Call for Papers: The Past, Present, and Future of Public Musicology

The Public Musicology Blog

The Past, Present, and Future of Public Musicology
Westminster Choir College of Rider University
Princeton, NJ
January 30 – February 1, 2015

Proposal Deadline: September 1, 2014

To further research on how music scholars, performers, educators, journalists and industry professionals can engage the public, Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey will host a three-day conference on public musicology from January 30 to February 1, 2015.  We welcome individual paper, lecture-recital, panel, workshop and innovative-format proposals on any aspect of public musicology.  These include but are not limited to the following areas:

• Innovative Programming
• The History of Public Musicology
• Music and Museums
• Musical Archives and the Public
• Music, Collective Memory, and Historical Interpretation
• The Material Culture of Music
• Musical Tourism
• The Relationship Between Academic Musicology and Public Musicology
• Music and Historical Preservation
• Public Musicology vs. Public History and Public Science

Proposals for individual papers, workshops, and innovative-format…

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Coming to America and Touching Hearts

I was not able to return to McCaffrey’s to see Arturo play because he was no longer there. I was glad I got his card on my first visit. I pursued an interview with him to talk about the venue, performing there and his life as a musician. I found out other things about Arturo that I did not know before.

Arturo Romay is from Venezuela and came to the United States in 1990. He started playing the guitar at 20 years old. He is a self-taught musician. Arturo just picked up the guitar and learned it himself. He never went to school for music and played by ear, a talent that not many people possess. When he came to America he decided to work in different places and then proceeded to make his first CD and business card. This then prompted him to start playing in different venues around Princeton (i.e. restaurants, parties, hotels, festivals etc.) and other areas of the nation and world, like Madison Square Garden, Cruise ships and Lincoln Center. He is a member of the Latin Grammy Recording Academy and can vote on who gets nominated. He is responsible for distinguishing what genre of music a song is classified under. Arturo has four CDs to date and is in the midst of working on his fifth CD.

When talking more specifically about venues and the many places he performed, I asked where his favorite place was to perform. He said he just enjoys playing from his heart. He plays with the same passion for one person or thousands of people. Arturo said it is always nice to play for a club setting or somewhere with nice acoustics, but in the end it does not matter for him because it is all about the joy of performing. If he needs to make adjustments on his amplifier to make his sound a little louder, he will do it. He would love to play in big theatres all the time, but in reality it does not always happen, so he has to do whatever he has to do to make it in this industry.

When I asked him about his experience at McCaffrey’s he said that they called him asking for him to perform at the Princeton venue. He played on Saturdays and he said that the people loved it, as did I. People could shop and listen to the music. It was a very pleasant experience. This type of venue was very different from where he performed in the past. He jokingly said, “I was in front of the bakery…so yeah it was different! People would try the bread and it was kind of cool because they would eat and not expect a musician to be playing in a supermarket.” I enjoyed this perspective of his because a musician could easily think of it as sort of demoting to not be front and center, or have themselves acknowledged in some way, but he was purely there to entertain, regardless of what was going on around him.

One big difference in the audience was that the overall population of shoppers at McCaffrey’s tend to be wealthier, so he would get tips for just playing in the supermarket. At other venues in different areas, he did not make as much tip and did not sell CDs. However, the way he touched his audience remained the same. Arturo made people smile, from children to older folk. He said he would see people shopping with very serious faces and then when they noticed the music, their expressions changed and they were happy. Just by playing he touched people’s hearts and made them feel good, and in return he felt blessed.

 

Bacon-Wrapped…Bruno Mars?

I was super pumped for my second “research” visit to Mediterra. I knew what to expect, I was excited for the food, and couldn’t wait to jam to the music. This time I brought a few more friends. I couldn’t have kept the $2 Tapas a secret if I tried…

With a larger group, we opted for a table in the Taverna section. I was a bit further away from the band this time. We got there around 9:30 and there was no music playing. Remembering the annoyingly long breaks the band took last time, I knew that there was no need to freak out.

We ordered wine, and took a few minutes to decide on some tapas. The crowd seemed a bit older this time, but still with varied age groups and types of people in the Taverna. The noise level was slightly louder too. Maybe the Thursday night crowd was just a little rowdier than the Tuesday group…

Finally, the music started playing as we were ordering tapas for the table. I looked over, expecting to see my favorite flutist, and noticed that these were not the same three men. I was disappointed at first, until they started playing a Latin-flavored Bruno Mars song. Some of the people in the bar were singing along, including some of the Westminster students that were at my table, because there is sadly just no such thing as too much singing for many of them…

This different and unexpected type of music made for an entirely different experience of the Taverna. It was more of a “sing along and drink” atmosphere than the “eat these delicious tapas and listen to the Jazz flutist do his thing” vibe that I got from the Tuesday night crowd.

I noticed that there were less people ordering food and more ordering drinks than on Tuesday. There was even a couple dancing. They even closed the kitchen around ten on Thursday when it was open until at least ten thirty on Tuesday. It became clear that the Thursday night experience is a different one from Tuesday night. But I wonder if it’s on purpose…

Is Mediterra trying to bring in a different crowd between the two Latin Jazz nights, or did it just happened to work out this way? Both nights give the customer an experience or a night out, rather than just dinner, but the experiences themselves are not the same by any means. Further, it seems like the dining room section of Mediterra is marketing itself differently from the Taverna as a whole. I wonder if there is a reason for this change in Mediterra’s identity from one section to the other.

I think that I will try and interview an employee, or preferably someone in charge of the restaurant to see what the deal is here. I’ll have to keep these things in mind until I find the right person to interview.