Professional Documents
Culture Documents
for the focus of this paper I have chosen the community that I am involved in when I
with the seven other musicians in the band Boston Common, the DJ with whom we
perform, as well as our crew members who control the lighting and sound system
and transport the necessary gear and equipment. While these band and crew
members remain relatively consistent (aside from a substitute member now and
then), this community also includes the guests of each wedding, which change for
every event. Although this instability is a salient factor of the community, these
different audiences are united in their purpose for attending each event, which is to
celebrate the union of their friends or family members. Additionally, although the
cultural heritage of the audience can directly affect the musical proceedings as I will
discuss later, the type of setting and use of American musicians remains constant
side, members range in age from 25-42, with various nationalities and backgrounds.
Most of the members have been educated at a music school, and most, but not all,
were born and raised in America. On the audience side, members range in age from
young children to very old adults, again with various nationalities and backgrounds,
expressed in the location of the event, and the type of music performed. In this
CFAMH750 – Richard Thompson 2
case, the ceremony and reception are taking place in America (more specifically,
greater New England), and the band (with one or two exceptions) has been hired to
1960’s to the present. Songs are chosen by the bandleader based on their familiarity
to the majority of the audience. A parallel can be drawn between this wedding
music and the “ubiquitous musics” described by Kassabian in her book of the same
title. According to Kassabian, ubiquitous musics are the musics that people hear in
public spaces, those musics that people aren’t necessarily actively listening to, but
that still produce “affective responses, bodily events that ultimately lead in part to
what we call emotion.”1 In choosing popular music that most of the audience has
songs. He is deliberately selecting songs that have been woven throughout the lives
emotional response – preferably one that encourages the audience to dance in our
case.
mentioned earlier, the audience and band have varied backgrounds, with any
number of different nationalities and cultural heritages. Popular music, with its
ubiquity, can connect the individual members of the band and audience. Just as
1
Anahid Kassabian, Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Subjectivity
(Berkeley: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), xi.
CFAMH750 – Richard Thompson 3
subjectivity can effectively erase the individual differences amongst audience and
band members, at least for a short time. Kassabian offers an example of the singing
belonging.”3 The popular music repertoire that we perform, when chosen correctly
(i.e. the majority of the audience is familiar with it), operates in much the same way.
interesting to examine how specific cultural musics are utilized to create a different
sense of space within the same location as our performance of American popular
music. At a recent wedding, the band’s set break was filled by the DJ with traditional
Greek music. For the attendees, this offered a moment of “distributed tourism,”
England.4 For the guests familiar with the music, this produced an affective
response, joining in the traditional dance, and throwing money at the bride and
groom. Even for those unfamiliar with the music, their physical proximity to the
into the community, and allowing them to participate as distributed tourists as well. 5
Kassabian talks about the shifting nature of identity – how identity can
change from one moment to the next, even in the same space. 6 Over the course of a
2
Anahid Kassabian, Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Subjectivity
(Berkeley: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), xxiv-xxvi.
3
Anahid Kassabian, xxvii.
4
Anahid Kassabian, 101.
5
Anahid Kassabian, 102.
6
Anahid Kassabian, Ubiquitous Listening: Affect, Attention, and Subjectivity
(Berkeley: Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), xxvii
CFAMH750 – Richard Thompson 4
few hours, the identity of these wedding guests changed from that of Americans, to
that of Greeks, and back again, due to the nature of the musicking that occurred
within that space at any given time. While this particular example involved Greek
Americans, I have witnessed the very same phenomenon numerous times, with a
variety of cultures, showing the power of music, and its effect on the temporality of
Bibliography