Course

ANTH-420: Ethnographic Research Practicum

Document Type

Student Paper

Publication Date

Spring 5-2019

Disciplines

Anthropology | Music | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Description, Abstract, or Artist's Statement

Families relocating to new communities face the hardships of learning how to navigate in a new legal and cultural environment and can also experience an interruption of past forms of passing down cultural, personal, or familial traditions, such as music. My research asks the following questions: how does music exist in the memories and daily life of Iraqi refugees in the Quad Cities, and how does the community provide specific expressive outlets for them? Using a combination of interviews with resettled Iraqi refugees and community members who try to reach out to them and participant observation, this research focuses on how some displaced and resettled people remember and use music from their past, how those musical traditions and knowledge are passed down to the next generation, and how the Quad Cities community tries to provide a platform for them to share their experiences.