This study explores how young Maltese women give meaning to the music they listen to and how this music is incorporated in everyday discourses and identities within the differing local contexts of their lives. This area of research has not attracted the attention of researchers and this study starts to fill this gap. The research was carried out in Malta, a post-colonial island with a population of approximately 400,000 people. Through purposive sampling and snowballing, 20 in-depth interviews were carried out with young Maltese women aged 16-34, from different social backgrounds. By looking at young Maltese women’s identities through their engagements with music, this study shows how girls experience the tensions between the opposing forces of Maltese traditional music and more modern globalised musical forms. Music was found to be a means of conspicuous leisure as well as a means of maintaining social difference and distinction. Musical taste and the social practices associated with that particular music was found to be a primary indicator of social class for Maltese girls. The significance of this study lies in the exploration of a topic that has not yet been properly researched. It combines the Maltese context and the gendered nature of identity formation in Malta’s music scene. The framework of categorisation of respondents is also significant since rather than categorising respondents according to the music they listen to, it categorises respondents through the ways in which they engage with their music. By developing Willis’s (1978) analytical framework, participants were placed into four categories of Fully Committed, Committed, Active Drifters and Passive Drifters. For each category, the most prominent characteristics of participants’ music identities are analysed. These include their understandings of social and cultural capital, structure and agency, negotiations of social boundaries and identity formation. The idea of distinct music subcultures is questioned as, in their everyday lives, young women in Malta rarely conform with distinct cultural groups but form parts of multiple groups within the contexts of their lives. Moreover, processes of hybridization seem to have erased what might have been understood as a subculture’s distinguishing characteristics. These have often become adopted and eventually absorbed by mainstream culture making distinct subcultures problematic. The findings of the research imply tensions between traditional and modern lifestyles that are, in turn, associated with different strata of social class.

Submitted by Erika Demachki (erikademachki@gmail.com) on 2017-03-09T18:49:03Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Pedro Henrique Bernardi Rocha - 2016.pdf: 7209305 bytes, checksum: 9407d1a5687a8e8fc1802e23fa47a0d6 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2017-03-10T10:58:31Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Pedro Henrique Bernardi Rocha - 2016.pdf: 7209305 bytes, checksum: 9407d1a5687a8e8fc1802e23fa47a0d6 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-10T10:58:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Pedro Henrique Bernardi Rocha - 2016.pdf: 7209305 bytes, checksum: 9407d1a5687a8e8fc1802e23fa47a0d6 (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-10 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / This work had as its objective the investigation of processes of style and performance in the most current alternative rock from Goiânia (the last five years) from a case study related to the music of three selected bands from the city, considering their aesthetic choices, artistic positioning and, after all, their practices, aiming for processes of identity implicated with this musical genre in the city. The methodological trajectory which made possible to reach the predicted goal, seeking methods and theories that privileged the symbolic, which gives support to the representational, consisted of analysis and interpretation of music scores, transcriptions and musical performances, always related to analysis and interpretation also from CDs, DVDs, the observation of photographies and live shows, lyrics, data collected in the study of the social, historical and cultural scenarios in focus and through oral reports collected in interviews granted by the social actors implicated with the object of study. Through those processes it was possible to verify the evidence of an alternative rock from Goiânia, more specifically related to the stoner rock variation, showing voluminous sound density, very close stylistically to American/English rock, ideologically distanced form national variations in its relation with the cultural industry and with the cultivation of elements from the national and local culture. By interacting with a traditional scenario from Goiânia, implicated as well with representational disputes between tradition and modernity, the alternative rock from the city has showed meaningful traces of a positioning of resistance before the hegemony of representations related to country music, to the relation of this music with residues from the past oligarchical culture from Goiás and with the most radical mechanisms of the cultural industry. It has revealed processes of identity, therefore, one of the vectors of an identity of Goiânia in constant construction. / Este trabalho teve como objetivo investigar os processos estilísticos e performáticos do rock alternativo de Goiânia na atualidade (últimos cinco anos), a partir do estudo de caso relacionado à música de três bandas goianienses selecionadas, considerando suas escolhas estéticas, posicionamentos artísticos e, afinal, suas práticas, visando processos identitários implicados com esse gênero musical na cidade. A trajetória metodológica que possibilitou atingir o objetivo previsto, buscando métodos e teorias que privilegiaram o simbólico que dá suporte ao representacional, se consistiu em análise e interpretação de partituras, transcrições e performances musicais, sempre relacionadas à análise e interpretação realizadas também a partir de Cds, DVDs, observação de fotografias e de apresentações ao vivo, letras de canções, dados colhidos no estudo dos cenários sócio-histórico e culturais em questão e através dos relatos de entrevistas concedidas pelos atores sociais implicados com o objeto de estudo. Através desses processos, foi possível constatar a evidência de um rock alternativo goianiense, mais especificamente ligado à vertente do stoner rock, exibindo densidade sonora volumosa, muito próximo estilisticamente do rock americano/inglês, distanciado ideologicamente de vertentes nacionais em sua relação com a indústria cultural e com o cultivo de elementos da cultura nacional e regional. Ao interagir com um cenário tradicional goianiense implicado também com a luta de representações entre tradição e modernidade, o rock alternativo da cidade mostrou traços significativos de um posicionamento de resistência perante a hegemonia das representações ligadas à musica sertaneja, à relação dessa musica com resíduos da cultura das oligarquias do passado goiano e com os mecanismos mais radicais da indústria cultural. Revelou processos identitários, portanto, um dos vetores de uma identidade goianiense sempre em construção.