[Download] "Boys and Girls Come out to Play: Gender and Music-Making in Hamilton, New Zealand/Aotearoa (Report)" by Genders * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Boys and Girls Come out to Play: Gender and Music-Making in Hamilton, New Zealand/Aotearoa (Report)
- Author : Genders
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Reference,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 386 KB
Description
[1] This article addresses gender and popular music-making in the city of Hamilton, New Zealand, a moderately prosperous provincial city (population 130,000) which services a large rural sector (the Waikato). Starting from the observation that few women enrol in tertiary commercial music courses in Hamilton, I aim to examine both the pedagogical experiences and perceptions of students relating to these courses, but also the background of beliefs and practices relating to gender and music in Hamilton, focusing on the live original music scene and its participants. My research question is 'what factors enable or disable women's participation in original popular music performance in Hamilton?' I have used mainly qualitative approaches (interviews with students, participants, participant observation at live music events) and some quantitative research (statistical analysis of gender participation in NZ tertiary education). Precedents include Lucy Green's Music Gender Education (1997) and Sara Cohen's Rock Culture in Liverpool (1991), which employed a mixed methodology to research similar issues in the UK. My theoretical approach starts from a position similar to Green: critical theory that aims to reveal and interpret ideological patterns of power within everyday experience, specifically in relation to ideologies of gender and music. However, while critical theory is excellent at identifying constraints, problems and contradictions, it's not always clear how it can set out a positive agenda, other than by addressing the problems it identifies. It doesn't always engage with how people dwell within and work with contradictions, rather than trying to 'solve' them. Some of the strategies I describe later that enable women's music-making could be interpreted as critical responses to social problems, but others do not work so much with or against dominant discourses but alongside them--that is, agents or groups develop effective strategies to make music 'on their own terms' but without necessarily defining themselves against someone else's terms. In the latter part of the essay I consider Gustav Holter's theory of public/private spheres and, briefly, Foucault's concept of resistance as alternatives to critical theory's emphasis on ideology. Background