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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2006 A Circle of Friends: Informal Musicking within an Old-Time Music Community Trevor S. Harvey
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COLLEGE OF MUSIC
A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS:
INFORMAL MUSICKING WITHIN AN OLD-TIME MUSIC COMMUNITY
By
TREVOR S. HARVEY
A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music
Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Trevor S. Harvey All Rights Reserved The members of the Committee approve the thesis of Trevor S. Harvey defended on Friday, March 24, 2006.
______Michael B. Bakan Professor Directing Thesis
______Frank Gunderson Committee Member
______Amy Koehlinger Committee Member
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
ii For Quinter and Annika and all the musicking you do
iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This thesis is the result of the efforts of many people who (often unknowingly) have inspired and helped me, and have taught me about what it means to music. In particular, I am grateful to Kate, Gus, Tom, Helen, Gary, Rose, Charles, and other participants of the Tallahassee-based old- time jam sessions in which I have taken part over the past two years.
Much of what has gone into this thesis comes from the great deal I have learned from my friends, colleagues, and mentors at Florida State University. The instruction I have received from the Musicology faculty in general, and my committee in particular, has been crucial to my development as a scholar and my ability to undertake this thesis topic. I am grateful to Amy Koehlinger, who has been very generous with her encouragement; Frank Gunderson, whose enthusiasm always resulted in new understandings; and Michael Bakan, my advisor, who continually motivated and challenged me, at times working harder than I. Additionally, I would like to thank my fellow student colleagues, particularly to Robbie Fry, Jason McCoy, and Fransisco Lara who have each given of their time to endless discussions and thoughtful feedback on my writing.
Finally, I am grateful to my family for all their love and encouragement. My parents, Jim and Marva, have been encouraging, as always, of my work. Of course, this project would never have been possible without the full and constant support of my devoted wife, Sara. Her patience, encouragement, and understanding helped carry me through moments of frustration and inspired me at every step.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii CD TRACK LIST...... viii ABSTRACT ...... ix
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION...... 1 Thesis Statement ...... 3 Review of Literature...... 4 Old-Time Music...... 4 Informal Musical Communities ...... 5 Cross-cultural Studies of Informal Music-making...... 7 Theoretical Approach...... 8 Ritual Theory and Musicking ...... 9 Informal Musicking as Ritual ...... 10 Methodology ...... 12 Structure of Thesis...... 14
CHAPTER 2: INFORMAL MUSICKING IN A TALLAHASSEE OLD-TIME MUSICAL COMMUNITY ...... 16 The Value of Informality...... 19 “That's good enough to go on stage” ...... 20 “It ain't old-time music if it's too good”...... 23 Participation and Familiarity ...... 24 “Ever hear of ‘Ragtime Annie?’” ...... 24 “I like the slow jams”...... 29 “I never quite got the…feel to it” ...... 34 Music Theory in Practice: Performance and Embodiment ...... 36 “I don't…understand how it works” ...... 37 “Just when I was startin' to get it!” ...... 40
CHAPTER 3: THE PROCESS OF INFORMAL MUSICKING...... 43
v (Re)creating Ritual ...... 44 The Process of Informal Musicking ...... 45 “Pull up a chair and join in”...... 46 “It's the process” ...... 48 “What key is it in?”...... 49
CHAPTER 4: THE ‘TALLAHASSEE OLD-TIME JAM’ AS AN IDEALIZED COMMUNITY ...... 53 Communication and Community ...... 54 Musical and Social Performances ...... 57 The Play of Informal Musicking...... 57 Embedding Meaning...... 59
APPENDIX A: HUMAN SUBJECTS APPROVAL FORMS...... 61 REFERENCES ...... 64 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 71
vi LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Participants at the Tallahassee old-time jam...... 19
Figure 2: “What the heck is old-time music?” cartoon...... 24
Figure 3: Kate playing the mountain dulcimer ...... 31
Figure 4: “There ain't no notes” T-shirt...... 36
Figure 5: Charles (mandolin) and Gary (dulcimer)...... 46
Figure 6: Gus playing the banjo...... 48
Figure 7: Gary playing the mountain dulcimer...... 59
vii CD TRACK LIST
Track 1: “Yellow Rose of Texas”...... 18
Track 2: “Angelina Baker” ...... 20
Track 3: “Colored Aristocracy”...... 25
Track 4: “Colored Aristocracy”...... 33
Track 5: “Southwind” ...... 34
Track 6: “Red-haired Boy” ...... 35
Track 7: “Midnight on the Water”...... 38
Track 8: “Golden Slippers”...... 40
Track 9: “Waterbound”...... 50
Track 10: “Waterbound”...... 51
Track 11: “Happy Days”...... 51
viii ABSTRACT
In this thesis, I explore social and musical processes between participants of old-time jam sessions in Tallahassee, Florida. As an alternate perspective to the song-and artist-oriented scholarship of old-time music, I propose a contextual approach by examining how the informal nature of these jam sessions allows for active participation in the musicking activity and the community-building experience that grows out of the jam sessions. I present a series of ethnographic vignettes, taken from two-years of participant-based fieldwork experiences and include transcribed dialog and field note extracts, which are then followed by analytical commentary. The vignettes are grouped into three emergent themes: informality, familiarity, and embodiment. Through the theoretical lens of ritual theory, I investigate the egalitarian and anti- commodification orientation of the jam session participants. Ultimately, by focusing on the musicking process (individual action and interpersonal interaction) over the musical product (how “good” or “bad” a particular song sounded), these musicians construct an alternate, transformative social reality that reflects an idealized notion of musical and social communities.
ix CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Wednesday nights, seven o’clock p.m., School of Arts and Sciences, Tallahassee, Florida. Four or five (or six or seven) adults, sitting on chairs and sofas arranged in a sloppy circle, converse with one another. With mandolins, banjos, guitars, fiddles, and dulcimers, they weave songs in and out of their conversations about daily life, with conversation topics ranging from employment to personal health to public politics. The ‘Wednesday night jam session’ (or ‘Tallahassee slow jam’ or ‘old-time jam’—there is no official name for these get-togethers) may not take place on a Wednesday night, nor is it always held at the School of Arts and Sciences. The informality of this musical community allows it to adapt to changing circumstances of place, time, and participants. Yet, despite shifting time and place, disruptions to routine schedules, and lapses in attendance (where participants may show up after months, or even a year, of absence), this loosely-knit circle of friends have maintained this musical community for several years, all the while drawing upon a fairly limited repertoire of old-time music. The jam sessions are casual, informal get-togethers that, despite the sometimes private gathering space of a participant’s home, are open and welcoming to new and visiting participants.
These particular jam sessions grew out of a dulcimer workshop that Kate and Gus1 held several years ago at the School for the Arts and Sciences in Tallahassee, Florida. Kate, the director of the school’s before-and-after school programs, and Gus, her husband and employee of the before-and-after school programs, have actively pursued interactive and participatory musical
1. Throughout this thesis the participants will be referred to by first name only.
1 projects with the children in the program. The success of the dulcimer workshop, in which children (and their parents) built cardboard mountain dulcimers from kits, led to the establishment of a weekly jam session, which offered an informal, social environment for continued musical experiences. Over time, attendance of the children waned, but the adults persisted. Other friends and members of the community were invited to participate, and Kate openly publicized the jam sessions through the Friends of Florida Folk (FOFF) network.
My research is rooted in more than two years of participatory fieldwork with the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam.’2 I came to be aware of the group through the FOFF website,3 which has listings of recurring musical gatherings throughout the state of Florida, and consequently contacted Kate about attending the next jam session. At the time, I had been focusing my research toward a study of informal musical communities, and within a few weeks of attending the jam sessions, it became apparent to me that the informal environment and participatory nature of these musical gatherings could provide a valuable subject for my Master’s thesis. The experiences and ideas that are presented in this thesis emerged from of the musical and social interaction I have had in the past two years with the other participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community.4
2. During my two years of involvement, the weekly sessions were reduced to semimonthly meetings and, in a recent turn of events, the group is no longer able to meet at the School of Arts and Sciences. Jam sessions are held frequently, though irregularly, in various places, including coffee shops, public parks, and the private homes of individual participants. 3. http://www.foff.org/ 4. Besides Kate, who plays dulcimer, and Gus, who plays banjo, other key participants discussed in this thesis are Helen (hammered dulcimer) and her husband Gary (dulcimer), Tom (guitar), Rose (dulcimer), Charles (mandolin), and Alan (a pseudonym; mandolin and fiddle). While these individuals make up the core group of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam,’ many other people participate, some frequently, others only occasionally.
2 Thesis Statement
This thesis is an investigation of musical activity and social interaction within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community. Through transcriptions of conversations, excerpts from field notes, ethnographic description, and close analytical interpretation of jam session events, I will explore how ideas of informality, familiarity, and embodiment help to create a ritual process in which musicking enables the creation of a temporary, alternate social reality for the participants of this community. The informal orientation of these old-time jam sessions is characterized by an emphasis on spontaneity, rather than rigid structure, and an avoidance of centralized leadership through non-competitive cooperation.5 The emphasis described above facilitates the exploration of a broader set of social values and ideals premised by social processes that sustain their musical community. For the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions, informality promotes musical and social interaction, and participation in the musicking process itself is valued much more highly than the resulting musical product, per se. This emphasis on process over product is a catalyst for the enactment of a transformative, idealized musical community.
Throughout this thesis, as in the above paragraph, I utilize the term “musicking” to emphasize the processual nature of musical performance within the old-time jam sessions. Musicking, as defined by Christopher Small, is “to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing” (Small 1998, 9). Following a historical overview of scholarship regarding old-time musical communities and informal musicking, I will provide a further discussion of the theory of musicking and ritual processes as related to this thesis.
5. Theories of “communities of practice,” which provide a similar perspective to my investigation of informal musical communities, is explored by Brown and Duguid (1991), Wenger (1998), and Laat and Simons (2002).
3 Review of Literature
While this thesis is concerned with investigating informal musicking among this specific community of musicians, it is necessary to situate the study within the academic literature relating to both the musical and social context of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam.’ Thus, I will first provide a historical background for old-time music and its treatment in scholarly literature. I will then turn my focus to reviewing literature that deals with the social context of this particular musical community. I will show how my study builds upon and departs from other scholars’ views on community musical practices and informal music-making, both in the context of old- time music (and related genres) and in a cross-cultural perspective.
Old-Time Music
The term “old-time music” first came into common usage in the 1920’s—the early years of the commercial recording industry—in a marketing effort to distinguish southern, traditional vocal and string-band music from newly-composed, popular songs. Old-time music, which was also called hillbilly music (and later country music), often included newly composed songs in the style of the “old familiar tunes,” as the Columbia 15000-D series of recordings were labeled (Malone 2002, 39). Today old-time music is perhaps best understood as an umbrella term for American folk music stemming from English, Irish, Cajun, and African American musical sources, yet rooted in the Appalachian Mountains (Rosenberg 1985; Seeger 2003). Considered the foundation for country and bluegrass, old-time music is distinguished by its non-commercial, “backwoods” associations (Seeger 2003), despite its initial usage as a marketing label by the commercial recording industry.
Research on old-time music has been dominated by two central themes—repertoire (Christeson 1973; Goertzen 1985; Titon 2001) and biography (Bronner 1987; Titon 1991; Wolfe 1997)—giving preference to the “old familiar tunes” and the “old-timers” who play them.6 Another research area, to which scholars have given much attention, is concerned with festivals
6. Regardless of the focus, it is common to include repertoire lists either within the text or as appendixes, for example, see Anderson-Green (2002) and Cauthen (1989).
4 and contests (Adler 1985; Cauthen 1989; Daniel 1980; Goertzen 1988; Goertzen 1996; Rosenberg 1985; Wolfe 1997).7 This third area of focus, however, may be seen as a conflation of the first two. Repertoire provides the material for contests, the results of which determine musicians worthy of folklorists attention.
