Jag drar mig för att ta beslut. I detta arbete vill jag se förbi min spontana reaktion att avfärda obeslutsamheten som ett oskick, för att istället se vilka möjligheter som infinner sig när något får lämnas öppet. Genom att se musikskapandet som något som sker i framförandesituationen, blir det musikaliska verket något mer än en förutbestämd entitet som drabbar en publik. Musiken uppstår i ett intrikat samspel av aktörer, innanför och utanför scenrummet, som tillsammans utgör framförandesituationen. Med detta synsätt som utgångspunkt kommer jag att beskriva tre kompositionsprocesser med sinsemellan ganska olika resultat, med tonvikt på hur jag på olika sätt bemött, använt och/eller strävat mot öppenheten inför framförandesituationen i dessa processer. Dessa erfarenheter kommer jag sedan att ställa mot ett pågående arbete med ett själv-resonerande vibrotaktilt instrument – en feedback-kontrabas. Efter en presentation av instrumentet kommer jag genom analys av videoinspelade improvisationer beskriva några av feedback-kontrabasens affordanser i en solokontext. Jag avslutar med en beskrivning av hur jag använt dessa erfarenheter i solostycket FYR.

The aim of this study was to explore how musicking (a term denoting any music related activity, see Small 1998, p. 9) could be used locally to support people with dementia and their caregivers in a sustainable manner. The data for the study came primarily from a group known as “Song Birds”, a community-based volunteer music group working with people with dementia and their caregivers in the south of England. Participant observation was combined with interviews and an extensive ethnographic study of the music and care world surrounding the group. The data was explored using a grounded theory approach investigating three time phases, “preparation for the events”, “during the events” and “in-between and after the events”. The main findings related to the lay crafting of the events and the emergence of pathways between “music and care nodes” in a local, social network. The preparatory physical and social crafting of Song Birds events created a transitional time and place that guided the participants from everyday life into their collective musicking. This crafting was essential to the success of the musicking and produced inclusive activities that considered the different capabilities of all participants. As a result of these carefully crafted events, dementia identities were temporarily displaced and relationships were transformed. The musical repertoire was an important resource in this crafting and evolved according to the participants’ changing situations. The positive musical benefits and affordances (see DeNora 2000) from such weekly events could be transferred into participants’ everyday lives through multiple music and care groups and the pathways that connected those groups which constituted a “music and care world”. Such musically fostered networks helped generate a virtuous cycle that maintained the music group as a sustainable activity. As dementia care was a long-term activity, such sustainability was important to the on-going community support for people affected by dementia. Community musicking thus allowed people affected by dementia, their relatives and friends to remain together.

This work explores the everyday uses of rock music by women rock musicians, fans and DJs (amateurs), in a specific place (Portugal) and time (1990s-2014). Drawing on the work in the two main fields of music sociology and gender studies and its performative perspective to both gender and music (but also taking contributions from techno-feminist studies, science and technology studies, sociology of work, leisure and sports), this research takes a ‘music-in-action’ approach. This approach understands music as a social activity, as a network of connections between people, materials, discourses and activities. Rock music is best understood as a genre-in-action (not just as a semiotic text or reflection), as socio-material practice, in its collective, relational, performative, situated contexts of use - as rock musicking. As such, there are socio-material processes that constrain and enable women (as a minority group) doing and being in a masculinist rock music world. Taking a ‘mutual shaping’ approach to genre and gender, this research also takes into account how people use aesthetic materials in the processes of performative gendered identity making and relationship with others, as well as world building. The data consists of sixty in-depth interviews with Portuguese rockers (between 2012 and 2014), and supplementary field observations and follow-up interviews. The research found that girls and women’s musical opportunities are more restricted, but that they are also actively negotiated. Parental support and the presence of rock fathers in early years, as well as participation in male networks – whether or not a woman is romantically involved with ‘one of the boys’ – throughout the life course are pathways into rock musicking, as documented in other studies. Adding to the literature, this research highlights how not only in early years, but throughout the life course, rock musicking practices are dependent upon specific aesthetic (musical and visual) gender performances. From female masculinity to alternative femininities, rock music and its visual and material cultures are ‘active ingredients’ in doing and undoing gender. In Portugal, the absence of a strong riot grrrl movement and the lack of female/feminist networks, turns membership in male bands the norm. Consequently, either the “girl in the band’ or girl/female bands have to deal with their ‘novelty’ value. These rockers negotiate the labels of riot grrrl, feminist and grunge within a ‘girl power’ discourse, but mostly, struggling not to let their musical skills and value be obscured by their sex/ualization – developing high standards of musicianship, managing on-stage bodily disclosure, naming and praising their peers, aligning with an Anglo-Saxon rock female canon, but also othering female fans. In male bands, due to male skill ascription, women are segregated into traditional female musical roles, the singer, the bass player. On the other hand, women drummers get token value. At the expenses of instrument specialization, women undertake multi-instrumental pathways. Becoming musical agile selves and re-valuing (traditionally female) musical roles, playing conventions and body techniques. Women also appropriate mixers to spread their love for rock music. These women creatively expand rock music’s material culture, crafting it with clothes, acessories and even food. For rockers who are mothers, rock musicking becomes a technology of mothering. Taking Portuguese women rockers and their socio-musical practices, at both the everyday level and on the “spectacular” rock stage, this research adds to the international and growing body of work on gender and (rock) music across different disciplinary fields (sociology, popular music studies, feminist studies). It extends the traditional focus within popular music scholarship on Anglo-American rock culture, feminist mo(ve)ments, and subcultures, to place emphasis instead on an age group and place that has otherwise been overlooked.

