Slobin

"Music in Diaspora: The View from Euro-America" begins with Slobin's strong claim of why music and its context in daily human life must be studied: it is simply unavoidable. "...music has always been wired into the mobile body, forming earliest memories and later evoking deep-set emotions." [p244] Because of this significance, the influence of music in the ethnic diaspora is central to understanding any people in their geographic or social location, according to Slobin, with which I agree. He also specifies that music not only reveals patterns within cultures, but between cultures as well.

Through the essay, Slobin attempts to define the relationship between the "superculture" and varying subcultural diaspora. He admits that subcultures elude definition, and thus the relations between subcultures, or between sub- and supercultures, are difficult to define, though cites examples that illustrate both definition and relationship. Specifically, Slobin identifies individuals, or "activists," that often serve as proponents for small subcultures or crossovers in which individuals navigate dual-identities, such as Cuban-American / African-American in the case of Jon Secada [p249]. He concludes the essay by discussing these individuals in the greater context of "oppositionality," which addresses high-cultures's incorporation of low-culture, often realized by superculture's incorporation of subculture--a challenge to diaspora cultures who seek both recognition and respect, inclusion and independence.

Discussion question(s): how can a subculture assert itself within a superculture without being incorporated, commercialized, or generally taken advantage of? Is it possible for a subculture to exist simultaneously, or is the cultural hierarchy unavoidable? How do ethnographic diaspora differ from the social diaspora of the subcultures we've already examined? And, how can we contextualize musical youth cultures in terms of Slobin's definitions of cultural diaspora?