Spatial analysis of musical diaspora culture

Abstract

Despite being majorly considered a means for pleasure and entertainment, music has always been a subconscious tool for nations to maintain their culture and transfer it to future generations. People from all around the world used their own genuine music, sometimes even just notes, to articulate their pride in their national history or the sorrows they went through as community. During adaptation, people who are forced to leave their homelands for any reason tend to keep their own culture and resist the social integration in their hostland, where they are considered the minority and even face social exclusion. Throughout history, migrants faced exclusion and opression as minorities, but they found ways to adapt their own music to their new homeland and continue their culture, which also served as a safe spot from the oppresion. This is how the migrants in diaspora are able to save their cultural identities as minorities. This dissertation discusses how the diaspora culture blends in with new geographies through evolving into the music and lifestyle more relatable by the majority of their hostland, and how it translates into various spaces through the very means. Most prominent examples of the diaspora culture are the African people brought to the USA for slave trade, the Rums of Turkey who faced forced migration during the Turkish-Greek population exchange, and for a broader concept, the scattering of Jews across the world, and the Romanians, implementing their own culture into their host countries instead of integration because they were generally not accepted by some nations.