The Value of Curating Music

This article examines the practice of concert organization from an ethical perspective. By examining the field in relation to the notion of value, it explores the processes by which curators produce live acts, and the issues they face when they do so. The central argument traces a trajectory from the material to the immaterial aspects. The first part (Context and Value) shows how financial and cultural matters are embedded into live music production, and frames curatorship as the articulation of their co-dependent relations. The second part (Praxis) explores how music curators breathe value creation in their work context, by comparing interviews with the directors of Venice Biennale Musica, London Contemporary Music Festival, and No-Nation. The third part (Risk and Ethics) introduces risk-taking as a unit of value measurement, and points out the force of the curatorial in its power to confer value.

Decisions on participation in music festivals: an exploratory research in Portugal

PurposeMusic festivals offer new opportunities for leisure and tourist experiences in Portugal. Some tourists and residents, the so-called festival goers, participate and come back to these events, whereas others, the non-goers, never participate and are not willing to do so. The aim of this research is to understand the decision to participate or not based on facilitators and constraints to participate or not in a music festival, dismantling residents and tourists' attitudes.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 1,178 music festival goers and non-goers in Portugal. Content analysis was undertaken to depict the most important determinants of their decisions. Those determinants were categorized according to the three dimensions of factors of ecological systems theory, considering festival goers and non-goers as well as tourists and residents.FindingsThe results suggested that although constraints are not as often voiced as facilitators, both influence decisions that are expressed as delaying, postponing, avoiding or complying with others by participating in these events. Furthermore, the results suggested that the decision to participate or not depends on the social contexts of the festival goers or non-goers, and that these social contexts may invert their decision, be it by facilitating or constraining their participation.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited to festivals in Portugal and used a qualitative analysis that may be confirmed in other countries with quantitative methods. Nevertheless, this research opens paths to discuss facilitators and constraints through ecological system theory and gives insights into this industry.Practical implicationsThe results provide important insights for festival organizers to retain and build long-term relationships with festival goers. The results also provide insights into how to overcome the resistance which non-goers demonstrated.Social implicationsThis research offers an in-depth and insightful understanding of individuals' attitudes towards music festivals, allowing festival demand to be better understood. Furthermore, this research proves that attendance of music festivals is mostly a socially driven behaviour.Originality/valueBy eliciting facilitators and constraints of the decision to participate in music festivals, considering residents and tourists, festival goers and non-goers, this study provides a deeper understanding of the decision to participate, through a theoretical framework which is rarely applied in this field.

Winterreise op. 89 di Schubert: una lettura a tre chiavi

This paper explains the “birth” and development of an idea of performance: “Winterreise” by Franz Schubert; the concert was premiered at Levanto Music Festival (La Spezia-Italy) in summer 2021. The performers were Mirella Di Vita (soprano), Tiziana Canfori (pianist) and Simone Fareri (painter and sculptor). The artists conceived a detailed performance that combined music, lyrics and fine arts, intending to get the audience more involved in listening to this long and complex Lieder cycle. The different languages and the space-time arrangement had to be considered in the structure of this concert to create a more natural and complete sharing experience for the audience.

Impacts of a health crisis on music festivals: a qualitative approach

PurposeThis research explores the consequences of a health crisis provoked by a pandemic scenario on music festival impacts considered by the stakeholders involved. The purpose of this paper is to identify the perceptions from the stakeholders' point of view (host community, public and private sector) and to identify the impacts generated before and after a health crisis regarding the celebration of a festival.Design/methodology/approachThe study offers a holistic insight into impact research by music festivals. The methodology implemented is based on qualitative techniques. By conducting 20 in-depth interviews with essential stakeholders, it is possible to determine their perceptions of the impact of the event and the effects of a health crisis.FindingsThe results allow detecting a gap between internal and external stakeholders due to poor communication and planning of the event. The results show that a health crisis provokes negative impacts on the economic benefits of events' organisation. However, the cultural city's identity suffers an important damage that it is difficult to overcome. The community and visitors are the stakeholders that suffer a detrimental impact on their experience when attending the festival, considering the security measures. Moreover, results allow us to identify practical implications for event management and planning in a health crisis scenario.Originality/valueThe most important contribution of this research is the theoretical model proposed to analyse stakeholders' perception of the event celebration in a context of a health crisis. The model also considers different moments of the social exchange. The theoretical approaches considered theory of social exchange (SET) and Visitor, Industry, Community and Environment (VICE) models allow analysing the stakeholder's perception of a case study of a music festival (Viña Rock Festival, Spain). The emerging and central role of the cooperation between stakeholders constitutes another notable contribution to the literature.

