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Performing Identity at The Arts Edge: Developing Radio Memoir Through the Excavation of Living Inquiry by Elaine Harder (Elaine Margaret Roach) B.A., Simon Fraser University, 2011 P.D.P., Simon Fraser University, 2010 Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Arts Education Program Faculty of Education © Elaine Harder 2020 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Summer 2020 Copyright in this work rests with the author. Please ensure that any reproduction or re-use is done in accordance with the relevant national copyright legislation. Approval Name: Elaine Harder (Elaine Margaret Roach) Degree: Master of Arts Title: Performing Identity at The Arts Edge: Developing Radio Memoir Through the Excavation of Living Inquiry Examining Committee: Chair: Allan MacKinnon Associate Professor Lynn Fels Senior Supervisor Professor Celeste Snowber Supervisor Professor Michael Ling Examiner Senior Lecturer Date Defended/Approved: July 30, 2020 ii Abstract In this thesis, I explore how community radio is a pedagogical and artistic platform that fosters personal agency, memoir, transformation and the unfolding of identity. Within the forum of an arts-based radio program, I witness how music, lyrics, broadcasting and personal reflections merge to inspire the surfacing of life’s lost moments, a collection of personal memories. This discovery evolves into a narrative loop between broadcaster and self, which leads to the excavation and interweaving of music and memory, and the alchemy of the radio tales. To this end, I explore autobiography, my mother’s lived experience and personal agency which unfold to become a storied musical memoir. While my research is largely informed by the scholarly work of Jerome Bruner, Lynn Fels, Walter Gershon, Mary Karr, Karen Meyer, Celeste Snowber, Sean Street, and Maxwell van Manen, it is further influenced by scholars whose work reflects arts and music education and is punctuated by songs and song lyrics. Research data1 for the radio tales and thesis is generated through several avenues: (1) Performative Inquiry explores how radio surfaces musical soundscape while unfolding musical lost moments that reflect lived experience. (2) Living Inquiry explores how writing a living document alongside radio production inspires the surfacing of lost moments and a collection of twenty-seven radio tales; (3) Acousmatic Modality, explores how reflective listening practices unpack contextual insights of lived experience. New understandings emerge through acousmatic dialogue, is comprised of living inquiry, lost moments. radio tales and one’s musical soundscape. My research reveals that everyone has a living story and a musical soundscape, thereby illustrating the universality of radio tales. Within this pedagogical and artistic platform, community radio acts as a springboard for the surfacing of musical soundscapes, the excavation of lost moments, the alchemy of radio tales and the unfolding of identity. The radio tales are offered throughout the thesis, as text and audio, with attached hyperlinks to redirect the reader to the SFU Repository where the audio files are stored. 1 Research Findings; Research Data; Data. Although these terms are traditionally associated with scientific research, at times I strategically use these terms. With the evolution of the English language – and the blurring and usage of lexicon alongside other languages and modes of communication – within my paper, everyday language merges and overlaps with the lexicon of academic, professional and formal language, and vis-à-vis. As such, I sometimes use academic terminology to disrupt academic formalities as they merge with the arts and my artist practice, and within my research process that has led to this thesis. iii Keywords: community radio; lived experience; lost moments; radio tales; music iv Dedication I dedicate this thesis to my mother, Margaret Eva Roach, who always believed in me, who encouraged me to sing and to find my voice in the world. To my father, Timothy Martin Harder, who loved and cared deeply for my mother, who introduced country music into my life, who raised me as his own. To my other father, the one I never knew, who passed on something I am yet to find. To those who have informed my life in ways that call me forth, I am grateful – thank you, a hundred times thank you . v Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge Dr. Lynn Fels for her support and encouragement in my exploration of radio as academic research, for reminding me that ‘art’ is comprised of all parts of the lived experience, and for her kindness and compassion as I excavated the challenging unknowns of my