THE 2005 LOTUS WORLD MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL: PROCESSES OF PRODUCTION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPATIAL LIMINALITY Sunni M. Fass Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University May 2006 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________________ Dr. Ruth M. Stone, Ph.D. _________________________________ Dr. Richard Bauman, Ph.D. _________________________________ Dr. Paula Girshick, Ph.D. _________________________________ Dr. Beverly Stoeltje, Ph.D. Date of Oral Examination – March 23, 2006 ii © 2006 Sunni M. Fass ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I became involved with the Lotus Festival almost as soon as I arrived in Bloomington in the late summer of 2001. I had just moved from Washington, D.C. and a position with the National Council for the Traditional Arts, and my friends there had advised me to keep an eye out for “this great little festival” that they’d heard of. So, with my furniture barely situated in my new apartment, I gave the Lotus office a call and was quickly set to work helping to make flight reservations for a particularly VIP artist. And thus began the journey...but it was hardly a journey that I took alone, and I am so grateful to the people I met along the way. To Lee Williams and LuAnne Holladay: Thank you so much for making this festival happen, and for all that you do for Lotus . you bring so much joy and beauty to the Bloomington community, and your work enriches so many lives. And thank you also, for your support of my research and for making this study possible—for your generosity and openness in sharing this process with me, for your patience with my questions, and for your friendship, I am forever indebted. To the Lotus family: Volunteers, staff, supporters . you number too many to name individually, but you all know who you are. I am completely in awe of the community spirit and the love with which the Lotus Festival is imbued and which you all give so willingly and tirelessly. And to the volunteer photographers who document Lotus every year, thank you for your dedication to creating a visual legacy, of which I have represented only a tiny portion here. To my research volunteers: I could not have tackled this huge event without you, my friends and colleagues who stepped forward to help me extend eyes and ears into iv every corner of the festival—Matthew Sieber (for your amazing photos), Colleen Haas, Angela Scharfenberger, Anthony Guest-Scott, Ed Wolf, Yamir Gonzales, Anne Prescott, Denise Dalphond, and Kim Bohannon. Vast sections of this dissertation would not exist without your hard work, creative ideas, and collaborative spirit . thank you so much! And a special acknowledgment to Richard Thurau, for generously contributing his mapping expertise to this final document. To Ruth Stone, Richard Bauman, Beverly Stoeltje, and Paula Girshick: I couldn’t have asked for a more brilliant committee. Thank you so much for all of your guidance, for constantly challenging me to think in new ways, and for your enthusiastic support of the notion that there is much worth studying in our own backyards. To my friends: I am deeply appreciative of your encouragement over the years, and for sticking by me as I have made my way through this long process which often made me moody and reclusive. Whether I have known you forever or we have recently met . I believe that no encounters are accidental, and that it was somehow meant and necessary that I have found and experienced all of you along this winding path. And to my family: For your enduring love, amazing inspiration, and for instilling in me the belief that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to—these things defy words and have been my richest gift. v Sunni M. Fass THE 2005 LOTUS WORLD MUSIC AND ARTS FESTIVAL: PROCESSES OF PRODUCTION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPATIAL LIMINALITY The dissertation explores the role of space in the production and perception of meaning in the cultural performance genre of festival, using a case-study approach centered on the production of the 2005 Lotus World Music and Arts Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. The study expands the notion of “festival” far beyond the four days of its enactment and encompasses the festival’s year-long production process, one significant element of which is how producers conceive and manipulate space to mobilize a “global” festival within a local geography. Drawing on data gathered via ethnographic methods such as interview and participant-observation, the dissertation analyzes the ways in which spatial considerations play into production decisions and become essential components of a uniquely “festivalized” and liminal participant experience. This study emphasizes space as an actor and prioritizes the affective role of space vis-à-vis the construction of meaning in festival contexts, and its conclusions examine how festival producers use spatial transformations, inversions, and juxtapositions to create powerful loci of ambiguity and symbolic tension. _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ vi Table of Contents 1. Situating the Study: An Overview ..........................................................1 Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 Conceptual Context: World Music and the Festival Genre...................................... 3 World Music ............................................................................................................... 3 Festival ....................................................................................................................... 7 World Music Festivals and Issues of Space and Place............................................. 12 Study Design: Research Questions, Study Object, and Methods ........................... 14 A Note ....................................................................................................................... 19 Overview of the Dissertation: Chapters and Terms ................................................ 19 Chapter Summaries.................................................................................................. 21 Definition of Terms.................................................................................................. 25 2. What’s a Lotus? ......................................................................................28 Introduction................................................................................................................. 28 An Orientation to Bloomington, Indiana.................................................................. 30 Planting a Lotus: Origins of the Festival .................................................................. 34 What’s In a Name? .................................................................................................. 38 Town and Gown: The Festival and the University ................................................. 43 Lotus Festival Overview: 1994 to the Present .......................................................... 48 The Festival Model: A Snapshot ............................................................................. 51 3. Visioning the Festival: Evaluation and Imagination...........................59 Introduction................................................................................................................. 59 2004 Post-Festival Debriefing: Setting the Stage for 2005 ...................................... 61 Shuttles and Transportation .................................................................................... 63 Communication........................................................................................................ 64 Artist Hospitality and Housing................................................................................ 65 Break Stage and Other Venue Concerns ................................................................ 66 Set-up, Tear-down, and Cleaning up ...................................................................... 67 Volunteers................................................................................................................. 68 Tickets and Merchandise ......................................................................................... 69 Backline.................................................................................................................... 70 Visual Arts................................................................................................................ 71 Tents and “Freebies”: Contested Space (Part 1) ..................................................... 73 Festival Geography: Imagining Space ...................................................................... 78 Creating Centers ...................................................................................................... 81 Marking Spaces and Defining Boundaries............................................................. 89 Juxtaposition, Ambiguity, and the Redefinition of Place....................................... 94 An Increased Role for the City of Bloomington....................................................