“Like a Cosmic, Invisible Umbilical Cord”

In summer 2002, New York City-based DJ Sadiq Bellamy and his two partners, DJs Tabu and Jeff Mendoza, organized the first Soul Summit Music Festival: a free, open-air, and open-to-the-public weekly series of house music dance parties set in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, during the summer season. The party ran every summer without incident for many years, and twenty years later, continues to receive global recognition among house heads for its success in bringing house music culture—and its legacy of liberation as a sensorial practice—to a broader and more intergenerational crowd than one would find in a club. Keeping in mind its rich genealogies, this article considers the social significance of open-air house music culture, and how various forms of participation within these house music topographies rearticulate the social in a way that refuses the spatiality of peripheralization and the temporality of extinction imposed on Black, brown, and queer of color life in New York City and beyond. In the case of Soul Summit, however, it is not just who participates, but also when and where that matter—in public space and in a historically Black neighborhood situated in a post-9/11, post-Bloomberg New York City—particularly as gentrification devastates the material and symbolic conditions that made possible house culture’s multi-faceted expression in the first place. This article proposes that in resistance to the “revanchist” urbanism of gentrification, the affects and arrangements cultivated on the open-air house music dance floor offer an alternate epistemology of, or way to re-imagine, the social. This lens of “house epistemology” illuminates how the gentrification of Fort Greene brought not only a shift in residential demographics, but also the displacement of a certain modality of public culture by foreclosing the social infrastructures that serve to remediate cultural memory and mobilize Black life.

Community-based Approach to Empower People with Disabilities

This article seeks to understand the empowerment issues of persons with disabilities. Various development programs have been implemented to reduce stigma, prejudice and stereotypes that impede persons with disabilities from having greater access to education, employment or the labor markets and public services. However, research findings showed that many interventions and strategies to address disability issues focus more on individual or medical models. As a consequence, public stigma and social exclusion of persons with disabilities continue to occur, preventing them from participating in various activities in the society including in the tourism sector. The purpose of this study is to identify social reasons that lead to exclusion and lack of empowerment, as well as to establish programs at the community level to increase the engagements of persons with disabilities in tourist attractions and tourist destinations in Malang. The result of the study shows that the insufficient skills and knowledge of the community members of Desa Kalisanga (nicknamed Kampung Cempluk) in communicating and interacting with persons with disabilities cause the lack of awareness in regard to disability issues. Using macro perspective, this study exhibits community-based approach which requires participation of community members in the planning and organizing an inclusive arts and music festival in Kampung Cempluk. The community was successfully provided various accessibility facilities needed by persons with disabilities to participate, both attending and performing at the festival. This study shows that community-based approach could be employed as a model or strategy to empower persons with disabilities by providing them with equal opportunities to participate in tourist attractions or other activities in the society and wider access to tourist destinations and other public facilities.

Managing a Mature Coastal Tourism Destination: The Case of Pattaya, Thailand

<p>This thesis develops the concept of destination management with a particular focus on the management of a local destination. It concentrates on seeking to understand what constitutes the general concept of destination management, exploring management practices, and clarifying the overall management of the local destination. In the absence of previous literature, a conceptual framework is developed from the bodies of literature in tourism, management, inter-organizational relationships, and integrated coastal management. This framework illustrates aspects, issues, and dimensions that are relevant to destination management and provides a structure for the analysis of destination management in Pattaya, Thailand. Given the exploratory nature of the study, a multi-phase case study is used. A mix of holistic and embedded cases is used to obtain broad and in-depth data relevant to the concept and practice of destination management. Pattaya, as one of the major coastal resorts in Thailand, is selected as the case study as tourism has been developed there for several decades and its diverse problems provide a range of management challenges. Its major tourism attractions - beaches, nightlife, Pattaya Music Festival - are examined as embedded cases. In addition to secondary data, semi-structured interviews and observation are used to collect primary data. The broad concept of destination management is developed first and then used as a basis to examine the nature and extent of destination management in Pattaya. The conceptual framework provides a structure to analyze the individual embedded cases and to compare commonalities and differences between their management processes and structures and their implications for the practice of destination management. The research reveals that there is a relationship between the practitioners' perspectives on a tourism destination and on destination management, and that there is a relationship between their initial perspectives on destination management and their management practices that occur at the destination. Destination management is defined as "the collaboration of relevant agencies responsible for providing multiple tourism products at the destination in a way to achieve common goals or destination goals." The research also highlights that destination management requires the integration of management agencies, of management purposes, and of management activities at the destination scale. In Pattaya, varying levels of integration occur and relevant agencies are commonly involved with managing aspects of tourism rather than the destination as a whole. The embedded cases reveal that two main forms of management occur in Pattaya: daily operations and project management. Daily management is practised by single agencies to achieve individual organizational goals and is evident in most aspects of beach management and the management of dispersed nightlife activities. Project-based management involves the pursuit of project goals and is carried out by committees, for example, Walking Street Committee and the Pattaya Music Festival Committees. A lack of common goals and low levels of integration are factors which lead to an absence of destination management. The formulation of destination goals and a scaled-up project management structure is suggested as one means of fostering destination management.</p>

