Those That Fly Without Wings: Music and Dance in a Chilean Immigrant Community

Those that Fly without Wings is a study concentrating on the practice of music and dance within a Chilean immigrant community in Oslo. It is a qualitative and interpretive account of how music activity plays a part in the negotiation and construction of immigrant identity, as well as how it gives a voice to tensions and contradictions within an immigrant group in an urban landscape. The study concerns a community with a considerable musical activity of various Latin American genres, taking place in public as well as private arenas. By engaging with both historical and present discourses in the community, complex processes of adaptation, redefinition, and reconstruction are addressed. Based on field research and interviews as well as song lyrics and poetry, the study examines various ways in which people with an active and committed relationship to music make their practices meaningful in this particular social setting.