Thesis-2010-Poole.pdf (6.42 MB)
Songs, stories and selfhood: a critical humanist study of creativity and identity on an acoustic music scene
thesis
posted on 2016-04-25, 13:31 authored by Mark PooleThis thesis researches singer-songwriters on an acoustic music scene. The rise of non-folk
based 'acoustic' music and the recent re-emergence of the 'acoustic singer
songwriter' in mainstream popular music bring up interesting aspects to consider
regarding the self in contemporary culture. The key purpose here is to reflect upon the
production and reproduction of creative musical identities amongst these music makers
both in the private sphere of their daily lives and life histories, and in the public sphere of
the acoustic music scene and conventional society. Through a consciously continuous
movement between the self and the social, and the private and public spheres, I fuse
ethnographic observation of the social workings of the acoustic music world with in depth
examinations of the making and management of creative identities amongst its
individual participants. The thesis focuses on three definable areas: firstly, the artistic
creativity of music making itself; secondly, the creativity involved in the everyday
managing of the musical identity, both in the domestic realm and in the music scene
itself; and thirdly, the creative carving out or mapping of musical identities through the
telling of individual life stories.
The research deals with semi-professional musicians well into their adult years who are
caught in a struggle between economic and domestic pressures on the one hand and their
personal construction of a musical identity on the other. My focus here on a demographic
category largely made up of the thirty-sixty age group - what we might refer to as 'the
greying zone' - is of crucial sociological importance. The only studies of older age
groups in music research tend to involve minority scenes outside of the mainstream such
as folk, jazz or classical. This thesis however gives a voice to individuals engaged in a
mainstream music scene, which, although closely related to folk, is in many ways closer
to rock and pop. This greying zone is surprisingly absent from studies of culture and yet
it is they who, more than ever, have a very powerful part to play in what is produced and
consumed in popular music. There will be aspects regarding the general nature of acoustic music in this thesis. It is
important to make clear however, that this is not intended to be a musicological study. It
is also crucial to state that it aims to be more than simply a popular music study. This is a
sociological analysis of individual identity, creativity and everyday life using a music
scene as a backdrop. Overall, I present here a dynamically human picture of a diverse
and mutable music culture involving individual stories and changes within and between
its members.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Publisher
© Mark PoolePublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2010Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.EThOS Persistent ID
uk.bl.ethos.539454Language
- en