A musical ethnography (Music life at my local home town) - Essay Example

Thesis: Music is an art that is meant for entertainment among other functions, the way it is conducted is of greatimportance considering the group and music genre. My experience is that with a band in a local restaurant, their norms and leadership impact on the music performance. Music life at my local home town For this ethnography project I have chosen to make a study of the music ethnographic experience at my local town restaurant band. The respondents for my interviews are branded names so that they are not embarrassed or offended (Horowitz).

My music ethnography tilts towards the comparison of the norms of behaviour of the workers at the restaurant most so when the supervisor is present as well as their behaviour when the supervisor is absent. To start with a norm is the standard of behavior that is expected by the societal standards. This will enable me find out the behavior of the restaurant attendants in the presence and the absence of the supervisors. My main focus in the ethnography is the norms of the workers though I will also consider the hierarchy and gender roles as they also play peculiar roles in the restaurant (Folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art).

The restaurant is a frequently visited joint frequently visited by all walks of people. It mainly sells food and drinks for its clients serving as both a hotel and a bar mostly at night. The restaurant has all it takes to provide quality food and another of its rooms there is well arranged place for beverages and a dance hall. The bar place takes a larger area of the bottom part that is covered by glass window which the clients can use to view the vicinity that has the view of a vast field of wild animals, a soccer and tennis courts on the other side.

Near the table where I sat there is also a television and this gives the main area where the observation was made. I would wish to see how the band responsible for playing night club music behaves when their supervisor is around as opposed to when the supervisor is not present. My musical experience around the band spans for a four day period; three days when the supervisor of the band is not present and the last day when he is around (Bird). The music band is composed of six men and my first task was to establish the roles that each of the six men forming the band were responsible for.

Some of them were responsible for the instruments while other were the vocalists. Just as may be expected the jobs are distributed fairly among the gender with women composing a greater part of the vocalists team while men are responsible for the instruments most so the heavier instruments like the drums. The dance group also brings on board the women given the aesthetic approach that they bring along with them. In finding who among the musicians, gender roles tend to play a vital role in making such decisions.

The musical band in a way exhibits some form of bureaucracy given the existence of a division of labor, a hierarchy of authority that is exhibited by the existence of the supervisor and the juniors in the band and the written rules and regulations. Given these elements it is prudent to note that the supervisory roles become effective even with the absence of the supervisor with the supervisor holding only the sole role of responsibility (Wade). Therefore the actions of the music band and their performance were not much different when the supervisor was present as much as he was not present.

For this study I chose to interview “John” the leader of the band of which I asked him his role in the band at the night. “Tonight I was the lead guitarist; this is a great role in the band. The supervisor has taught us to be self-reliant in that each one of us can fit in the others roles hence there is normally no vacuum in our band at any time.” “When our supervisor is here or not, the operations remain the same and we entertain our guest….” The next night I also interviewed “Tracy” the dance coordinator of the night who showered a lot of praises to the supervisor for instilling good norms in them and the way things are handled by their band.

From my observations of the band is that the norms and standards of behavior remain almost the same with a slight difference when the supervisor is around (Wade). This is explained by the much seriousness exhibited by the band members and they remain less relaxed. It is therefore factual if we can conclude that with no one to reinforce norms, then the norms can always change irrespective of the degree of the change. Actions of this nature are common everywhere in almost all institutions with human being as the actors.

Works Cited Bird, S. Elizabeth. The anthropology of news & journalism: global perspectives. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Print. Folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art.. 2nd ed. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2011. Print. Horowitz, Maryanne Cline. New dictionary of the history of ideas. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2005. Print. Wade, Bonnie C. Thinking Musically: Experiencing music, expressing culture. New York &Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print.