Possibilities: the role of music and emotion in the social dynamics of a music festival MICHELLE DUFFY The Australian Centre, School of Historical Studies University of Melbourne 149 Barry St, Carlton, VIC 3053AUSTRALIA Abstract: - Music festivals offer us unique insights into connections between people, place and notions of belonging. Particular meanings are attributed to music that draw on how sounds can represent distinct cultural groups. However, music is more than a representational process; it is experiential, it elicits emotions. This paper examines how the music of a festival can create spaces of belonging–or in some cases alienation– between individual and community, through notions of authenticity and transgression, rhythm and listening. Key-Words: - music, cultural diversity, emotions, Australia, identity, belonging 1 Introduction The value of festivals is recognised in UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), which has identified the expression of culture through festivals as part of humanity’s intangible heritage. An underlying concern behind the Convention is that there are living but endangered traditions of cultural practices, endangered because of the pace and magnitude of changes in the contemporary world, and more specifically because of the processes of globalisation. As has been discussed in a variety of arenas, as we become more connected, two contradictory impulses arise; first, the sense that there is an increasing homogenisation of culture, one often characterised in terms of a Westernisation or even Americanisation of culture; and second, that in response to these globalising pressures, there is a strong desire to retain particular group identities, be that at a regional, national, or subnational levels. UNESCO’s focus on people and their knowledge and skills is one response to globalisation’s impact on vulnerable communities. Yet, as anthropologist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett points out, UNESCO’s definition of intangible cultural heritage does keep alive the “division between the West and the rest” [1]. While not suggesting that we disregard the often traumatic impact of globalisation, nor the need to assist people in maintaining their cultural traditions, we do need to recognise that culture is not an essential and unchanging thing, neither is it something only those outside the West have. I want to push the boundaries of UNESCO’s notion of intangible cultural heritage so that it encompasses not just endangered cultures but all of our living practices. In particular, I want to focus on how festivals connect us to one another, to forms of community, to our histories, and to place(s). As a living cultural process, what we express and display are open to change and transformation, and this is significant to expressions of who we are or hope to be–the unfolding of our being-in-the-world in the face of contemporary processes and pressures. The majority of the literature on the festival understands it as an event apart from the everyday, as a liminal and temporary activity [2], or as a spectacle [3]. These are useful ways to consider the processes of identity formation, place-making and belonging that are all activated by festival events. However, a focus on liminality and spectacle can obscure the more subtle, nuanced, highly localised and even, perhaps at first glance, banal ways that relations between people and place are constituted and mediated. The festival is not simply something separate from the everyday, but rather it is a performative, affective event that heightens everyday behaviour, knowledge, and interactions, with all their contradictions, in which place and belonging are negotiated and (re)constituted [4]. Music offers insights into the connections between space, belonging and identity quite distinct to that of other modes of engagement. The music performances of festivals can draw us in and arouse emotions in us that encourage opening up to others. We clap, sway, perhaps sing along, smile, talk, and get caught up in the moment. Or we may even feel quite alienated, rejecting the sorts of performances we come across, grimacing, covering our ears and hurrying past. Nor do our ears alone hear sound; our bodies are in fact sounding boards that pick up the vibrations so that we are enveloped by sound. This WSEAS International Conference on CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM (CUHT'08), Heraklion, Crete Island, Greece, July 22-24, 2008 ISBN: 978-960-6766-89-3 101 ISSN 1790-2769