Repertoire in Action among Musicians

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract: Faulkner/Becker: Repertoire in Action among Musicians People who play jazz together in public places often have never met or rehearsed together, yet can perform competently together for an entire night, drawing on a shared repertoire (learned from a larger pool of already existing songs) to assemble specific programs. The research will explain how this repertoire has been formed and is put into use in an artistic community. Repertoires consist of an array of resources participants assemble into a working agenda, which they then perform. They choose from a pool of songs, assembling a program by prioritizing and promoting songs according to their interests and talents, shaping the list of resources for each performance, given the demand conditions of the situation. Then they enact the agreed upon list, implementing the designed program in collective action. Based on a publicly available (in "fakebooks" and archives) base of tunes and songs, jazz improvisation is easily studied. Musicians can be observed and interviewed about their definitions of available tunes and the use of those definitions in performance. Repertoire in action can be observed via participation (both investigators are competent playing members of this professional community). The project investigates the social dynamics of concerted action, using improvisation and its practitioners as a resource and a topic for qualitative investigation. It focuses on how musicians choose material and organize it in performance. This recognizes that performed repertoire results from a process of continuing choice and is continually constructed as items are added, dropped and replaced. Studying this process requires observations close to the actions studied, rather than distant reports of possible behavior. The study also includes interviews with 100 practitioners about how they learned specific songs, their individual practices of learning new material, and performance situations affect their repertoire. Songs are usually chosen in the context of the jazz performances, but little is known about what occurs in such ensembles: how songs are chosen, what criteria of choice are used, which tunes are performed and why. The study suggests that repertoire is a social construct, more fundamentally than has been previously appreciated. The broader impact of the research lies in its empirically based clarification of the concept of repertoire. Like many concepts in social science, "repertoire" is more image than well-defined concept. Providing an empirical basis for the concept, will make possible more realistic research in arts production and management, as well as in studies of business enterprise, professions, and political mobilization. It also contributes to basic theorizing and research on concerted social action. Finally, the research will contribute to the training of graduate students.