Playing on the margins: local musicians and their resistance projects

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] This study examines the resistance projects used by local musicians in a mid-sized town in the Midwest. Drawing on a practice approach, I explore how musicians use music in their lives to help promote a more just society. I focus on how people who have left-leaning political stances use music as a way to resist practices of gender, race, and class inequality. This study is an ethnographic account of individual practices that are disassociated with any formal social movement, yet create small changes for the betterment of others. Music is treated as a cultural form used to help organize sites of resistance. As individuals practice a resistance project, they are forced to deal with the inherent contradictions of multiple forms of inequality. This study examines the boundary making process whereby social inequality based on gender, class, and race is challenged and reproduced.