Dissertation final submission Andy Hillhouse - T-Space - University

393 Pages·2013·2.52 MB·English

by  Andy Hillhouse

TOURING AS SOCIAL PRACTICE:
TRANSNATIONAL FESTIVALS, PERSONALIZED
NETWORKS, AND NEW FOLK MUSIC
SENSIBILITIES

by

Andrew Neil Hillhouse

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Music

University of Toronto

© Copyright by Andrew Neil Hillhouse (2013)
ABSTRACT
Touring as Social Practice: Transnational Festivals, Personalized Networks, and New
Folk Music Sensibilities

Andrew Neil Hillhouse

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Music

University of Toronto

2013

The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to an understanding of the changing
relationship between collectivist ideals and individualism within dispersed, transnational,
and heterogeneous cultural spaces. I focus on musicians working in professional folk
music, a field that has strong, historic associations with collectivism. This field consists
of folk festivals, music camps, and other venues at which musicians from a range of
countries, affiliated with broad labels such as ‘Celtic,’ ‘Nordic,’ ‘bluegrass,’ or ‘fiddle
music,’ interact. Various collaborative connections emerge from such encounters,
creating socio-musical networks that cross boundaries of genre, region, and nation.
These interactions create a social space that has received little attention in
ethnomusicology. While there is an emerging body of literature devoted to specific folk
festivals in the context of globalization, few studies have examined the relationship
between the transnational character of this circuit and the changing sensibilities, music,
and social networks of particular musicians who make a living on it.
To this end, I examine the career trajectories of three interrelated musicians who
have worked in folk music: the late Canadian fiddler Oliver Schroer (1956-2008), the
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Irish flute player Nuala Kennedy, and the Italian organetto player Filippo Gambetta.
These musicians are all notable for their taste for transnational collaboration and their
reputations as mavericks and boundary-pushers. Through case studies of their projects,
relationships, and collaborative networks, I explore transformations in the collectivist
folk ideal by focussing on how these musicians are implicated in three phenomena:
transnational festivals, new folk music sensibilities, and touring as social practice.
This research is based on multi-dimensional, multi-sited fieldwork undertaken in
Toronto, Genoa, Edinburgh, and at various festivals in Europe and North America
between 2007-2013. I conclude that Schroer, Kennedy, and Gambetta experience
transnational folk music space as a field of intersecting transnationalisms that are
imaginaries and collectivities of varying size and scope. While festivals in this space
increasingly celebrate a transcultural ideal and foster the formation of transnational
networks, stable, heterogeneous transnational relationships are proving more difficult to
attain. I argue that touring on this circuit generates a desire for community continuity that
becomes part of the poetics of new instrumental folk music.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, this dissertation would not have been possible without my family’s
encouragement. My mother and father, Elma and Neil Hillhouse, gave me emotional and
material support at times when I had doubts and concerns about the enormous and risky
undertaking of writing a dissertation. To them I am forever grateful, not just for this
project, but for their support throughout my life in music. My beloved partner, Nathalie
Thibault, was always understanding, even when I was in a panic about how I was going
to manage to answer student emails, prepare a lecture, and finish a dissertation draft
before my deadlines. More important, she let me fly off around the world, despite the
expense and strain of being apart. I am especially indebted to her for her patience and
understanding in August 2010, when I was in Italy at the time she began to experience
labour with our son Adam (I made it back in time for the birth). Merci mon amour, je
t’aime fort.
