Music and Dance Theses and Dissertations

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The Sounds of Fairy Culture: Music, Fantasy Lifestyles, and Activism in the Digital Age
(University of Oregon, 2021-09-13) LaFleur, Hannah; Fine, Abigail
In this thesis, I investigate fairy culture through its music. Fairy music, the music that intersects with these communities, is incredibly diverse, ranging from the protest music of gay rights movements, to music emanating from Irish fairy-forts, to TikTok video soundtracks. I argue that the resurgence of fairy imagery and appropriation today is a reaction to modernity, with fairies symbolizing the antithesis of industrial capitalism, secularity, and heteronormativity. Furthermore, I argue that music in this culture is largely connected to place. People use music to identify locations as liminal spaces between reality and “the Otherworld” through storytelling and performance. Social media users actively enchant their surroundings by evoking the sounds of fantasy worlds. When outsiders to these communities dismiss these as eccentric fringe cultures, they fail to recognize the global influence of these movements, which build upon a historic precedent of activism, enchantment, and new ways of understanding the world.