We propose a music-culture model that is grounded in music as it is performed

Place yourself at a music event that moved you. At the center of the event is your experience of the music, sung and played by performers.

Review the two diagrams, Figure 1-6, Elements of a musical performance, and Figure 1-7, A music-culture model. Note how the concentric circles in the two diagrams parallel each other. For example, the center of Fig. 1-6, the music, that is, the musical event itself, is parallel to the center of Fig. 1-7, the affective experience (music’s power to move). Explain how the ideas in the other three concentric circles of the two figures are related and parallel to each other.

What will be an ideal response?

• The performers (Fig. 1-6) create and produce the performance (Fig. 1-7).
• The audience (Fig. 1-6) turns into the community within a music-culture (Fig. 1-7), which pays for and supports the music.
• Time and space (the when and where of the musical performance of Fig. 1-6) become memory and history in the music-culture model of Fig. 1-7.

• The performance – What is the purpose of the performance?


• The community – The group (including the performers) that carries on the traditions and norms, the social processes and activities, and the ideas of performance.


• The Memory/History – The community is situated in history and borne by memory.