I am thankful and honoured for the opportunity to have worked closely with Dr.
James Kippen, my advisor. As an ethnomusicologist, Professor Kippen’s breadth and
depth of knowledge and experience goes without saying to those who have read his work
or looked at his CV. For those who have not had the opportunity of working with him,
they may not be aware that he is also a very encouraging mentor with a special ability to
make the most daunting task seem manageable and acheivable. He set a standard of
composure and professionalism that I hope to aspire to in my academic career.
I was also extremely lucky to work with the two other gifted ethnomusicologists
on my committee, Jeff Packman and Joshua Pilzer. Drs. Packman and Pilzer were very
generous with sharing their insights into my projects, and I am highly indebted to them
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for their willingness to answer my questions about thorny theoretical issues, whether over
email or over pints at the Duke. Two other University of Toronto professors whom I
would also like to acknowledge are Dr. Ken McLeod, my internal examiner, and Dr.
Robin Elliott, who stepped in at the last minute when needed as a member of my defense
committee. Further, Dr. McLeod offered some helpful feedback on various pieces of my
work pertaining to my dissertation research, and Dr. Elliott’s PhD seminar in my first
year at U of T was highly valuable in setting me off on the right course. My appreciation
also goes to Jeremy Strachan, who came to the rescue with his Sibelius skills. I would
also like to heartily thank my U of T ethno colleagues, with a particular ‘shout out’ to the
‘60’s club.’ You are all great folks and the collegiality at U of T has made the whole
experience that much more worthwhile.
I greatly value my extermal examiner Dr. Timothy Taylor’s critical and insightful
response that gives me much to consider as I continue developing this research. In
addition, along the way I have received some indespensible advice and input from other
scholars beyond the Faculty of Music. Some of these are Dr. Kim Chow-Morris of
Ryerson University, Dr. Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin of Concordia University, Dr. David
Wilson of the University of Toronto’s Department of Celtic Studies, Dr. Caroline Bithell
of the University of Manchester, and Dr. Ulf Hannerz of Stockholm University. Thank
you to Linda Bull as well for her assistance in translation.
Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to Nuala Kennedy, Filippo Gambetta, and the
late Oliver Schroer. A special aspect of this project was that Oliver, Nuala, and Filippo all
were very willing to discuss their own well thought out, sophisticated, and nuanced takes
on their experiences of this musical field. Filippo and Nuala, thank you for letting me
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crash on your couches, and for showing me around your cities, and for generally making
the space for me in your extremely busy lives. Filippo, I greatly appreciate you taking me
up to Bobbio, that was an amazing experience. Nuala, I am incredibly honoured to have
had the chance to play together, and look forward to more.
If Oliver were here I would thank him for his enthusiastic discussions while he
was in a physical state that would have led most people to prefer privacy. I will close by
taking the opportunity to say what I never said when he was alive, and what I know so
many people would concur with: thank you Oliver for the deep well of melodic gems you
left us, your humour, your daring, and your creative energy that did not cease, even when
forces in your body conspired against it. We are definitely the richer for your time with
us.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ii 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv 
LIST OF TABLES xii 
LIST OF FIGURES xiii 
CHAPTER 1 – PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES 1 
Festival Snapshot: The Lorient Festival Interceltique, August 2010 1 
Festivals, Sensibilities, and Touring as Social Practice 5 
Oliver Schroer (1956-2008), St. Margaret’s Hospital, Toronto, September 2007 11 
Pushing the Boundaries 13 
Tradition/Innovation, Transcendence/Immanence 13 
