How do musicians play and talk to audiences? Why do audiences listen and what happens when they talk back? How do new (and old) technologies affect this interplay? This book presents a long overdue examination of the turbulent relationship between musicians and audiences. Focusing on a range of areas as diverse as Ireland, Greece, India, Malta, the US, and China, the contributors bring musicological, sociological, psychological, and anthropological approaches to the interaction between performers, fans, and the industry that mediates them. The four parts of the book each address a different stage of the relationship between musicians and audiences, showing its processual nature: from conceptualisation to performance, and through mediation to off-stage discourses. The musician/audience conceptual division is shown, throughout the book, to be as problematic as it is persistent.
Jonathan P.J. Stock - Foreword: Audiencing
Ioannis Tsioulakis & Elina Hytönen-Ng - Introduction to Musicians and Audiences
PART I: CONCEPTUALISING THE AUDIENCE-PERFORMER ENGAGEMENT
Bruce Johnson - In the Body of the Audience
Laura Leante - Observing Musicians/Audience Interaction in North Indian Classical Music Performance
Mary Louise O'Donnell & Jonathan Henderson - 'One Step Above the Ornamental Greenery': A Survivor's Guide to Playing to an Audience Who Does Not Listen
PART II: LIVE RELATIONSHIPS: NEGOTIATIONS OF PERFORMANCE
Elina Hytönen-Ng - Contemporary British Jazz Musicians' Relationship with the Audience: Renditions of We-Relations and Intersubjectivity
Barbara Bradby - Performer-Audience Interaction in Live Concerts: Ritual or Conversation?
Andrew Pace - Refiguring Maltese Heritage through Musical Performance: Audience Complicity and the Role of Venues in Etnika's Stage Shows
PART III: TECHNOLOGICAL MEDIATIONS: THE VIRTUAL AND THE MATERIAL
Hillegonda C. Rietveld - Authenticity and Liveness in Digital DJ Performance
Richard Osborne - That's Me in the Spotlight: Audiences and Musicians on Screen
Ioannis Tsioulakis - 'Soon You'll Wish They Would Shut Up!': The Digitised Political Voices of Music Stars and their Audiences in Recession Greece
PART IV: OFF-STAGE DISCOURSES AND THE POWER OF FANDOM
Nancy Bruseker - 'Where are the girls of the old brigade?': Vesta Tilley and Her Female Audience in Correspondence
Mark Duffett - From Secret Fantasies to Social Systems: Re-reading Starlust as a Portrait of the Dedicated Popular Music Audience
Walter van de Leur - Afterword: 'Moved to the point where she could no longer contain herself': Ellington and Audience Interaction at the Newport Jazz Festival
