Mariachi presentation (R, T, J)
Mariachi presentation (R, T, J)
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://www.freewebs.com/joshttu/
1. Good description about strategies for adapting fieldwork to what was schedule-feasible and how that might have evolved. As I have said in class, sometimes, when we’re “handed lemons, we make lemonade.” In other words, sometimes we have to take the necessary strictures of schedule/hours/etc and work within them—but it is important to “work smart,” and try to turn those limitations into advantages. How did time- or schedule-limits impact on your own team’s work? Give examples.
2. The comment was made that mariachi’s functions seem to include “remembering one’s heritage”; this in turn would seem to implicate issues of the construction of cultural identity. At the end of the semester, can we make observations across fieldwork situations about music’s use in the construction of identity? Each seminar member: please cite at least one (1) example of “music as a tool for constructing identity” from your own fieldwork, cite at least one (1) example of similar usage from at least two (2) other team’s work, and explain why the “identity-construction” in your fieldwork is similar to the “identity-construction” in the other two teams’ work. Be specific.
3. How can a fieldworker employ the subjectivity of informants’ “versions of history” versus the “factual” record? What role does “history” play in a community’s musical construction of identity? Provide at least 6 lines summarizing your own target group’s “community history” or “community myth.”
4. What does the ubiquity of mariachi in a very wide range of sub-community situations reveal? What are the implications of this “soundtrack” for this part of the Hispanic community? Articulate a comparison to the target music’s role in your own fieldwork: give at least 3 examples of the target music’s use in your informants’ lives, and compare/contrast to that of the mariachi community’s.
5. Issues of adaptation of outside repertoire into the insider style: how can a style “stamp” or “re-brand” a song originating with one culture with an Hispanic cultural activity? Can a song from outside Hispanic community culture be thus “re-stamped”? What about “appropriation” (meaning: the symbolic acquisition of cultural materials, the “claiming as one’s own” materials that might formerly have been alien)?
6. Good observations about ways in which fieldwork can the fieldworker’s own growth and cultural enrichment. In the best of all possible fieldwork situations, both informants and fieldworkers conclude that they have gained by the experience; this is how ethnographic fieldwork is transformed from being “only” scholarship, growing to also encompass communication, relationships, mutual enrichment, and a better world. What have you gained from your individual experience of fieldwork?
7. Good commentary about shifting repertoires in different contexts or for different (ethnic) audiences. Please provide examples from your own observations about ways in which your informants adapted musical repertoires, styles, or behaviors to fit within (or to transform) contrasting situations.
8. Insights about musicians’ (and music’s) cross-cultural adaptability. Almost by definition (and as we have seen from numerous readings) musicians have to be especially skillful at moving across cultural boundaries which non-musicians may experience as much more problematic. Please provide examples from your own fieldwork of ways in which your informants used (or didn’t use—and if so why not) music to move across such social/cultural boundaries. Did their strategies provide strategies which you think you could use in your own life and career? Describe these, and explain how they might play out.
9. Excellent use of glossary as heard in rehearsals. “what people hear” is a crucial indicator of how they experience the world. Please provide at least 3 examples of specific dialect, terms, adjectives, or other jargon, unique to your sub-community, which your informants used repeatedly to describe certain desirable or undesirable results. What do these specific words imply about how your informants saw the world, the music, and their own individual places within both?
posted by CJS at 2:07 PM
23 Comments:
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2. An example in our research that reflects cultural identity, is that our informant Kelly, learned to play music from his dad. Actually, many of our informants were taught by someone in their family. I think it’s fairly obvious that in the Korean Baptist Church and the Lubbock Chinese Church, the music choices represent cultural identity. Those songs are chosen in a specific language to serve a specific purpose. In the salsa group, the dancing at some locations was very tied into community. This can form an identity for the group of participants, even if they are not of the same origin. This relates to our project because song choice and audience are very important aspects of performance for our informants.
7. Our informants have to adapt their repertoire all the time. Requests are made and audience demographics differ. They depend on the social acceptance to keep them in business so they are going to play what makes the audience happy.
5. This ‘re-stamping’ of songs happens a lot in today’s culture. One minute, it’s a boys II men song and the next, Allen Jackson is singing it. With out informants, with the exception of John, they all sang mostly covers. They performed songs written and made famous by other people. Why? 1. They are popular. 2. People can sing along. 3. You don’t have to be famous to sing them. 4. It’s a link between you and your audience through a common denominator. I think it’s perfectly fine to cover songs and I think it’s permissible for songs to cross cultures. Just because “an old white dude” first sang a song doesn’t mean a mariachi ensemble can’t play and adapt it for their audience.
