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" Music, Migration, and Politics of Belonging: Persian Popular Music Scenes in California "
Goli, Shabnam
Crook, Larry
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1055659
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| Doc. No
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TL54776
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| Main Entry
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Goli, Shabnam
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| Title & Author
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Music, Migration, and Politics of Belonging: Persian Popular Music Scenes in California\ Goli, ShabnamCrook, Larry
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| College
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University of Florida
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| Date
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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2019
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| Note
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234 p.
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| Abstract
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This ethnographic study examines processes of identity (re)construction and negotiation, expressions of migration experience and narratives of homeland and nationness in two distinct, yet closely interrelated, Persian popular music scenes of Musiqi-ye Losanjelesi (“Music of Los Angeles,” MLA) and Musiqi-ye Mostaghel (“Alternative Music,” MM) in the United States. Informed by post-structuralist and postmodern readings of identity as dialogic, shifting and ambivalent, I argue that the complex network of local, translocal and virtual scenes of Persian popular music in diaspora has formed significant sites for the (re)production and expression of multiple individual and collective migrant identities. Engaging with musical activities in the scenes, Iranians conduct strategic acts of boundary making, negotiate their position and relationship with the host country and reflect not only socio-cultural capital and political stance, but also conceptions of Iran and Iranianness. While MLA has propagated an essentialist view of Iran and Iranianness celebrating a combination of pre-Islamic Persian culture and Western, urban, and secular set of values, the emergent translocal MM has introduced more fluid, pluralistic, and transnational notions of Iranianness. Addressing the neglect of the MM scene in Iranian diaspora studies and investigating multifaceted functions of music in shaping narratives of homeland and migration for people with common backgrounds but dissimilar experiences of displacement, I argue that music, as not only a reflective but also a constitutive factor in the enactment of identity, empowers migrants to engage in complex processes of (dis)identification. MLA and MM speak to two prominent waves of Iranian migration in different socio-political climates in home and host countries during the 1980s and 2000s. Drawing on Wimmer’s theory of boundary making and through multi-site ethnomusicological fieldwork research, interviews and participant-observation engagement with the community, I contend that music’s fluidity over metaphorical and material borders enable it to serve as an influential cultural sign for the (re)(de)construction of migrant identities and an advantageous tool for strategic negotiations of boundaries in transnational contexts. The examination of MM in relation to MLA challenges monolithic readings of the Iranian diaspora as an ethnic minority with a shared origin, collective identity and bounded culture.
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| Descriptor
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Ethnic studies
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Middle Eastern studies
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Music
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Music history
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Crook, Larry
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University of Florida
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