Browsing by Subject "Festivals"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Let the car burn, we're going to the faire : history, performance, community and identity within the Renaissance festival
(2004-05) Gunnels, Jennifer Sue; Canning, Charlotte, 1964-
The Renaissance festival is an interactive venue which utilizes popular and fantastic views of history to encourage audience members to participate in the performance. While these festivals share much in common with living history presentations, the open use of myth and romanticized history at the Renaissance festival, while sometimes criticized, allows the festivals to incorporate people in the performance in ways that other venues cannot. Living histories, usually heritage sites, seek to confirm and validate identity or membership within a specific community. Their methods of presentation leave little room for playing with or questioning these historically predetermined roles. The Renaissance festival, based as it is in a much earlier history and a romanticized one at that, creates more flexible group and individual identification. Because the Renaissance festival encourages the exploration of identity and community beyond those determined by the history of the historical performance, it carries the potential to change the ways in which individuals view themselves, performance, history, and community. It does so through encouraging new constructions of identity for the individual as well as new group affiliations based on interpersonal interactions, commerce, and myth. These will be viewed through the use of three case studies of the Scarborough Faire, Texas Renaissance Festival, and Michigan Renaissance Festival. Participation in these performances can encourage a questioning of how community and identity can be built and what they mean.
Music and tourism in Cusco, Peru: culture as a resource
(2009-05) LaBate, Elizabeth Ann; Slawek, Stephen
This dissertation explores music in Cusco, Peru found in the festivals and other performance contexts related to tourism. The central thesis considers what happen when culture becomes a resource for socio-economic development. First the historical emergence of culture as a resource is examined through the discourse of international agencies, folklorists, and travelers. Next, various contexts of music and tourism in Cusco highlight specific examples of culture as a resource, such as Inti Raymi, other raymi festivals, the pilgrimage of Señor de Qoyllur rit’i, dinner show restaurants, and nightclubs. In each example, I discuss the history of the performance context, the musical repertoire, opportunities for musicians, and how local people keep the performance relevant to their lives. While critics have called cultural tourism a devil’s bargain and proponents have called it a panacea to under-development, I conclude that the real effects of culture as a resource in Cusco are more complex. I analyze the music in conjunction with social conditions of asymmetric power as the aestheticization of poverty.
Towards an elsewhere space : potentialities and performance technologies in Latinx festivals
(2023-04-21) Ramirez, Jeannelle, M. of Music; Moore, Robin D., 1964-; Marshall, Wayne; Seeman, Sonia; Cordova, Cary; Carson, Charles
Latinx festivals are a form of anti-essentialist cultural production. The dissertation centers on Latinx festivals in the United States, between 2010-2022, focusing particularly on festivalization, technology, experimentalism and Latinidad. This study seeks to understand the motivations and experiences of festival producers and curators in producing Latinx transmedia festivals, as well as how performers use various non-standard technologies in their performances to produce new expressions. Data was collected through ethnography, participant observation, and discourse analysis of social media and websites. Interviews included festival organizers, artists, and other collaborators. The study also draws on applied work in festival production. Motivations for Latinx festival production include providing a platform for experimental Latinx arts, as well as increasing professional opportunities for experimental Latinx artists, including composers, multimedia artist, musicians, and dancers. Additionally, festival producers are concerned with making experimental work more accessible to Latinx communities and expanding representations of Latinidad in the arts. Transmedia festival programming allows festival producers to achieve some of these goals, offering a platform for artists working in the interstices of various mediums and existing in-between different cultures. Meanwhile, artists performing in these spaces use customized controllers and objects like robots and automata to express culturally-specific histories, narratives, and desires for the future. The case studies in this dissertation are oriented towards potentiality and futurity, in addition to a notion of shared cultural heritage. These practices center the present condition of being Latinx and serve as sites for co-producing culture, as opposed to celebrating heritage. These findings indicate a need for deterritorialized, pan-Latino, anti-essentialist frameworks in Latin music scholarship, and further research on Latino/x festivals and other emergent forms of cultural production amongst various Latinx groups. Additionally, this study calls for further inquiries into the uses of non-standard technologies in performance practices through an intersectional lens, and a consideration the use of items such as food, plants, and religious paraphernalia as part of customized MIDI controllers or musical automata.