1) Some other time restraints that our group had was the fact that most of their performances were on the weekends, and with football games, whether teaching the Goin' Band Pit or local high school drumlines, really got into the way. We just went to the performances that we could. After the party in Slaton, one of the members just looked at me and started telling me directions to the next gig. We followed them to another party.
2) I believe that this mariachi scene is about remembering the heritage. One thing that was interesting, and due to time restraints I could not talk about, was the fact that these guys hold mariachi bands in Mexico up on a pedastool. They told us that they weren't real mariachis, instead the ones in Mexico were the real deal.
3) The verbal history from the members was really fun to listen to, but some stuff did not match up with what we found. We did find a link to some french traditions, and we were told by the mariachis that you could cause serious trouble by mentioning French tradition. They see this art as a "pure mexican" art, and that's it, it was started in Mexico, end of story.
1. Our group had a lot of struggle with the amount of time that should be dedicated to this project. We all wanted to put in as much time as possible, and all of us became very interested in this project, but if we where to go to every event that we could possibly go to we would find ourselves dedicating our evenings to this project about 5 nights a week. In the end it basically boiled down to picking an event that we would like to make our place of deepest study (Melt) and use other places as comparative or simply recognizing their legitimacy and existence. Secondly, it came down to use each individually sitting down and deciding what time commitment was reasonable for each one of us to commit to. Knowing what kind of availability the group had helped us to really get a feel for the degree to which we needed to narrow our scope.
4.The music to our community is the excuse to which our informants use to come and enjoy each other company. The enjoyment of salsa music is something that all of the insiders have in common and it ends up serving a role as an ice breaker for people to start, build upon, develop, and continue relationships with one another. The salsa dance is a fairly intimate style of dance that requires people to get close physically that in turn means that it requires a certain amount of trust. Whenever you put your trust in someone at any level, you begin to feel a connection to that person and this is a big part of how the music plays a significant role in the developing of relationships within this community.
5. It seems that in the salsa community other genres of music can be altered to sound more along the lines of what is heard when in a situation with the umbrella term usage of salsa. However, there is a definite sensitivity amongst this culture about keeping tradition and I think that the people within this community would never accept salsa that was altered to fit a mold of anther style of music. It was noticed by us and talked about to us by some of our informants that salsa music will only be performed and sung in Spanish and it would be considered disrespectful to sing salsa in English, as an example.
1. Our team's fieldwork became pretty interesting with our schedules. For example, Melt starts to pick up around 11 or 11:30pm, and I usually try to go work on Tuesday/Thursday mornings. So, spending Wednesday nights out meant that I couldn't stay very long, or in some cases that I just didn't go to work so I could stay later. In the cases of the other group members - well, you all saw us around the begining of the semester, sitting in class trying desperately to stay awake...So, after a while, fieldwork became more sporadic and we would wind up working in pairs so the other two people could take a break.
3. In our group, there are actually parallel histories for development. In the case of Jacob, for example, he started salsa night on the business side at Jake's, then at Melt. On the other hand, DJ Mario remembers salsa night at a place called Oliver's, and the musical torch was sort of passed on to him after two of his colleagues left the business (or left town). These things were probably happening around the same time, but in two different "worlds"; the Business World, and the Music World. Each informant knew the local history as it related to them.
7. To reiterate an example, DJ Mario used different types of music for different functions. You had "classic", or familiar, music to get people dancing; "new" music to get people interested; and "new" or "bad" music to get people drinking.
Danielle’s Mariachi (R, T, J) Comments
7. Salsa, by its very nature, is an amalgamation of styles that does tend to adapt according to a particular region and/or location. Our team found this sense of modification to be especially prevalent and definitely noticeable, according to repertoire at each venue. Melt catered to the traditional crowd and thus focused on the traditional salsa and merengue tunes. Jakes catered to a younger, more mainstream crowd, so it tended to play less salsa and merengue, and more reggaeton (which resembles the popular hip hop genre).
1. Time commitment was definitely an issue in regards to the salsa project. So many of the salsa events occurred on week nights, starting late and frequently running till 2 in the morning. Thus, this project placed strain on everyone’s already busy schedules, and it was important for us to determine who would attend what. We also chose to focus most of our fieldwork on Melt, spending more time there than at Jake’s or South Beach, for instance.