These artist-oriented and song-oriented studies on old-time music are what Charles Wolfe refers to as “vertical approaches” (1974), in that they offer a historical lens into the development of repertoire and style, but fail to contextualize their subjects within the broader cultural milieu. The “limitations in artist-oriented and song-oriented approaches,” Wolfe argues, fail to “tell us much about the social, economic, and cultural context which produced these folk performances” (1974, 66–67). Indeed, these vertical approaches to the study of old-time music obscure some of the more important aspects concerning the social context of old-time musical activity: the value of informal, open participation and the primacy of community.
Informal Musical Communities
By focusing on community we move away from the vertical approaches critiqued by Wolfe and instead focus upon the social context of community music. In Peter Dykema’s classic definition, he argues that community music is “socialized music,” that is, music “for the people, of the people, and by the people” (1916, 218).8 In other words, community music must be participatory, a condition which allows musicians to establish and maintain the social values of a given community.
While research on community music has been undertaken by scholars in music education, the focus has been primarily on evaluating the effectiveness of curricular music programs in increasing participation in non-curricular, community-based music.9 In the context of these studies, informal music-making generally refers to non-curricular musical activity. Ann Marie White takes what she calls informal music participation (or “IMP”) a step beyond the mere
7. Folk festivals have grown out of old-time fiddling conventions, and the main draw of many festivals today, if not the “headliner” musicians, are the contests. 8. socialism and capitalism 9. See Bowen (1995), King (2001), Mark (1996), Waggoner (1971), and White (2002).
5 involvement in non-curricular (or voluntary) music participation to something “that occurs during children’s free-time and that children initiate, control, and organize” (2002, 12.). If we substitute “people” for “children,” White’s interest in IMP bears similarity to Dykema’s definition of community music. Thus, we see informal participation as a vital aspect of community-based musical activity.
Scholars of bluegrass music have explored informal music-making within the context of jam sessions. Neil Rosenberg (1985) and Michelle Kisliuk both note the importance of “informal jam sessions in the campground[s] or parking lot[s]” (Kisliuk 1988, 141) of bluegrass festivals—old- time folk music festivals share a similar jam session phenomenon. The title of Richard Smith’s Bluegrass: an Informal Guide (1995) plays off of the perception of bluegrass as an informal musical activity, a view that is shared by many scholars of bluegrass music.10 However, each of these studies fails to fully demonstrate standards of informality due to the “special kind of courtesy” that Kisliuk argues is vital to the creation and sustainability of the “temporary, transcendent [musical] community” (1988, 154). This “special kind of courtesy” is echoed in Smith’s advice to bluegrass novices to "try to find a session that is not too far above your abilities” and to “join in if it seems appropriate, but stay out if it seems closed” (Smith 1995, 229). This limitation to the open, participatory nature of (what I mean by) informal musical communities is, in part, rooted in the “covert competitions…[in] the semi-public setting of the festival parking lot” (1985, 10). Indeed, as Thomas Adler notes, “a close scrutiny of the interchanges that occur when banjoists [or guitarists, or fiddlers, etc.] get together will often reveal a sort of ritualized competition” (1985, 10). For the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old- time jam’ musical community, these “covert competitions” may undermine the informal environment and instead create a complex social and musical hierarchy in which order must be maintained, without which the experience may “disintegrate into the depths of bad music” (Kisliuk 1988, 154). Thus, rather than an informal musical process of the degree explored in this thesis, these scholars have revealed concepts of impromptu performance—or as Robert Cantwell (1984) describes it, extemporaneous improvisation—which does not necessarily connote
10. Besides Kisliuk (1988), Rosenberg (1985), and Smith (1995), see also Adler (1985), Bealle (1993), and Rosenberg (1983).
6 informality. The informal character of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ is concerned neither with “covert competition” nor with “bad music,” opting instead for non-competitive, open participation.
Cross-cultural Studies of Informal Music-making
Parallels may be drawn between the Wednesday night jam session community examined in this thesis and music cultures with informal music-making environments described in ethnomusicological literature. Thomas Turino explains that among the Ayamara of Peru “music is judged on the quality of the social relations and total experience that it engenders as much as on the quality of sound produced” (2004, 250). This processual and participatory approach is also highlighted by John Miller Chernoff, who explains that in Africa “without participation, there is no meaning…the music of Africa invites us to participate in the making of a community" (1979, 23). With an emphasis on the overall social experience, participation, as a goal of the music-making process, is evidenced in that “Ayamara musicians do not usually comment on or correct other players in their group so as not to offend them” (Turino 2004, 250). Colin Turnbull found among the BaMbuti in Central Africa that "the Pygmies seemed bound by few set rules. [The BaMbuti display] a general pattern of behavior to which everyone more or less conformed, but with great latitude given and taken” (1961, 80). So, while social constraints exist in participatory musical communities, community cohesion is maintained by and balanced with individual agency within informal musical processes.
John Blacking, while noting that the music object serves as the focus of analysis, suggests a processual stance toward music research. In his work among the Venda of South Africa, Blacking discovered the value of investigating musical process, rather than focusing on the musical object. Indeed, the significance of musical interaction as social process within a community is evident in Blacking’s assertion that “art lives in men and women, to be brought out into the open by special processes of interaction. Thus the signs have no meaning until that meaning is shared, so that the processes of sharing become as crucial to the semiotics of music as the sonic product which provides the focus of analysis” (Blacking 1995, 225).
7 Theoretical Approach
While informed and influenced by many of the works discussed in the preceding review of literature, this thesis offers a theoretically distinct approach to the study of musical performance, that is, to the conditions within which one engages with music and the terms of that engagement. In this section, I will draw upon theoretical works which inform a processual perspective of musical performance and the ritual practice of informal musicking.
While the subjects of my thesis may be considered “amateur musicians,” in the sense that they receive no income from performing music and lack “certifiable” or professional training, I instead propose the term “informal musicians,” for reasons outlined below. Despite an earlier age when amateur musicians were held in high regard11 and the word “amateur” was still associated with its Latin root amare (to love), present-day connotations of “amateur” (particularly within the music conservatory, but also in popular usage) impress upon the mind images of the less-skilled, and therefore less-desirable and less-respected, musician. “Informal,” on the other hand, avoids valuation of the subject altogether and places our focus on social context of the musical activity.12 Informal musicians may lie anywhere along the professional–amateur–non- musician continuum, because the designation “informal” is contextually driven by the environment in which the musical activity takes place. Additionally, “informal” suggests broad accessibility with regards to participation, resulting in a removal of the audience-performer demarkation and re-emphasizing the community basis for musical activity.
Christopher Small’s aforementioned book, Musicking (1998), provides a foundational perspective for understanding the community basis of informal musical activity. First, Small’s definition of musicking13 allows for the inclusion of non-music-generating activities as part of the musical activity (i.e., dancing or listening). This is reflected in the open participation of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community and my inclusion of the participants’
11. See Clarke (1935), Kalisch (1932), Nistner (1932), Schauffler (1911), and Shera (1939). 12. What Eric Clarke (1935) calls “true amateurs” could be considered informal musicians in that they are “untroubled by the thought of what their singing [or playing] may sound like, because they have for the moment made a[n experiential] discovery” (1935, 85). 13. See “Thesis Statement” (page 3).
8 conversations as a vital part of the musical performance. Second, musicking provides a process- centered approach to musical scholarship. The basic premise that “music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do” (Small 1998, 2) places our focus on human activity, rather than the musical product.
The participatory nature of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community allows for the embodiment of musical symbols that are collectively shared and used to create individualized meanings. In this regard, John Blacking’s work among the Venda of southern Africa provides insight into a participatory approach where “all human beings are capable of musical performance” (1973, 34). In fact, according to Blacking, “the simplicity or complexity of the music is ultimately irrelevant” (1973, 33), which is also a truism for the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community. For the Venda, according to Blacking, the value of music is to be found in its “functional effectiveness” (1973, 33). For the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, the value of musicking depends on its ability to reflect the social processes that sustain the musical community and to be woven into the daily lives of the participants. Thus, for these participants, I believe that meaning-making takes place within the process of musicking. Informality frees them from the expectations of the creator/consumer or audience/performer dichotomy, and thus allows for active participation in the musical performance. Ritual theory will provide a useful lens through which I will explore how music is made meaningful in this particular context of informal musicking.
Ritual Theory and Musicking
That musicking constitutes ritual is a central feature of Small’s theory of musicking. His investigation of the processual nature of music is demonstrated through his portrayal of a typical Western classical orchestra concert, in which he describes the complexity and intentionality of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the homogeneity of apparel and posture, and the rigidity and specificity of the musical score. (The latter is a model that requires literacy for maintaining fidelity to a tradition of interpretation of the former.) Considering Rappaport’s definition of ritual as “the
9 performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers” (1999, 24), we see that Small’s example clearly fits the formalized, performative requirements for ritual.
The definition of ritual is a contested space in the literature of anthropology, religion, and social theory. Many theories of ritual are entrenched in the structural-functionalism of Émile Durkheim (1995), who viewed ritual as a religious practice meant to sustain social order by integrating the practitioner into the social structure. Max Gluckman (1965; 1991), in extending the functionalist side of Durkheim’s approach, focused on the role of ritual in establishing and maintaining social relationships and bonds. Regarding ritual as social action, he brought a sense of fluidity to the definition of ritual, extending its meaning to incorporate the secular, as well as the sacred. Ritual theory is thus used to describe and explain a variety of cultural phenomena with a functional, and perhaps communicative, purpose. Generally, definitions of ritual indicate a patterned, performative action, which is often demarcated from everyday life. Catherine Bell (1992; 1997) points out that any universal definition of ritual is problematic, because performative actions are culturally implicated. In this regard, any definition of ritual must emphasize the performative and processual nature of the phenomenon.
Informal Musicking as Ritual
One problem with many definitions of ritual is that it is assumed to be conventionalized, formalized, and specified. If “prescribed formal behavior” (Turner 1967, 19), to which Small’s example neatly conforms, is a crucial concern in the identification of ritual, how should informally oriented processes of musicking be understood as ritual? While Small acknowledges the existence of informal ritual, his illustration clearly stays within the formalized space carved out by theorists of sacred and secular ritual.14 The improvisational and familiar interactions of the participants at the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions seem to be at odds with notions of ritual as formal, precise, stereotyped, and conventionalized. The tendency of ritual theorists to juxtapose formalized ritual with improvised mundanity, aiding the scholar in identifying the demarcation
14. Besides Rappaport (1999) and Turner (1967), see Tambiah (1985).
10 of ritual space, has been aptly challenged by Saba Mahmood (2001), who explored the continuance of spontaneity and individuality in ritual, and thereby suggests escaping distinctions between conventional and spontaneous behavior in ritual processes. In common with Mahmood, my intention here is not to challenge existing definitions or notions of ritual. Rather, my point is to demonstrate the simultaneity of formalized ritual and spontaneous activity, and thus the coexistence of transcendent and politicized experience, within the musicking process of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions.
Influenced by, and responding to, both Durkheim and Gluckman, and borrowing from Arnold van Gennep’s work on the liminal phase in rites of passage (1960), Victor Turner developed a processual theory of ritual (1967; 1969). Based on his field experience with Ndembu initiation rites in southern Africa, Turner employs a Lévi-Straussian model of binary opposites to explicate “communitas,” the unstructured liminal phase of ritual that he claims stands in stark contrast to Durkheim’s notion of “solidarity” (1969, 132). Where solidarity supports and justifies existing social structure and power relations, communitas provides the means to transcend social structure, and thus transform social experience, and by extension, society itself.