Managing a Mature Coastal Tourism Destination: The Case of Pattaya, Thailand

<p>This thesis develops the concept of destination management with a particular focus on the management of a local destination. It concentrates on seeking to understand what constitutes the general concept of destination management, exploring management practices, and clarifying the overall management of the local destination. In the absence of previous literature, a conceptual framework is developed from the bodies of literature in tourism, management, inter-organizational relationships, and integrated coastal management. This framework illustrates aspects, issues, and dimensions that are relevant to destination management and provides a structure for the analysis of destination management in Pattaya, Thailand. Given the exploratory nature of the study, a multi-phase case study is used. A mix of holistic and embedded cases is used to obtain broad and in-depth data relevant to the concept and practice of destination management. Pattaya, as one of the major coastal resorts in Thailand, is selected as the case study as tourism has been developed there for several decades and its diverse problems provide a range of management challenges. Its major tourism attractions - beaches, nightlife, Pattaya Music Festival - are examined as embedded cases. In addition to secondary data, semi-structured interviews and observation are used to collect primary data. The broad concept of destination management is developed first and then used as a basis to examine the nature and extent of destination management in Pattaya. The conceptual framework provides a structure to analyze the individual embedded cases and to compare commonalities and differences between their management processes and structures and their implications for the practice of destination management. The research reveals that there is a relationship between the practitioners' perspectives on a tourism destination and on destination management, and that there is a relationship between their initial perspectives on destination management and their management practices that occur at the destination. Destination management is defined as "the collaboration of relevant agencies responsible for providing multiple tourism products at the destination in a way to achieve common goals or destination goals." The research also highlights that destination management requires the integration of management agencies, of management purposes, and of management activities at the destination scale. In Pattaya, varying levels of integration occur and relevant agencies are commonly involved with managing aspects of tourism rather than the destination as a whole. The embedded cases reveal that two main forms of management occur in Pattaya: daily operations and project management. Daily management is practised by single agencies to achieve individual organizational goals and is evident in most aspects of beach management and the management of dispersed nightlife activities. Project-based management involves the pursuit of project goals and is carried out by committees, for example, Walking Street Committee and the Pattaya Music Festival Committees. A lack of common goals and low levels of integration are factors which lead to an absence of destination management. The formulation of destination goals and a scaled-up project management structure is suggested as one means of fostering destination management.</p>

Public Space, Community, and Enjoyment in Music Festival: The experiences of 2019 Jazz Traffic Festival audience in Surabaya

This research focuses on the visitors' experience of the Jazz Traffic Festival (JTF) 2019 in Surabaya. This research then aims to know how the experience gained by the visitors in JTF with the genre expansion was incorporated despite its title as Jazz music Performances. This research uses case study method and descriptive-qualitative approach. The data in this research is obtained by observation and independent-interviews with four informants as visitors of JTF. The results of this study showed that each JTF visitors have a different experience due to the preference and purpose of attending the festival. JTF becomes a public space for visitors who are part of the urban community for several reasons. The visitors attend JTF for the entertainment, to escape from the routine, to build social interactions, and to actualize self-identity. in addition, the innovative effort of JTF in maintaining its existence by expanding to non-jazz music and market was apparently still enjoyed by the visitors.

Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Identity

The book explores the ritual geography of a pilgrimage system woven around local medieval saints in Norway and the renaissance of pilgrimage in contemporary majority-Protestant Norway, facing challenges of migration, xenophobia, and climate crisis. The study is concerned with historical narratives and communal contemporary reinterpretations of the figure of St. Olav, the first Christian king who was a major impulse toward conversion to Christianity and the unification of regions of Norway in a nation unified by a Christian law and faith. This initially medieval pilgrimage network, which originated after the death of Olav Haraldsson and his proclamation as saint in 1030, became repressed after the Reformation, which had a great influence on Scandinavia and shaped Norwegian Christianity overwhelmingly. Since the late 1990s, the Church of Norway participated in a renaissance that has grown into a remarkable infrastructure supported by national and local authorities. The contemporary pilgrimage by land and by sea to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim is one site where this negotiation is paramount. The study maps how pilgrims, hosts, church officials, and government officials are renegotiating and reshaping narratives of landscape, sacrality, pilgrimage as a symbol of life journey, nation, identity, Christianity, and Protestant reflections on the durability of medieval Catholic saints. The redevelopment of this instance of pilgrimage in a majority-Protestant context negotiates various societal concerns, all of which are addressed by various groups of pilgrims or other actors in the network. One part of the network is the annual festival Olavsfest, a culture and music festival that actively and critically engages the contested heritage of St. Olav and the Church of Norway through theater, music, lectures, and discussions, and features theological and interreligious conversations. This festival is a platform for creative and critical engagement with the contested, violent heritage of St. Olav, the colonial history of Norway in relation to the Sami indigenous population, and many other contemporary social and religious issues. The study highlights facets of critical, constructive engagement of these majority-Protestant actors engaging legacy through forms of theological and ritual creativity rather than mere repetition.