Cultural Integrity and Local Music in Cape Breton and New Orleans

Abstract

Based primarily on ethnographic work in Cape Breton and in New Orleans, this chapter is about how local music connects to cultural integrity–a concept that can be useful in thinking about how expressive culture relates to local concepts of good and satisfying lives in particular places. People in Cape Breton and New Orleans care about their music and tend to see it both as integral to a good life and emblematic of a kind of wholeness in the local culture. Yet in both places, economic displacement and development driven by gentrification threatens the sustainability of this cultural integrity.