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Profiles in Courage: Practicing and Performing at Musical Open Mics and ScenesAldredge, Marcus David 2009 August 1900 (has links)
This dissertation explores the social patterns and cultural layers of musical "open mics"
in New York City. The study uses a qualitative approach which includes methods such as
ethnography, in-depth interviewing, historical and discourse analyses focusing on open mics and
the popular musicians who attend and perform them. Open mics, short for "open microphones,"
are public events that allow musicians to perform songs without a pre-planned, formal booking
with a club or venue. Owing a historical and discursive connection to the folk hootenannies and
jazz jam sessions of the past, these events have proliferated and spread considerably across the
United States since the 1990s since their development, by name, in the late 1970s. Open mics not
only reflect a do-it-yourself and participatory cultural ethos manifested with other recent
expressive cultural activities, but also demonstrate a growing interstitial "musical third place"
residing between private practicing and public performance.
Musical open mics as musical third places provide musicians and singer/songwriters to
network with other musicians, practice new musical compositions and play when other
performance opportunities are not readily available. It provides a means for musicians to "hone
their craft" in terms of performance methods and also construct musical identities in the almost
exclusive company of other working singer/songwriters. This "backstage region" is thus framed
and keyed by the musicians onto a continuum between two theoretical poles: performance practicing and practicing performance. Performance practicing as defined in this study frames a
more performance-oriented display for musicians in locations called "closed open mics" or
COMs. These settings, also residing on a theoretical continuum are socially more exclusive in
terms of performance types, the aesthetic careers of the performers, the genres represented and
the sociological makeup of the setting participants in general. OOMs or "open open mics," on
the other hand, usually have a more fluid, diverse sociological composition of musical
performers, performance types, and musical genres played and represented in these mainly
weekly events. Closed open mics align into more homogeneous, isomorphic settings comprising
"local open mic scenes" and open open mics remain more heterogeneous, socially inclusive, and
unsettled as "pre-scenes."
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J.S. Bach in everyday life : the 'choral identity' of an amateur 'art music' Bach choir and the concept of 'choral capital'Einarsdottir, Sigrun Lilja January 2012 (has links)
This thesis presents research on an amateur composer-oriented Bach choir. Its main purpose is to study the development of musical identities and musical preferences of choir members as they take shape through the collective learning process of rehearsing and performing large-scale choral music. The study analyses how the choral participation and performance creates a certain type of ‘choral capital’ (a combination of social and cultural capital within the choral setting) and how the choristers reconstruct and relate to the composer (J.S. Bach) by creating ‘choral identities’ linked to the composer-orientation of their choir. This study is based on an interdisciplinary approach, seeking concepts and ideas from different fields of study – primarily sociology and music sociology (music in everyday life and the concepts of social and cultural capital in the amateur choral setting) but also music psychology regarding concepts of musical and vocal identities, history of music (especially Bach scholars, previous biographical writings about J.S. Bach), music and education (choral singing as informal music education) and interdisciplinary studies on music, health and well-being. The methodological approach of this research consists of a grounded theory based, single case study where the case was the Croydon Bach Choir in London performing J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor, using participant observation (where I sang with the choir for one semester) and qualitative interviews as main research methods and gathering demographic background data on choir members via paper-based survey. Whereas significant research on music performances has been conducted, so far choral research, where the direct participation of the researcher as a member of the choir is used as one of the main research methods, is still quite rare. Results indicate that participants develop socio-musical identity both through their choral participation in general, performance experiences and early music consumption in the family household and the emphasis of the importance of choral singing as a fulfilment instead of pursuing a professional career. Through choral singing, participants developed ‘choral capital’ through a) the effects of collective learning on their musical taste and preferences (thus broadening their musical taste and preferences and reconstructing the composer) and b) the well-being factor of collective singing and communal learning through the process of rehearsing and performing the Mass in B Minor. Furthermore, findings indicated that participants construct Bach as a genius and a devout Lutheran, an image that relates to the romantic image of Bach presented in the late 19th – early 20th century biographical writings on the composer. Thus in general, their choral activities form a valuable addition to their social and cultural capital (´choral capital´), which they use as a source of well-being in everyday life. In addition, participants create a certain ‘choral identity’ by relating to the composer-orientation of their choir; the promotional label of Bach as a synonym for quality choral singing and the emphasis of challenging repertoire.
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