Music, Culture and Society: Postgraduate Session
8 March 2008
Jimi Hendrix: Towards A Socio-Biography
Marios Elles
Mythologized in his own time, Jimi Hendrix is still a name that arouses enigma today. Despite numerous biographical works by scholars and fans, over the last four decades an understanding of the inner man and the social, cultural and historical basis of his work remain largely untapped. As we move away from the twentieth century new works by his admirers will begin to emerge that represent a closer reading of his life and achievements. Drawing upon a range of research approaches and perspectives I identify my own work as belonging to this second wave of Hendrix scholarship. Although a worthy exercise, I have not sought to prise apart the extra musical and musical elements of Hendrix’s life, because I wish to illustrate how one necessarily informs the other. Hence the paper provides some interesting insights into the intentions behind Hendrix’s entry into the musical world, why he played guitar so well, his relationships with fellow friends and band members and the reasons behind the change in his career direction in 1969. Whilst the paper consciously avoids venturing into the thicket of theoretical discussion, one of the underlying features of this work-in-progress more generally is that it takes its inspiration from a wide range of disciplinary fields within the humanities.
Marios Elles is preparing his dissertation on Jimi Hendrix in the Sociology Department at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. Thus far, he has published a paper based on his research in the student e journal The 49th Parallel, titled, ‘Chinese Whispers: Jimi Hendrix, Fame and the Star Spangled Banner’. He is due to submit in early 2010.
Elements of Musical Listening: Conceptually Generating A Way into the Social Investigation of the Musical Experience
Michael Walsh
This paper presents the findings of a review of literature that explored the social action of musical listening in its historical and contemporary manifestations. From a brief consideration of the literature the paper moves on to present the need to explore musical listening through five related strands of enquiry. These five constitutive aspects of listening are presented as the site of musical experience, the musical elements, the social history of the listener, the technological means by which listening is enabled and the agency of the individual. The paper finds that it is only through combining and considering these particular elements of listening an adequate and more precise understanding of musical listening in the social is possible.
Michael Walsh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Media and Communications at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He is currently working on the empirical aspect of his project that explores the social act of musical listening in relation to notions of social and spatial context. His work more generally explores the socially dynamic aspects of the musical experience with a particular emphasis on everyday life. He is due to submit in late 2009.
“That Feeling of Exaltation”: An Ethnography of Music and Religious Experience at a Music Festival
Mark Jennings
This paper is a work in progress, based on an ethnography of the performances at the West Coast Blues & Roots festival (henceforth “WCB&R”) which took place March 31-April 1 2007 in Fremantle, Western Australia. I begin with a narrative of a day at the festival, sketching the transition from the casual interest of attendees in the morning and early afternoon to the intense, densely packed devotion of participants in the evening. I describe music as a ritual negotiated between performers and participants. I outline the combination of factors by means of which music becomes a “portal”, inviting participants to an experience of euphoria and communitas. I make use of the broad understanding of religious experience outlined by Friedrich Schleiermacher, together with the historical and ethnographic work of Robin Sylvan, to suggest that this musical portal opens into a transcendent experience of the sacred.
Mark Jennings is a doctoral research student at Murdoch University in Western Australia. His thesis, due for completion in 2009, explores the ways people make use of contemporary music, and uses ethnographic methods to compare the significance and function of music and religion in a Pentecostal church setting and in a Blues music festival. The project is jointly supervised by Dr. Alexander Jensen and Dr. David Palmer. Mark is married to Sonja, they have two daughters and live near Fremantle, Western Australia.