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  2. In Concert: Performing Musical Persona

In Concert: Performing Musical Persona

Philip Auslander 2021
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The conventional way of understanding what musicians do as performers is to treat them as producers of sound; some even argue that it is unnecessary to see musicians in performance as long as one can hear them.  But musical performance, counters Philip Auslander, is also a social interaction between musicians and their audiences, appealing as much to the eye as to the ear. In Concert: Performing Musical Persona he addresses not only the visual means by which musicians engage their audiences through costume and physical gesture, but also spectacular aspects of performance such as light shows.

Although musicians do not usually enact fictional characters on stage, they nevertheless present themselves to audiences in ways specific to the performance situation.  Auslander's term to denote the musician's presence before the audience is musical persona.  While presence of a musical persona may be most obvious within rock and pop music, the book's analysis extends to classical music, jazz, blues, country, electronic music, laptop performance, and music made with experimental digital interfaces. The eclectic group of performers discussed include the Beatles, Miles Davis, Keith Urban, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, Frank Zappa, B. B. King, Jefferson Airplane, Virgil Fox, Keith Jarrett, Glenn Gould, and Laurie Anderson.

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ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-05471-8 (paper)
  • 978-0-472-07471-6 (hardcover)
  • 978-0-472-12839-6 (ebook)
Subject
  • Theater and Performance
  • American Studies
  • Music
  • Media Studies
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  • Table of Contents

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  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Introduction: Genre, Frame, Persona
  • Part I: Preliminaries
    • Chapter One. Performance Analysis and Popular Music
    • Chapter Two. Music as Performance
    • Chapter Three. Sound and Vision
    • Chapter Four. Lucille Meets GuitarBot
  • Part II: The Interactionist Turn
    • Chapter Five. Musical Personae
    • Chapter Six. Everybody’s in Showbiz
    • Chapter Seven. Jazz Improvisation as a Social Arrangement
  • Part III: Contexts of Performance
    • Chapter Eight. Beatlemania
    • Chapter Nine. Good Old Rock and Roll
    • Chapter Ten. Barbie in a Meat Dress
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

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Figure 1. A flow chart showing the path of communication in musical performance from performer to audience with the musical persona as the key element through which the performer communicates.

A Model of Popular Music Performance

From Chapter 1

Figure 1. A Model of Popular Music Performance

Figure 2. Suzi Quatro, dressed in a black leather cat suit and playing a bass guitar, performs the persona of a female rocker, rare in the early 1970s.

Suzie Quatro performs "Can the Can"

From Chapter 1

Figure 2. Video still of Suzi Quatro performing “Can the Can” on the German television program Disco in 1973.

Figure 3. Laurie Anderson, dressed in a white silk jumpsuit, touches sensors in the suit to trigger percussive sound samples, thus becoming the musician and the instrument simultaneously.

Laurie Anderson performs "Drum Dance"

From Chapter 2

Figure 3. Laurie Anderson performs “Drum Dance.” Film still from Home of the Brave (1986), directed by Laurie Anderson.

Figure 4. Canadian virtuoso pianist Glenn Gould, dressed in a bathrobe, hunches over his instrument and smiles, displaying his eccentric persona.

Glenn Gould plays the piano at his country home

From Chapter 2

Figure 4. Glenn Gould plays the piano at his lakeside home in a still from the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary Glenn Gould. Off the Record (1959), directed by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor.

Figure 5. Two young men perform music sitting behind laptop computers, making it difficult for the audience to know exactly how the sound is produced.

Patrick K.-H. and Oleg Makarov perform at the Love Live Electronic Festival in 2009.

From Chapter 3

Figure 5. Patrick K.-H. and Oleg Makarov, “Live-Acousmatic” performance, Love Live Electronic Festival, November 27, 2009. Camera: Ivan Savchenko, “OK-films” studio.

Figure 6. Jefferson Airplane performs at the Fillmore East in front of a spectacular projected light show that draws the audience’s attention away from the performers.

Jefferson Airplane performs "Wooden Ships" at the Fillmore East in 1970

From Chapter 3

Figure 6. Jefferson Airplane performing “Wooden Ships” at the Fillmore East, New York City, November 28, 1970. Source: wolfgangsvault.com.

Figure 7. Blues musician B. B. King, dressed in a suit and fronting a full band, sings at a microphone with his eyes closed and without playing his guitar.

B. B. King on the television program Jazz Casual in 1968

From Chapter 4

Figure 7. B. B. King sings on Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual (National Educational Television, 1968). Still from video.

Figure 8. B. B. King plays a guitar solo with his head tilted down toward the instrument and his eyes closed in an expression of deep concentration on the music.

B. B. King on the television program Jazz Casual in 1968 - 2

From Chapter 4

Figure 8. B. B. King communes with his guitar, Lucille, on Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual (National Educational Television, 1968). Still from video.

Figure 9. Violinist Mari Kimura, wearing a formal black dress, stands near Guitarbot, a four-stringed robotic instrument on a pedestal that is considerably taller than she is, and looks at it as if it were a fellow musician.

Mari Kimura and Guitarbot perform "Guitarbotana" in 2004

From Chapter 4

Figure 9. Mari Kimura and GuitarBot perform GuitarBotana at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York City, in 2004. Still from performance video directed by Liubo Borrisov.