4. Salsa music served some of the same purposes as the mariachi music did. Salsa, like mariachi, was used to create and maintain a sense of cultural identity. Salsa also provides context for social interaction and also helps to create and maintain relationships within the sub-community.
1. Unlike the salsa schedule, our team had more limited times of observations. To see worship music in practice it was necessarily important to attend Sunday morning worship services. This meant it would take a month to accumulate four observations. With the time sensitive nature of the project, it was crucial not to miss any observations and to go as early in the semester as possible. The unfortunate side effect was missing worship with my community in order to observe worship in another community.
7. The repretoire shift seen in the churches seemed more to fit the circumstances. For example, the use of traditional hymns for offertory and communion in the Korean church. I suspect that these two functions are seen as traditional therefore require more traditional music. In addition, I think the choice to use a hymn during communion is that the texts of hymns often very directly speak to the death of Christ for the salvation of his believers.
5. Appropriation occurs within the Chinese church substantially because these worshippers have no Christian tradition of their own. Our informant told us directly that they borrow heavily from other churches. Yet, I think because the Chinese worshippers translate the music into Chinese, they also begin to establish ownership of the material borrowed.
1) Time and schedule limits impacted our group a lot. Because of my own personal schedule, I was unable to ever attend fieldwork at River Smith's. To make up for it, so to speak, I attended fieldwork at Mar y Tierra, and was at least able to observe similarities of repertoire and audience for each time that I was there. I was also unable to attend the Diez y Seis de Septiembre festival because of an out-of-town marching band requirement. Scheduling also made it extremely challenging for our group to do fieldwork together. The only thing we all attended was the Mi Tierra rehearsal. In retrospect, we could have branched out from just working with Mi Tierra. There is more than just one mariachi group in Lubbock, and maybe, instead of trying to work with just one group, we could have found one or more other groups who may have had easier-to-work-our-schedule-around performances and rehearsals. Then we would have also gotten a bigger perspective on the whole of mariachi music in Lubbock, rather than just that which falls around Mi Tierra.
5) A style can easily re-stamp a song. For example, Mi Tierra sang a Frankie Valli song with a mariachi spin to us on more than one occasion. I think that they did this more to just have a song that they can sing to the "white people" that is in english and has some kind of cognitive meaning rather than it being appropriated into the culture. There was more than one time where the vihuela player would whisper "en engliais" to the guitarron player when we were present, which kind of seemed a lot like they were assuming things about us like...assuming we don't speak any spanish or don't want to hear the regular mariachi music. The song could have been re-stamped because it had special meaning to one of the players, or because they heard a version of it which had already been re-stamped by somebody else and they really liked it. I do not think that in our specific case, there was any immensely deep cultural reason for them re-branding "Can't Take My Eyes off of You."
8)Like I mentioned with the Frankie Valli song, Mi Tierra used that song to cross the socio-cultural border between the mariachi regulars and the "other people" who have maybe only heard it on the riverwalk in San Antonio or in restaraunts, who may not speak spanish, and for whom it carries no significant meaning. They played the song with a "mariachi spin" sort of to say "Yes, our music is different from yours, but no, we're not going to exclude you. We want you to enjoy it as much as we do, so we're going to relate it to you in the best way that we can." This is a great strategy for any musician to use. For example, a classical musician could relate the Firebird Suite to Fantasia for an audience who may not have a deep database of music, but can remember their Disney movies. Dr. Houck once related early and traditional music to post-tonal modern music for me, which really put them both into a completely different perspective and helped me gain a different kind of appreciation for them. Finding ways to relate to people and using that, with your music, to educate them, "brainwash" them, or just show them that some musics just really aren't that different from others is something we all need to know how to do.
1. Time was a factor with the VOL team. In the beginning, we were going to find churches to go to and make observations. This was a facotr because all of us had church obligations and could not go every Wednesday and Sunday to do observations. I agree with Jeremy that we had limited time to do things with the worship projects because there is always limited time do do these fieldworks. Luckily VOL fell into our laps because they met for rehearsals on Saturdays, and I was able to go almost every week. Bob was only able to make it 3 times, and James wasn't able to make it at all, but luckily we had another avenue to pursue in VOL.
