Sarah Buckler uses music as a route to exploring three small, isolated and rural communities in the North East of England at the beginning of the 21st Century. Drawing on an understanding of the links between identity, community and landscape, Buckler reveals how these communities maintained a sense of meaning in a political and economic context that has stripped them of their identity. Through her analysis of loss, Buckler analyses the impact the music had on the community.

Buckler's ethnographic research takes her into these communities as a local authority officer. In this role, the conflicts between policy making and anthropology become apparent, raising questions about how to conduct ethnographic research while also working in an official capacity. Despite these difficulties, Buckler's analysis outlines a theoretical perspective that links people, community, music and landscape to ultimately show how the moral universes originally created through the community of playing music together have now been adapted and are performed instead through speech and movement. The fieldwork reveals the replacement of coalfields with memories, as Buckler draws on Jungian, psychoanalytical approaches to community, to reinforce the idea of a third realm of existence. In so doing, Buckler challenges conceptions regarding the distinction between music and language.