Songwriting and Activism: A Young Singer's Efforts to Write Himself into the Traditions of an Activist Group |
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Authors: | Ross Collin |
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Institution: | 1. School of Education, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY, USAross.collin@mville.edu |
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Abstract: | This article examines how music functions as a vehicle by which people may place themselves in social movements. Centering questions of culture, the article describes how an environmentalist group based in the northeastern USA used music to: (1) assert a collective identity; (2) project a past, present and future; and (3) forge relationships among group members and between group members and the general public. Against this background, the article considers how a young activist used music to take on and adapt a movement identity and position himself within the movement's traditions and social relations. In a discourse analysis of a song this young activist composed and performed at the group's summer music festival, the article shows how he adapted a range of cultural resources to reimagine and place himself within the group's relations of time and social space. |
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Keywords: | Activism youth music songwriting genre discourse analysis |
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