Concepts, Terminology and Methodology in Music Performativity Research

Abstract

A music performance may be defined as the live presentation of a music event by musicians and other participants or stakeholders at a given time and place, usually in the presence of an audience. The concept of music performativity, on the other hand, includes not only the artist's/artists' production of sounds and movements, persona (stage presence), competence, approach, and style, but also influential factors such as the acoustics and style of the venue, the arrangement of the stage or arena, audience seating, the lighting, and the contributions of the director, technicians, backup artists, make-up artists, event organizers, entrepreneurs, audience, and patrons; indeed everyone involved in the process of bringing a performance to fruition. This article discusses the recent rise of thinking about performativity by interdisciplinary scholars, performers, music scholars, and performer-scholars, and proposes a comprehensive four-level methodology for research into music performativity. After investigating performative concepts such as persona, competence, interaction, improvisatory practices, cueing, and related attributes such as musicality, talent, and giftedness, the article discusses the factors of intersubjectivity (or group bonding), entrainment or groove, and reception. Finally, a case study exemplifies the proposed methodology, including how the members of a competent or accomplished Acehnese-Indonesian song-dance group communicate while performing, how their persona and intersubjective bonding affects the way they rehearse, cue, and perform their strenuous body percussion sounds, movements and songs with nearperfectly synchronous entrainment, tone colour and intonation, and how they interact with each other and the audience.

Introduction: Making History Through Music Performance and Education

“…Perhaps this is because it has not yet been properly defined, delineated or differentiated in these contexts, so as to offer something beyond what is already offered by established practices. Margaret Kartomi (2014) presents what seems to be a promising effort in her article "Concepts, Terminology and Methodology in Music Performativity Research". But Kartomian performativity seems, through its reliance on and approach to a music performance's many stakeholders, to be more in line with Christopher Small's term "musicking" (1998), than with Austinian performativity serving as the foundation for her argument (Kartomi, 2014, p. 191, I give Austin's performativity more attention below).…”

“…It will be interesting to see how it may develop in the future. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that there is a growing tendency to address performativities more fully in music research (see e.g., Chung, 2019;Kartomi, 2014;Madrid, 2009), in addition to the established Butlerian approaches affiliated with, for instance, identity, gender and ethnicity studies. In one sense, we seek to join forces with Chung's P 1 -Performativity and P 2 -Performativity, as well as Miller's Performativities sub 1 and sub 2 (Chung, 2019;Miller, 2009), while at the same time acknowledging the individual contributions and genealogical steps of performativity's development (e.g., Loxley, 2006;Loxley & Robson, 2013) in close relation to pedagogy and rhetoric.…”

“…(Lilja, 2021, p. 28) Is the object of HIP also art? To answer this question properly, one needs to be aware of two divergent paths that have coexisted in the HIP movement practically since its inception (Kartomi, 2014): the path of early music scholars -who have focused on publishing written outputs (articles, books and editions) to foster their academic careers; and the path of early music performers -who have focused on performing and recording to foster their artistic engagement.…”

Educación musical performativa en la formación de intérpretes. Un estudio de caso

“…Por su parte, el concepto performatividad surgió en el ámbito de la Filosofía del Lenguaje de la mano de Austin en 1961de Austin en (2010, siendo numerosas y diversas las disciplinas que posteriormente lo han venido aplicando exitosamente en sus respectivos campos de estudio (Sociología, Estudios de Género, Teología, Performance Studies, Educación, Artes…). Kartomi (2014) emplea el concepto performatividad en el ámbito de la Música para hacer referencia a todos aquellos componentes y características que describen y definen aspectos emergentes mientras el músico está llevando a cabo una actuación musical, así como los factores que influyen en el evento y en su preparación previa, refiriéndose a la persona intérprete, a su competencia, a la forma de abordar la performance y su creación, al estilo musical, y otros aspectos como el repertorio, el ensayo o la interacción entre intérpretes de un mismo grupo musical que al final definirá el grado de sincronía y comunicación sobre el escenario. Por su parte, Rodríguez-Quiles -a partir de diferentes trabajos sobre cultura performativa (Bachmann-Medik, 2006;Fischer-Lichte, 2004Volbers, 2014) y en lo que ha definido como Educación Musical Performativa (2017, 2018)-focaliza la atención en aquello que acontece en el aula de Música cuando se ponen en juego las denominadas performances didáctico-musicales (PDMs) y cómo estas facilitan la adquisición de conocimientos y habilidades mediante procesos educativos que empoderan al alumnado a partir de procesos autorreferenciales y constituyentes de realidades estético-musicales.…”

“…Los datos obtenidos por medio de esta investigación fueron analizados a partir de un sistema de categorías, subcategorías y códigos de tipo emergente. Para realizar una categorización apriorística con ayuda del programa NVivo 12, se tuvieron en cuenta aspectos propios de la investigación en EMP (Rodríguez-Quiles, 2017), así como conceptos referentes a la investigación en Performatividad Musical (Kartomi, 2014) y en Aprendizaje Informal (Green, 2013). Educación musical performativa en la formación de intérpretes.…”