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This thesis explores alternative ways of staging music in preschool. The ‘preschool subject of music’ is approached as a social and cultural construct that is embedded in discursive negotiations. Participants in the study are 1-3 year-old children and their music pedagogues, working in the preschool on a daily basis. In three studies, the negotiation of a local music ‘didactic identity’ is examined by answering research questions related to three different discursive levels: (i) the micro-level of face-to-face interaction; (ii) the level of pedagogue’s conceptions; and (iii) the political/societal level. Study I examines the participants’ use of semiotic resources in their co-construction of musicking events. By means of micro-analyses of video-recordings it is shown that mobility in the room is essential for the children’s access to instruments and other artefacts, and for their possibility to influence music activities. Other crucial conditions concern the pedagogues’ responsive uptake and improvisatory approach, and that the activities are open to other forms of expression. Study II explores conceptions of the ‘child’ and conceptions of ‘music’ in four music pedagogues’ talk in a group interview. Different conceptions of the ‘child’ are seen to interrelate with certain ontological and functional conceptions of ‘music’ that involve diverse opportunities for children’s (bodily) agency. This analysis is made by means of discursive psychology. Study III examines the music practices from a political and philosophical perspective, using Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘public sphere’. This third perspective shows how this preschool’s music practices create a public sphere by seriously putting into practice equality and plurality as values and principles that increase the equality between children and adults. Age power structures are thereby challenged, and the children can be seen as citizens in the ‘here and now’, and not in some distant future when they are grown-ups. Also, the ‘preschool subject of music’ itself becomes a negotiated issue. Implications for preschool practice and preschool teacher education are discussed, and further research is suggested within other educational areas regarding how pedagogues’ interpretations of the concept of ‘children’s participation’ and ‘influence’ impact on specific preschool subjects, such as music. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: In press.</p>

Abstract The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the popular male K-pop group BTS has influenced seven people, to motivate them to a better mental health and new life path in Sweden. The study examines purple dreams that represents mine and six other individuals’ stories that has found similar motivation from Korean popular culture. The method used in this study are autoethnography, my own prior memories and qualitative methods in the form of three interviews and three written stories. The theoretical perspective in the study consists of Blumer's interactionism, which provides a closer insight into how a fandom as a whole community acts and reacts in its inner workings. The results show that the informants experience an improvement in their mental state through this community. It also showed that communication between fans has helped improve mood, providing fans with a community to help fulfill some goals on the road to their dreams. It emerged in the interviews and stories that fans, and idols play a significant role in the BTS community. The community's experience show that culture and interaction are important to people's lifestyles and have contributed to better mental health.

