Four Post-doctoral fellowships in Local Musicking
(State University of Campinas & University of São Paulo – Brazil)
Summary of the Thematic Project:
This Thematic Project (TP) aims to investigate how music produces locality and how it is produced by locality. By focusing on the locality of the musical activity, we call attention to the role of music in articulating this context, regardless of the origin of the style in question. Localities are dynamic settings; they are points of continuous encounter between people, ideas, practices, technologies, and objects that converge in the locality over time. The specificity of a locality derives more from its relationships to other localities than from its isolation. Here, we aim to document how musical engagement articulates with the social interactions that occur during musicking, whether the participants are amateurs or professionals. The project, therefore, focuses on the investigation of the relations between music and locality in terms of the people involved in musicking.
TP Subthemes:
• Musicking and the production of locality;
• Localities, encounters and connections in local musicking;
• Learning, transmission and preparation;
• Technologies of local musicking.
Research projects:
The specific themes to be developed by each research fellow will be defined by the candidates, according to their previous research backgrounds and personal interests, but it is envisaged that fellows contribute to the collective advancement of the debates surrounding the TP as a whole.
In conformity with the general objectives of the TP, the fellows’ projects will be guided by the following key questions:
• What is the nature of musicking in the local context? What does this tell us about the production of locality and the ways in which localities are experienced by those involved in local musicking?
• What contributes to the establishment of musical engagement and of feelings of commitment to music production at the local level?
• How do local music groups operate as ‘art worlds’ and/or ‘communities of practice’? How do their organizational structures affect the forms of musicking in a locality, both in the amateur and professional domains?
• In what ways do people, objects, technologies, institutions interact in musical practices? How are these ‘agents’ related to a physical or imagined locality?
For further particulars, please go to: http://www.fapesp.br/oportunidades/o_musicar_local__novas_trilhas_para_a_etnomusicologia/1615/