For Turner, communitas stands as the anti-structure to the social structure of everyday life; it emerges in a “moment in and out of time” (1969, 96) where “social structure is not” (1969, 126). Within the context of the Ndembu rituals, and from the perspective of Turner’s theory of ritual process, the use of binary opposites is broadly applied in a cyclical manner in which “social life is a type of dialectical process that involves successive experiences of high and low, [or] communitas and structure” (1969, 97). However, my experiences with the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community has provided a microcosmic view into the bifurcation of communitas and structure within the ritual process, in which the “dialectical process” of ritual is not any more “successive” than it is simultaneous. In this simultaneity of structure and anti-structure of the informal musicking process, community results not from the absence of social structure, but from the symbolic actions, or more specifically, interactions, of the individual participants.
The informal protocol of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions is a process in which musical tunes and conversations of daily life are interwoven, as the participants (sometimes independently) move between conversing, noodling, and playing a tune, creating a multiplicity
11 of activities that coexist in the relatively unstructured environment. Noodling, the impromptu and improvisational playing of a musical instrument, is defined by its casual nature in that individual participants may noodle and converse simultaneously; thus, noodling often serves as a bridge between conversations and tune-playing with in the jam session. Additionally, as an improvisational and individual activity, noodling occupies the space between, and provides a contrast to, group-oriented conversations and tunes. These activities do not exist in linear or causal order, but often overlap in simultaneous fashion.
Methodology
Historically, ethnomusicologists have considered fieldwork as the defining method of ethnomusicological research and ethnography as the scholarly achievement of successful field research through which the academic presents his or her collected data and analytical findings. However, in recent decades critical questions have emerged among anthropologists concerning the objectivist stance of descriptive ethnography (most notably in Clifford and Marcus 1986). This has led to a rethinking of research methodology and theoretical perspective.15 Experimental approaches to fieldwork and ethnographic writing emerged in anthropology, reshaping how ethnomusicologists positioned themselves vis-á-vis the field (the experience) and ethnography (the scholarly interpretation of the field experience) ( see Barz and Cooley 1997). The advocation of subjective methods in ethnomusicological literature, such as phenomenology and reflexivity (see Rice 1994; Bakan 1999), allows for a “focus on the performative aspects of culture, and our ability to engage music and individuals through substantive participation” (Cooley 1997, 5). This participatory lens, I believe, provides a basis for experiencing and relating the process of informal musicking as practiced by the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, because music, like culture, is something enacted (practiced or performed) and therefore is best seen as a process in which the ethnomusicologist takes part. Indeed, the very shadows we are chasing “in the field” and “at home” (during the writing process) (Barz and
15. For example, see Jackson (1989), Jackson (1996), Jackson (1998), Turner and Bruner (1986), Turner and Schechner (1986), and Turner and Turner (1985).
12 Cooley 1997) are the products (the musical objects), which are cast by individuals enacting culture (musicking). And so it is, from a processual perspective, that I have endeavored to align my research methods and writing approach to what Mary E. McGann calls “intentional participation” (McGann 2002).
At the commencement of my fieldwork I followed what I understood to be standard methodological procedures—jotting down observations during jam sessions on a small notepad, asking probing questions, and conducting personal interviews—but I quickly reassessed my approach, finding the typical “tools of the trade” to be inadequate, even at odds with my experiences in the informal environment of the old-time jam sessions. While fully aware that my presence at the jam sessions would “alter the normal flow of human action and interaction” (Bakan 1999, 13), I was not prepared for the disruption that even the most subtle note-taking would cause. Not only were formal interviews failing to provide the understanding and insight I had hoped for, but I eventually found the entire interviewing process quite stilted and scripted (both in terms of my questions and their answers), and far removed from the informal environment of the jam session, making it clear to me that I had to find a different approach. This approach to fieldwork, focusing on my performative and interactional experiences as a “participatory participant-observer” (Shelemay 1997) in an organic and improvisatory manner, is a processual approach. Like “radical empiricism” (Jackson 1989), this processual approach follows an ad hoc methodology, which is grounded not only “in the actual events, objects, and interpersonal relationships” (Jackson 1989, 2) of the fieldwork experience, but the ethnographer’s interactions within that world.
Ethnomusicological fieldwork is rooted in “participant observation” (Myers 1992) and nearly every ethnomusicologist reasserts their position as a participant-observer in the introductory chapter of their book. Indeed, the dichotomy offered by participant-observation allows the ethnomusicologist to claim an empirical basis for her research, while simultaneously validating the “scientific, systematic and sympathetic investigation of [music]” (Myers 1992, 31). However, the redundancy in Shelemay’s idea of ethnomusicological fieldwork as “truly participatory participant-observation” suggests a leaning away from “observer as participant” (Myers 1992, 29) toward “observation [as] an integral part of participation” (McGann 2002, 45). As Nicole
13 Beaudry (1997) notes, the delineation between participation and observation is not always clear; “watching” is an integral part of social interaction, and therefore constitutes participation in the social event, just as musicking is not excluded to actions directly linked to the creation of sonic phenomena. So, leaving my notepad and recording devices behind, I came to the jam sessions with nothing more than a dulcimer in hand and an interest in musicking informally. In retrospect, it might be more accurate to call my approach “fieldplay,” rather than fieldwork or field research, and my role “intentional participant,” rather than “participant-observer.”
This does not mean that observation and analysis are absent from the research process. Just as intentional participation dominated the fieldwork component of my research, intentional observation was the focus of my post-fieldwork analysis of the experience. In the latter stages of the fieldwork process, I began video recording the jam sessions with an unattended video camera perched atop a tripod in a corner of the room in order to document, and later transcribe, conversations and interactions among the participants. While the experiential aspect of musicking calls for a reflexive ethnographic approach, my fieldwork experience is best reflected in an ethnography in which the voices of the other participants drive the ethnography by providing context and content. Thus, I seek a critical balance between playing a “bit player” (Titon 1997) in the presentation of the jam sessions, while becoming a “central character” (Bakan 1999, 17) in the framing and interpretation of those events.
Structure of Thesis
The remainder of this thesis consists of three chapters. In Chapter 2, I present thematically organized vignettes from the informal jam sessions at the School of Arts and Sciences. The dialogue, which I transcribed from field recordings, is formatted as a script with a cast of characters and is interwoven with narrative commentary, which is presented in italics within brackets. Essentially provided as descriptive fieldnotes, each vignette is followed by reflective commentary, a contribution of “headnotes” (Ottenberg 1990)—the unwritten memories and impressions that remain with the ethnographer from the field experience. As “un-texted” memories of experiences, headnotes are in constant flux, subject to revision and reinterpretation,
14 and existing only within the mind of the ethnographer. My aim is to evoke a sort of polyphonic discourse (Tyler 1986) in which the simultaneity of multiple conversations and thought processes are reflected in the juxtaposition of transcribed dialogue and “texted” headnotes. My purpose in this is to reflect the performative approach to my fieldwork and foreground the interactive and participatory environment of my field experience in the ethnographic text by “facilitating an interpretation that is never final, but [is] always engaged in an ongoing process of re-evaluation” (1997, 57). Stephen A. Tyler helped point the field toward this discursive approach in ethnography: Because post-modern ethnography privileges “discourse” over “text,” it foregrounds dialogue as opposed to monologue, and emphasizes the cooperative and collaborative nature of the ethnographic situation in contrast to the ideology of the transcendental observer. (1986, 127)
The ethnographic experience related through the vignettes in Chapter 2 is divided into three themes: informality, familiarity, and embodiment. Chapter 3 builds upon these concepts and provides further investigation of the ritualized jam sessions and the participants’ resistance to the commodification of music through the privileging of active participation. I then present additional ethnographic material, through which I hope to illuminate communicative and interpersonal processes evident in the jam sessions.
In Chapter 4, I briefly return to the ritual theory outlined earlier in this chapter in order to further discuss the interrelated processes of musical and conversational actions within the jam sessions. Drawing upon perspectives offered by scholars of performance studies and play theory, I explore the duality of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions as simultaneously a transcendent ritual and a politicized process in which idealized notions of community are enacted and meaning is embedded into the participants’ lives.
15 CHAPTER 2
INFORMAL MUSICKING IN A TALLAHASSEE OLD-TIME MUSICAL COMMUNITY
In this chapter, I present transcribed dialogs along with descriptive narrative, which relate typical scenarios that arose during my involvement with the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community. I transcribed the dialogs from video and audio recordings I made of several jam sessions over a nine-month period. Through the use of these transcribed ‘fieldnotes,’ interspersed with ‘headnotes,’16 I explore three central analytical/interpretive themes—informality, familiarity, and embodiment—relative to informal musicking that emerged from my experience with the participants of the jam sessions.
[Wednesday night. 7:00 p.m. The School of Arts and Sciences, Tallahassee, Florida. G!"#, G$%, and R&%' sit towards each other while they unpack their instruments and tune them with the aid of electronic tuners. I set my video camera to record and take a seat on the opposite side of the sofa from G!"#. Someone I have never seen before sleeps on another sofa that is, more or less, within the circle. My camera is perched atop a tripod I set outside the circle. T&( drives up and G$% adjusts his chair, and the chair next to him, to make room for T&(. I get up to adjust the camera to make sure the entire circle is within the frame.]
16. See Chapter 1, “Structure of Thesis” for an explanation of headnotes and their relationship to the fieldnotes.
16 R&%':[To me, laughing somewhat nervously, as if a comedy of awkward behavior is before her] What are you doing?
T&(:[To me, entering through the door] Don’t tell me you’re recording this!
G$%: Smile! You’re on candid camera!
G!"#: It’s Tom!
[As T&( gets settled, G$% is working through passages of “Yellow Rose of Texas” on his banjo. Having recently lost his job, T&( recounts his day applying for new employment. G$% chimes in with stories from his day of protesting the Bush administration downtown, just outside the State Capitol. The conversation continues with a discussion of politics and the upcoming presidential election.]
G$%:[Turning to me and pointing to my video camera] Is your machine working? [a slight pause, while everyone turns to the camera] You’re going to get us all arrested.
[I chuckle nervously, stammering out an explanation of the video recording that might assuage any concerns, unsure of the the seriousness of G$%’ comment.]
T&(: Are we being videoed or audioed?
T"')&": Video.
T&(: It will be interesting to see the DVD.
[Abruptly breaking off the politically charged conversation that has thus far been drowning out the music, G$% begins playing “Yellow Rose of Texas” loudly, seemingly with the intention of drawing everyone together in playing music. I return to my seat and situate my dulcimer upon my lap.]
R&%': Why are you videoing this instead of recording [audio only]? To practice?
T&(: He wants to be able to see your fingers.
17 [T&( joins G$% on guitar, punching the harmonic changes. G!"# and R&%' begin to play chords on their dulcimers, while I try plucking out the mildly familiar melody. A few seconds later G$% gets a little tripped up and T&( stops. Everyone else breaks for a couple seconds until G$% continues on. Within a few seconds everyone is back on track and we play the tune for a couple of minutes more before stopping.]17
T&(: Who's this? [pointing at the man laying on the couch sleeping, snoring.]
G$%: This is Antonio. He's like...he's going to school and working [for the after school program at the School for the Arts and Sciences] and he's just tired. He's snoring.
T&(: We're not making enough noise for him.
[Laughter from the group.]
The participatory nature of these jam sessions is dependent upon a relaxed and open atmosphere, where anyone, even the snoring Antonio, is welcome and included within the circle. Informality drives participation, and a familiarity with the environment provides the comfort necessary to sustain the informal setting. (While both were threatened by the presence of my video camera, the anxiety over my video recording soon faded and a comfortable, informal environment was re-established.). Familiarity is developed through a process of physical action and interaction, or embodiment, and video recording the jam sessions freed me up to capture an experiential glimpse of informal musicking. This intentionally participatory experience, combined with observational analysis of the recordings, provides a basis for exploring how informality, familiarity, and embodiment affect and are affected by the particular sentiments of the individual participants and the group as a whole, and how these concepts bring the members of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community into participatory involvement.
