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Portuguese Burghers are a minority ethnic community in Sri Lanka who speak an endangered creole language, Sri Lanka Portuguese (SLP). This paper explores the way Portuguese Burgher identities are articulated in their main performance tradition: a syncretic quadrille dance known as káfriinha. This dance is an important social dance which is embedded in the proceedings of wedding celebrations and other formal events and is a prominent expression of Portuguese Burgher identity. As the primary form of Portuguese Burghers' performative expression, káfriinha reflects aspects that are core to their identity including the socialisation of gender roles and the self-definition of their identity. Its groove is arresting to the observer, enduring in its history and catching in its cultural influence—both within Sri Lanka and across the Indian Ocean. In this article I demonstrate how ethnographic analysis of káfriinha is revealing of continuity and change in Portuguese Burgher identity, bringing into focus processes of creolisation and aesthetic (and cultural) value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical performances are at the heart of many significant cultural events and often represent and affirm distinct cultural identities. Ethnographic research on music thus provides an important lens through which to understand distinct cultural worlds. In this introductory article we consider the value of research on music—for the communities for whom it is a highly valued form of cultural expression and for the produced understandings of peoples' social worlds. Extending Anthony Seeger's recent flagging of areas for improvement in ethnomusicological research, this special issue is framed in terms of several concerns: engagement with cultural tradition, music and essentialism, and music as sustainability activism. Against the contemporary context in which the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically altered the ways that musicians can gather and make music together, we consider the question of research on music from interdisciplinary perspectives and the varied positions of researchers, musicians and community members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]