Flamenco, an art complex with its roots situated in Andalucía, is often assumed by outsiders to be a representative of a coherent national identity. This is a false assumption, both with regards to the realities of the art form and in terms of Spanish identity. My research suggests flamenco is a subculture appreciated by a minority of Andalucía-centric Spanish aficionados. Most outside of the scene reject it for reasons including identifying with another region, preferring popular music, or negatively associating flamenco with Franco and Gitanos. Significantly, as early as the nineteenth century, it developed a considerable following outside of Spain’s borders amongst non-Spanish aficionados. Utilising information acquired from ethnomusicological fieldwork in Sevilla and the UK, the thesis examines the relationship between local (Spanish) and foreign flamenco culture. The aim is to provide insight into how flamenco travels, manifestations in its new locale, and possible effects on the Sevilla scene. Preliminary UK investigations revealed sub-scenes revolving around the efforts of singular cultural brokers who developed connections with flamenco in Spain and transported the information to the UK forming a glocal cultural model. This foreign interest has resulted in a commercial flamenco industry in Sevilla, as well as a vibrant associated ex-pat community there. These realisations inspired a methodological approach involving the individual experience and its importance in music migration. Further research revealed that flamenco is transmitted outside of Spain primarily by foreign individuals (Cosmopolitan Hubs) who possess transcultural capital from the Andalucían flamenco community, as well as from their home country. This transcultural capital is utilised to create economic capital in the UK. Overall this research suggests a postnational approach and explores the role of Cosmopolitan Hubs in cultural transmission, thus suggesting an alternative approach to music migration and glocalization in a world increasingly less focused on ethnicity or nationality for individual identity formation.

Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Birmingham (2009-2014), this thesis explores the role music plays in shaping and producing the urban environment via a focus on three specific processes; normalisation, marginalisation, and resistance. The contemporary city’s relationship with music has undergone substantial change in recent years within the UK, including significant growth in the live music industry and the increased targeting of musical activities within urban policy. The thesis examines the implications of these changes in the context of Birmingham. Chapter One introduces the research aims and objectives. Chapter Two positions the thesis within the current geographies of music field and grounds the thesis in an anti-essentialist approach to geography and cultural politics. Chapter Three provides an overview of the research location and methodology. Chapter Four explores ‘normalisation’ by examining the role of public bodies in shaping local musical activities. Chapter Five explores ‘marginalisation’ by examining the exclusion of local rap music from the mainstream live musicscape, and rap music’s place in shaping marginal geographies. Chapter Six explores ‘resistance’ through three in-depth examples of how different individuals use music as a tool of resistance against dominant power relations and the production of uneven urban geographies.

This thesis investigates the issue of the application of cognitive analysis techniques for Western art music to folk dance melodies for violin, with a view to enabling the development of a computer tool that can aid in the identification and exploration of the stylistic characteristics of the origin of the melodies. The following questions are addressed: Can cognitive music analysis techniques for Western art music be applied successfully to folk dance melodies for violin? Is it possible to define an integrative analysis approach in this context drawing from existing approaches? To what extent can decision tree induction aid in the classification and interpretation of the analysis results? How might the musical data for analysis be represented on computer? What is the best approach to program development for an automated music analysis tool in this context? A series of experiments using samples of American and Irish melodies are presented that verify the use, in this context, of the cognitive analysis approaches of Lerdahl and lackendoff and Narmour. Statistical approaches have also been investigated, since research has shown that such methods can reflect the way in which listeners mentally organise the music that they hear. To enable the analysis to be carried out in an algorithmic way, an experiment using human subjects to further the work of Lerdahl and lackendoff was required. An integrative analysis approach has been identified that can be carried out in an algorithmic way therefore lending itself to future implementation on computer. In order to interpret the results of the analysis process, a decision tree induction tool (SeeS) based on Quinlan's CS algorithm was employed. SeeS was able to classify the melodies based on the attributes derived from the analysis. The decision trees and rules derived by the tool enabled the identification of features of the melodies that pertain to their origins, thus enabling a deeper understanding of the stylistic variations of the melodies. A further experiment indicated that the cognitive analysis approaches and subsequent classification with SeeS compares favourably with the classification abilities of human subjects after a small amount of training in the musical context. Further inductive learning techniques (decision tree induction using Friedman's CART, and neural networks) have been applied to the problem of classification andinterpretation of the analysis results, and although the neural network classified the musical samples with greater accuracy (illustrated using ROC analysis), decision tree induction has been shown to be a more appropriate method in this context. Approaches to music representation and subsequent program development have been investigated, reSUlting in a proposal for future computer implementation of a music analysis tool using the Humdrum toolkit as a means of representation, and a declarative language for the program development.