Figure 10. Mari Kimur stands very close to Guitarbot while performing her piece “Guitarbotana” to create the impression that she and the machine are performing collaboratively.

Mari Kimura and Guitarbot perform "Guitarbotana" in 2004 - 2

From Chapter 4

Figure 10. Mari Kimura and GuitarBot perform GuitarBotana at the Chelsea Art Museum, New York City, in 2004. Still from performance video directed by Liubo Borrisov.

Figure 11. Michael Jackson, leaning forward in a spotlight as he executes dance steps, holds a fedora that he will put on when he steps up to a nearby microphone to begin singing.

Michael Jackson performs "Billie Jean" in 1996

From Chapter 5

Figure 11. Michael Jackson strikes a pose just before putting on his fedora to complete the “Michael Jackson” persona before performing “Billie Jean.” Still from concert video, Brunei, 1996.

Figure 12. Darius Rucker portrays the persona of an itinerant country musician by playing and singing while walking on railroad tracks, wearing contemporary clothing that looks older, and playing a Gibson archtop style acoustic guitar.

Darius Rucker in the music video for "Wagon Wheel," 2013

From Chapter 5

Figure 12. Darius Rucker assumes the persona of an itinerant country musician. Still from the music video for “Wagon Wheel” (2013).

Figure 13. Carole King, wearing a pink dress, sits at the piano and sings with her eyes closed and an expression of deep immersion in the music on her face.

Carole King on the BBC TV program In Concert, 1971

From Chapter 5

Figure 13. Carole King personifies the female version of the normative singer-songwriter persona of the 1970s. Still from her appearance on the BBC television program In Concert in 1971.

Figure 14. Miles Davis looks off to his right as if distracted while playing the composed section of the piece, suggesting that doing so requires little concentration.

Miles Davis performs "So What" on CBS TV's The Sound of Miles Davis in 1959

From Chapter 7

Figure 14. When playing the theme of “So What,” Miles Davis looks off to the right as if to suggest that doing so requires little effort or concentration. Still from The Sound of Miles Davis, CBS Television, April 1959.

Figure 15. Miles Davis, seen in close up, plays the trumpet with his eyes wide open and fixed on a point in infinity to show that he is focused on improvising his solo.

Miles Davis performs "So What" on CBS TV's The Sound of Miles Davis in 1959 - 2

From Chapter 7

Figure 15. When improvising, Davis looks off into infinity, suggesting deep concentration on his solo. Still from The Sound of Miles Davis, CBS Television, April 1959.

Figure 16. An image of the entire Miles Davis ensemble annotated to show different regions of the performance space: the “Batter’s Box,” where the current soloist stands; the “On Deck Circle,” where the next soloist waits; and the “Dugout,” where musicians who are not currently playing stand and observe.

Different areas of the stage in Miles Davis's performance of "So What"

From Chapter 7

Figure 16. The different areas of the stage. the “dugout,” the “offstage” area where musicians withdraw from playing; the “on-deck circle,” where they stand while waiting to take a solo; and the “batter’s box,” where the soloist is positioned. Annotated still from The Sound of Miles Davis, CBS Television, April 1959.

Figure 17. Saxophonist John Coltrane, seen behind Miles Davis, listens intently to Davis’s improvised solo with his eyes closed.

John Coltrane listens to Miles Davis's solo during "So What" on The Sound of Miles Davis, CBS TV, 1959

From Chapter 7

Figure 17. John Coltrane concentrates on Miles Davis’s improvised solo. Still from The Sound of Miles Davis, CBS Television, April 1959.

Figure 18. Three young women attending a Beatles concert in 1965 stand behind and cling onto a wire fence at Shea Stadium, eyes closed and mouths open as they scream in response to the presence of their idols.

Beatles fans at the Beatles' Shea Stadium Concert in 1965

From Chapter 8

Figure 18. Beatles fans attending their concert at Shea Stadium, New York City, in 1965. Still from the documentary film The Beatles at Shea Stadium (1966), directed by Bob Precht.

Figure 19. As Sha Na Na perform the teen tragedy song “Tell Laura I Love Her,” three singers in gold lamé suits stand at the center. Two form the roof of a chapel by raising their arms, while the third is on his knees singing beneath.

Sha Na Na performs "Tell Laura I Love Her" on the German television program Musikladen in 1973.

From Chapter 9

Figure 19. The members of Sha Na Na form a human “chapel” while performing the teen tragedy song “Tell Laura I Love Her.” The singer at the center is Johnny Contardo. Still from video of the group’s appearance on the German television program Musikladen in 1973.

Figure 20. A linear chart depicting a continuum from Authenticity, Auteurship, and Modernism at the left pole to Inauthenticity, Pastiche, and Postmodernism at the right pole and the positions of John Lennon, the Mothers of Invention, Roy Wood’s Wizzard, and Sha Na Na on this continuum.

A Diagram Mapping a Continuum between Authenticity and Inauthenticiy in Musical Performance

From Chapter 9

Figure 20. The continuum on which I have mapped the four artists discussed here to illustrate and differentiate their respective performed relationships to rock and roll of the 1950s.

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