UC Santa Barbara

In this thesis, I offer a literature review addressing recent scholarship, largely in the field of ethnomusicology, on the concepts of local, locality, and localization. I first explore how authors have deployed the term local as an adjective to describe musical activities in terms of spatial scales of reference. I then turn to the concept of locality as a domain of social life that is reproduced through social interaction, focusing mainly on how contemporary scholars have used cultural theorist Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) ideas within music studies. Finally, I address the term localization, often discussed in context of the related concept of globalization, to consider how authors have used the concept to address movements and adaptations of musical forms in various places. I further position this thesis as a point of entry into the case study of El Paso, Texas, combining this literature review with brief examples from my own observations and distance research on El Paso. I argue that a focus on locality as a quality produced through social activity can productively address the tensions inherent in El Paso’s position as a city on the border of Mexico and the United States.