Folk music/ Art music 16 
Touring and Networks 20 
Oliver: A Brief Biographical Introduction 23 
Nuala Kennedy and Filippo Gambetta 26 
Introducing Filippo Gambetta: A Genoese Organetto Player 29 
Introducing Nuala Kennedy: An Irish Flute Player in Edinburgh 34 
‘Folk’, ‘Celtic’, ‘Traditional’ 39 
A Note on ‘Vernacular Music’ 44 
Scenes, Sensibilities, Lifestyles 46 
New Folk Music Sensibilities 51 
Place and New Instrumental Folk Musics 53 
‘World Music’ Intersections 59 
CHAPTER 2 – COSMOPOLITAN FOLK IN A TRANSNATIONAL FIELD 70 
Globalization 71 
Non-diasporic Transnationalisms 74 
Folk Music and Transnationality 76 
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Tensions in ‘Folk Music’ 78 
Transcendence and Immanence 78 
Dialectics, Tensions 80 
Place, Community, and the ‘Folk Musician’ 83 
The Transnational Folk Festival Field 84 
Spaces and Fields 86 
Flows and Scapes 90 
Transcendent Institutions? Transnational Festivals 94 
Tropes of Transnational Festivals 94 
Ties: individual and institutional 96 
Festivals, Tourism, and the Marketing of Place 99 
Social Stratification at Festivals 102 
Transcendent Individuals? Cosmopolitan Folk Musicians 104 
Mobile Cosmopolitans, Flexible Careers 104 
Critiques of Cosmopolitanism 107 
Reflexivity and Self-making 111 
Representing the Self/Narrating the Self 114 
Festivals, Individualization, and Pluralism 118 
Community: An Open Question 121 
CHAPTER 3 – RESEARCH METHODS AND TECHNIQUES 123 
Mapping Networks: Micro, Meso, Macro 123 
A Folk Musician Researching Folk Musicians 126 
‘Backing’ my Collaborators 127 
My Story 132 
Insider Research: Theoretical Perspectives 138 
A Particularly Heterogeneous Field 140 
Distancing 142 
Multi-Dimensional Fieldwork 144 
Constructing the Field: Multiple Sites and Strategies 148 
Sites and Strategies 149 
Problems and Limitations with Fieldwork 150 
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Multi-sited Research 152 
Problems of Depth 154 
Problems of Holism 156 
CHAPTER 4 – FESTIVALS AND TRANSCULTURALITY 159 
Historical Emergence of the Transnational Festival Field 160 
International Folklore/Folklife Festivals 160 
The 1960s: Beyond Folklore Festivals 163 
Influence of Rock Festivals and Counterculture 164 
European Festivals 165 
Western Canadian Folk Festivals 166 
Music Camps 168 
Baumann’s Mental Constructs 171 
Welsch’s Transculturality 174 
Three Recurrent Themes in Transnational Festival Promotion 178 
The Ever-expanding Festival 179 
From Diversity to Interaction 183 
New Folk Music and Innovation 186 
Celtic Connections, The Vancouver Folk Festival, and Lorient Festival
Interceltique 189 
Lorient Festival Interceltique 189 
Celtic Connections 190 
The Vancouver Folk Festival 193 
Themes of Transculturality at Lorient, Celtic Connections, and Vancouver 196 
Expansion 196 
Diversity, Boundary Blurring, and Innovations 200 
Broad Categories 204 
CHAPTER 5 – COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS AND TURNING HOME 207 
A Glocal Sense of Place 209 
“The Network Society” 211 
Producing Home by Leaving and Returning 215 
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Filippo’s Transnational Links 216 
Finland 217 
Belgium 221 
Brittany 227 
Nuala’s Transnational Links 232 
Cape Breton 233 
Voyage de Nuit 236 
Other Projects 237 
The Turn Homeward: Filippo 238 
The Ambiguity of ‘Home’ 238 
Liguriani 242 
Pan-Italian Projects 248 
The Turn Homeward: Nuala 252 
CHAPTER 6 – OLIVER, NUALA, AND FILIPPO 256 
The Social Network 258 
“Network Sociality” and Community 259 
The Internet and Touring 262 
Networked Individualism 267 
Social Capital, Transnational Networks, and Strength of Ties 269 
Network Variety and the Transnational Dimension 276 
Cultural Capital and Essentializing Place 278 
Interpersonal Commitment, Risks, and Challenges 284 
CHAPTER 7 – OLIVER 291 
Relationality, Individuality 291 
Tensions and Longings 294 
The Value of Relational, Individual, or Collective Selfhood 299 
Fiddle as Individual, Collective, and Relational 301 
The Dilemma of Choice: Fiddle “Dialects” 304 
The Trajectory of Oliver’s Creative Projects 309 
Early Career 311 
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