17. CD Track 1, “Yellow Rose of Texas”
18 Figure: 1 Participants at the Tallahassee old-time jam. Clockwise from left: Gus (banjo), Tom (guitar), Rose (dulcimer), Gary (dulcimer), Trevor (dulcimer), Antonio (bottom of frame, sleeping under his jacket).
The Value of Informality
For the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam,’ group participation—not merely one’s own involvement, but the participation of all members of the community—is essential to the enjoyment of musicking. Informality is a key element of increasing participation in community- based musical activity, and thus maintaining informality within the musical community is a crucial concern. The jam sessions I participated in were characterized by an informal atmosphere: participants sit, facing each other in a circle, in a relaxed fashion on chairs or couches (although some may occasionally stand); there is no set list of tunes; there are no leaders; there are no particular procedures.
This informal setting is supported by a particular stance toward musical performance—one that evades valuation of the musical performance itself, by avoiding public performance and maintaining a commitment to being not “too good.” While individual positions regarding public performance may differ, the group as a whole does not perform outside of these informal jam sessions, that is, they do not perform on stage in front of an audience. This stance against public performance is reinforced by performative discrepancies, a term which I derive from Charles
19 Keil’s concept of “participatory discrepancies” (1987; 1994; 1995). Performative discrepancies—or what might otherwise be considered mistakes, problems, or imperfections— are supportive of a philosophy that old-time music should not sound “too good,” or it ceases to be old-time music; in other words, for these musicians informal musicking is a non-specialized, participatory act and the aesthetic goal of sounding not “too good” helps achieve these social ideals.
The following vignette elucidates the group’s stance on public performance and performative discrepancies, and how that stance helps maintain informality within the jam sessions.
“That's good enough to go on stage”
[Following R&%'’% suggestion of playing “Angelina Baker,” G$% strikes up the tune, and all five of us (G$%, T&(, G!"#, R&%', and myself) have joined in before the end of the first phrase. G$% stomps out the beat with his bare foot on the linoleum floor. Except for a brief period when R&%' and G!"# drop out about four minutes into the performance to shake out their hands and give their wrists a rest, everyone plays through the entire tune with much enthusiasm, maintaining the sprightly tempo G$% had set from the beginning. No one signals to end the tune, but sensing the fatigue of R&%' and G!"#, everyone ends together.]18
G$%: Well, that was fun.
T&(: That’s good enough to go on stage at the Old Timers’ Convention…
G$%: Not in this lifetime!
T&(: …get a bunch of dulcimer players up there…[gesturing to R&%', G!"#, and me]
G$%: Not in this lifetime.
T&(: You don’t think so?
18. CD Track 2, “Angelina Baker”
20 R&%': Gus, you are such a good banjo player I don’t know why you don’t do that. You’re probably one of the best banjo players I’ve ever known.
G$%: No.
R&%': Yes.
T&(: Oh, listen to this [referring to R&%'’s compliment toward G$%].
G$%: I’ll call you Republican if you keep lyin’!
Gus’ rejection of Rose’s compliment and Tom’s less-than-serious call for a public performance by the group illustrates the resolute commitment to informality on the part of the community. While, as the above dialog demonstrates, the musicians take part in some sort of valuation of their own musical performance, Gus’ reaction displays a deliberate attempt at trivializing valuation in standard terms of musicality. Once musical activity is staged and brought into an audience-performer dichotomization, it is objectified and may be subject to evaluation based on purely musical terms interwound with the spectacle of public performance. For the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ participants, this would defile the integrity of the musicking experience.
I was not surprised by Gus’ response to Tom’s suggestion that the group could perform “Angelina Baker” on stage at an old-time festival. I was well aware of Gus’ disinterest in performing publicly. Months earlier, Gus had shared a childhood story with me that not only explained his personal bias against performing publicly, but also illustrates the problem of public performance as spectacle in his view.
[G$% and I are sitting at a picnic table outside the school. I take advantage of the opportunity to solicit his personal perspective on music, performance, and the old- time jam sessions.]
G$%: Some of us…when I was in kindergarten, my first public performance, I rode my…uh…I was one of the Three Little Pigs. And I was on a tricycle, and I rode my tricycle off the stage. You know, that’s major embarrassment when you’re a little kid and, you know, those things stay with you your whole life. You know, you’re on
21 stage, somethin’ bad’s gonna happen. So…uh…I’ve entered contests before, I’ve played for people before, played for weddings before. But it’s not somethin’ that I’m driven to do at all.
While Gus’ childhood story provides a convenient explanation for his avoidance of public performance, it is of particular interest because it elucidates the issue of public performance as spectacle. Expectations are set for public performance, and failure to meet those expectations is likely to result in embarrassment and disappointment. This evaluation of public performance is either perceived to be or is actually imposed from outside the performance space. In other words, the audience-performer dichotomy may differentiate between those who music, and those who don’t—and those who don’t place evaluative criteria upon a process in which they have no experiential claim. This objective frame of reference alters the definition of music and its derivatives.
For informal musicians, musicality (or musicianship) is not determined in the public sphere of performance, nor can it be reduced to the simple act of playing a tune “right.” In the particular performance of “Angelina Baker” described above many things could be considered not right: Gary and Rose dropping out together to rest their wrists, creating a sudden change in dynamics; my sometimes forgetting the melody or simply playing a wrong note; Tom ending with a strong I-chord on the downbeat one round too early; some unintentional tempo fluctuations.
But none of these issues distracted from the value of the musical experience. While the fluctuation in tempo did create a disparity in timing and groove among the various participants, no one seemed to take much notice. No one looked around to find the groove disrupter, nor did anyone take the lead in reestablishing the groove by punctuating the beat. We played through the section and everyone eventually synched up with each other again. No one looked at me when I hit wrong notes, either. Did they not hear the wrong notes, or did they not care? Nor did anyone look at Tom when he ended early. Everyone did take notice when Gary and Rose dropped out, but the other three (Gus, Tom, and myself) continued to play without hesitation until Gary and Rose joined in again. For all its apparent faults, this was deemed a “good” performance (even a stage worthy one, perhaps). It was deemed “fun,” it captured the right mix of communal togetherness and desirable performative discrepancy.
22 “It ain't old-time music if it's too good”
[The group is playing “Flop-eared Mule.” For eight minutes we continue to cycle through the melody, while some of us improvise harmony lines. There is a feeling of satisfaction as the tune comes to a close.]
T&(: That's sounding really good.
G$%: Uh-oh. We can't let it get too good. You know there's a…some people say that it ain't old-time music if it's too good.
This dialog between Tom and Gus helps us to better understand the evaluative criteria behind the earlier performance of “Angelina Baker.” If the value of musicking lies not in the public performance, but in the private and semi-private communal experience, then Tom’s appraisal of the success of "Angelina Baker" and Rose’s compliment of Gus’ playing are a recognition of something other than accurate musical performance. “Angelina Baker" reinforced the participatory ideals of this informal musicking community, thus making the value of its performance notable.
Because value is placed on participation, the performative discrepancies evident in “Angelina Baker” actually enhance, rather than diminish, the value of the experience. Performative discrepancies, or what Charles Keil calls processual “participatory discrepancies,” relate to ways in which music is intentionally, albeit usually subconsciously, “out of time” and “out of tune” (Keil 1994, 96). While Keil’s concept of participatory discrepancies reflect a subtlety that is almost imperceptible, thus enhancing or creating groove, the discrepancies discussed in relation to the performance of “Angelina Baker” were indeed noticeable, even blatant, and at times were a disruption to the groove. Yet, if these moments of musical mishap keep the performance from being “too good,” they actually serve a useful purpose: to foster an informal atmosphere in which anyone may feel comfortable participating. In other words, performative discrepancies are not only acceptable, but necessary, in maintaining the desired informal, participatory environment. Indeed, “discrepancies pull people into participation” (Keil 2002, 50) by subverting objective evaluation, thus establishing and maintaining the informality necessary to meeting the goals of informal musicking.
23 Figure: 2 “What the heck is old-time music?” cartoon. From “The Old-Time Music Home Page” by David Lynch19
Participation and Familiarity
Besides creating a relaxed, open environment free of objective evaluative criteria, informal musicking, like informal speech, is characterized by simplified structures and familiar vocabulary. Familiarity with the basic materials (tunes) and people with whom one musics is a necessary component for active participation in the jam sessions. The following dialog demonstrates the importance of familiarity, and how familiarity is established and maintained within the performance space.
“Ever hear of ‘Ragtime Annie?’”
[G$% tells the group about his recent visit to an acupuncturist. Everyone listens to his story. There is an uncharacteristic silence in the room when G$% finishes talking. He breaks the silence by picking the tune “Colored Aristocracy” on his banjo. This grabs
19. http://www.oldtimemusic.com/otdef.html
24 our attention and everyone is about to join in when G$% stops to retune. He has had trouble staying in tune all evening. As G$% retunes, T&( suggests we play “Ragtime Annie.”]
T&(: Ever hear of “Ragtime Annie?”
R&%': I think I heard that over the weekend [at the Peach Jam in Jekyll Island, Georgia].
T&(: Yeah, we were doing it at banjo night and Jane [a well-known local folk musician]20 invented a third part [laughter from group]. You know, you’re not going to find it written anyplace. She invented it.
G!"#: She did [a particular tune] and she taught us, oh, three or four years ago or something, and it just bore no resemblance. Very little. I heard it three times through before I realized what she was playing.
T&(: Well, I’ll listen to a couple of things on her CDs, a few tunes and I’ll think, “That ain’t quite it.”
G!"#: Yeah.
T&(: But it was nice. It was still a nice tune and stuff. It just wasn’t quite the same tune.
[G$% finishes retuning and strikes up “Colored Aristocracy” again. I join in while T&(, G!"#, and R&%' continue their conversation. Eventually, T&( joins in playing “Colored Aristocracy,” only to stop moments later after realizing he is playing in the wrong key.]21
Folk songs, or what old-time musicians refer to as “tunes,” are a central concern for both performers and scholars of old-time music. Great old-time musicians are generally deemed such because of the large catalog of tunes they have memorized. Scholars often focus on compiling repertoire lists and tracing the transmission and variation of folk tunes, and noted old-time musicians are often the primary source for folklorists who undertake such research. But for this
20. Jane is a pseudonym. 21. CD Track 3, “Colored Aristocracy”
25 community of informal old-time musicians, a large catalog of tunes may not only be insignificant, but potentially antithetical to their goals of increased participation. Inclusionary performance requires familiarly with the tunes from the participants, and thus a relatively small number of tunes are repeated each week at the jam sessions.
There is no set procedure for the selection of the tunes played during a jam session. Most of the time, the tunes arise out of casual noodling or conversations between the various participants. An individual may spontaneously join another participant’s noodling, which may lead to everyone else joining in. At other times a participant may suggest a tune during and lull in conversation. Sometimes conversations about what tune to play continue on for extended periods of time. Interest in playing a familiar tune is what led to Rose’s suggestion of playing “Angelina Baker” earlier in the evening.
[R&%' begins playing a tune quietly while G$% retunes. G!"# joins in with R&%'. T&( is casually picking through “Ragtime Annie,” but nobody picks it up. G$%, unfamiliar with the last two tunes we have played, apparently does not want to have to struggle through yet another tune he does not know well. G$% interrupts the general noodling.]
G$%: How ’bout, like…uh…one of those tunes that we used to play all the time. Didn’t we write them all down?
R&%': We used to have a list, but I didn’t bring all my junk today. [A pause] “Angelina Baker?”
[G$% jumps at the suggestion and immediately starts off “Angelina Baker.” Everyone else is quick to follow.]22
Tom’s recognition of the success of the group’s performance of “Angelina Baker,” as discussed at the beginning of the chapter, was directly related to the familiarity of the tune. The group’s return to a familiar tune allowed for greater participation from all participants. This process can been seen in the previous vignette. Tom’s noodling of “Ragtime Annie” may have
22. CD Track 2, “Angelina Baker”
26 been an attempt to get the group playing the tune. Because of simultaneous conversations, noodling of different tunes, tuning of instruments, etc., it frequently takes two or three cycles of a tune before everybody joins in.
