jensen 2009, xviii) needs significant expansion. Thinking with both movement and particular instances of musical atmospheres, 10 See Abels forthcoming for a more in-depth discussion of the interconnectedness of atmosphere, affect, and cul- tural frames.