Musicians and their Audiences

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.

Ioannis Tsioulakis is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast. In the past he has lectured at University College Cork and University College Dublin on topics including ethnomusicology, popular music and politics, Mediterranean music, and ethnographic research methods. His research focuses on cosmopolitan aspirations among local music practitioners, the concept of music professionalism, and the impact of crisis on music and politics in Greece. Ioannis is currently Associate Editor of the Irish Journal of Anthropology. He is also a professional pianist, composer, and arranger who has performed and recorded extensively within the Greek popular music scene. Elina Hytönen-Ng a cultural researcher and an ethnomusicologist, is a university researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. She has been studying the contemporary British jazz scene and musicians' flow experiences. She received her PhD in 2010, and since then has been an academic visitor at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, and a visiting research fellow at King's College London.

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