Text in English, abstracts in English and Zulu / This thesis explores the current state of marimba music performance practice in Zimbabwe. I begin by presenting a historical perspective of the marimba, and then discuss how the Zimbabwe marimba tradition came into being at Kwanongoma College of African Music in Bulawayo. The study continues to unveil how the relatively new marimba tradition has grown to popularity in its 55-year history in the country, with the phenomenal emergence of professional Zimbabwe marimba musicians. The thesis includes analyses of marimba musicians’ lived experiences, traditional and contemporary marimba music compositions, marimba music education programs and mentors, as well as the Zimbabwe marimba construction industry. Using ethnographic methods, the analysis in this qualitative study draws on an application of Christopher Small, Richard Schechner, and Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical perspectives, amongst others. Results show that marimba music performance practice in Zimbabwe has been kept alive in various permutations, albeit in a harsh economic environment. Education, passion for marimba music, cultural tourism, and festivities are the main avenues where Zimbabwe marimba music performance practice has survived on the margins of Zimbabwe’s popular musical cultural traditions. / Le thesis ihlola isimo samanje somculo wemarimba kanye nokuqhutshwa kwawo eZimbabwe. Ngiqala ngokwethula imibono yezomlando ngemarimba, ebese ngixoxa ngokuthi ngabe usiko lwenkambiso yemarimba eZimbabwe lwaqhamuka kanjani eKwanongoma College of African Music eBulawayo. Ucwaningo luqhubeka luveze ukuthi umculo wemarimba omusha usheshe kangakanani ukukhula nokuba nedumela kumlando weminyaka engu 55 ezweni, kanti futhi nokwenza ukuthi abaculi bemarimba eZimbambwe basebenze ngesiprofeshini. Le thesis ibandakanya ukuhlaziya izipiliyoni zabaculi bemarimba, usiko kanye nokuqanjwa komculo wemarimba, izinhlelo zemfundo yomculo wemarimba kanye nabaqeqeshi abafundisa abasha emculweni, kanye nokwakhiwa kwemboni yomculo wemarimba eZimbabwe. Ukusebenzisa izindlela zesayense yokuchaza abantu eyaziwa ngokuthi yi-ethnography, uhlaziyo kulolu cwaningo olubheka kanzulu, lufunde nokuchaphuna kwimibono yochwepheshe yethiyori yabantu abafana no-Christopher Small, uRichard Schechner kanye no-Pierre Bourdieu phakathi kwabanye. Imiphumela ikhombisa ukuthi ukwenziwa komculo wemarimba eZimbabwe wenziwe ukuthi uqhubeke ngokusebenzisa inqubo yokuhlela izinto ngokuhambelana noma inqubo ye-permutations, kodwa ngaphansi kwesimo esinzima kwezomnotho. Imfundo, ugqozi lomculo wemarimba, inqubo yezovakasho lokufunda ngamasiko kanye nemicimbi ngenye yezindlela lapho khona umculo wemarimba eZimbabwe oboniswa khona nokwaze ukuqhubeka ngayo, nangendlela esetshenzisiwe ukwenza ukuthi umculo uqhubeke nokuba nedumela ngisho nangaphansi kwesimo esinzima eZimbabwe. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Musicology)

This dissertation, titled Interactive Music Composition, is a practice based Ph.D. thesis in the field of Musicology. The purpose is to explore if and how one can compose computer based interactive music, that is musically satisfying for an interacting audience, consisting of both laymen and skilled musicians. The text describes the design and reflection in two interactive music installations: Do-Be-DJ, open-air installation in a public park, and, Mufi, with modular and moveable interface. Based on methods and per­spectives in Musicology and Interaction Design, a composition model for interactive music is developed. The model investigates the experience di­mensions listen, explore, compose and collaborate. It also investigates the design dimensions of interaction, narrative structure, composition rule and sound node. The conceptual approach is to apply improvisation and composition methods from jazz, pop and groove based music on interactive music. It also uses the concepts of openess in musical structures and interpretation, musical mediation of actions and meaning and everyday use of music, when composing interactive music. The dissertation contributes to an understanding of how to create composition techniques for interactive music, such as: Direct, varied and shifting response. It reflects on the change in meaning of the musicological terms composition, improvisation, musical work, listener, musician and audience. And on the interaction design terms interaction, gameplay, system and user. The term co-creator is used to describe an actively, interacting and collaborating person, to complement traditional terms like audience, performer and user. / <p>Ljudfiler till avhandlingens bilaga 1, http://musicalfieldsforever.com/dobedj_more.html; Videodokumentation av Do-Be-DJ, Interaktiv installation, http://musicalfieldsforever.com/dobedj_more.html; Videodokumentation av Mufi I och II, Interaktiv installation, http://musicalfieldsforever.com/mufi_more.html; Doktorandtjänsten finansierades av Interactive Institute; Musikinspelning finansierades av Framtidens Kultur genom Skiften på Malmö högskola</p> / Interaktiv musikkomposition / Interactive Music Composition / Interaktiv ljuddesign / Interactive Sound Design / Musik och Hälsa / Music and Health