ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to provide a general theoretical framework for understanding how processes of identity ‘work’ in practice. I have chosen to work with theoretical approaches that focus on tangible and observable manifestations of identity. This search for a hands-on and practical theory of identity led me to the works of Richard Jenkins (2004) and Maykel Verkuyten (1999), supplemented by the ideas of Rogers Brubaker (2004), Brubaker and Frederick Cooper (2000), and Cornell and Hartmann (1998). These scholars present theories that describe and analyze processes of identity in social reality in particular. Their descriptions illustrate how identification processes manifest themselves in observable expressions and tangible phenomena. Music is such an observable behavioural pattern.