Rose had only just “heard [‘Ragtime Annie’] over the weekend,” and no one else seemed to know it well. So, Tom’s noodling never developed into a group performance. Likewise, Gary and Rose were playing a tune that they had just learned at a dulcimer camp in Georgia the previous weekend. Gus interrupted these unfamiliar tunes and reunified the group through the familiarity of “Angelina Baker.” This is evidenced by the fact that all participants immediately joined in playing as soon as Gus started “Angelina Baker.”
Issues of familiarity relate not only to tunes, but also to participants in the musical community. Although the community is open to new and visiting musicians and the particular make-up of the group in terms of participants changes from session to session, a certain level of familiarity with the other musicians is necessary to sustain participatory interaction. Being familiar and comfortable with others within the performance space has a direct impact on one’s enjoyment of the musical interaction. Gus elucidated this concept during a private conversation I had with him.
G$%: Yeah, when I play, depending on who it is that I’m playin’ with, sometimes it’s even hard to enjoy playin’, because you’re working, tryin’ to figure out what they’re doing. And, whereas, when you’re playin’ with a group that you play with regularly…it doesn’t matter, ‘cause you know what the person’s gonna do with a particular tune.
The concern for being able to follow what other musicians might do with a particular tune during a jam session was also expressed by Tom and Gary, who both mentioned having difficulty following Jane’s versions of various tunes, because she “invented a third part” or her interpretations “just bore no resemblance” to the version of the tune with which they were familiar. Although it is generally understood that old-time tunes, as part of a “constantly used and evolving” musical tradition (Seeger 2003), may be altered and endlessly varied, Tom, Gary, and Gus each express an expectation that the participants of an informal jam session share a common understanding of how a tune is played.
27 Each of the members of this community also play in other musical communities within the city of Tallahassee and the broader southeast region. Local institutions, such as The Warehouse club in Tallahassee, host regular old-time, Irish, bluegrass, and cajun jam sessions, and active folk music societies, such as Friends of Florida Folk (FOFF), sponsor frequent festivals and weekend gatherings. The participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community are active in many of these other events. For example, Gary, Helen, and Rose often attend weekend dulcimer festivals in Florida, Georgia, and other neighboring states; Tom and Gus play with the Tallahassee “Flying Banjo Squadron” on Thursday nights; Charles and his wife participate in Irish jam sessions in private homes. Thus, these individuals follow a multitude of “pathways” (Finnegan 1989), temporary, fluid, and part-time “communities” of local music-makers.23 As these participants follow their own individual pathways, they learn different tunes and styles of playing. Following concurrent pathways can create conflict when multiple pathways intersect. This is evident within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community as the participants bring new tunes or new interpretations of tunes into the jam sessions. Also, as the make-up of the group changes, as individuals follow new pathways that bring them into or lead them out of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, new tunes and styles may be introduced into the jam sessions.
The following vignette illustrates a shift in repertoire as a result of a change in participants of the jam sessions. Alan, who had only recently started coming to the jam sessions, steers the group toward a number of unfamiliar Irish tunes. Others express a concern regarding adjusting the tempo, which may compensate for the unfamiliarity of the new tunes.
23. It is important to note that Ruth Finnegan uses the term “pathways” explicitly to avoid the term “community,” which she sees as limiting and misleading because of its “connotation of boundedness” (Finnegan 1989, 305) and suggestion of distinct geographical locality. However, in referring to the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, and in other references to the term community throughout this thesis, I am suggesting informal, fluid communities, similar to Finnegan’s concept of pathways.
28 “I like the slow jams”
[The group has just completed playing through an Irish tune, which is quite out of the ordinary. G$% is noodling on his banjo, working out the melody line of the tune that was just played.]
G$%: I should tell my wife how hard this tune is.
T&(: Yeah. And tell her it's an Irish tune.
A*!+: She doesn't like Irish tunes?
G$%: Not if it's difficult.
C,!"*'%: I just started playing with some Irish folks at a house. A slow, slow jam. That's the way to do it.
T&(: I gotcha.
C,!"*'%: I like the slow jams.
T&(: Yeah. [Pauses for a moment and looks at the floor. He suddenly raises his head and, with a smirk, responds to C,!"*'%] Well, this is a slow jam.
C,!"*'%:[With a slight chuckle] Yeah. This isn't as slow as when Kate's here.
A*!+: Not as slow as what?
T&(:[Simultaneously with A*!+] Kate really hasn't been doin' this for a while. [To A*!+] Huh?
A*!+: Not as slow as what?
C,!"*'%:[Together with T&(] As when Kate's here.
T&(: As when Kate's here.
C,!"*'%: Then it's a slow jam. She always has to rein in Gary.
[C,!"*'% leans over to look at G!"# with a big smile.]
A*!+: Kate's never been here when I have.
29 G!"#:[Responding to C,!"*'%' teasing comment] You should wait until Helen gets here with her hammered dulcimer. Whoo!
T&(: I'm trying to think of when the last time Kate was actually here.
T"')&": I think Kate has only played once…
T&(: Last Spring.
T"')&": …for one song the entire time I've been here, and that's been since last February.
T&(: Well, she's sort of a facilitator.
A*!+: Well, what sort of instrument was that that she was carrying?
[K!-' had previously walked through the room, to her office in the back, carrying a dulcimer case.]
T&(: Dulcimer.
A*!+:[Focusing in on G!"# and me] She's also a dulcimer player?
T&(: Yeah.
[G$% stops noodling, just as the conversation comes to a pause. After a brief moment of silence, T&( suggests keeping with the Irish trend and playing “Red-Haired boy.” A*!+ jumps at the chance to play “Red-Haired Boy” on his violin; everyone else seems hesitant to continue with the Irish tunes. T&( picks up the melody at a very brisk tempo, just as A*!+ begins to lose the melody around the end of the second phrase.]
G$%:[Over the top of T&('s playing] I can't even think that fast!
[T&( stops playing as his fingers get a little tripped up trying to maintain the overly exuberant tempo.]
T&(: I can't even play that fast.
30 No one besides Tom and Alan show any signs of interest in continuing to play Irish tunes. There are several likely reasons: we do not know the melodies, we are inexperienced in the particulars of the Irish ‘feel,’ and the tempi are beyond our abilities to quickly adapt and learn the tunes. A concern for the fast tempi is expressed by Charles, who “like[s] the slow jams,” and by Gus, who claims to not be able to “even think [as] fast” as Tom was trying to play “Red-Haired Boy.”
Figure: 3 Kate playing the mountain dulcimer.
Returning for a moment to “Angelina Baker,” part of the success of that particular performance was found in the group’s ability to establish and sustain a lively, but controlled, tempo. Establishing a comfortable tempo, like establishing familiarity and informality, is an important aspect of participatory musicking. In almost every recording from the jam sessions I have analyzed, the tempo increases between 4% and 7% during the course of a tune (a tune may be played for anywhere between four to eight minutes, or even longer). Beyond possible aesthetic reasons for this slight acceleration, there is a practical one: starting off relatively slows
31 gives the musicians a chance to recall the tune (or learn it for the first time), without the added challenge of having to play fast. Thus, as in the following vignette, a participant may make a deliberate attempt to get another participant, or the group as a whole, to start a tune off slowly.
[T&( is noodling. Everyone else is ready, waiting to start playing as soon as someone gets the ball rolling.]
G$%: So, we’re gonna play…[to T&(] pick a tune.
T&(: “Colored Aristocracy.”
G$%: Okay.
T&(:[Establishing the key by strumming a V-I resolution on his guitar] In G.
G$%: Slow.
[G$%’ comment on the tempo has not yet registered with T&(.]
T&(:[Referring to the key] The way it’s supposed to be.
G$%: Okay. You start off.
T&(: Oh, you wanna do it slow…okay. We can do it slow. [He strums a G-chord] Like a strut slow?
G$%: Yeah.
[T&( starts the tune off and G$% joins in immediately. T&( messes up the tune at the beginning of the second phrase and stops playing the melody, but maintains the slow tempo by strumming the chords.]
T&(: I don’t know if I can do it slow. I’ll try it.
[T&( starts working the melody back into the chord changes while quietly humming the melody to himself, getting it back into his fingers. Everybody else starts to join in. The group plays five cycles of “Colored Aristocracy” over three-and-a-half minutes,
32 accelerating the tempo from 100 beats per minute to 115 beats per minute. Players start to drop out toward the end as a discrepancy emerges between the participants concerning the location of the beat and the groove begins to destabilize.]
T&(: I think we got outta line there. Don’t you?
R&%': What was the name of that?
T&(: “Colored Aristocracy.”
G$%:[Responding to T&(’s earlier comment] Well,[…]in a place or two.24
Starting off slow, then gradually accelerating, is a basic (if unarticulated) performance strategy of the the group. While an energetic tempo helps maintain the enthusiasm of the participants, a fast tune (especially if it is unfamiliar) can alienate some participants. Kate, who helped get the group started in the beginning, no longer plays primarily for this reason.
Returning to the performance of the Irish tunes, participation was waning due to the unfamiliarity of the tunes and the fast tempi at which they were being played. But participation is sustained through the proposal of a waltz (one that Gary was familiar with), which slowed things down allowing for familiarity to develop.
[T&( is picking “Red-Haired Boy,” working through the more difficult passages. He stops when G$% lets out a big yawn and starts retuning his banjo. G!"# is thumbing through his songbook looking for “Red-Haired Boy.” A*!+, realizing that he is the only one still playing, stops, rests his violin and looks up at the rest of the group.]
G!"#:[Still looking at his songbook] Oooh! [Putting down his book] Why don't we do “Southwind”?
T&(:[Enthusiastically] Yeah!
A*!+: Yeah. I like that song.
G!"#: We'll do it slow.
24. CD Track 4, “Colored Aristocracy”
33 T&(: A waltz version.
G!"#:[Confirming T&('s statement] A waltz version.
T&(: A regular, slow waltz version. Helen’s not around, so she won't speed it up.
[G!"# begins playing “Southwind” and everyone quickly joins in.]25
In the above dialog, Gary takes advantage of the brief moment of silence to suggest a waltz: “Southwind.” Alan's yielding of the sonic space allows Gary to redirect the group towards a slow tune that, while Irish, is familiar within old-time circles, and as a waltz has a more familiar, accessible groove. Gary's shift of focus is in keeping more with the spirit of a “slow jam,” which, as Charles had mentioned earlier, is the most desirable kind. Again, familiarity with the tunes results in an enthusiastic response from Tom and Alan and the slow tempo invites participation from the entire group.
The following dialog illustrates that Gary’s interest in playing “Southwind” was not only about tempo and familiarity with the tune, but also about familiarity with a particular “feel” or groove.
“I never quite got the…feel to it”
[After a brief moment of silence, T&( suggests keeping with the Irish trend and playing “Red-Haired boy.”]
G!"#: I actually used to play that. Every time I did people would strongly discourage me from ever playing it again. [He laughs.]
T&(: Why?!? It's a good tune!
G!"#: I know, but I never got the rhythm right.
T&(: Oh, yeah. You gotta have the rhythm right.
Gray: You gotta have just…
25. CD Track 5, “Southwind”
34 T&(: It is…it is tricky.
G!"#: Yeah. I never quite got the…Irish feel to it. I was hittin' the notes. They were all the right thing, but I never quite got the Irish thing.
[G$% yawns loudly.]
G!"#:[Picking up a songbook laying next to him.] I think I have it actually.
