For a While They Live a Few Feet Off the Ground

Place and Cultural Performance at the Walnut Valley Festival

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2365482
AutoresMaggie Colleen Cobb (0000-0001-7465-7759, University of South Florida, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen45
Número4
Páginas367-395
Fecha de publicación2016-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Contemporary Ethnography (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0891-2416 • E-ISSN: 1552-5414
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0891241614568192
OpenAlexW2331146163
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas3
Referencias citadas41

In this article, I use ethnographic data and twenty-five interviews collected over a period of four years at the Walnut Valley Festival, an annual folk musicians' festival, to explore how attendees construct and maintain a meaningful sense of "place." I argue that place is created through the repetition of traditional rituals that both physically and symbolically transform space into what participants call "home." Of these, the most important are musical rituals in the form of "jams." As a cultural performance, and through repeated participation over the years, musical ritual synthesizes the past and present, a merging that generates shared, heightened emotions among participants that leads to states of liminality and communitas. It is through attendees' continued participation in musical, cultural performance, and the shared meaning, emotion, and memory that it provides that place is created and maintained at the festival

Aesthetics · Art · Communitas · Construct (python library · Ethnography · Folklore · Liminality · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Musical · Repetition (rhetorical device · Sense of place · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Music History and Culture · Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts