<p>To many people, music is just a hobby, something they listen to on the drive to work or background noise throughout their day. Maybe they will go to an occasional concert or buy a record here or there, or more likely download one off iTunes. To some though, it can mean so much more. To some people, music can be the whole basis of their social lives. Here I will show how the music scene in DeKalb, Illinois has created strong bonds, enough to be termed a community. Helped through punk ethics and a DIY (do-it yourself) mindset, the DeKalb punk scene has brought together musicians, poets, artists, fans, and others involved through zines and record labels into one community. Through the words of those directly involved in the scene, I show how they view DeKalb&rsquo;s punk scene as a community. The scene has become a welcoming space, where everyone&rsquo;s projects are supported, leading to a variety of experimentation. One of the interesting elements of DeKalb&rsquo;s scene in relation to other punk scenes is the older age of the participants. Traditionally seen as music for teenagers, as DeKalb is a college town the main participants are in their 20s, though older members are not rare; indeed, some are even in their 40s with families and kids. An important part of creating this scene is DIY philosophy, and I examine the role that has in creating a community. Additionally, spaces for music are equally important, as I illustrate how these spaces are essential in the music scene. Finally, as DeKalb is college town with a rotating population, I investigate what the future holds for everyone involved and the town&rsquo;s punk scene. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Anthropology, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3927. Adviser: Anya P. Royce. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 5, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on May 11, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-08, Section: A, page: 3194. Advisers: Ruth Stone; Sue Tuohy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2007. / (UMI)AAI3287735. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-10, Section: A, page: 4129. Adviser: Terry E. Miller.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1142. Adviser: Ruth M. Stone. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed June 18, 2007)."

<p> This thesis explores the intersection of nationalism, popular music, and sport as they collided with German identity politics and discourses of twentieth-century history. I contextualize public performances of German national identity during the 2006 World Cup within the broader historical context of national identity construction through music and sport in the last two hundred. I contextualize Germans' public performance of national pride and hospitality during the World Cup as the latest in a long line of cultural performances of German identity that have shaped and been shaped by historical circumstances and socially conditioned discourses of national identity. Taking a broad historical and conceptual perspective on cultural performance, I argue that cultural performances of German national identity&mdash;communicated in music, sport, and visual symbolism in the public landscape (i.e., through the use of posters, ads, popular press, etc)&mdash;have been tailored to and contingent on the social and discursive exigencies of particular historical and political junctures of the past two hundred years. Likewise, cultural performances during the 2006 World Cup must be seen as particular to twenty-first-century German society. Analyzing the Germans' public performance of national identity as well as popular songs and their audio-visual texts (i.e., music videos), I argue that some supposedly nationalist performances of German identity gained traction and popular support during the World Cup because of the strong role played by popular music and sport in framing the terms of their performance and interpretation.</p>

<p> This dissertation explores the reconfiguration of Syriac Orthodox liturgical tradition among Aramaic-speaking Christian refugees in the Netherlands. Under the pressures of Dutch integration policy and the global politics of secular recognition, the Syriac liturgy is rapidly losing its significance as the central axis of social life and kinship-relations in the Syriac Orthodox diaspora. As such, it has become a site for debate over how to be religiously, culturally, and ethnically distinct despite the narrative binary of Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East that dominates Dutch multiculturalism discourse. Every week, young Syriac Orthodox women and men congregate at their churches to practice singing the liturgy in classical Syriac. What they sing, and how they decide to sing it, mediates their experiments in religious and ethical reinvention, with implications for their efforts at political representation. Singers contend not only with conditions of inaudibility produced by histories of ethnic cleansing, migration, and assimilation, but also with the fragments of European Christianity that shape the sensory regime of secular modernity. Public debates over the integration of religious minorities illuminate this condition of fragmentation, as well as the contest over competing conceptions of ethical personhood inherent in the politics of pluralism in Europe.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4235. Adviser: Donna A. Buchanan. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 379-405) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Choro is a traditional Brazilian music that began in Rio de Janeiro during the latter half of the nineteenth century. A virtuosic instrumental music, choro developed through Brazilian interpretations of European dance genres, especially polka and waltz. Participation by both amateur and professional musicians characterizes choro's traditional pedagogy, a reflection of informal and formal learning processes and contexts. At the turn of the twenty-first century, choro schools now offer venues for defining and validating the tradition as well as inspiring an atmosphere for innovation and creation. Inherent within the concept of tradition is the dichotomy of continuity and change. This study exposes how institutions negotiate the past and present through a comparison of current and historic pedagogy and modes of learning. Choro institutions use traditional and innovative modes of learning to support and enhance the genre's current practice through community organization, which sustains and contributes to its continued performance. Chapter one focuses on defining choro music, first discussing the etymology of the word 'choro,' followed by a survey of choro's history and review of choro literature. The chapter concludes with an explanation of this investigation's purpose. In chapter two I posit the notion that a music community practices and performs choro. Biographies and stories of choro's past and present community members reveal how they learned choro. The chapter ends with an analysis of the processes that establish and reinforce the community. Chapter three examines how people learn choro. I offer prevailing learning perspectives&mdash;acquisition, participation, and knowledge creation&mdash;and establish categories for modes of learning&mdash;formal, non-formal, and informal&mdash;to define the processes and contexts involved in learning choro. Chapter four discusses the musical codes that characterize choro, what the choro community describes as a musical language. The chapter ends with a description of the curriculum at Escola Portatil de Musica, the school case study used for this dissertation. Chapter five is the summation and conclusions, revealing why musicians learn choro music.</p>

<p> This is a study of contemporary jazz culture in post-apartheid South Africa. It demonstrates that the significance of jazz can productively be understood from the perspective of listeners, complementing the necessary attention that has historically been afforded to the creators and performers of the music. It describes the rich social life that has emerged around the collecting and sharing of jazz recordings by associations of listeners in this country. In these social contexts, a semi-public culture of listening has been created, it is argued, that is distinct from the formal jazz recording, broadcast and festival sectors, and extends across various social, cultural, linguistic and related boundaries to constitute a vibrant dimension of vernacular musical life. South African jazz appreciation societies illustrate that collecting may be a global phenomenon but that recordings can take on quite particular social lives in specific times and places, and that the extension of consumer capitalism to places like South Africa does not always automatically involve the same kinds of possessive individualism that they do in other settings, and might even serve as a catalyst for new forms of creativity. The study demonstrates, moreover, that what is casually referred to as "the jazz public" is an internally variegated and often enduringly segregated constellation of scenes, several of which remain quite intimate and, indeed, beyond the view of the "general public." The study foregrounds how one specific dimension of jazz culture &ndash; the modes of sociability with which the music has become associated among its listening devotees &ndash; can assume decidedly local forms and resonances, becoming part of the country's jazz heritage in its own right and throwing into relief the potential breadth, range and contrasts in the ways that jazz writ large can be figured and recontextualised as it is vernacularized around the world. The study recognizes the significant role that jazz appreciation societies play in creating culturally resonant grassroots social settings for this music, documents and analyses the creativity with which they do so, and considers the broader implications of their contribution to the musical elaboration of public space in contemporary South Africa.</p>