[T&( and A*!+ start playing through “Red-Haired Boy,” as G!"# thumbs through his songbook looking for the notation.]26
Although it is rare for songbooks to be used during these jam sessions, Gary eventually gives in to searching for notated versions of certain songs following the string of unfamiliar Irish tunes played that evening. On the off chance that Tom is unfamiliar with a tune, he might look at a book that Gary has brought to aid him, particularly if there seems to be a harmonic change outside of variations on the typical I-IV-V progression. Gary might refer to notation for unfamiliar or forgotten tunes, or he will reference tablature for chords and harmonizations of the melody, moving beyond the “traditional style” of only droning the first two strings on the dulcimer.
In this particular instance, Gary turns to notation for security within the unfamiliar terrain of Irish tunes. Alan, who was relatively new to the community, had introduced the idea of playing Irish tunes that evening. But Irish tunes were not typically played at these jam sessions and the unfamiliar feel was more of a concern then the melody itself. The issue is not that Irish tunes can not be performed within an informal musicking context (the Irish slow jam sessions that Charles mentioned attending at an acquaintance’s home may very well meet the criteria for informal musicking), but that Alan and Tom began to create a fracture within the community by introducing a string of Irish tunes, and placing evaluative criteria on the performance of those tunes, causing discomfort for Gary, who felt that he couldn’t get the rhythm right. (Gus had long before withdrawn into his own world, noodling on his banjo and not participating in the
26. CD Track 6, “Red-haired Boy”
35 discussion or music.) This disrupted the informality and familiarity, thus diminishing the participatory value of the experience. Gary soon countered with his suggestion of playing “Southwind,” which, as previously discussed, helped reestablish unity within the community.
Figure: 4 “There ain't no notes” T-shirt. Design by Fish Bonez Designs as sold on eBay27
Music Theory in Practice: Performance and Embodiment
Recently I was in a small Appalachian folk music instrument shop in Black Mountain, North Carolina called Song of the Wood. On the store wall hung a sign that read: “There ain’t no notes on a dulcimer, you just play it.” Within a brief period of hanging out with old-time musicians, one is likely to come across some variation of this saying. This quote has been attributed to various people, and the instrument mentioned is often swapped out for banjo, fiddle, or some other folk instrument. Emblazoned on T-shirts, on signs, and quoted in instruction books,28 it is a saying that accurately elucidates an important conceptual position for many old-time musicians, which can be extended to understanding informal musicking broadly. It raises questions regarding fundamental assumptions about music and musicians, and pits informal musicians against mainstream Western thought regarding musicianship and musicality, specifically regarding musical literacy. As I will explore in this final section of the chapter, the familiarity
27. http://stores.ebay.com/fish-bonez-designs 28. For example, Pete Seeger attributes a similar saying to an anonymous “old-time banjo picker” circa 1850 (Seeger 1962).
36 necessary for the informal musicians of these jam sessions to “just play it” is not dependent upon musical literacy or an understanding of music theory, but on a visio-kinesthetic model supported by repetition ad infinitum.
“I don't…understand how it works”
For all of his years of playing music (more than 35 on the banjo), Gus doesn’t read “notes.” And while he does use his ear to pick up a new tune, it would not be accurate to say that Gus “plays by ear.” The common notion that folk musicians learn to play “by ear” is as much a misnomer for these musicians as is the concept of oral transmission. The dichotomies of learning by ear versus reading notation, and orally transmitted versus written traditions, fail to recognize a third model for understanding transmission: the visio-kinesthetic model. Learning to play the pitches for a tune often consists of watching the position of the other musicians’ fingers and mimicking the placement of the fingers on the fretboard to get the pitch that sounds correct.
[G$% begins “Colored Aristocracy.” T&( stops after hitting a few wrong notes.]
T&(: Ah! I’m in the wrong key.
G$%: You got your finger holdin’—your playin’ on the same string.
T&(: It’s not the same note, though…
[Eager to play, G!"# tries to get a new tune started up.]
G!"#: Can you do “Midnight”?
[G!"#’s tune request goes unheard by T&( and G$%.]
T&(: …you don’t hit the same strings. It’s a different key.
R&%':[Responding to G!"#] Oh, “Midnight on the Water”?
G!"#: Yeah.
R&%': I’ve been working on that one.
37 T&(:[Directed toward G$%, who looks perplexed at T&(, both unaware of R&%' and G!"#’s conversation] You tune different.
G$%: Huh?
T&(: Don’t you tune different?
G$%: I’m in D. But if you capo up…
T&(: Oh, I’d have to capo up…uh…E…I’d have to capo up so I’d be…
R&%':[To T&( and G$%] Are you playing in D or G?
T&(: …right here.
[T&( demonstrates with his left hand how far up the neck of the guitar the capo would have to be placed in order to keep the same fingering in the raised key.]
G$%: Ahhh…I see, I see! So if you capoed up to the second position you’d be playing it in A if you play it in your normal G…
T&(: Yeah. Right.
G$%: A…B…C…D…okay. You’d have to go up five spots. Gotcha.
[Looking at T&(, R&%' speaks up louder, interrupting the discussion of the mechanics of music-making, in an effort to get another tune going.]
R&%': I’ve been working on "Midnight on the Water".
G!"#:[To T&(] Can you do “Midnight on the Water”?
T&(: Yeah.
G!"#: In D?
T&(: In D.
[The group starts “Midnight on the Water” together.]29
29. CD Track 7, “Midnight on the Water”
38 T&(:[To G!"#, over the top of the music] Helen was doing that. Where is she?
G$%:[To me, as an aside] I don’t do music, per se. You know, I don’t, uh, read music or understand how it works—officially. [He smiles.]
I refer to the various participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ as “musicians,” because, as is evident through my experience, they music, that is, they engage in musicking. But Gus is fully aware that in Western society music is often thought of as an object that is theoretically conceptualized and pedagogically transmitted. And so, despite all of the time he spends playing music, he claims to not “do music,” because he does not “understand how it works.” He views his own musicking as ‘unofficial,’ because he lacks the literacy he feels he needs to claim legitimacy.
Even for Rose and Gary, who read music and tablature, learning is typically done by watching another dulcimer player play the tune and following along, memorizing the physical movements and placement of the fingers. This visio-kinesthetic process does not exclude aural models, but is enhanced by listening. Playing by ear helps to locate and correct errors made within the visio-kinesthetic process.
Kate adds an oral component to the kinesthetic approach, producing a less visually dependent pedagogical methodology, when teaching children to play the dulcimer during the before-and- after school programs at the School of Arts and Sciences.
G$%:[Referring to playing dulcimer with elementary-aged school children earlier in the day, he can’t seem to get numbers out of his head] 7-7-3-3-5-5-9.
T&(: Yeah. I like all those 7-3-2's and all that stuff. Whatever [Kate] yells out.
G!"#: 7-3-2, what's that?
T&(: That's what she yells out…
T"')&": To tell the kids what frets…
T&(: …to all those kids while they're playin', so they'll know what fret they're at. 5-7-5-7-3-2-1.
39 The understanding of pitch is kinesthetically linked to the musical instrument in the hands of the informal musician. For example, Gus pointed to the position of Tom’s finger in trying to understand why the note didn’t sound right. Numbers are used, whether when Kate is teaching the young children a melody or Gus is trying to understand how many “spots” Tom would have to capo up to get to the right key, as referential units for positioning the fingers on the fret board.
Workshopping technique is not an emphasis of the jam sessions, but performative discrepancies will sometimes lead to discussions concerning the cause of the discrepancy. Such was the case with Gus and Tom’s conversation about the key of “Colored Aristocracy.” In this context, music theory is simply a standardizing mode of discourse necessary to enhance the communal act of musicking. Once the discrepancy was settled, Rose and Gary were anxious to refocus the group on playing by suggesting another tune, “Midnight on the Water.”
“Just when I was startin' to get it!”
Implementing the visio-kinethetic model to develop technique and familiarity depends upon repetition. The brevity and simplified structures of old-time tunes provides a basic composition which may be repeated in perpetuity, enabling the informal musician to map the physical movements necessary to play the tune.
[The group is playing “Golden Slippers.” H'*'+, playing mountain dulcimer rather than hammered dulcimer, is facing G!"# and R&%', watching them intently before joining in. She plays a phrase then stops, looking up to watch G!"# and R&%' again. When that same phrase comes around again, she joins in and tries to continue into the next phrase until she gets lost. Again, she stops, watches G!"# and R&%' and joins in once she is reoriented. This continues throughout the song. As everybody ends the song, H'*'+ looks a little flustered.]30
H'*'+: Just when I was startin' to get it!
[Laughter from H'*'+ and the group.]
30. CD Track 8, “Golden Slippers”
40 Helen’s ability to learn a new tune through the visio-kinesthetic model is based on an interactive process that is dependent upon the group as a whole and the dulcimer players, Gary and Rose, in particular. As she watches their hands and fingers, she imitates the movements they make in order the learn the song. For these informal musicians, practice does not take place solely in the private space of a practice room or studio, where musicians typically rely upon their aural or literacy skills. Rather, the learning of new tunes or techniques happens in the open, semi-public realm of a jam session, where observation and repetition serve to reinforce the embodiment of musical practice.
Most of the tunes played during the jam sessions are “two-part” tunes—an “A” part and a “B” part. Generally, each part consists of 2 or 4 phrases of 2 to 4 bars each; each part is typically played twice, resulting in an AABB form that is usually between 16 and 32 bars long. The entire tune is repeated until there is a general feeling of satisfaction or boredom. The sometimes seemingly infinite cycle of what would otherwise be a very short melody (sometimes only 8 bars long, lasting perhaps only 15 or 20 seconds), creates increased participatory opportunities and flexibility for experimentation through variation, ornamentation, or harmonization. Just as repetition is used in the private practice room, this repetitive performance model allows for individual embodiment of musical experiences, establishing familiarity through the visio- kinesthic model.
However, the embodiment of musical practice is not merely a pedagogical tool used to increase familiarity of tunes and participation in the performance of those tunes. Embodiment processes, or performances of the body, are experiential and individual. Thomas Csordas has discussed how, through the experiential nature of embodiment practices, we begin to perceive our own bodies subjectively. He argues that “if we do not perceive our own bodies as objects, neither do we perceive others as objects” and we thus enter an intersubjective realm where “[a]nother person is perceived as another ‘myself’” (Csordas 1990, 37). Within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions, the embodiment processes inherent in the visio-kinesthetic model tend to break down self/other distinctions and provide the interconnectedness necessary for successful community-building.
41 Much of the success of these jam sessions may be measured on the basis of participation. Participation, within this context, is dependent upon standards of informality, familiarity and embodiment. Informality is established by a mode of interaction; it is descriptive of a type of process which regulates musical and social behavior. Familiarity, in turn, is developed through processes of embodiment and participation. Participation in these informal jam sessions is processually oriented; thus, informal musicking becomes concerned primarily with process and the interactions which take place within the performative space. For the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, participation is established through a culture of musical and social informality bolstered by a concern for familiarity, which is developed through physical acts of embodiment—the experiential force of doing.
In the following chapter, I examine how the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions are ritualized through a processual orientation provided by the central themes presented in this chapter. I then provide ethnographic description that highlights the value placed on active participation, as well as communicative, interpersonal, and experiential processes evident in the jam sessions.
42 CHAPTER 3
THE PROCESS OF INFORMAL MUSICKING
Jacques Attali, in his book Noise: the Political Economy of Music (1985), provides the following assessment of the societal role of music:
Fetishized as a commodity, music is illustrative of the evolution of our entire society: deritualize a social form, repress an activity of the body, specialize its practice, sell it as a spectacle, generalize its consumption, then see to it that it is stockpiled until it loses its meaning. (1985, 5)
While Attali’s argument has been justly criticized as “overly polemic and teleological” (Moehm 2005, 74), it nonetheless provides a useful perspective for reflection on and analysis of the central themes evident in the preceding vignettes of Chapter 2. I represented musicking within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community as necessarily requiring informality, familiarity, and performative embodiment of the musical act. By subverting the objectification of musical activity, informal musicking resists generalized consumption, rejects the notion of musical performance as spectacle, thwarts attempts at specialization, and provides a process whereby musical activity is embodied and shared. Each of these concepts, as with the formal/ informal continuum, is understood as varying in degree, not in kind.
