Korean community music group with Swiss-German costumes and instruments (2010)
A music community is a group of people involved in a given type of music. Typically such a community has an informal, supportive structure. In the past such groups have typically developed within a town or school, where the members can meet physically. The internet has made it possible for a more dispersed music community to use the web for communication, either via specialized websites or through broader social media. Ethnographic studies indicate that online music communities do not center around one website, but use a network of sites, including personal blogs, artist or publisher sites and social media.
The musician and musicologist Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin has broadly defined a music community as "a group of interested participants who agree on the form and content of the music and its social contexts".[1] A music community may be taken to mean a group of people with strong ties who often come together to play and talk about music, but a sense of community may also come from a national educational system that connects young people to their cultural heritage and traditions.[2]
The concept of music communities is well-developed in ethnomusicology. A large part of this discipline consists of studies of groups of people who frequently exchange and communicate musical material.[3]
Barry Shank, writing in 1994 of Rock and roll in Austin, Texas, used the word "subculture" to define the shifting meanings and membership of musical communities, or cultural spaces. Will Straw built on this work, replacing the term "subculture" by "scene".[4] Straw saw a "scene" as relatively transient, while a music community is more stable. He wrote in 1991 that a music community engages in "an ongoing exploration of one or more musical idioms said to be rooted within a geographically specific historical heritage."[5] Disputing Straw's characterization, later writers have pointed out that music communities may be mobile and transient.[6]
Musical communities typically have very flexible structures, voluntary membership and people of a wide range of ages.[7] They offer participants the opportunity to play different roles including creator, participant or observer. Conscious efforts may be made to involve disadvantaged members. Typically the group encourages diversity, and all members are committed to lifetime learning.[7] When a music community is widespread, aspects of music-making such as repertoire and style may evolve and diverge.[8]
Types of music community
There are many types of music community.[citation needed] Women's music communities among the Ewe people of Ghana help create bonds and nurture cooperation between women who would otherwise be pulled apart by competition in their polygamist society.[9] Irish immigrants to the United States were generally keen to assimilate and adopt a new ethnic identity as Americans, but a minority held onto their traditional culture and formed Irish traditional music communities in Boston, New York, Chicago and other cities.[10] After over one hundred years these communities persisted. The primary reason seems to have simply been the entertainment value.[11] Teachers may deliberately foster development of a music community within their school, which can assist students in reaching their full potential.[12] Such teachers may build on the Suzuki method in the belief that cooperation in group classes plays an important role, and that competition is inappropriate.[13] According to Mary Ann Froehlich, "Competition isolates, while cooperation creates community. ... Our goal is to build an inclusive music community."[14]
Researchers have explored how a sense of musical community is developed through routine use of shared metaphors and symbols,[15] and have demonstrated how particular social practices and institutions are sustained through development of musical communities.[16][pageneeded]
Online music communities
One of the early online music communities was established in 1996 by Oh Boy Records, a small independent record company. It took the form of a chat page on its website that let fans of John Prine exchange views and information. The website became the base of a specialized Prine music community.[17] However, as Prine ceased performing while fighting cancer, and no new recordings were released, the community ran out of information to exchange and went into decline.[18] Oh Boy eventually closed the chat page.[19]
Another early online music community that was the subject of an ethnographic study was the Banjo Hangout, established in 2000. As of 2011 it had about 51,000 members and featured a large online learning center.[20]
imeem, a social networking site with 28 million monthly visitors, was the first music community to provide ad-supported free online music streaming and downloading. Other sites such as Myspace followed with similar services.[21] Specialized software has been developed to support online music communities.[22]
Online communities have emerged for genres of folk music such as Blue Grass and Old Time. Cyber-ethnography using the framework of Étienne Wenger's social learning theory shows that sites like this may be considered a community of practice (CoP).[23] The members of an online music community can publish, listen to and evaluate the music they have created, giving them a strong sense of membership. It provides a platform within which members can create a musical identity as well as one in which they can build social bonds.[24] J. P. Williams, writing in 2006 in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, argued that the driving force behind online music communities is the interest of the participants in building their identities, despite the ostensible focus on making and sharing music.[25][26]
A 2013 book notes that in Finland the Mikseri music portal, with about 140,000 registered users, helps people create, share and discuss their music in this sparsely-populated country. This web-based community was the object of ethnographic studies in 2008 and 2009 based on theories of sociocultural learning.[27] Members of Mikseri do not exclusively belong to that community, but may belong to other real-world or online communities.[24] An analysis of event-related data from an online music community shows that events on that site often cause increased interest in a given artist, but propagation over links within digital social communities is also an important factor.[28] An investigation of the music community of fans of Swedish indie music showed that they do not gather around one site, but interact with a network of sites including their own fan sites, Myspace, Last.fm, YouTube and so on.[29]
Online discussion forums may provide some of the functions of virtual music communities.[30] However, according to Mary McCarthy a music community should teach uninitiated listeners or musicians, and an online group cannot fill this role.[30] Only a community of real people in a real place can provide the depth of contact, discussion, sharing and support that the novice musician requires for their development.[31]
Vampr is a social network app for people in the music industry to discover, connect and build a community of other like-minded musicians and professionals. It currently has a userbase of over 1,000,000 users.[citation needed]
↑ Hebert, David G. (2012). "Metaphors of a Japanese Band Community". Wind Bands and Cultural Identity in Japanese Schools. Landscapes: The Arts, Aesthetics, and Education. Vol.9. pp.217–226. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-2178-4_14. ISBN978-94-007-2177-7.
