Return to Modernity's Contested Borders Diaspora in Jewish history was always associated with return, or at least with the possibility of reaching the promised land.
Return is no less a factor in the history of diaspora that grows from European modernity.
The New Europe, I wish to suggest, has formed from the Old Europe because of the return to the beginnings. Diasporic history has shifted back toward Europe and the Mediterranean, and music provides us with a means of recognizing its path and interpreting whether or how it might lead to the elusive promised land. The political problem that emerges is how to identify and differentiate the proccesses of returning and reconstructing the New Europe. The historical journey to Eastern Europe takes on a sacred character as one moves along the rivers and pilgrimage routes that defined the beginnings of Eastern European culture. What becomes clear to us as we witness the return to musical nationalisms, landscapes, and sacred sites in the New Europe is that music does narrate histories.