Buskers Underground: Meaning, Perception, and Performance Among Montreal’s Metro Buskers by Nicholas Wees B.A., University of Victoria, 2015 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Anthropology © Nicholas Wees, 2017 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee Buskers Underground: Meaning, Perception, and Performance Among Montreal’s Metro Buskers by Nicholas Wees B.A., University of Victoria, 2015 Supervisory Committee Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (Department of Anthropology) Supervisor Dr. Lisa M. Mitchell (Department of Anthropology) Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (Department of Anthropology) Supervisor Dr. Lisa M. Mitchell (Department of Anthropology) Departmental Member This thesis explores the practices, motivations, and sensorial experiences of Montreal’s metro buskers. By examining the lived experiences of ‘street’ performers in the stations and connecting passageways of Montreal’s underground transit system, I consider what it ‘means’ to be a metro busker from the perspective of the performers. Informed by my ethnographic fieldwork among metro buskers, I detail their performance practices, ‘staging’ strategies, uses of technology, bodily dispositions, and subjective perceptions in relation to the public, each other and the spaces of performance. In the process, I make visible—and audible—the variable and improvisational nature of busking practices, and how these are constituted in relation to the physical features of the performance sites. More broadly, I explore the co-productive relations between body and space, the sensorial experiences and spatial practices of everyday urban life, and the potential for moments of micro-social encounter and appropriations of spaces that are not designed to foster conviviality and creative engagement. I locate ‘the busker’ within these questions not as a fixed identity or subject-position but as an embodied assemblage-act that is socially and materially situated and subjectively enacted through highly variable practices, perceptions and experiences. In detailing the moments of social encounter precipitated by metro buskers, I propose understanding busking as a form of Gift- performance that finds certain parallels in sensory ethnographic videography. I show how the influences of diverse participants—human and material—on the filming, editing, and distribution processes changed the course of the audio-visual production in this research. Finally, I introduce a notion of ‘expanded trajectory’ that links performer and space, researcher and participant, and may enable new acts of encounter and exchange, new processes of social and material circulation, new forms of Gift. iv Table of Contents Supervisory Committee ...................................................................................................... ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... iv List of Illustrations ............................................................................................................. vi Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. vii Dedication ........................................................................................................................ viii Chapter 1 – Introduction: Parameters and Procedures ........................................................ 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Plan of the Present Work ................................................................................................ 2 Some Notes on Terminology ...................................................................................... 6 Context and Research Questions .................................................................................... 8 Literature Review .......................................................................................................... 10 Theoretical Framework ................................................................................................. 13 Methods: Researching Under the City .......................................................................... 16 Observations and Participant Recruitment ................................................................ 19 Language and Translations ....................................................................................... 20 Conversations, Interviews and Informed Consent .................................................... 21 Audio-visual recordings and Participant-collaboration ............................................ 22 Sensory Ethnography ................................................................................................ 23 As Above, So below: The City and the Metro .............................................................. 24 Chapter 2 – Locating the Busker: Motivations and Self-conceptions .............................. 27 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 27 Who busks? Why busk? ............................................................................................ 28 Profession, Identity, and the “Stereotypical” Busker ................................................ 31 First Underground Forays: Jean-Talon Station ............................................................. 33 Downtown on the Green Line ....................................................................................... 38 On the Margin of the Margins: The Westmount Square Corridor ............................ 41 Place-des-Arts ........................................................................................................... 44 The Central Hub: Berri-UQAM .................................................................................... 48 Discussion: Motivations ............................................................................................... 52 Monetary Considerations .......................................................................................... 53 More than Money: Sharing, Practicing ..................................................................... 54 Self-conceptions and “Identity” ................................................................................ 55 Coda: Busking for Salvation and Enlightenment .......................................................... 56 Chapter 3 – Practices and Perceptions .............................................................................. 58 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 58 Emplacement: Getting a Spot, Enacting a Space .......................................................... 62 Act I: Alexander ........................................................................................................ 62 Act II: Lalo ................................................................................................................ 65 Act III: Bucket of Change ......................................................................................... 67 Act IV: Klank ............................................................................................................ 70 Musical Practices .......................................................................................................... 72 Technology and Repertoire I: Effem ........................................................................ 72 v Technology and Repertoire II: Rodrigo Simões ....................................................... 75 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 79 Staging Practices ........................................................................................................... 81 Hat, Sign, Space ........................................................................................................ 81 Performing Space ...................................................................................................... 84 New Technologies ........................................................................................................ 86 Busking Bodies ............................................................................................................. 87 Coda: The Wind ............................................................................................................ 89 Chapter 4 – Encounter and Performance, Circulation and Gift ........................................ 93 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 93 Encounters and Exchanges ........................................................................................... 95 Community and Conflict ........................................................................................... 99 Performance, Circulation, Gift ...................................................................................