Cultural collision and the emergence of new musical traditions

This thesis studies the role of cultural collisions (intensive and sustained contact between two previously separate cultural groupings) in the emergence of new musical traditions. Five musical traditions are studied jazz, classical, R&R, Electroacoustic, and Technology-R&R The thesis focuses on several aspects of cultural collisions. These include 1) the role of socio/political/economic forces in the dominant culture triggering the collision, 2) the collision causing musicians to encounter new instruments and types of music and, in an extended process of experimentation, modify their ways of playing and thinking about music, 3) the pivotal role of young, low power, musicians finding themselves in a different world from the older generations and seeing music as a vehicle for expressing these differences, resulting in the new music having the ‘spirit’ (reflection of backgrounds, values, aspirations, and conflicts) of the subordinate cultural grouping, 4) the socio/political/economic role of the dominant cultural grouping (especially the young emerging generation within it) resulting in the new music having the ‘form’ (musical technology and meaning structures) of the dominant cultural grouping, and 5) the wide-spread rejection of the new music by established opinion leaders as being evidence of the emergence of a new musical tradition