@article{THESIS,
      recid = {1642},
      author = {Eldridge, Lauren},
      title = {Playing Haitian: Musical Negotiations of Nation, Genre,  and Self},
      publisher = {University of Chicago},
      school = {Ph.D.},
      address = {2016-06},
      number = {THESIS},
      pages = {219},
      abstract = {In this dissertation, I show how participants at Haitian  music camps negotiate a range of identifications, from the  individual, to the national, to the global. I argue that  through programming and attending both individual  performances and broader summer camps, musicians and their  audiences broker the boundaries of what Haiti is, and what  it means to be Haitian. I call this work playing Haitian.  “Playing Haitian: Musical Negotiations of Nation, Genre,  and Self” has more than one resonance, in keeping with the  significatory practice of the Kreyòl language and the  broader African diaspora. I interrogate what it means for  musicians of Haitian descent to compete for the right to  narrate Haiti. I question the activities of foreign  volunteers who lead camps abroad and concertize Haitian  classical music at home. Across both groups, I focus on the  acts of rehearsing and performing culturally significant  repertoires. 

	What does it mean to play Haitian?  Throughout Haiti, students, teachers, and audiences explore  narrative possibilities through a wide range of musical  genres. Summer music camps serve as complex sites of  interaction, in which participants engage in contests of  meaning regarding the authenticity of these musical genres  and the identities of those present. This dissertation  examines the performative tensions that arise within these  camps, and in the discursive zone between the two mutually  constitutive genres of classical music and folkloric  performance. Participants are “playing Haitian” by  deploying an array of social strategies to recompose both  nation and self as definitively Haitian entities. The  tensions between their sometimes-opposing presentations of  self and nation challenge any construction of Haiti as a  monolithic race, class, religion, or culture. By “playing  Haitian,” musicians and their audiences perform at the  crossroads of group identity and self.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1642},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.6082/uchicago.1642},
}