<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)."

This thesis contributes an empirically informed understanding of postcolonial experience and musical expression in West Africa through an ethnographic study of amateur brass bands (fanfares) in the Republic of Benin. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Western hegemonic cultural tradition of the brass band was exported across the globe through imperialist institutions such as the military and the church. Music in colonial Dahomey was an integral part of the French civilizing mission, and the brass band took center stage. Brass bands remain pervasive in present-day Benin and perform in a multitude of political, social, and religious contexts. Previous scholarship subsumes postcolonial musical performance into social scripts of resistance, framing brass bands in particular within cultural modes of mimesis, indigenization, or appropriation. Pushing against these canonical narratives, this thesis illustrates apolitical, affective, and embodied modes of experiencing colonialism's material and musical debris. Broadly, the ethnography presented here speaks to four themes. The first of these is material. Evident in musicians' accounts are materials' sonic inclinations: how instrument design and disrepair constrain musical ideals, and how different metals encourage particular pitches and timbres. Present, too, is the social and affective capacity of material: how ideas about brass instruments shape histories, erect styles, construct tastes, move bodies, induce anxieties, and proffer futures. The second theme is precarity. Fanfare musicians “get by” in an exploitative (musical) economy, are made anxious by ambiguous understandings of brass instruments, and manage an undercurrent of uncertainty in a social milieu rife with rumor and distrust. A third theme arising is that of the body, broadly conceived. This thesis illustrates the corporeal demands of fanfare performance, the embodied experience of blowing brass instruments, and the social value of bodily strength and exertion. The fourth theme is entanglement. Beninese musicians' experience of fanfare is entangled within (at times contradictory) ideas of the past, imaginings of the outside, emotions in the present, and expectations for the future. Entanglement likewise extends to musical instruments: the multiple valences of materials collide in brass instruments, as do histories, traditions, and feelings.

<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>

In recent years, flamenco has been consolidated as a prominent symbol of regional identity in Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain. In the late 1970s, Spain began to decentralise into seventeen autonomous regions. As a result, each region has been encouraged to foreground its own culture vis-à-vis national culture. Although associated with Spain in general, flamenco has fulfilled the role of regional identity building in Andalusia. Increasingly, the Andalusian Government has focused attention on the development of flamenco within and outside of the region. In this thesis, I explore this relationship between flamenco and regional identity in Andalusia. In doing so, I draw upon the theoretical tenets of political geography. Through scholarly exchange, I argue that political geographers and ethnomusicologists can learn much about the relationship between music and regional identity. I use flamenco as a pertinent case study of this relationship in the European context. In particular, I discuss the role that governmental institutions play in the ‘regionalisation’ (Schrijver 2006) of flamenco (that is, the institutional development of flamenco as an ‘official’ symbol of regional identity). However, I argue that at times the regionalisation process can be disputed and subverted. Accordingly, I contend that regionalism (that is, the bottom-up identification with a region) in Andalusia is a fragmented concept. By examining the contexts, the discourses and the styles associated with flamenco, I present alternative readings of regionalism in Andalusia. Drawing upon virtual ethnography and traditional ethnography in Granada, I examine the reception and the production of flamenco at a local level as well as at a regional level. Arguably, some flamenco scholars present a somewhat rigid understanding of the relationship between flamenco and regional identity. By offering different readings of regionalism through flamenco, I reveal the complex and contested relationship between flamenco and identity in southern Spain.

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.