This paper examines the practice, pedagogy, and evolving transnational significance of Carnatic music, the South Indian musical tradition, within the Indian diaspora in the Devon neighborhood of Northern Chicago, as embodied in the neighborhood Carnatic music academies. With a population of approximately 240,000, Chicago is home to the second-largest Indian population in the U.S, and Devon Avenue, located in the West Ridge neighborhood and often referred to as "Little India," is one of the largest Indian-American enclaves in the country, making it an ideal setting for this study. Through interviews with educators, performers, and temple musicians from four different academies in Devon, along with approximately 15 students (both children and adults), and religious performers and vaadhyars (priests) from a South Indian temple in Devon, I investigate how pedagogy, performance spaces, and audience engagement evolve in this diasporic setting and with contemporary learning models. Traditionally, Carnatic music has been transmitted orally through the guru-shishya-parampara (master-disciple-relationship), where knowledge is passed down through rigorous, immersive training. However, my findings reveal that Carnatic music academies in Devon have developed innovative approaches that blend American schoolchildren’s learning styles with traditional Carnatic training, preserving the art form’s discipline. They also go beyond solely musical instruction, imparting South Indian values to the newer generation of Indian-Americans in the community such as discipline, respect, and cultural and religious identity. While the community remains deeply committed to Carnatic music as a cultural anchor, learning environments increasingly incorporate digital tools and written notation alongside oral transmission, balancing accessibility with tradition.

This paper examines the analogous traditions and practices between Greek-Catholic and Orthodox Ukrainian churches in Chicagoland through historical and musical factors that shape cultural identity within a diasporic context. Each of the two churches in this study have a dedicated congregation of parishioners despite a stark difference in attendance between the two, with the Greek-Catholic church seeing a significantly higher turn out each week than the Orthodox. To explore the potential reasons for this divide, I center the churches’ respective choruses as vehicles for connection and continuity between the two religious traditions. Based on historical analysis, interviews and digital ethnography, musical circulation between the groups underscores a hybridity of practices evident within the weekly liturgy and secular repertoire of the vocal ensembles. A closer look at St. Joseph’s Stavros men’s choir and St. Volodymyr’s mixed chorus demonstrates numerous religious and musical similarities between the choruses and their respective services. Going further, a cherubic song from ca. 1847 by Ukrainian composer Mykhailo Verbytsky, “Їже херувими” (“There are cherubs”), stands out as a specific point of connection with both choruses having sung the piece in services and carol festivals. My fieldwork demonstrates that the choirs are essential to the church communities they’re a part of, anchoring them in their worship and providing Chicagoland with a shared Ukrainian soundscape. This paper seeks to provide a plural understanding of what Ukrainian identity could constitute–as both religious groups share a unified desire for independence and community.

During the first half of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Black migrants made their way north to Chicago in what would later be coined the Great Migration. These migrants filtered into an urban environment already alive with both established and nascent networks of other migrants. Using Black music making as its focus, this paper explores the ways shared space acted upon musical networks, and the ways those networks in turn transformed the city’s musical landscape during a period of intense change and important place making in Chicago’s history. I argue that negotiations of public and private space between Chicago’s migrant communities helped define Black musical networks between 1930 and 1950, particularly within the south side’s popular entertainment industry. Using archival research, musician interviews, and digital mapping tools, this paper aims to answer two central questions: How was public space transformed by migrants to accommodate burgeoning Black music networks on Chicago’s south side? And how were identity driven hierarchies (race, religion, gender, nationality, etc.) maintained and challenged in the entertainment industry’s private spaces? A historical approach to analyzing how Chicago’s musical spaces were mediated lends insight not only into how Black musicians established security for their families after relocation to the north, but importantly how migration and resettlement are woven into the fabric of one of the most segregated cities in the nation.