Liberating voices : towards an ethnography of women's community a cappella choirs in Australia

Abstract

This thesis is essentially an ethnographic study of the musical culture of women's community a cappella choirs in Australia. More specifically, it is an examination of the experience of women in five selected women's community a cappella choirs in south-eastern Australia during the period from July 1995 until April 1996. The thesis explores the origins of the choirs that participated in the study, the motivations for the women who joined, the broader lifescapes of the members, the organisational processes of the choirs, the repertoire they chose to perform, the musical experience within the choir, and their performances. Drawing on these explorations, it examines the issues inherent in the intersection of gender, identity and musical experience within the overall experience of the women's community a cappella choirs. It considers how gender, identity and musical experience are expressed and experienced, produced and reproduced, within this choral environment. To a lesser degree, it places these choirs within the emergence of an a cappella scene and, more broadly, the cultural milieu in Australia from a theoretical viewpoint that recognises everyday musical practice as an appropriate site. The thesis also examines the challenges to a methodological approach that is fundamentally one of a researcher who is both an insider and an outsider. Show more