National identity and/in music: study of the constribution of the music policy of early Flemish radio broadcasters to the construction of a Flemish cultural identity, 1929-1939

This paper is part of a historical research on the cultural policy of the Flemish radio-associations that broadcasted in the 1930s in Belgium, their discourse on Flemish musical culture and their contribution to the construction of a Flemish musical identity through this discourse and above all through their music programming. The research will consist on the one hand of a content analysis of the few preserved audio-fragments of broadcasts and of the radio-magazines of the radio-associations, which were considered as side-notes to the music programming, and on the other hand an analysis of the actual music programming of the broadcasters, put in a database during the project.
It is not the aim of this paper to present the results of this research, since the empirical part is still in a preliminary stage, but the paper lays out the basic assumptions and theoretical framework underlying this research. The central issue at stake here will be to show how music on the radio can be considered to contribute to the cultural emancipation of a region, by offering a cultural national identity that incorporates ideals of emancipation.
Because an understanding of the Flemish case of radio requires some background information on the history of Flemish cultural emancipation and the nature of early Flemish radio, this paper starts with a rough sketch of Flemish emancipatory and radio history. To follow, a theoretical elaboration on some important theories on cultural nationalism shows how cultural nationalism takes on a momentum of its own, drawing on an own dynamic, and requiring own methods of analysis, different from political nationalism. Radio will be introduced as a cultural institute of possible importance for cultural nationalism, attributing it the power to offer a distinctive national identity to its listeners, enhancing the cultural emancipation of the region it represents. This issue brings the paper to an introduction into the study of cultural, and, more specific, national identity, leading eventually to the theory that music can be an active element in enhancing group identities and thus also national identities, which is the basic assumption of a study of the (discourse on the) construction of a Flemish cultural identity through music programming on the radio. The case of Flanders will be developed throughout these chapters.

Keywords:cultural nationalism, national identity, Flemish emancipation, identity, music