2. I think music was a tool in constructing cultural identity. VOL definitely made their own cultural identity by using this choir to make their own worship music. They talked about their heritage and how it related to the music that they made. I think the ballet folklorico also used their heritage to make their own cultural identity. The group talked about a dancer who went down to Mexico a lot and did dancing there to make sure that he stayed with his heritage and did the dancing right. Another group was the Asian worship because they also created their sense of cultural identity by having their own worship space. We are similar because we also used our own space to worship and used our own heritage to make our culutal identity.
6. I think I have gained a lot from the fieldwork that I did. I learned that I shouldn't judge people before I see what everything is really about. I had my own pre-conceived notions when I first went into the rehearsals and group, and most of them changed. I did not think that it would be as spiritually charged as I thought. Everyone was so inviting and nice to me. They tried to help me out as much as possible. Anything that I needed, they tried to help me in achieving that. I couldn't have been more grateful.
4. Country plays a similar role within its broader community: they see themselves as the guardians of tradition, while also seeking to expand on that tradition.
5. It is the product of multiculturalism (or culture clash, depending on your viewpoint). For an outstanding musical statement on the clash of American culture (and other latin cultures) with Mexican musical traditions check out the Café Tacuba album “Re.” One could write a dissertation on that album, alone.
7. Our group’s classes were partitioned by style, so they didn’t deviate much within classes, but students did experience a small controlled spread of styles constructed to provide diversity while maintaining the specificity of each style.
1) Because of the fact that I work at a church on Sunday mornings it was very difficult for me to find a time to visit our informant’s churches. That’s why my team allowed me to be the “web master” of our page. It gave me the opportunity to look at all of our fieldwork in an up-close and time consuming way. My team members were also nice enough to schedule interviews at a time when I could attend since I didn’t get to go to the churches as often as I would’ve like.
5. I most definitely believe that a style can be taken from a different culture and and make it their own. Granted, the meaning of the song might be changed depending on the subjectivity of the piece. For example, look at how many rock songs have been turned into country songs, or pop songs into punk songs. Their meaning might not be the same but the performers obviously had some sort of connection with the song to want to re-stamp it in the first place.
6. In the previous questions I talked about how the Chinese Christian churches had to discover things they liked about other churches to adapt into their own culture. If a person attended one of the churches we visited that normally went to a church, they would notice that LCC and LKBC ‘borrowed’ songs from American culture. For example they used Rock of Ages, Come, and Thou Fount of Every Blessing.
1. time, the great equalizer. all of us had things going on all semester, both private & school-related that kept us from fully immersing ourselves in the work at hand. what we ended up doing was getting the help of the community (our informants)...Zenaida lent us a book & was very willing to sit down w/us & go over some of the questions we had regarding the steps, the dresses, etc...Daniel got us some SW collection interviews he had done, but not transcribed yet. he also helped us fine tune some of the questions (without us actually asking him directly).
2&5. identity construction: the entire idea of ballet folklorico seems to be re-construction, with the understanding that new ideas will be incorporated as needed. the Aztec dancers from NM were a great example, taking from Native American and Native Mexican American indigenous cultures to form something that represents what the descendants of those groups hold dear now. We saw the same thing in the mariachi groups, taking pop, motown, & rock songs into their repertoire because that's what the audiences want, (& probably because that's what some of the group members grew up with & played at one time).
1. The reason my team organized our fieldwork the way we did (different people observing different ensembles/situations) was because of the time constraints and the location of our fieldwork. SPC is located in Levelland, which means a decent drive to get to the fieldwork. I had the time to go on T/TH which meant that I would observe the bluegrass ensemble. Since I developed a relationship with these particular people, I was invited to the Meadow session. The meadow session gave me an entirely different view about the SPC group.
6. I think I’ve gained a better look at a musical idiom I was surrounded with but never interested in. I’ve also gained relationships with people I normally wouldn’t come in contact with, as well as an appreciation for musical hospitality.
9. 1) Picking- a term used to describe the action of playing bluegrass music. Also a “landscape” that all bluegrass musicians inhabit that R describes as “real.”
2) “Do what good musicians do.” Never was exact technique discussed in rehearsal, only the idea to play good (implied stylistically accurate) music.
3) Humor- Humor was used between all of the members of the ensemble. Each member is teased by the other members.
These words and ways of speaking imply that informants view themselves as members of a community more than an academic program, and that the goal is not to get a degree, but to learn how to play better in the idiom.
1. I knew that when the semester began, I would have an immensely busy schedule by mid October into the beginning of December. One of my other teammates was quite busy at the beginning of the semester. I like to keep in touch by phone more than any other means. It's more personal and has an immediate response. So, due to this, I put a focus on recording in any way possible. Since I owned a video camera, I thought this would be the best means for sharing information with other teammates that could not be present.
