The folk festivals provide one of the most powerful metaphors for the music of ethnic North America.

The processes of ethnic transformation are acutely present in the music that we encounter at a folk festival. Music must change to fit the conditions of the festival in the same way that immigrant traditions change to adapt to the conditions of a new nation. This makes the festival itself a context for the making and re-making of traditional music.

THE MULTIPLICITY OF MUSICS IN NORTH AMERICA

The Meaning of Ethnicity for Music in North America

Ethnicity itself is a concept and set of cultural practices spread over many parts of society. Understood from the perspectives of ethnomusicology, ethnicity links music to culture in a multivalent fashion. Therefore, music that is ethnic reflects patterns of organization within the group

The secondhand store is a metaphor for concepts of musical instruments in North America.

German-American music at Disney World

In the secondhand store. The old and the new mix, establishing links with both tradition and modernity. Instruments have many functions, depending on how they are used and who uses them.

Preservation allows the best of the past to survive; establishes links between the generations; isolates the differences between one group and another. Preservation has driven folk music scholars to collect only those pieces that survive and prove that isolation has been good for a community. Preservation is an idea about music that we can find in every ethnic group in North America. It provides one of the ways for an ethnic group to define its cultural core and articulate those values it wants to survive.

Ethnicity, with its problematic questions of difference and identity, nonetheless plays an indispensable role in determining the most far-reaching yet culturally central ideas about music.

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Approximate Word count = 725
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)