An Ethnographic Exploration of Emerging Practices of Musicians Devising Co-Creative Musicking with Elderly People

MUSICIAN, FRIEND AND MUSE: an ethnographic exploration of emerging practices of musicians devising co-creative musicking with elderly people Karolien Sofie Katrien Dons a dissertation submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Guildhall School of Music & Drama July 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of contents 2 Abstract 6 List of Figures 8 Acknowledgements 9 Author’s declaration 11 Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION: a challenging social-musical situation for the classically-trained musician 12 1.1 Intro: an example, a reflection, a biography 12 1.1.1 A musical encounter with Ms Vries 12 1.1.2 Outline of the study 15 1.1.3 Musical biography and position in the field 16 1.2 The participatory turn: A rise of music making outside of the concert hall 22 1.3 Healthy ageing and value based health care 24 1.4 Music and wellbeing at a later age 27 1.5 The professional musician devising musicking with the elderly 30 1.6 Research question and aims of this study 33 Chapter 2. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK: a basis for understanding co-creative musicking 36 2.1 Theory of Practice 37 2.1.1 ‘Emerging practices’ 38 2.1.2 A Bourdieusian perspective on musician-audience relationships 39 2.1.3 Extending Bourdieu’s thinking tools 41 2.2 Co-creative musicking 44 2.2.1 The archetypal musician-audience connection 44 2.2.2 Co-creation within the arts 46 2.2.3 Problematizing person-centred co-creation 49 2.3 Praxialism 51 2.3.1 Ethics 54 2.3.2 Personhood: ethics of the contact with the other 56 2.3.3 Intentionality: ethics of the initiative 58 2.3.4 Situatedness: ethics of the moment 60 2 Chapter 3. METHODOLOGY: ethnography and Grounded Theory 63 3.1 Ethnography 63 3.2 Data collection 66 3.3 Data analysis 70 3.4 Ethics and reflexivity 73 3.4.1 Ethical considerations in the study’s design 74 3.4.2 Ethical considerations in practice 75 3.4.3 Fluctuating between inside and outside 77 Chapter 4. THICK DESCRIPTIONS: four cases of musicians at work 79 4.1 Entering a space where nothing is fixed: The Presidents 79 4.2 We’re all the same, we’re all together: Simon’s session at an elderly day care centre 89 4.3 We are more than just performers and just audience: Music at the open house 97 4.4 Me, being in control, and bonding with the musicians: Music at the ward 108 Chapter 5. ANALYSIS: emerging practices of co-creative musicianship with elderly people 121 5.1 Towards co-creation: an implicit process of negotiation 121 5.1.1 Implicit co-creation 123 5.1.2 Problematizing implicit negotiation 125 5.1.2.1 A lack of transparent dialogue and access 126 5.1.2.2 An out-of-balance distribution of power 127 5.1.3 Integral and organically emerging co-creation 129 5.2 Friend or muse: a humanistic and functional relationship 132 5.2.1 The humanistic side: a close and caring friendship 132 5.2.2 The functional side: a muse relationship 135 5.2.3 Where the humanistic and the functional blur 138 5.2.4 Tensions of equality 139 5.3 Considerations of the navigating and negotiating musician 144 5.3.1 The prepared and the unpredictable 144 5.3.2 The other and oneself 149 5.3.3 Dynamics of considerations involved in devising co-creative musicking with elderly people 152 5.4 Between eudaimonia and musicianism: a case for ethical musicianship 155 3 Chapter 6. CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 159 6.1 Conclusions 159 6.1.1 Towards ‘established’ practices of ethically devising co-creative musicking with elderly people 159 6.1.2 Reflections on the conclusions 161 6.2 Limitations of the study’s design 162 6.3 Contribution to knowledge 164 6.4 Recommendations for practice and for further research 165 6.5 A final thought 169 BIBLIOGRAPHY 170 APPENDICES 188 A. Excerpt of notebook writing Music at the open house 188 B. Excerpt of a digital report of The Presidents 191 C. Examples of prepared questions and prompts 196 D. Excerpt interview transcription Simon Parker 197 E. Draft colour scheme The Presidents 199 F. Code list Music at the ward 200 G. Information sheet for seeking ethical consent 201 H. Format of consent form 204 I. Long list of practices 205 4 I first had to recover from the authentic story, to let it go, before I could rediscover it in my own way. Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine Ik moest eerst genezen van het authentieke verhaal, het loslaten, om het op mijn manier terug te kunnen vinden. Stefan Hertmans, Oorlog en Terpentijn 5 ABSTRACT In leaving the more traditional territories of the concert performance for broader societal contexts, professional musicians increasingly devise music in closer collaboration with their audience rather than present it on a stage. Although the interest for such forms of devising co- creative musicking within the (elderly) health care sector is growing, the work can be considered relatively new. In terms of research, multiple studies have sought to understand the impact of such work on musicians and participants, however little is known about what underpins the musicians’ actions in these settings. With this study, I sought to address this gap by investigating professional musicians’ emerging practices when devising co-creative musicking with elderly people. Three broad concepts were used as a theoretical background to the study: Theory of Practice, co-creative musicking, and Praxialism. Firstly, I used Theory of Practice to help understand the nature of emerging practices in a wider context of change in the field of music and habitus of musicians and participants. Theory of Practice enabled me to consider a practice as “a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Secondly, I drew the knowledge from co- creative musicking, which is a concept I gathered from two existing concepts: co-creation and musicking. Musicking (Small, 1998), which considers music as something we do (including any mode of engagement with music), provided a holistic and inclusive way of looking at participation in music-making. The co-creation paradigm encompasses a view on enterprise that consists of bringing together parties to jointly create an outcome that is meaningful to all (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004; Ramaswamy & Ozcan, 2014). The concept served as a lens to specify the jointness of the musicking and challenge issues of power in the engagement of participants in the creative-productive process. Thirdly, Praxialism considers musicking as an activity that encompasses “musical doers, musical doing, something done and contexts in which the former take place” (Elliott, 1995). Praxialism sets out a vision on music that goes beyond the musical work and includes the meanings and values of those involved (Silverman, Davis & Elliott, 2014). The concept allowed me to examine the work and emerging relationships as a result of devising co-creative musicking from an ethical perspective. Given the subject’s relative newness and rather unexplored status, I examined existing work empirically through an ethnographic approach (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Four cases were selected where data was gathered through episodic interviewing (Flick, 2009) and participant observation. Elements of a constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014) were used for performing an abductive analysis. The analysis included initial coding, focused coding, 6 the use of sensitizing concepts (Blumer 1969 in Hammersley, 2013) and memoing. I wrote a thick description (Geertz, 1973) for each case portraying the work from my personal experience. The descriptions are included in the dissertation as one separate chapter and foreshadow the exposition of the analysis in a next chapter. In-depth study of the creative-productive processes of the cases showed the involvement of multiple co-creative elements, such as a dialogical interaction between musicians and audience. However, participants’ contributions were often adopted implicitly, through the musicians interpreting behaviour and situations. This created a particular power dynamic and challenges as to what extent the negotiation can be considered co-creative. The implicitness of ‘making use’ of another person’s behaviour with the other not (always) being aware of this also triggered an ethical perspective, especially because some of the cases involved participants that were vulnerable. The imbalance in power made me examine the relationship that emerges between musicians and participants. As a result of a closer contact in the co-creative negotiation, I witnessed a contact of a highly personal, sometimes intimate, nature. I recognized elements of two types of connections. One type could be called ‘humanistic’, as a friendship in which there is reciprocal care and interest for the other. The other could be seen as ‘functional’, which means that the relationship is used as a resource for providing input for the creative musicking process. From this angle, I have compared the relationship with that of a relationship of an artist with a muse. After having examined the co-creative and relational sides of the interaction in the four cases, I tuned in to the musicians’ contribution to these processes and relationships. I discovered that their devising in practice consisted of a continuous double balancing act on two axes: one axis considers the other and oneself as its two ends. Another axis concerns the preparedness and unpredictability at its ends. Situated at the intersection of the two axes are the musicians’ intentionality, which is fed by their intentions, values and ethics.

Load more