Imagined Engagements: Interpreting the Musical Relationship with the Canadian North

Jeffrey van den Scott; Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.15.2.07

Authors

Jeffrey van den Scott Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.15.2.07

Keywords:

Imagined Engagement, Music, Musical Language, Interaction Order, Inuit

Abstract

In this article, we extend Benedict Anderson’s notion of imagined communities to examine the idea of an “imagined engagement” between or among people and groups that have not met. These imagined engagements include a blurring of temporal lines, as one group “interacts” with another’s past, present, or future. Imagined engagements are a form of failed interaction, and, as such, have their place in Goffman’s interaction order. We argue that musical language can comprise a meeting point of these engagements. We then demonstrate how two composers—one historic and one contemporary—have used the musical cultures of an Othered people, with a focus on Indigenous America, in an attempt to create a sense of community and common ties between the West and these Others—a sense of community in which the Othered have no part.

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Author Biographies

Jeffrey van den Scott, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Jeffrey van den Scott is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Tradition and Tradition Research Partnership and Adjunct Professor of Musicologies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. His intellectual project examines music and the contemporary Inuit experience both in “traditional” communities and in urban spaces, with a focus on the interaction of Inuit and the Canadian mainstream. His work explores the complex relationship between Inuit and Euro-Canadian populations, each of which expresses the desire to know the other. He has published in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Canadian Folk Music, and Porte Akademik. He is a contributor to the Craft of Qualitative Research (Canadian Scholars’ Press 2018) and the forthcoming SAGE Encyclopedia of Music and Culture. Van den Scott currently serves as the treasurer of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music/Société canadienne pour les tradition musicales (CSTM-SCTM).

Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Herresearch interests include space and place, time, symbolic interactionism, and qualitative methods. She has published in such journals as the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Symbolic Interaction, and American Behavioral Scientist. She is co-editor of the recently published Craft of Qualitative Research (Canadian Scholars’ Press 2018). Van den Scott is currently an associate editor for the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics (JERHRE) and treasurer for the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI).

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