Citation:
Date Presented:
February 7, 2013Abstract:
Most anthropological work on exclusion and boundary policing focuses on how different groups separate each other, but few have managed to uncover why these mechanisms of exclusion take the forms that they do. Through fieldwork among Iranian immigrant musicians living in Toronto I examined how “fusion” musicians––musicians who aim to combine classical Persian and western styles––differentiate themselves from the more commercial pop musicians. At the same time, I trace these exclusionary practices back to Iran in the early nineties, when these mechanisms of exclusion were first developed. These mechanisms are complicated by the interactions between Iranian musicians and the Canadian state. Government grants, due to the nature of multiculturalist legislation in Canada, go almost exclusively to fusion musicians. This support is seen by these artists as a validation of the exclusionary practices, and therefore lend weight to pre-existing divisions within the Iranian community in Toronto. These sorts of unintended consequences show is that for government policies to be understood, the social context of the people the policy will be directly affecting has to be studied as well.