ABSTRACT
The group of internationally renowned scholars featured offers a detailed study and fine-grain analysis of several distinct island music cultures, and of musicians and composers. Island Musics is intentionally made up of a broad range of research methods and sub-field approaches, as reflected in the various forms and styles of analysis reportage contained herein. Island Musics has to be broad enough in scope to encompass the increasingly dynamic, mediated, interactive, transnational nature of music making in today’s world whilst providing detailed studies of the music of insular cultures held in place, as if bound to the island itself. The richness and complexity of their lyrics detail the importance of their island homes in constructions of islander identity, in the musicians’ sense of belonging. Patullo describes the series of events that make up the Jubilation revue, a medley of ‘island songs’, a clash of local and non-local musical instruments and costumes, adding up to a performance of ‘high class American kitsch’.
