ABSTRACT
More than 60 years ago, sociologist Howard Becker (1951) pointed out that jazz music was a service occupation in which musicians had to satisfy audiences’ demands. Becker stated that there were two parties at work in every performance: first, the musicians ‘whose full-time activity was at the heart of the occupation and whose self was in some ways deeply involved in it’ and, second, the audience whose relationship with the occupation was ‘much more casual’ (Becker, 1951: 136). Even though much has changed in the past 60 years, the negotiation of roles and power between musicians and audiences has far from vanished. Similar types of relationships exist across genres and cultures, especially as ‘presentational performance’ (Turino, 2008) and the professionalization of music-making become the norm. In the meantime, new technologies and types of music have changed the ways in which these negotiations take place and become mediated.
