5 College Anthropology Conference Presentation

Student Music Philsophohies Script

For two and a half years as a personal project independent from a class, I have written ethnographies about my friends improvised music and performance art group giant enemy cancer cult, learning to unlearn the traditional band, song, and social structures i've absorbed over my life by letting myself wildly flail across basement floors, making my violin sound like its birthing something sickly while simultaneously being skinned alive, contorting my body in unrepeatable ways that make the audience wince and gape with morbid fascination. unfolding primitive guttural sounds that coagulate into a heavy wave of unpolished emotion, watching my friends jaunt neurotically yet with no mental chains of fear holding them back, our pride as impish sprites of chaos pushing us to deliver our anti fascist message to anyone and everyone

ABSTRACT Though my participant observation only covers 2 of the groups 15 year span, the common behaviors and beliefs quickly became visible by playing with my friends in 40 plus shows across western mass and around new england I noticed the Foundational core values of all members include anti authoritarianism, anti capitalism, radical social relationing, deconstruction of culture and much more To note where the offstage actions of the members do and do not adhere to these values , i sort behavior into tangibility and interaction themes that create and challenge the social physical and conceptual environments that the band encounters

RELATIONSHIPS 2 DOCUMENTATION Improvisers, experimentalists, avant gardists in literature and in close locales like western mass are suspicious of academia and intellectualism, unsure if the written word is capable of fully capturing the textural and conceptual density of an improvised music and performance art piece. My experience in performing has led me to agree with this, as each time i get on stage the narrative relations are bent and broken and rebuilt within seconds and done through verbal and non verbal cues such as head nods, blinks, abstract hand motions ,whispering, bodily contortions, and more Such experience has led me to question how my attempts to track behavioral patterns in improv performances and social groups off stage can be antithetical to the inherent and highly valued ineffability of improv. How does my own writing both illuminate and dull the vividity of the psychosocial dynamics i create and engage with in this group This Questioning the value and format of accurate representation is a core poststructuralist tenant that the structure of improvised music urges. This questioning is the main data point gleaned from these experiences.

TANGIBILITY 1. The people in cancer cult and close friends also heavily involved in experimental music find deep annoyance with John Cage's monopoly in collegiate music classes; they would rather prove themselves in real venues and social groups instead of "learning the rules to break them" in a classroom setting for an artificial grade 2. The questions common in the improv mindset when approaching a new or familiar space include what can I utilize here? What does this room want from me? Who teaches me to navigate this space? Is this habitat at risk of elimination? What class level does the structure and decoration indicate? 3. The phases of the performance lifestyle include gaining access, learning local and global canon, developing one's own improv dialect, time spent improvising The phases of organizing a performance include booking traveling to the venue planning a loose skit setting up instruments, playing, setting down, socializing, traveling back, talking about the performance The phases of a performance itself include gradual rises, middle plateaus, lulls of volume and number of instruments, narrative checkpoints, peak of volume and movements, and the gradual fall signifying the end of the performance 4. Common Conversations about technicalities of instruments such as cost, maintenance, accessories ability to alter it thru circuit bending and sampling, cords needed, compatibility with sonic and social palette one desires to enmesh with or challenge

INTERACTION

  • 1. The players value and need audience engagement to keep a scene stable, but cringe against the framing of connection with profit motive and traditional social mobility
  • 2. Credentials and experience is covertly important to improvisers, since history and knowledge of experimental music is of interest to these people but they value resisting traditional merit based inclusion
  • 3. Another value is resisting band role stratification and hierarchy, but it is created through asserting spatial, and sonic visual dominance of the narrative through large movements and holding the mic. This frontmanship role authority is utilized creatively by exchanging the focus of attention between performers to write a shared visual narrative
  • 4. Lastly, performers are often suspicious of other musicians who rely too much on the academy to supply funding for their art and the bulk of their socialization, instead cancer cult participants aim to find like minds in people's basements, diy spaces, experimental record stores, and in the smoke circle outside the venue, as those environments flourish with non normative logics shunned and vetted out by institutional rubrics.