43 (Re)creating Ritual
Generalized consumption is resisted through the promotion of participation within the semi- public forum of the jam sessions where non-music-producing activities provide valuable content to the event; a fundamental concept behind Small's argument for a theory of musicking. For example, while Kate rarely played music during the Wednesday night jam sessions, she was always present for at least part of the jam session and certainly played a primary role as a consistent participant. Extemporaneously moving in and out of the performative space, Kate would participate in the midst of tunes by engaging in conversations with participants who might otherwise have joined in the playing of the tune. At other times, while the group would be playing a waltz such as “Midnight on the Water” or “Westphalia Waltz,” Kate would walk up to Gus, and pull him out of his chair and away from his banjo, in order to participate in the musicking through dance. While rarely active in a music-producing role in the jam sessions, Kate still plays a creative role in the musicking process, interacting with the other jam session participants as a peer. In this somewhat egalitarian mode of the informal musicking environment where all participants are active in the creative process, no one is relegated to the role of consumer, and thus participatory roles cannot be generalized.
If all participants play a creative role in a unified activity that is not propagated for general consumption, then specialization is undermined through this perspective of open participation in community-making. Lacking the “breaks” (improvised solos) of bluegrass music, or the strict categorizations of other musical ensembles, the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions engender an environment of egalitarianism among all participants. Each instrument is equipped to play both melodic lines and accompaniment patterns (chords, drones, etc.), and so each player freely moves in and out of these roles throughout the cycle of a tune; choosing to play a supportive role during one cycle of the tune, while emphasizing the melody on the next cycle. Of course, a certain degree of specialization is certainly present: each participant focuses on a particular instrument, familiarity with the tunes could be considered a level of specialization, and Kate’s reluctance to play the dulcimer was certainly a result of her own self-evaluation of not being skilled enough. On the other hand, the participants are not locked into particular instruments, or into even playing one at all. For example, Gus sometimes plays dulcimer rather than banjo, I
44 occasionally play guitar rather than dulcimer, and Helen may bring her hammered dulcimer one week and her Appalachian dulcimer the next week. Alan, who had played the mandolin the first couple of sessions he attended, showed up one evening with his fiddle, which he had only recently started playing. He asked, somewhat sheepishly, if we would mind him trying to play the fiddle, rather than the mandolin, that evening. The response was unanimous. There was great support and encouragement for Alan to try something new, and no one seemed to share his concern of the inevitable poor tone quality and intonation problems of a beginning fiddler.
De-specialization also occurs through the ideology that anyone can music—and in the context of old-time music, this includes playing an instrument. Chris Goertzen recently addressed this inclusive model to musical performance at old-time music conventions: If you can dance and can sing, you can also likely master most of the instruments and play this music with a reasonable amount of practice—thus, the repertoire lends itself to an egalitarian ethic. And the repertoire for average and highly skilled practitioners is essentially the same. (Goertzen 2003, 141)
In the event that a guest appears without an instrument, Kate or Gus promptly places a dulcimer with a body made from cardboard into the hands of the participant. Kate, who is not likely to be actually playing, might commence to shout out in time the frets the new participant should finger, “7-7-5-5-4-4-3-1,” etc. This is not unlike my first time attending one of the jam sessions, where Gary handed me one of the dulcimers he had brought, and a pick, so that I could play along at my leisure. Without any music notation, I relied on the visio-kinesthetic process I detailed earlier in this thesis for working out my own involvement in playing the unfamiliar tunes during the jam session that night. By creating an environment of non-specialization, the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community are able to negotiate individualized terms of their own participation.
The Process of Informal Musicking
Attali sees deritualization happening, in part, in the repetitive frame of the mass-produced, mass-marketed, and mass-mediated recording industry, where musical production, separated by processes of commodification, is a discrete act from other modes of musicking. But embodiment
45 processes evident in the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions create a situation where “something is not simply described or symbolized, but done, enacted” (Cooley 2005, 192) and embodied. From this perspective, informal musicking clearly emerges within the ritual space as a processually oriented, creative act. By reaffirming the vitality of participation in musical activity, these informal musicians reinsert music into the ritual space abandoned through what Attali identifies as the commodification of music.
Figure: 5 Charles (mandolin) and Gary (dulcimer) on a Sunday afternoon outside Starbucks.
“Pull up a chair and join in”
[Sunday afternoon. 2:00 p.m. On the patio outside Starbucks coffee shop. H'*'+, G!"#, and I are sitting at a table, hiding from the hot afternoon sun under the shade of a large umbrella. I had just arrived and as I sat down H'*'+ handed me some copies of some tunes that she and G!"# had learned the day before while at the Westville Dulcimer Jam Festival in Lumpkin, Georgia. As we talk about their trip to Lumpkin, two men and a woman approach the coffee shop and, stopping short of the entrance, turn towards our table.]
46 W&(!+: Are you going to play again?
[G!"# and I looked at each other. We had not yet begun to play.]
W&(!+: I really liked listening to you last time I was here.
[One of the men she was with chimed in with much enthusiasm and curiosity.]
M!+:[Pointing to our instruments] What is that called?
T"')&": A dulcimer.
G!"#: A mountain dulcimer.
M!+: A dulcima?
T"')&" : A dulcimer. D-U-L…
H'*'+:[Pointing to G!"#’% dulcimer bag] There's another one in the bag. Pull up a chair and join in.
[With a slight chuckle, the three friends wish us well and continue on their way inside the coffee shop. H'*'+ and I look quizzically toward G!"# and he explains how she had spoken with him and Tom a few weeks ago when they were playing at the same location.]
Although the three passers-by did not realize it, Helen was perfectly serious in her invitation to them to join us. As I discussed in the previous chapter, participation in the informal musicking of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions is a fundamental value—and it is open to anyone. The participants seem to adhere closely to Small’s rejection of the objectification of music, emphasizing a very active sense of the idea that music is “something that people do” (Small 1998, 2).
After Charles arrived, Gary quipped that our “fans” had stopped by earlier. I was reminded of an experience from when Gary, Tom, and I were playing at Starbucks the previous week. At that time, three university-aged women, who were studying at the neighboring table, used each break between tunes as an opportunity to comment on our playing and encourage us. At one point, one
47 of the women asked if we would be performing at the upcoming Springtime Tallahassee event (an annual city-sponsored festival, which includes several stages of simultaneous performances by local acts throughout the day). Another one of the women asked if we had a CD; if we had, she assured us, she would buy one. Tom responded politely to these encouragements with a smile and an explanation that “We don’t do that.”
Embedded within the responses offered by Helen and Tom is a resistance to the commodification or objectification of music. Within the context of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions music should resist objectification; in other words, musicking is an experiential process.
Figure: 6 Gus playing the banjo
“It's the process”
[Returning to the conversation G$% and I were having at a picnic table outside the school.]
T"')&": Do you perform? Publicly?
48 G$%: I have in the past. I mean, performance was never what it was about, in my opinion. Now, I know a lot of people that will probably disagree, that if you’re just playing music and not lettin’ it out, then…uh…you’re not really accomplishing anything. [But] I have friends that say that sittin’ down with a group of people and playin’ tunes, and gettin’ that connection is kinda like goin’ to church. Ya know, where you all hit the same area of a tune at the same time and you enjoy it and…uh…not that I think that it’s church-like, but I don’t think that you necessarily have to perform to feel satisfied from playin’ music.
It doesn’t matter what tune you’re playin’, or it doesn’t matter what tempo you’re playin’ it at, or if you’re playin it in the right key, or if you’re playin’ it in the right— it doesn’t matter. It’s the process.
Satisfaction for the participants of these old-time jam sessions is not object-oriented nor defined by goal-completion; rather, it occurs in the sometimes imperceptible moments of interaction among members of the community. From within the constant interweaving of conversation and music-making that happens on Wednesday nights at the School of Arts and Sciences in Tallahassee, Florida, arises a process of informal musicking—a process concerned with experience and participation.
The following vignette illustrates this processual nature of the jam sessions. From choosing a tune to play, to settling on a key for the tune, to listening to and interacting with one another, this process unfolds in an organic manner, exposing a community less concerned with the final product of playing a tune well, than with working through communicative and musical discrepancies.
“What key is it in?”
[G$% begins playing “Waterbound” and pauses before completing the A section.]31
G$%: Wanna play that one?
31. CD Track 9, “Waterbound”
49 [G$% continues playing from the beginning. T&(, perhaps unfamiliar with the tune, plays a couple of notes, then stops.]
T&(: What key is it in?
G$%:[Continuing to play, uninterrupted] D, I guess.
[T&(, after having difficulty finding the melody notes, stops and grabs his capo. R&%' stops playing and looks at G$%, straining to listen to the melody line. G!"# continues to vigorously strum his dulcimer, seemingly unaware that everyone else notices a lack of synchronization in the rhythm of the song.]
R&%':[To G!"#] You skipped a beat. You gotta listen to him.
[G!"# stops playing and R&%' returns her focus to G$%. G$% continues playing, accelerating the tempo, now that he is the only one playing. After capoing up, T&( joins in again. R&%' begins to quietly pick out the melody line. G$% begins singing, straining to hit the high notes of the melody.]
G$%: Way too high.
T&(: G! It’s a G tune.
[G$% and T&( stop. The dulcimer players, G!"#, R&%', and myself, continue to play, falling apart and segueing into individual noodling and working out the tune, waiting for G$% and T&( to pick up playing again.]
G$%: It’s a G tune. You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I apologize.
T&(: That’s okay. I just capoed it all the way up to the seventh fret.
[Everyone starts playing again, except for G!"#, who sits out the rest of the tune.]
T&(: Too high. [He smiles.]
[G!"# mumbles something inaudible to the whole group.]
T&(:[To G!"#] Huh?
50 G!"#: I learned how to play it in D-A-A, but never in G.
[R&%' starts playing a slightly different version of the tune in D. I join in with T&( and G!"#. T&( removes his capo and returns back to the key of D. G!"# seems comfortable with the tune, now that he can play it in the D-A-A tuning. G$% watches intently for two cycles through the tune before he tries joining in. After a few more minutes, the tune is brought to an end.]32
G$%:[Seemingly unaware that they had just played essentially the same tune that he was just playing] What was that?
R&%': That was our version of “Waterbound.”
T&(: You played it in D.
[Everyone takes a break, sitting back and chatting quietly. Gus continues to pluck out Rose’s version of “Waterbound.”]
G$%: I thought…I though that was that…how does "Happy Days" go?
R&%': “Happy Days?”
G$%: “Happy Days.”
[G!"# begins playing immediately and R&%' quickly joins in. Soon after everyone else joins in.]33
G!"#:[Chuckling] Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
The communal act of informal musicking requires communication and interaction, listening and adjusting, responding to others musically, verbally, and physically. Sensitivity to these issues helps to create a meaningful process based in musical and social experience. As a process, the burden of creating a meaningful musical experience through informal musicking lies with the establishment and maintenance of participation as a foundational component of the jam sessions.
32. CD Track 10, “Waterbound” 33. CD Track 11, “Happy Days”
51 It is within this process-centered realm of experience, within the act of musicking, broadly defined, that value is identified, creating an effective mode of meaning-making in the lives of the participants.
