Edinburgh Napier University

  Hybridisation is a multifaceted term that appears across several sociocultural contexts, while common conceptualisations of musical hybridisation in scholarship tend to be positioned in genre studies. As a result of the perceived disjunctions of taxonomical framings of genre however, analytically satisfying definitions of musical hybridity are seldom offered and this clear gap in musicological, ethnomusicological, and cultural research is yet to be adequately explored by conventional theoretical research. This thesis therefore argues that a practice-based approach is more appropriate towards contextualising and understanding this phenomenon. In doing so, it problematises language and concepts, including genre, that fail to accurately describe such phenomena and move towards a more tangible definition of hybridity. This is approached through the creation of a genre-free framework for the creation and analysis of this phenomenon, establishing the musical hybrid as an experiential product, and musical hybridisation as a process that entangles various modalities (theorised in this thesis) of construction, expression, and experience. This framework informs and contextualises a portfolio of original Scottish Gaelic-language music that exploits these modalities, providing a practical contextualisation of the hybridisation framework through the analysis of the hybridisation process and hybrid product(s) of the compositional work. Consequently, this thesis offers knowledge in the form of the theoretical framework and the musical output of my practice.