Festivals and Musical Life

Society for American Music

SAM, Montreal, Québec, Canada, March 24, 2017.

Material from this seminar was published in Festivals and Musical Life.

Seminar Abstract

In this seminar, we examine the multiple ways in which festivals—understood as music communities (or scenes) concentrated into limited temporal and geographic frames—affect musical life in the Americas at the micro and macro levels, both historically and in the ethnographic present. How have festivals shaped the production and reception of musical genres throughout the history of American music? How might historians of American music use festivals to chart the development of musical life? In what ways have festivals impacted tourism, civic and urban development, and local economies? How do festival organizers’ administrative, financial, and artistic decisions impact each other? How have festivals affected social, cultural, and aesthetic hierarchies? Finally, what challenges do festivals pose to established theoretical and methodological frameworks for music scholars? Seminar participants should be prepared to present case studies that investigate and discuss the cultures, histories, values, and spaces developed in music festivals in the Americas.

Seminar participants:

• Katherine Brucher

• Alejandro Garcia

• Ellen Olsen George

• Elyse Marrero

• Colleen Renihan

• Timothy Storhoff