ABSTRACT
This ethnography explores a musical activity and event spanning many different bars, cafés, and locales across the diverse cultural tapestry of New York City. This book sets out to describe the participants and their situational practices and interactions within these event sequences and local nocturnal cultures. These events are discursive, historical, and interactional moments of musical production and participatory consumption. The Do It Together (DIT) ethos and approach embodied at open mics are cultural updates of the ongoing DIY ethos that emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century. As discussed throughout the book, an identifiable spatial emergence facilitating the vitality and expansion of open mics is the fourth place. This place, sharing qualities of both places and spaces, allows for a range of creative production and consumption along with the negotiations of performance and practice (Lofland, 1998; Gieryn, 2000). As a place exclusively residing on the margins of institutions, it is ripe for the emergence of music and artistic scenes. This concluding chapter explores and outlines the distinctions between closed mics and open mics. Scenes and pre-scenes typify regional and ongoing moments for the social and symbolic distinctions between musicians within open mic settings.