2. The first event my team attended was a Mexican independence festival. That should say everything about remembering ones heritage. Yet, it's interesting that for the two day festival there was only one live mariachi group. But, there were numerous ballets.
7/5. One of the most interesting parts of our study was the multiple uses and settings that Mariachi is used in. The function of the music definitely plays a huge role in the choice of repertoire used in performance. One good example was the performance at the fair where the Mariachi Amistad played their version of “My Girl.” The decision to incorporate this style of song was obviously made to make a connection to the cultural outsiders sitting in the audience. On the idea of appropriating this other music, I don’t necessarily think they are claiming it as their own, but instead incorporating it into their repertoire for the reason of reaching out to other cultures.
6. From my own personal fieldwork experience, I’ve gained mainly a more open view of culture and how people, including myself, use music in our daily lives. One major tool that I’ve gained is how to communicate with other cultures and I believe a big part of this is acknowledging yourself as an outsider and as a novice at what they do and expressing interest in their society.
1. This is an easy one to answer. After switching or project focus to something completely different the meeting time for the classes at SPC were either at the same time as a class I had at Tech or did not allow enough time to get there/return in time for a class I had at Tech. Subsequently, I was not able to attend any of the meetings or events at SPC.
6. I learned that country/bluegrass is growing as a musical genre in way I didn’t anticipate. When I hear country on the radio, it seems to me to either be the “old school” country (acoustic guitar, twang in singers voice, and simple music) or the “new school” which shares some of the same aspects but comes more from a rockn’n’roll perspective as far as vocal styling and the use of electric guitar, and greater amplification. At SPC the students in the program are learning methods to learn, read, and create new music all while learning pedagogy of instruments, voice lessons, and ensemble skills. The music they create isn’t always simple and as an example, the recording we played in our presentation used more than just I-IV-V in the harmony.
8. RTB, as I explained earlier, went from business world to country music. Completely different worlds to be in, one taking place inside of an office building and requiring suit and tie; the other taking place in bar and requiring a cowboy hat, boots, and tight jeans. Instead of using his musical skills to play a different style, RTB used music itself as his vehicle for crossing cultural boundaries and redefining his career.
7. One informant spoke of picking songs based on what the crowd would like. Some dance steos were too boring, too slow, or even too difficult. If the audience would not like the dances, then why dance them? After this commentary, BF became more that just educational or a way of expressing/learnign cultural identity. It became a form of entertainment, also.
8. We spoke of variety in ethnicity of BF dancers. In one group there were more than just Hispanic dancers. In another, there were only Hispanice dancers. I think that this had to do with recruiting tactics, but it still showed a seperation between groups. In the way of the group that did have various ethnicities, the group showed it willingness to teach the art to more than the 'original' ethnic group.
9. Terms. First, those terms that I did not understand... because they were in Spanish. This showed the groups continuation of the Spanish tradition, though most of the instruction was given in English. Second, entertainment. One informant used the word to describe why the did certain dances or songs. This implied the reasoning behind the dancing was more than just educational. Third, authenticity. This was what was judged on and what was strived for. This lead to another level of reasoning behind the dances that extended into the tradition and culture behind the dances as opposed to the entertainment o the dances.
1. How did time or schedule-limits impact on your own team’s work? Each our team member had so busy semester so that team meeting was not satisfied to me. We only had two times to gather the meeting for interviewing and participant. Because of different schedule, we had to do each fieldwork. I wish we had more time getting together and because of communicating hardship between me and the others, I could not contribute for team project as I wish. 2. Yes, I like saying that is “remembering one’s heritage.” I felt that when I went the River Smith restaurant. As I mention in our presentation, I saw one old guy was just waiting for singing with mariachi band. He did not sing well. But I saw he was trying to get something special from singing. I think that it was missing his heritage. 7. I like also saying that is “cross cultural adaptability.” As I said in our presentation, I went three times the River Smith restaurant. The main reason I went there that I really like their music. When I was there, I saw some white people who had same reason I had. I felt that Mi Tierra’s music was absorbed into Lubbock society at least at River Smith restaurant. I want to say that even their music is different culture music, but I noticed that their music was adapted into Lubbock people over cross culture.
1. We tried to not worry about how much time we had but rather use what we did have as useful information. Rather than trying to always do stuff in a group we individually went out and did research if the others couldnt make it for a few reasons. This kept us in contact with our informants so they would see our interest. It also gave us a few different insights and then we had our weekly meetings to discuss everything we saw and what we thought.
