Participatory Belonging: How Tourist Music Workshops Establish Trans-Local Music Scenes

Abstract

Music workshops are short-term vacations in which participants learn about a particular music genre under the guidance of professional musicians. In this chapter, Bolderman analyzes music workshops as a special kind of trans-local music scene. Based on participant observation during three music workshops in Europe and 19 semi-structured interviews with participants, the workshops are shown to derive their power from their position at the periphery of music worlds, offering a ‘safe space’ for participants to learn and to enter the broader music world they wish to become a part of. Due to the intensity of the experience and the travelling community of musicians and participants that form the temporary music scenes of the workshops, the connection to the music scene becomes durable. This analysis shows how music workshops can be used to study the dynamics of flows and connections, power and hierarchy that are important in establishing trans-local music scenes and belonging. Reconceptualizing music workshops as peripheral trans-local music scenes in this way contributes to deepening the music scenes concept, while nuancing the role of tourism in the music scenes perspective.