ABSTRACT
In the novel The Time of Our Singing (Powers 2003), the glocal – the dynamic interaction between the local and the global, which is one of the characteristics of globalisation – is addressed not so much through place per se, but through the tension between two musical traditions with vastly different origins and diasporas: the African American and the European classical tradition. In this chapter, I argue that in Powers’s novel the tension between the two musical traditions is used to explore the issue of racial identity and cultural belonging from many different, sometimes opposing, angles. To aid my discussion I use three concepts with musical connotations: contrary motion, musical miscegenation and resonances. Musical miscegenation here leads into the broader concept of musico-literary miscegenation that is important in later chapters of this book, particularly Chapter 6.
