This work aims to render an account of the relations between musical creation, identity politics and globalization in Germany today taken from one case: the creole competitions, a cycle of festivals leading every two years to a prize for "world music from Germany" (since 2010 "Global Music"). According to its accompanying text, this festival is intended to illustrate the "creolization" of the world and the diversity of cultures in Germany. When one investigates the genesis of the project and the mobilization of candidates, partners and experts, it turns out that the expectations are more complex and that these events, rather than illustrating an established reality, create plural versions of a "world music from Germany". The crux of this work is to explain the tensions between the values which have currency within the intimacy of this professional sector ("die Nische Weltmusik") and the public perception of the genre, tarnished with suspicion and controversy. This world of music cuts across questions that mark more generally German society today: as an "immigrant country" (Einwanderungsland) torn between the idealization of cross-fertilization and the fear of diversity, as a "music country" (Musikland) known for the richness of its intellectual heritage, but desirous to promote examples of contemporary music and as a political system divided between local structures and globalized frameworks which define public culture. Just as the background of this work is large, so too the attention given to specifics has to be precise: to show the organizing frameworks of the contests, the various criteria taken into account by the juries in their deliberations and the debates which emerge among the spectators on the "spirit" of this manifestation.