Smith, Sally K. Sommers (Summer 2001). "Traditional Music: Ceol Traidisiúnta: Irish Traditional Music in a Modern World". New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua. 5 (2). University of St. Thomas (Center for Irish Studies): 111–125. doi:10.1353/nhr.2001.0036. JSTOR20557723. S2CID201777964.
Veblen, Kari K.; Elliott, David J.; Messenger, Stephen J.; Silverman, Marissa (2013). Community Music Today. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN978-1-60709-319-0. Retrieved 2015-08-17.
Waldron, Janice (2009-12-01). "Exploring a virtual music community of practice: Informal music learning on the Internet". Journal of Music, Technology & Education. 2 (23). Intellect: 97–112. doi:10.1386/jmte.2.2-3.97_1.
Wolf, Mary Montgomery (2007). "Introduction". "We Accept You, One of Us?": Punk Rock, Community, and Individualism in an Uncertain Era, 1974—1985. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries. p.19. doi:10.17615/e26e-6m88. Retrieved 2015-08-17.
Gender includes the social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being a man, woman, or other gender identity. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social constructs as well as gender expression. Most cultures use a gender binary, in which gender is divided into two categories, and people are considered part of one or the other ; those who are outside these groups may fall under the umbrella term non-binary. A number of societies have specific genders besides "man" and "woman," such as the hijras of South Asia; these are often referred to as third genders. Most scholars agree that gender is a central characteristic for social organization.
Ethnomusicology is the multidisciplinary study of music in its cultural context, investigating social, cognitive, biological, comparative, and other dimensions involved other than sound. Ethnomusicologists study music as a reflection of culture and investigate the act of musicking through various immersive, observational, and analytical approaches drawn from other disciplines such as anthropology to understand a culture’s music. This discipline emerged from comparative musicology, initially focusing on non-Western music, but later expanded to embrace the study of any and all different kinds of music of the world. Ethnomusicology development resembled that of Anthropology very closely.
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
Thorstein Bunde Veblen was an American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who connect through specific social media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. Some of the most pervasive virtual communities are online communities operating under social networking services.
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann, Michael Walzer, Clifford Geertz and Kurt Gödel, many of whom had emigrated from Europe to the United States.
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a "family of invisible friends". Additionally, these "friends" can be connected through gaming communities and gaming companies. Those who wish to be a part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and just to specific content or links.
Collaboration is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. The form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.
A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.
Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.
Online ethnography is an online research method that adapts ethnographic methods to the study of the communities and cultures created through computer-mediated social interaction. As modifications of the term ethnography, cyber-ethnography, online ethnography and virtual ethnography designate particular variations regarding the conduct of online fieldwork that adapts ethnographic methodology. There is no canonical approach to cyber-ethnography that prescribes how ethnography is adapted to the online setting. Instead individual researchers are left to specify their own adaptations. Netnography is another form of online ethnography or cyber-ethnography with more specific sets of guidelines and rules, and a common multidisciplinary base of literature and scholars. This article is not about a particular neologism, but the general application of ethnographic methods to online fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars.
The following outline is provided as an overview of topics relating to community.
Sociomusicology, also called music sociology or the sociology of music, refers to both an academic subfield of sociology that is concerned with music, as well as a subfield of musicology that focuses on social aspects of musical behavior and the role of music in society.
Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project that supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from Wikipedia in that it offers tutorials and other materials for the fostering of learning, rather than an encyclopedia. It is available in many languages.
James Gee is a retired American researcher who has worked in psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, bilingual education, and literacy. Gee most recently held the position as the Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University, originally appointed there in the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gee has previously been a faculty affiliate of the Games, Learning, and Society group at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and is a member of the National Academy of Education.
Netnography is a "form of qualitative research that seeks to understand the cultural experiences that encompass and are reflected within the traces, practices, networks and systems of social media". It is a specific set of research practices related to data collection, analysis, research ethics, and representation, rooted in participant observation that can be conceptualized into three key stages: investigation, interaction, and immersion. In netnography, a significant amount of the data originates in and manifests through the digital traces of naturally occurring public conversations recorded by contemporary communications networks. Netnography uses these conversations as data. It is an interpretive research method that adapts the traditional, in-person participant observation techniques of anthropology to the study of interactions and experiences manifesting through digital communications.
Identity performance is a concept that holds that "identity" can be a project or a conscious effort or action taken to present oneself in social interactions. This is based on the definition of identity as an ongoing process of self-definition and the definitions of the self by others, which emerge from interaction with others. The idea is that there are identities that are performed to achieve several objectives such as assimilation and acculturation, among others. It draws from the Erving Goffman's theatrical metaphor theory where, in social situations, the others perform the role of the audience, which an individual must perform to impress.
David G. Hebert is a musicologist and comparative educationist, employed as Professor of Music at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, where he leads the Grieg Academy Music Education (GAME) research group. He has contributed to the fields of music education, ethnomusicology, sociomusicology, comparative education, and East Asian Studies. Since 2018, he has been manager of the Nordic Network for Music Education, a multinational state-funded organization that sponsors intensive Master courses and exchange of university music lecturers and students across Northern Europe. He is also a visiting professor in Sweden with the Malmo Academy of Music at Lund University, and an honorary professor with the Education University of Hong Kong. He has previously been sponsored by East Asian governments as a visiting research scholar with Nichibunken in Kyoto, Japan, and the Central Conservatory of Music, in Beijing, China. He also serves in various leadership roles with the International Society for Music Education.
Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs is a 1977 book on education, written by British social scientist and cultural theorist Paul Willis. A Columbia University Press edition, titled the "Morningside Edition," was published in the United States shortly after its reception.
The Wind Repertory Project (WRP) is an online database of music written for wind and percussion instruments. Built on the MediaWiki framework, the WRP is primarily intended as a reference work for band directors and other musicians.
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