3. I think we can emply what we recieve from our informants as their own opinion and see why THEY personally are participating in the music. I think the music plays a huge role in cultural identity because one of the conclusions we came to was how Mariachi music helped remember one's heritage. Based on their believes that music was used to transport information, sing about politics, sing about love, etc. shows thier idea of the history and they continue to sing about these things because for years this is what this music has done.
6. i think from my individual research i have gained exactly what mariachi music is out to do. Going to the parties they played at or the festivals really brought home a sense of Culture, Mexican pride almost in a way. It has also none the least helped me get a better understanding of one of the main genres of music from my families homeland.
1.Time and schedule conflicts had a great impact on our team’s work. Zanaida’s group meet Monday, Tuesday and Thursday early evenings. We all had classes during this time. I was trying to look ahead and see when I can miss a class for the sake of research, but it never worked out. I had to rely on the videos Liz captured from the time she could wiggle out.
6.I was able to further connect to a few friends of mine. I found out through this experience that they had Ballet Folklorico in their younger years. I was so socked that I never knew things like this from good friends. It helped me ask the right questions when learning more about my friends from Mexico. There are tons of things I don’t know about the people I see everyday. I learned that those things are sometimes the coolest things you can learn.
#1) Time and schedules played a big factor in our group research as my fellow group members were busy college students and members of the Goin' Band, one with a part-time job. I perform live music several nights a week and travel on the weekends as well. Most of our field work had to be conducted between sundays and thursdays which competed with study time for this class and others. However, to my advantage as a "quasi-insider", many of my performances involved the informants I was researching. There was, however, one night a week that three out of us four group members could meet and that was monday night at the Koko Club. The Koko was the venue where one of our informants, Kelly, performed with his country/variety band Cadillac Jack.
#2) Our informants were members of a "sub-community" who were chosen based on the instrument they play,the electric guitar. Their use of music as a tool for establishing identity is not for identifying them as a member of a particular group or groups, but as an individual of great merit based on their musical achievements and prodigous performance , if not mastery, of their instrument and various styles of music.
#6) I had the opportunity to interview the informants we were studying, which gave me a chance to ask questions of both practical and philosophical nature. All informants came to some point in their lives when they realized that music was the one thing in life they wanted to do. I'm a performing musician... I've realized before that its a really different path in life to take, but it's something that I can't (won't) give up. To get to delve into the lives of other serious performing musicians gives me a sense of community and a greater sense of where I stand as a member of that community. I am actually good personal friends with all the informants I interviewed so they were very at ease. From them I also learned how important it is for me to continue to combine my academic knowledge with my experience as a gigging musician.
ok let’s try this one again….. argh….
1. Our group had little problem early on. Who does in September? Then came November. Our weekly meetings became absolutely impossible when Curtis and I each left town for conventions on different weeks, plus there was Thanksgiving week in there to throw everything off. So we had to adapt and so we generally paired up and shared the plan with whoever couldn’t be there via phone or e-mail. So it essentially just became less formal. But as a result we just ended up communicating more regularly. This is also a direct influence on the previously mentioned break up of the work load. This is how we all had a project by ourselves to do as well as paired projects and the 3 times early on where we all three worked the same event.
4. I know that I gained by my exposure to a whole bunch of music that fills in some major gaps in aural models for pre-Beatles Rock and Roll, to say nothing of my understanding of where these genres find them selves after the turn of the century. The venues, the festivals, the demographics, and every other imaginable aspect of context. The fact that it is multi-functional, that it works at different volume levels, and with dancing and without. In bars and on the street. I know that the time shared at every fieldwork operation was one of mutual interest. Jerry Coleman was as interested in talking to me as I to him. So eager that he put me and Amber on the air right then! That spoke volumes about what the currency that interpersonal relationships carries in the context of this musical community. The music is interesting stuff, but in reality it is a merely a medium for social exchange. Certainly it also serves as the exclusive carrier of kinds of intellectual, emotional and spiritual “matter,” inacessible to people through any other means. I can’t say that I was even completely ignorant of the music, because I wasn’t. Now, I don’t mind admitting though that I was enough of a novice that, having never really listened to much Buddy Holly, I thought that “That’ll be the day,” was an early Beatles tune thanks to the Beatles Anthology! So this was a great chance to grow both musically and interactively.
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