The work of improvisational jazz performances as an interactional context for dignity-ing

• In Event: Dignity-ing: Magnifying the Social Construction and Consequences of Dignity-Affirming or Dignity-Denying Micro-Interactional Moments

Abstract

Purpose and Framing: Improvisational jazz has been described as a site for syncretic activity and an “aesthetics of tension” (Duranti & Burrell, 2004; Roth, 2022). Duranti & Burrell (2004) understand an aesthetics of tension as “​​the tension between what is known and what is unknown, what is possible and what is impossible, what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, what is expected and what is unexpected, what is right and what is wrong” (p. 85). In this space of tension, contexts can be created for the transformation of sound and musical performance in ways that support explorations of the self and the collective (Duranti & Burrell, 2004). In the improvisational jazz community, this kind of exploration is made possible by the embodied work musicians do during musical performances (Jovicevic, 2021).

For musicians, improvisational performances are creative art forms and a form of professional work. According to Jiménez (2015) the performance of work is a site for learning and transformation and “bestows dignity” (p. 290). In this paper we bring Jiménez’ (2015) scholarship on the performance of work and dignity alongside Espinoza et al.’s (2020) conceptualization of dignity as an interactional accomplishment in learning environments. We consider how five artists who routinely work together in improvisational performance contexts interactionally create a context for dignity-ing.

Methods and Data Sources: The data in this paper comes from a participatory design research project (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016) that engaged a group of five Chicago-based “jazz” artists in conversations about their histories of relationships and their improvisational practices. Building from these conversations artists participated in two live performances and post-concert conversations. All activities were video-recorded for the purposes of analyzing learning in the moment-to-moment of interaction.

The concept of stance informs our analysis. Stance is a public act where a person aligns their body with an object/subject of focus in order to both evaluate actions and display their point of view (Kiesling, 2022). Scholars have written about the moral (i.e., goodness) and affective dimensions of stance (Goodwin et al., 2012; Ochs, 2004). In this paper, we trace how artists evaluate one another’s aesthetic choices and how these evaluations are displayed through affective stances. Using the tools of micro-analysis (Erickson, 1992) we identified the emergence of affective stances, focusing on moments when an artist demonstrated their orientation to and alignment with a musical act by smiling. Once we identified the emergence of individual artists’ affective stances, we then reviewed the moment again, in order to determine the presence of congruent stances among the collaborating artists (Strid & Cekaite, 2022).

Results and Significance: Analysis shows that variation in the musical performance is often the focus of artists’ affective stances. Within moments of variation and tension, dignity-ing is interactionally accomplished when a social actor’s stance demonstrates another is worthy of respect-ful attention. Recognition of an artist's aesthetic choices, as displayed through affective stances, is a sign of respect and mutuality and what makes dignity-ing possible in this context.

Authors

• Ananda M. Marin, University of California - Los Angeles

• Shivani Dave, University of California - Los Angeles

• Lindsay E. Lindberg, University of California - Los Angeles

• Brenda Y. Lopez, California State University - Fullerton