Browsing by Subject "Bands"
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Item Miners and musicians : rethinking company towns through the Butte Mines Band, 1887-1953(2020-12-10) Lockman, Gwendolyn Reid; Bsumek, Erika MarieThis masters’ report argues that the role of the Butte Mines Band in its community, from funerals to celebrations of life for miners and their families, shows how life in Butte, Montana outside of mining was mediated by copper mining interests, but that the city was not a company town. This is primarily evident from financial support of the Band by Butte’s copper companies, but it is also part of a more complex story of corporate influence, unionism, and environment. Using a socio-environmental lens to look at how environment and human interaction work in concert to create social and cultural structures, norms, and behaviors, this study reconsiders the meaning of the phrase “company town,” and considers a scope of “studyscapes” to analyze sensory knowledge of Butte. These include landscape, workscape, soundscape, playscape, and deathscape. The Mines Band offers a confluence of these culturescapes that reveals a complicated web of influence on local culture. This report primarily uses archival research from the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives in Butte, Montana. It builds on the historiography of mining, labor, recreation, unionism, and environment in the U.S. West. It also uses interdisciplinary methods by borrowing from ethnographic social sciences to consider walking as valuable historical method for place-based study. This is done in concert with studying sensory history. While historical sound and smell cannot be determined by present qualitative evaluations, the historian can revisit place to better consider the context for how sensory consumption may have changed over time. Chapter One details the extant scholarship on Butte and introduces readers to the theoretical frameworks for studying the Mines Band in a socio-environmental context. It outlines the problems with considering Butte a company town while offering a means to understand the complex corporate-cultural relationship in the city. Chapter Two focuses on Butte’s urban development and cultural makeup, outlining the several sensory landscapes of life in Butte, including soundscape, smellscape, playscape, and deathscape. Chapter Three details homes in on the Butte Mines Band and examines its role in the city, connecting place, mining, and death to cultural customs.