52 CHAPTER 4
THE ‘TALLAHASSEE OLD-TIME JAM’ AS AN IDEALIZED COMMUNITY
In establishing a historical context for scholarship of old-time music and informal musical communities in Chapter 1, I referred to Charles Wolfe’s 1974 call for a “contextual approach” to old-time music research; an approach which would avoid the “limitations in artist- and song- oriented approaches” that continue to occupy the majority of research in old-time music (Wolfe and 1974, 67). In Chapter 2, I set out to provide a response to Wolfe’s concern by providing a musical ethnography that focused on musical action and interaction in the context of informal, old-time jam sessions at the School of Arts and Sciences in Tallahassee, Florida. To be sure, old- time jam sessions may take place in a variety of social contexts: from major public festivals to semi-private clubs to private, family-room gatherings, each with varying degrees of formality. My focus on jam sessions that fall toward the informal end of the formal/informal continuum is a deliberate attempt to move away from the objectifying influences of the artist- and song-oriented approaches criticized by Wolfe.
I presented a variety of vignettes in Chapter 2—transcribed dialog from jam sessions with the Tallahassee-based old-time musical community—which were followed by “texted” headnotes that reflected on the conversations and my experiences with this community of informal musicians. Through these vignettes I established three primary themes—informality, familiarity, and embodiment—which I feel express meaningful concepts and social values for the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community and emphasize the participatory nature of the jam sessions.
53 The themes that emerge in Chapter 2 provided the means for further analysis, which I undertook in Chapter 3. Further discussion of these themes focused on ideas of resisting consumption, rejecting spectacle, and thwarting specialization. Through additional ethnographic description, I hoped to demonstrate the processual nature of the informal musicking apparent in the pursuit of these themes, and their associated practices of resistance, within the context of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community. For the participants of the jam sessions, these concepts (while not necessarily conscious) provide a means for a ritualized act of musicking; that is, they elucidate the idea of music as a processual act.
I now turn my focus to how the ritual process of informal musicking within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions allows for the creation and existence of a community that is an idealized reflection of the participants’ world views as related to social structure and power relations. Returning briefly to ritual theory, I look at the formation of community through ritualized communicative acts. Within this process emerges a sense of play, a concept that allows the informal musicians to participate in the re-creation of an idealized social structure that is then embedded into their lived experiences outside of the ritualized jam sessions.
Communication and Community
That “ritual is a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication” (Tambiah 1985, 128) is supported in the Durkheimian notion of propagation as a central function of many rituals (Moore and Myerhoff 1977, 7). While this communicatory role of ritualized acts is a common factor in many definitions of ritual, the conversations and tune-playing evident in the musicking of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community do not necessarily communicate any prescribed symbolic meanings—with the exception perhaps of noodling, which may at times serve a communicative role as a sort of clarion call to move the group away from conversational activity toward playing a tune together. Although the ritual of informal musicking at the Tallahassee jam sessions does indeed propagate old-time tunes and traditions, as well as particular sociopolitical beliefs, this is not its primary purpose.
54 Nonetheless, the “binary opposites” of conversation and tune-playing are a sort of communicative process that establishes and develops community, through what Martin Buber calls das Zwischenmenschlichkeit (Turner 1969, 127), the interconnectedness of humanity. At the root of the participatory model of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community is the establishment of a community for musicking and the embodiment of an idealized social structure as a response to the social superstructure in which the participants live. This interconnectedness of communal musicking was made clear to me during a conversation I had with Gus, in which I asked why music played such a central role in his life. Gus replied: The relationship that I have with my wife. We met by…uh…through a mutual friend, who was a musician[…]And so, I guess, [as] I look back over my life all of the real important, fun things that have happened to me have been, you know, in and out of music, out of the old-time music community[…]And…uh…I’ve met people from all over the United States, met people from Africa, met people from Australia, all through music connections. So there’s a lot goin’ for it.
Gus is very reflective as he relates this point. Meeting new people and the interpersonal connections that arise out of these musical settings are not just passing moments, but lead to meaningful long-term relationships. Kate and Gus often bring some of these friends with them to the jam sessions; people who stay with Kate and Gus as they travel through the area. So, within the specific context of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions, the “important, fun things” that happen are the building of relationships between individuals, in other words, the building of a community. In this regard, communicative speech and gesture (of which music is a type) are a vital part of the jam sessions. But the concern is not with propagation, which would suggest a hierarchical structure of power relations and unitary directivity; rather, the participants are concerned with establishing a sort of egalitarian interactivity. From this standpoint, the informal musicking of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community may be viewed as an interpersonal ritual. Interpersonal rituals, which sometimes feature formalized actions, may be spontaneously initiated and informally enacted. As Goffman explains: Interpersonal rituals have a dialogistic character…When a ritual offering occurs, when, that is, one individual provides a sign of involvement in and connectedness with another, it behooves the recipient to show that the message had been received, that its import has been appreciated, that the affirmed relationship actually exists as the performer implies, that the performer himself has worth as a person, and finally, that the recipient has an appreciative, grateful nature. […A]nd when we focus on minor rituals performed
55 between persons who are present to each other, the giving statement tends to be followed immediately by a show of gratitude. Both moves taken together form a little ceremony— a supportive interchange. (Lemert and Branaman 1997, 115)
A good example for the type of interpersonal rituals described by Goffman would be the speech and physical acts involved in greeting and parting (the shaking of hands, the “hellos” and “goodbyes,” etc.) (Firth 1972). Likewise, the interpersonal ritual evident in the ‘Tallahassee old- time jam’ sessions consists of some conventionalized acts enacted spontaneously. The old-time tunes themselves—structured bipartite melodies based on a particular mode or scale, sometimes with associated lyrics—are a sort of formalizing device that are initiated spontaneously, and individualized improvisational interpretation of these tunes, rather than prescriptive symbolic meaning, is evident throughout the jam session performances.
The necessity for alternating and simultaneous occurrence of conversational and musical action, which provides for multiplicitous participatory roles, is explained by the Durkheimian notion of ritual as an integrative force. By allowing for varying degrees or modes of participation, the egalitarian-democratic ideology of the jam sessions reflects the social belief system of the participants. Gus’ claim to modesty (questioning Rose’s compliment of his banjo- playing by suggesting that she was lying like “a Republican”)34 may be seen as an abstract claim presented during a performance, which “constitutes one way in which a performance is ‘socialized,’ molded, and modified to fit into the understanding and expectations of the society in which it is presented.” The socialization process displays a “tendency for performers to offer their observers [and fellow performers] an impression that is idealized” (Goffman 1997, 101). In this case, by insisting that he is not “too good,” Gus attempts to establish a non-specialist position for himself, and thereby project and maintain an egalitarian viewpoint for the community.
34. See heading “The Value of Informality” in Chapter 2.
56 Musical and Social Performances
Victor Turner's processual theory of ritual, which I outlined in Chapter 1, is directly related to his notion of ritual as a “social drama.” This performance-oriented approach to ritual studies provides a useful perspective for further investigation of the enactment of idealized notions of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions. As a process, the jam sessions may be viewed as simultaneously a musical performance and a social performance. While the separation of these two concepts is somewhat contrived, since the musical performance is an integral part of the social performance and vice versa, the distinction will be a useful tool for further analysis of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions as an idealized social community.
The concept of play is of vital importance in processes of meaning-making and the construction of an idealized musical and social community within the ritualized jam sessions. Richard Schechner's definition of performance—“ritualized behavior conditioned/permeated by play” (Schechner 2006, 79)—provides insight into the relationship between ritual and play in the old-time jam sessions. Henry Bial provides further understanding of the relationship between ritual and play, and further explication of the simultaneity of structure and anti-structure, as previously discussed in Chapter 1: In performance studies, play is understood as the force of uncertainty which counterbalances the structure provided by ritual. Where ritual depends on repetition, play stresses innovation and creativity. Where ritual is predictable, play is contingent. But all performances, even rituals, contain some element of play, some space for variation. And most forms of play involve pre-established patterns of behavior. (Bial 2003, 115)
The Play of Informal Musicking
The concept that ritual serves as an idealized mirror (Bell 1997; Furman 1981; Rappaport 1999), projecting an orderly model that transcends the “real” social experience, is especially insightful for investigating processes of musicking generally and the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community specifically, because “music is [also] a play of mirrors in which every activity is reflected, defined, recorded and distorted” (Attali 1985, 5). Attali adds to this that:
57 music is a mirror because as a mode of immaterial production it relates to the structuring of theoretical paradigms, far ahead of concrete production. It is thus an immaterial recording surface for human works […] a collective memory allowing those who hear [or perform] it to record their own personalized, specified, modeled meanings… (1985, 9)
The mirror, rather than projecting any “actual” or “real” social experience provides an idealized image, a distortion of the real thing. Within the process of informal musicking, the playing of tunes, interspersed with conversations of mundanity, allows for the participants to project their own image of an idealized society—they play with ideas of how they perceive things ought to be. According to Catherine Bell: performance approaches seek to explore how activities create culture, authority, transcendence, and whatever forms of holistic ordering are required for people to act in meaningful and effective ways. (Bell 1998 208)
Indeed, musical and social performance within the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ sessions is not so much reflective of culture as it is a way of creating culture. “Playing” music, then, comes to mean more than creating a sonic product. Musicking is a performance during which an alternate social reality is constructed and “played out.” As Michael Jackson states: The existential imperative to exercise choice in and control over one’s life is grounded in play. […] Play enables us to negotiate the given, experiment with alternatives, imagine how things might be otherwise, and so resolve obliquely and artificially that which cannot be resolved directly in the ‘real’ world. (Jackson 1998, 28)
In the process of musicking among the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, the politicized conversations may be used to symbolize the material world. Music is rarely the topic of the conversations; rather participants often share mundane experiences that are grounded in their struggles with bodily existence and the social superstructure. This may include stories of Gus’ visit to the acupuncturist due to back pain, Tom’s job-search during a period of unemployment, or most commonly, general criticism of the incumbent political forces at the local, state, and national level. These improvised conversations serve as a grounding to a social reality that contrasts with the alter-reality of playing a tune together. Thus, the playing of tunes transcends the mundanity associated with the material world.
58 Embedding Meaning
The ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community is a sort of experiment, built on idealized principles of social structure and interpersonal activity. The informal musicking of the jam sessions is a reflection (albeit, an imperfect one) of these social values, which help sustain the community and guide the participants toward embedding these values into their daily lived experiences. As Bloch observes, the transcendental “continues to be attached” to lived experiences and “the return to the here and now is really a conquest of the here and now by the transcendental” (Bloch 1989, 5).
The participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community create meaning in the mundane experiences of daily life by attaching informal musicking, or associations to the ritual experience, to other aspects of their lives. In the spring, when the weather is nice, I often meet Charles, Gary, and Tom during lunch time at a gazebo outside the building where Gary works. During these jam sessions, the ritual act of informal musicking was less strictly delineated in terms of time and space from mundanity and the hierarchical social structure and power relations of the workplace.
Figure: 7 Gary playing the mountain dulcimer at a gazebo outside his office building at lunchtime.
59 The first time I met Gus, he told me that music is 80% of his life. While that is not an accurate reflection of actual time devoted to musicking, it reflects certain values and suggests something concerning the meaning of music for Gus. Music, for the participants of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community, is meaningful through an experiential processes. As Dilthey notes, “meaning does not lie in some focal point outside our experience, but is contained in [the experiences] and constitutes the connections between them” (Dilthey and Rickman 1976, 8). For Gus, Kate, Tom, Gary, Rose, Helen, Charles, and myself, informal musicking provides an experiential process for transforming, if only temporarily, and interpreting social structures. We seek to establish a sense of equality and togetherness through a ritual process that is open and informal. This ritual process allows for the creation of individualized meanings that are then reinserted into daily life, in an effort to extend the transformative experience of the ‘Tallahassee old-time jam’ musical community.
60 APPENDIX A
HUMAN SUBJECTS APPROVAL FORMS
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70 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Trevor Harvey received his B.A. in Music from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, where he studied composition. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Musicology (Ethnomusicology) at The Florida State University.
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