Annotated bibliography of community music research review, AHRC connected communities programme

This research review, consisting of a 90-entry annotated bibliography, was produced as part of an AHRC Connected Communities programme project entitled Community Music, its History and Current Practice, its Constructions of ‘Community’, Digital Turns and Future Soundings. It supports a 2,500 word report written with this same title for the AHRC

Popular music, psychogeography, place identity and tourism: The case of Sheffield

Tourism and cultural agencies in some English provincial cities are promoting their popular music ‘heritage’ and, in some cases, contemporary musicians through the packaging of trails, sites, ‘iconic’ venues and festivals. This article focuses on Sheffield, a ‘post-industrial’ northern English city which is drawing on its associations with musicians past and present in seeking to attract tourists. This article is based on interviews with, among others, recording artists, promoters, producers and venue managers, along with reflective observational and documentary data. Theoretical remarks are made on the representations of popular musicians through cultural tourism strategies, programmes and products and also on the ways in which musicians convey a ‘psychogeographical’ sense of place in the ‘soundscape’ of the city

Popular music education in and for itself, and for 'other' music: current research in the classroom

This article considers some ways in which the school classroom enters into, changes and complicates musical meanings, focussing particularly on the role of popular music and how it relates to classical music. I suggest that in bringing popular music into the curriculum, educators have largely ignored the informal learning practices of popular musicians. Popular music has therefore been present as curriculum content, but its presence has only recently begun to affect our teaching strategies. I examine how the adaptation of some informal popular music learning practices for classroom use can positively affect pupils’ musical meanings and experiences. This applies not only to the sphere of popular music, but also to classical music and, by implication, other musics as well. Finally, the notions of musical autonomy, personal autonomy and musical authenticity in relation to musical meaning and informal learning practices within the classroom are discussed

Artistic value and spectators’ emotions in dance performances

Our experiences of art are framed by the context and the rules that apply to it. Not only the theatre where performing arts are enjoyed, but also art museums displaying paintings, sculptures, installations and other artistic objects, dictate the distance to the pieces and the type of sensory perception permitted to the visitors. How art is presented to us reflects traditional established settings that determine the conditions of our appreciation and that have become part of each art’s ontology. Moreover, what we are allowed to do in those public contexts, when confronted with art works, reflects the artistic value attached to them. But, in some cases, there seems to be a tension between the borders erected by categories of artistic value and the affective reactions by the perceivers. In this paper I will discuss contexts (original, transplanted and mediated) and perceptual conventions for dance art, and how these define spectators’ roles and impact on their emotional responses to dance performances. In particular, I will focus on negative reactions to dance art to argue that the use of moving human bodies presents specific affective challenges to audiences

Music and dance: beyond copyright text?

Are experiential, experimental forms of music and dance beyond protection by copyright? If they are, how might these art forms best be protected by cultural policy and cultural economics? These were the key questions that we set out to investigate with the support of a Beyond Text grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and with the help of our network members where together we formed an interdisciplinary team comprised of experts in copyright law, cultural policy, cultural economics, dance and musical composition. Through a series of interviews with musicians, singers, songwriters, composers, dancers, choreographers and others involved in the music industry and dance community we came to the conclusion that these types of works are both before copyright and beyond copyright. They are before copyright because what matters to the majority of those involved is the process of creation – which itself is constantly evolving – rather than the product – the protected work once fixed. They are beyond copyright because key aspects of the performance involve contributions which are not recognised by copyright, and because there is much about the performance which simply cannot be captured in the mechanical sense. As a result, policy intervention, which focuses on the product rather than the process, becomes problematic. This article suggests a series of practical recommendations made by our interviewees for ways in which the art forms may be supported into the future

Remaking Classical Music: Cultures of Creativity in Pleasure Garden

AbstractTaking its theoretical orientation from Sherry Ortner's distinction between ‘power’ and ‘projects’, this article considers the relationship between local artistic projects and the cultures in which they participate. I focus on Pleasure Garden, a collaborative project that spans site-specific installations, concerts and an album. Exploring a wide range of issues at stake in the creative process, including collaboration, gender, aesthetics, colonialism, the work concept, and commodification, I trace how Pleasure Garden’s creators variously reproduced and reworked dominant conventions, while at the same time pursuing their own distinctive commitments. Through this, I argue that Pleasure Garden’s creators negotiated a space that was inside, yet sometimes out of alignment with what I call the ‘cultures of creativity’ associated with Western art music, the music industries, late capitalism, and neoliberalism. This highlights both the powerful forces affecting musicians today and the possibilities for making things otherwise.</jats:p