ABSTRACT
Music, ethnicity and politics are central to this chapter, and the examples are organized around several themes, including: soundly organized time; musical particularity and historical continuity; particular and general musical practices; and the African American contribution to North American music. The chapter aims to help readers connect these broad themes to three overarching questions within ethnic North American music making. The first of these is bound up in exploring the boundaries of difference and similarity. The second has to do with differences between professional and non-professional musicians. And a final question concerns the concept of performance. A series of musical examples, including children’s game songs, music at wedding services, Anglo-American ballads, tecnobanda, the strathspey, spirituals, blues, and jazz, among others, highlight and illustrate each of these themes/questions.
