oa Journeying Towards an Activist Study of Musical Performance

This chapter explores what an activist study of musical performance might entail. The discussion starts from the premise that musical performance research is activist insofar as it strives to advance social and more-than-human justice in collaboration with, and for the benefit of, the involved practitioners and fields; and that, to qualify as research, it must simultaneously build upon the earlier traditions of studying musical performance cultures, with attention to the power hierarchies and inequalities inherent in such practices. The chapter argues for the relevance of new materialist perspectives in understanding the co-constitutive relationship of sociocultural and material factors in performance activities and how musical performance may help envision less human-centered, more equitable relations between human and non-human beings. Coming in four parts, the chapter's propositions are based on the author's research of several kinds of especially vocal performance in the context of western classical and contemporary music.

Keywords: classical singing ; ecocrisis ; ecomusicology ; ethnography ; new materialism ; opera ; transgender experience