Music Ethnography

Philip Sneed
MUSI 1306
Professor Young
February 25, 2010
Musical Ethnography of the UTD Pub

Although I could have chosen to study a music culture more exotic or foreign to me, I chose to research the music culture of our very own Pub. Maybe it is not the same as delving into the subtle eccentricities of Kelantanese music and how it differs from the music styles of the coast of Malaya, but I was determined to learn about this culture, my culture, and see it in a new light.
In researching this music culture I ran into a slight problem: there is almost nothing written about the music in the pub. So, I decided to go there myself, sit, and observe. In observing I took in the following details. First, the typical music being played at the Pub when no events are underway is ambient. Nearly all restaurants or coffee houses play ambient music that either best suits their target demographic or perpetuates whatever image that place is going for. For example, Cracker Barrel plays country music and Starbucks plays “Indie” and folk music, both of which fit their demographics, and La Madeleine plays French music or classical music, which suits the image they are trying to portray. We can see both of these elements working as one in the Pub. It is meant to set a tone of socialization and keeping with the times, not to entertain or to evoke any emotion in particular. This ambient music is played through speakers in the ceiling and is just the radio usually set to FM 102.1 The Edge, or 106.1 Kiss FM. The Edge plays modern alternative rock music, while Kiss FM plays mostly hip-hop and “pop,” which fits the typical demographic of college-aged men and women that frequent the Pub. This is juxtaposed to the music of Comet Café down the hall, which typically plays music from Radio UTD. Radio UTD has a much wider, often more obscure selection of music.
Much of these elements change, however, during an event night. Almost every week the Pub features a different live music event. What was ambient becomes central in the Underground Poetry Circus or Open Mic Night. The mood changes as the focus of the room turns from socializing over a meal to being entertained by performers. The role of music at the Pub turns to entertainment and artistic expression rather than the hum of the radio. I have attended many of these events in the past, but for this class I attended the Open Mic Night (hereafter referred to as OMN).
Music performers at OMN in the Pub are, by definition, folk musicians. That is, they are amateurish and perform for the enjoyment of the community. However, often OMN performers cover music written by professionals. This is a common practice and is respected among performers and audience alike, so long as the performance itself is well done. This brings up an interesting point about this music culture: So long as you are performing your own original composition, the quality of the performance is not judged nearly as harshly. But if you are performing a popular song, the audience is much quicker to deem your performance as unsatisfactory. I suppose in this way this music culture values original music. Still, there was a wide variety of music played at the OMN I attended. Everywhere from covers of Bright Eyes on guitar, to Christian praise music on the piano, to an a cappella performance of “You Raise Me Up” were done, as well as many original pieces played on piano and guitar.
The only professional performers that make UTD Pub appearances are comedians, according to full-time Pub employee Sami Atassi. In my interview with Atassi, I asked him what he noticed the audience respected in the performers. “It’s all about confidence, it’s all about confidence,” he said. He went on to explain that the audience would rarely respond very strongly to a performer who did not show good charisma on stage. Engaging the audience, such as getting them to sing along to a familiar song, or clap, or anything of that nature depended on the performer’s confidence and the general attitude of the night. OMN had a laid back, small scale kind of feel, so the audience stayed, for the most part, uninvolved. No matter how involved the audience is at these performances, there is never any dancing. This may be due, at least in part, to the fact that there are no alcoholic beverages sold at the UTD Pub.
As I mentioned before, I have attended many evening events at the Pub, though I attended before I was in this class. I noticed that the mood varied from event to event. There is no question about it, the OMN I attended for this class was not nearly as vivacious or exciting as other events, such as the Underground Poetry Circus, which was hosted by DJ, and had poets and other performers coming in from all over the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. In those events, members of the audience were literally called upon to rate the performance of the poets on a scale of 1-10. So, just as the role of music in this culture changes from day to day (or from afternoon to night), the roles of the different aspects of this music culture (performers, audience) change from day to day (or night to night) depending on the feel and popularity of the event hosted that night.
There is an interesting feature of the material culture of music at the Pub. On Open Mic Night, for example, people were encouraged to perform, even if they had not intended to initially, by being awarded prizes for their participation. I did not plan to perform at OMN going into that night, but because I saw that participants were being given coupons for 25% of their next purchase at the Pub, I changed my mind and played a piece I wrote for the piano. So, one could say that food plays a fairly large role in this music culture. After all, that is a large part of the appeal for attending performances at the Pub – if the music stinks, the food is good! But apart from that, the material culture of music was straight forward for western style music. Music was played on a stage, performers brought their own instruments (except piano, which was provided next to the stage), amplification was provided for electric guitars, and, of course, microphones.
With music ranging from Christian worship music to Hip Hop, from 3-person bands to 1-man a cappella performances, from death metal to country, the music culture of the Pub is varied. I did not expect to see such strong diversity in this music culture when I started researching it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was very intriguing to see a familiar culture with a different set of eyes – ethnocentrically – so to speak. So many of the things that I simply took for granted, or wrote off as completely normal in a performance, I now realize are often completely unique to my culture, or even the culture of the restaurant I am eating at. Music cultures are all around us, sometimes we just cannot see them because we are so much a part of them.


Work Cited:
Atassi, Sami. Personal interview. 10 March, 2010.


P.S. - I am attending a concert in Fort Worth of a band called Muse next week. I am excited to see them in light of what we have learned about music cultures.