Sound Recordings and Dignity Takings: Reflections on the Racialization of Migrants in Contemporary Italy

In the field of ethnomusicology, it is possible to consider musical collaborations—such as traditional fieldwork or joint musical projects between artists of different background—as spaces where different individuals and subjectivities share their own artistic practices and products, as well as the musical cultures of which they are representative or bearers. Such collaborations raise an array of methodological questions with implications to social justice and power relations. The aim of this contribution is to use the notion of dignity takings and dignity restoration to tackle some of these questions. While relying strongly on my own fieldwork in Rome and Chicago, I will also deal with works from ethnomusicologists who developed ways to combine collaborative efforts with the use of sound archives. Central to my investigation is the figure of Badara Seck, a well-known vocalist from Senegal who has been active in Europe for about two decades. His musical collaborative projects both confirm and contest the racialization of so-called “migrant musicians” in Italy, that—I argue—can also be identified as a dignity taking. An interview with this expert in cross-cultural collaborations provided interesting insights into the ways in which musicology and discourse around music can involve both a dignity taking and dignity restoration. I will use his words to conclude by proposing strategies to address dignity taking and dignity restoration in the practice of ethnographic fieldwork

Thermal Purcell effect and cavity-induced renormalization of dissipations

In recent years there has been great interest towards optical cavities as a tool to manipulate the properties and phases of embedded quantum materials. Due to the Purcell effect, a cavity changes the photon phase space and thus the rate of electromagnetic transitions within the material, modifying the exchange rate of heat radiation with the photon environment. Here, I derive a simple expression for the radiative heat power absorbed by the material, investigate how it changes in the presence of a cavity and show that it is enhanced dramatically for appropriate cavity geometries. I compare this effect with typical energy dissipation processes, provide a criterion to establish its impact on the temperature of a material coupled to the cavity and apply it to 1T-TaS$_2$.Comment: 6+6 pages 3+3 figure

Badara Seck. Il contributo del griot e l’identità come frammento accessorio

Vocalist, composer, actor and director, Badara Seck was born in Senegal but has been active in Italy for many years. He identifies himself as a griot, and the vast range of his activities can be divided in three areas that are apparently different but can all be related to popular music. Firstly, Seck collaborated with many Italian pop artists, such as Massimo Ranieri and Mauro Pagani. While relying on the visibility earned within the pop scene, Seck articulated a complex strategy in order to be recognized as an authoritative, and “authentic”, voice of the migrant communities (second area). Nowadays Badara is mainly focused on leading his own band and releasing original productions (third area).The three areas are usually considered separately, as it is a hard task – for critics – to fully comprehend that the same Badara whose voice is featured in the soundtrack of the last Checco Zalone´s movie is also the author and interpreter of the poignant piece of musical theatre called Galghi. Drawing from Mark Burford’s analysis of Sam Cooke’s pop albums, I will look at the relationship between Italian popular music and representations of migration in the work of Badara. His work will therefore emerge as a set of “performances [that] conveyed an understanding of ethnicity as an identity that can affirm important solidarities, but also as an accessory to musical performance capable of giving pleasure in any number of ways” (Burford 2012, 141)

Critical light-matter entanglement at cavity mediated phase transition

We consider a model of a light-matter system, in which a system of fermions (or bosons) is coupled to a photonic mode that drives a phase transitions in the matter degrees of freedom. Starting from a simplified analytical model, we show that the entanglement between light and matter vanishes at small and large coupling strength, and shows a peak in the proximity of the transition. We perform numerical simulations for a specific model (relevant to both solid state and cold atom platforms), and show that the entanglement displays critical behavior at the transition, and features maximum susceptibility, as demonstrated by a maximal entanglement capacity. Remarkably, light-matter entanglement provides direct access to critical exponents, suggesting a novel approach to measure universal properties without direct matter probes.Comment: 10 pages; 7 figure

Measurement induced transitions in non-Markovian free fermion ladders

Recently there has been an intense effort to understand measurement induced transitions, but we still lack a good understanding of non-Markovian effects on these phenomena. To that end, we consider two coupled chains of free fermions, one acting as the system of interest, and one as a bath. The bath chain is subject to Markovian measurements, resulting in an effective non-Markovian dissipative dynamics acting on the system chain which is still amenable to numerical studies in terms of quantum trajectories. Within this setting, we study the entanglement within the system chain, and use it to characterize the phase diagram depending on the ladder hopping parameters and on the measurement probability. For the case of pure state evolution, the system is in an area law phase when the internal hopping of the bath chain is small, while a non-area law phase appears when the dynamics of the bath is fast. The non-area law exhibits a logarithmic scaling of the entropy compatible with a conformal phase, but also displays linear corrections for the finite system sizes we can study. For the case of mixed state evolution, we instead observe regions with both area, and non-area scaling of the entanglement negativity. We quantify the non-Markovianity of the system chain dynamics and find that for the regimes of parameters we study, a stronger non-Markovianity is associated to a larger entanglement within the system

Sistemi di tariffe di cubatura per le fustaie di pino d’aleppo, pino laricio e pino domestico della Sicilia

The aim of this study is to set up one-way volume table series to predict stem volume of the main conifers in Sicily, namely Italian stone pine, Aleppo pine and Corsican pine. For each species the relationships between height and tree diameter at breast height (dbh) resulted well represented by the semilogarithmic function, which was established as «guide line» of the height-diameter relationship. Adapting each height - dbh series according to the inclination of the «guide line», a set of isomorphic height curves was obtained for each species. Corresponding volume series was obtained from each height series on the basis of National Forestry Inventory volume tables. Oneway volume table series are of considerable usefulness in the context of forest management since they represent estimation tools with flexible application at different levels of forest management