Bluegrass presentation
All:
Please read and respond (via "Comments") to at least 3 of the following observations/queries arising from this presentation. Both team members and other class members should comment, and should particularly focus on ways in which insights from this presentation reflect, nuance, or contradict insights from your own fieldwork. Make sure your comments address this latter point.
Website at http://freewebs.com/spcbluegrass/
- Nice layout; how does the organization (visual or conceptual) of the final presentation (web, conference paper, lecture-demo, or other) impact upon the clarity and deeper insights you want audience members to derive?
- Note the very effective strategy to use differing team assignments (e.g., "you do this, you do that, I'll do this"), not only to save on hours allotted, but--much more importantly--because it presents different types of fieldwork experiences. No two fieldworkers will experience a situation similarly, it is true--and therefore it is nice if (as with some teams) 2 team members experienced the same situation in 2 different roles. However, "chunking out" assignments, informants, or fieldwork situations to different team members does permit each team member to meet with the same people multiple times, thereby building a deeper, subtler, and more nuanced interaction with informants.
- What are the implications, within a given musical tradition of particular notational and/or pedagogical tools? How do pedagogical tools reveal musical priorities and aesthetics? Can you summarize the implications of these contrasted methods? Axiom: every musical tradition develops its own indigenous pedagogy, designed to accurately and efficiently transmit those musical characteristics that the tradition itself believes to be important. For example: African percussion music has developed very sophisticated oral/aural means for teaching and conveying subtle and complex polyrhythmic concepts, whereas Irish traditional music has developed similarly subtle and complex means for honing melodic recognition and retention. To each idiom its appropriate pedagogy. What are the implications if someone from an outside musical tradition, unfamiliar with the indigenous pedagogy, tries to teach that music using a non-traditional method? What things are lost?
- Heavily dependent upon outside listening for issues of appropriate performance practice
- What are the implications, in this project, of the diversity of student profiles? Clearly students at SPC are involved for a wide range of personal reasons; what is the impact of this diversity on the overall community? How does it compare to other musical sub-communities?
- What are the implications of verbacl narrative in presenting such material effectively?
- Mitch (and others): You described buildings, decor, and physical objects. Clearly you believe this is significant information (and I agree) but can you articulate for us what are the implications/interpretations you can build from the material-culture descriptions?
- Similarly, what about the implications of the various performance strategies and procedures.?
posted by CJS at 12:25 PM
3 Comments:
2. I think dividing up parts of the project has its benefits and drawbacks. I think it is possible to gain a better insight with informants and members of the group if one person goes to the same place over and over again. I went to the VOL rehearsals numerous times, where by the 4th time people were calling me by my name and I felt a bit more like an insider. I think it is good to get more research on different topics by giving them to different people. I also think 3 people going to the same event will give 3 different insights on the same event, and make it 3 times as strong.
3. I think a lot is lost when someone tries to mess with the natural progression and preservation of different pedagogical tools. There is a reason why African percussion is done by rote. There is a reason why Irish music is taught by rote and the members have to use mental retention to keep the music in their head. VOL used the same tools. I thought it was very difficult trying to learn music with no music in front of me, but this is how they worked. It was a different learning experience for me, but I think it was very insightful.
8. I think giving a very, horribly thorough and detailed description of an environment from a scientific perspective is a great thing to use. There are some people that gain information differently than others. I believe it is science that says women ascertain information differently than men. Does this have bearing on the way people right up fieldwork? I think so. I think to know how many sugar packets are on the bar table that you sat it can be as important as the physical expression of a performing group.
I have to agree w/Stefan on this one, the missing ingredient is aural familiarity. While this goes both ways, the bonus to learning things the way folks at SPC do is that you learn to hear your way through things in a genre specific manner. what i mean to say is that i'd much rather hear one of these musicians 'fake' their way through a Bach piece than hear one of TTU's students 'fake' their way through a bluegrass piece. I don't think the same applies to the BF thing, as folks from 'outside' the culture are welcomed, if you can move your feet, you can learn to dance in this style (or any, i guess).
as far as student diversity goes, that's one of the things that struck me when I was teaching at SPC, the majority are there because they want to be, some may not have the money to go every semester, but when they're there, they're committed 100%. Everybody knows this & responds/interacts accordingly. also, the faculty's willingness to accommodate these students' learning styles means that there's the chance that more of these students feel as if they're getting what they paid for. Not the case at some of the universities I've attended, for sure. this coincides w/the BF directors' need to approach EVERY student slightly differently: not every girl is gonna be able to do the steps perfectly after 2 days of practice, & the boys need a COMPLETELY different approach, they don't have the same steps, etc...
2. Our group divided-up assignments, but we all tried to experience the fieldwork together. Some people’s schedule did not allow for everything, but we did a great job. As I said in the presentation, I loved that Rob and I went to the same event and our ‘notes’ were drastically different. This could be for different reasons, the main one I think of is that Rob is in the midst of doing lots of Graduate work and may look at things more analytically than I do. At the Day of the Dead festival, Liz and I would sit with each other and kind of discus things, point things out to each other, and that would lead to us helping each other form questions and insights. I like how my group did work and fieldwork.
3. This is a glorious question. I think of myself when I was trying to learn Jazz Piano in high school. There were two teachers arguing how to teach me; whether I learn with chord changes or I learn with written music. In the end, I learned via chord changes. I believe this made me more flexible in improve, a faster thinker, and better with jam sessions. However, I got to college and I could not play written music and I longed for chord changes. Does it achieve the same thing? Written versus Oral? Probably so, but the players are better equipped to handle the workings of that music if they are taught orally.
8. I am willing to bet that they do not put too much thought into the procedure of the performance or strategies. It is probably the same procedure, or lack of procedure, that has been practiced for years. Laid back, ‘whatever happens,’ is a strategy. Goodness, I’ve used it for a recital or two.
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