ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept of ‘musical topophilia’ to understand music tourism. It examines the three phases in the model in turn, drawing on existing studies from the fields of cultural studies, ethnomusicology, music sociology, cultural geography, and tourism studies. The concept of musical mythscapes has already given some clues as to how ¬imaginaries of musical places come to be, as the media plays an important role in the way music listeners create narratives about music and place. Tourism provides the opportunities and spaces for these special musical experiences to take place. The theory of musical topophilia and the model of music tourism presented here represent a holistic approach to music tourism. Music tourism is able to answer to a human need for ‘emplacement’, for finding value in the world around, as first described by cultural geographer Yi-Fu Tuan through the notion of ‘topophilia’.
