Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking provides a reference to HOW, cross-culturally, people engage ideas of community, locality, and place through music. In that academic interest has increased in such themes as the modes of musicking, music and identity, music and place, musical communities of practice, global/local interaction and music in everyday life, this collection of essays on local musicking provides a framework for integrating the range of theoretical developments that have taken place across the spectrum of contemporary musicologies.
The term "musicking," first used by Christopher Small (1998), has gained currency in music studies, particularly among scholars investigating local, community, and amateur music worlds. A person is musicking whenever he or she is engaged with music, regardless of the nature of that engagement. Thus, performing is a mode of musicking, but so is listening, editing sounds, talking to friends about a music file on one's mp3 player, organizing a music festival, preparing the set for a musical theatre production and so on -- an immanently social activity. By linking musicking to the local, we aim to highlight the ways in which musical practices and discourses interact with people's everyday experiences and understandings of their immediate environment and their engagement and commitment to that locality and the people within it.
By viewing musicking in a broad sense, the contributions engage with debates on the processes of musicking, identity construction, community-building and network formation, competitions and rivalries, place- and space-making, local-global dynamics among other themes.
Synopsis
WINNER OF THE 2019 SOCIETY OF ETHNOMUSICLOGY ELLEN KOSKOFF PRIZE FOR EDITED COLLECTIONS
The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking provides a reference to how, cross-culturally, musicking constructs locality and how locality is constructed by the musicking that takes place within it, that is, how people engage with ideas of community and place through music. The term "musicking" has gained currency in music studies, and refers to the diverse ways in which people engage with music, regardless of the nature of this engagement. By linking musicking to the local, this book highlights the ways in which musical practices and discourses interact with people's everyday experiences and understandings of their immediate environment, their connections and commitment to that locality, and the people who exist within it. It explores what makes local musicking "local." By viewing musicking from the perspective of where it takes place, the contributions in this collection engage with debates on the processes of musicking, identity construction, community-building and network formation, competitions and rivalries, place and space making, and local-global dynamics.