Dr Stefano Barone

Stefano's research focuses on youth cultures and popular music: in particular, he has been working on the heavy metal, electronic, and rap music scenes in post-revolutionary Tunisia. He is interested in the way youth cultures and popular music scenes appear and develop in non-western contexts.

Stefano identified Tunisia as an interesting case study: its 2010/2011 revolution, that sparked the so-called Arab Springs, changed local music-making practices and the social value of music. Heavy metal, rap, and electronic are indeed confronted with the challenges of post-revolutionary democratisation: they are embedded in the debate on national culture, and the role Islam has on it, and express the complexities of the local social structure. Stefano’s monograph, titled “Metal, Rap, and Electro in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia. A Fragile Underground” was published by Routledge in 2019. Besides, he has published several papers on this topic, both in English and French, and regularly participates in international conferences on youth culture, popular music, and African/Middle Easter Studies.

In 2020, Stefano started a new research project that explores the way in which foreign cultural diplomacy institutions participate in the Tunisian music scene. This research will particularly look at the Institut Français and Goethe Institute, to see how the participate in shaping local music and culture, how their values and discourses interact with Tunisian musicians' ones, and how "soft power" is reinvented as a consequence of these interactions.