This article explores political dimensions in Jiménez’s work, particularly the themes of liberation from societal oppression and memorialization of victims of violence. A focus is XLIII Memoriam Vivere, dedicated to the memory of the forty-three students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College who were abducted and murdered in on September 26, 2014; the perpetrators have not yet been brought to justice. The memory of the forty-three students is evoked through numerous references to the number 43 and the motto ‘Vivos’ (alive), presenting a reflection on a crime that has left a deep wound in the Mexican collective memory and an act of resistance against the forgetting of this injustice. In other works, the author address the oppression perpetuated by patriarchal and religious structures and interrogate the entrenchment of traditional gender roles. Music today must both confront the complex issues of our world and inspire actions to transform it.

This special issue, which brings together six articles, seeks to explore the question of madness from non-European contexts (Latin America and Africa), taking part in the dynamic renewal of historiography on mental disorder and psychiatry in the ‘Global South’ over the past few years.1

Music cannot be separated from the politics which define the lived experiences of the twenty-first-century African composer. This article challenges the widespread error that African music is a homogeneous musical culture in which rhythm plays a primary role. This stereotype excludes African composers who do not focus on rhythm, while conversely, music by composers who do write rhythmically is dismissed as lacking intellectual complexity. How can we have our voices heard without being put in a box defining how our music should sound? How can African music be as independent and intellectually strong as any other music? Drawing on an overview of the current scene and excerpts from his own works, the author underscores the inherent hybridity of African music. His compositions include influences from jazz, African musics from different traditions, French spectralism, and more. His music is therefore a hybrid that does not reproduce its influences, but rather develops its own space.

The social and political upheavals that rock our world are rarely treated in the world of contemporary ‘art music’ composition. Popular music reaches a larger public and seems more at ease in addressing these themes. But is it intrinsically linked with such content in its musical expression, or only through its lyrics? Would art music, for its part, lose its ‘purity’ by abandoning its stance of abstraction in approaching these subjects? This article draws on examples from the author's works Kein Licht (2017) and Lab.Oratorium (2019). Kein Licht, a ‘Thinkspiel’, imagines a future in which humankind’s appetite for energy consumption has led our species to the verge of extinction. The semi-staged Lab.Oratorium addresses the humanitarian crisis of immigration into Europe. Both works reflect the evolution of traditional genres (opera, oratorio) with theatrical elements.

Several collections of lesson books for practising mensural music published in Spain during the eighteenth century, known as canto de órgano, have been overlooked in musicological scholarship. These canto de órgano lessons allowed students to be trained in a wide variety of repertoire, from renaissance polyphony to modern-style monody. This article provides an initial overview of these printed collections and identifies noteworthy parallels with the didactic repertoires of other regions, such as Italian solfeggi. To that end, I present context and different Spanish opinions of the period on the usefulness of solfeggio collections and specific examples of collections that could serve as models of style. I analyse the way in which solfeo was practised, before proposing a classification. In assessing these works against other sources, I suggest that these lesson books were useful not only for the practice of reading music, but also for the cultivation of good taste in interpretation, improvisation and composition.

This article analyzes women’s experiences of human papillomavirus (HPV) in Turkey under gendered health governance, a lack of public vaccine coverage, and conservative moral norms. Interviews with twenty-three mostly urban, university-educated women show that the diagnosis is experienced as shame, anxiety, and individualized responsibility. The burden is deeply felt despite the high cultural capital of the sample, indicating that stigma and access barriers to vaccination are not mitigated by individual resources alone. After diagnosis, women perform extensive emotional and moral labor, arranging follow-ups, insisting on condom use or choosing abstinence, and calculating disclosure risks to partners and family. Men are largely absent from prevention and care. Clinical routines also produce moral judgment and turn medical risk into a disciplinary test of respectability through marital-status questioning, limited privacy, and admonishing talk. The case in Turkey aligns with global feminization and moralization of HPV yet is distinctive for increasing official familism, rising conservatism on sexuality, and a prolonged lack of HPV vaccine coverage, as well as related civil-society campaigns and pay-it-forward schemes. In such a context, assigning risk management to women creates a double burden of dealing with moral discourses and caring for their and others’ health. Even if free HPV vaccination begins, equitable uptake will require non-moralizing clinical communication, confidentiality, and partner-inclusive, de-gendered prevention.