Music can be an incredibly powerful tool, and in an age where technology allows us to connect with those that don’t live near us, finding ways to use music to encourage that bonding can be incredibly beneficial. Particularly, in a global pandemic such as COVID-19, finding ways to connect with others remotely is more important than ever. In this study, I will be looking at how one artist in particular, Tessa Violet, manages to continue to not only grow her community, but also encourage her community to bond with each other. She achieves this by finding various ways, unique to her and her branding, that allows her community to connect with each other. By using her platform to give scavenger hunts to her fanbase, promoting and fostering community growth through various platforms, and livestreaming in ways unique to her style, she is able to connect her audience with each other. By engaging and observing these various actions on her part, I am able to see and experience this community bonding myself. I also look at ways this might be able to expanded to other artists and their communities as well. The hope is that the internet and social media can be just another form of music encouraging people to connect with one another.

With over a century of culturally established associations for different musical sounds, the narrative properties of film scoring powerfully influence how societies and cultures perceive themselves through film. Film scoring in mainstream culture functions as a form of social practice in which consumers dictate the market that producers create for, while the ideas and philosophies portrayed in film shape consumer audiences’ perceptions of what their societies look like. A surge of discourse in the 21st century surrounds issues of representation and inclusivity in mainstream media, including what constitutes appropriation versus appreciation in film scores using non-Western music traditions. Recent postcolonial ethnomusicological theory demonstrates that collaboration and co-authorship are inclusive ways that can both avoid the pitfalls of colonialist power structures and also create autonomy for participating marginalized groups. My research examines four contemporary films of the 21st century--Kung Fu Panda 3, Moana, Black Panther, and The Breadwinner--and the collaborations between film composers and source musicians that establish cultural and racial musical narratives. I analyze various musical techniques these composers learned through the collaboration process with contributing source musicians and the resulting musical space each film’s soundtrack created for the representative demographic. This discourse opens other avenues of exploration into how mainstream media and the “global imagination” informs cultural music identities. I conclude my research with examples of film scores appearing outside cinema in social musicality; these examples demonstrate the impact that inclusivity in film scoring has on many areas of mainstream culture, especially in racial representation discourse.