Performing identity within a multicultural framework

Abstract

The role of music in community festivals is often to assist in constructing a particular identity of place, and music functions in such instances as a means to provide a sense of belonging for participants. However, multicultural festivals complicate any simple relationship between place and identity, because such festivals demonstrate the heterogeneous state of both identity and place. Anxieties that arise around issues of cultural authenticity within such festivals point to concerns of hybrid identities that may challenge and threaten the maintenance of clearly demarcated identities in the face of transnational relations. Drawing on ethnographic material and theoretical conceptualizations of the self, this paper explores the dynamic and fluid constructions of identity at two Australian community music festivals, and raises questions on the sorts of practices that seek to regulate the ways in which these identities are constituted and performed.