ABSTRACT
An important issue for music educators, researchers and students is how to study and understand various layers of the doing in musical practices. Musical performance is more than the production of sound. All performance is embedded in complex dynamics of expectations, cultural norms and evaluations. The doing is inseparable from the doer; hence the performance becomes a facet of the performer’s ongoing professional identity project, a premise in the musician’s self-staging, self-regulation and self-esteem. This chapter explores how musical performance, self-censorship and culture are entangled. Different ways of looking at, experiencing, and studying musical performance will be outlined. Through philosophical lenses, and with tools from Michel Foucault’s theories, discourses of tacit cultural and social mechanisms influencing "the musical performer" will be mapped.