ancestral heritage. I would like to acknowledge Dr. Celeste Snowber for teaching me that the personal is the universal, that all lived experience is stored within, and that the true alchemy of my thesis is the reframing of my mother’s life amid music, memory and lost moments. I would like to acknowledge the professors in my Master of Education program (Arts Education cohort) whose metissage of scholastic and artistic practices have been an important model for my own teaching and artistic practice: Dr. Lynn Fels, Dr. Vicki Kelly, Dr. Carolyn Mamchur, Dr. Susan O’Neill, Dr. Kathryn Ricketts and Dr. Celeste Snowber. On a technical note, I would like to acknowledge the Repository Department of SFU, and Alex Garnett in particular, for his assistance with creating an Audio/Metadata platform where The Radio Tales can hang their hat, where they will exist forever. Also, a big thank you to Anise Ladha, SFU’s Library Thesis Assistant, for the invaluable time she gave to my thesis and for her tenacity to perfect the aesthetics of the finished product. On a broadcasting note, I would like to acknowledge SFU’s campus radio station, CJSF 90.1 FM and the station’s incredible staff for the invaluable training and support they’ve provided me without whom my radio show, The Arts Edge, and ‘the radio tales’ would not have come into being. I am especially grateful to David Swanson (for hearing my voice and encouraging me to produce my own show), Magnus Thyvold (for his kind leadership) and my Saturday Night pals (Jagz & The Pirates of the Caribbean and Hip Hop Happens), who are an inspiration in the Saturday night live radio forum. On a personal note, I would like to acknowledge family and friends who supported me in helping my thesis come to fruition: Marlene Freylinger (nee Harder), Sharon Harder and Ken Harder (my siblings) who – through the years – shared familial information, DNA documentation and hospital records; Marion Jorgenson (nee Roach) who continuously reminded me that all I needed was one good idea; Auntie Elaine Lynch (nee Roach), Auntie Stella Mumford (nee Roach), Auntie Mamie Jorgenson (nee Roach) and my vi Roach cousins for our many conversations about shared ancestry; Christine Lynch (nee Hanley), Janet Mumford, Helen Roach (nee Nedelec) and Pat Saxon (nee Lynch) who shared Roach family photos and ancestral information; Agnes Anstett (nee Shaw) & Duane ‘Dewey’ Anstett who shared archival knowledge about our Anstett/Roach ancestry; Alison Stewart who offered expertise in editing and perserverence; friends and colleagues who – as transcribers, readers and listeners of the radio tales – provided invaluable support and feedback; and finally, the recent ‘listeners’ of the radio tales: high school friends who were present when so many of the stories and songs that we shared, that now lie within these pages, first came on my radar. I would like to acknowledge the prairie folks of McGee and Rosetown, Saskatchewan who so generously shared their time, archival knowledge and ancestral history of the Roach family: Yvonne Clark (nee Savage); Sharon Clark (Rosetown Centennial Library Archives); Bob Fisher; Mary Pat Fisher; Elaine Schille (nee Halliday); James Smith (of the 1930s’ Smith Family General Store in McGee, Saskatchewan); Rosetown Town Office (for providing land documents of the Roach homestead: Rural Municipality of Pleasant Valley No. 288, 1915-04-12; NE 3-29-16 W3); and finally, Peter Wiebe who welcomed me to camp out on the original Roach homestead land where the 1932 Roach farmhouse still stands, and to retrieve the 1930s Roach sisters’ wrought iron bed frame (from the farmhouse) as an ancestral fossil. On a final note…I would like to acknowledge my childhood family for it is they who had the biggest influence on this ancestral journey, on my life as an artist, and on my musical soundtrack. While the tracks were being laid, linking lived experience with the music of my childhood and beyond, my siblings introduced me to the arts and to the diversity and joy of music; my mother taught me how to sing and to tell stories; my father taught me to appreciate the prairie landscape and the roots of country music; and together as a whole, my family taught me that music was a way to know my life. It is here that my story begins. vii Table of Contents Approval ............................................................................................................................ ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................iii Dedication ......................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... vi Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................

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