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This book is an in-depth look at contemporary American popular music and the
kind of musicianship that is appropriate to it. Stith attempts to explain
dynamics of rock musicians by studying how the skills, ideas, and human
identities associated with this population manage to be created and transmitted
in the context of industrialized culture. In addition, he is trying to examine
how musicians begin to take on and are characterized by that identity. Stith is
interested with this phenomenon because these people were not “successful” or
had not received a record contract, yet their identities remained intact. Stith
gathered his data through six years of sporadic field study throughout Colorado,
Illinois, Washington, California, Missouri, and southern France. He used both
observational and interview methods in his study, however, it was participant
observation that was used as a primary data-gathering technique. He presented
himself as a musician and indicated in some form that he was interested in
forming a group.
At times he presented himself as a performer, other times as a
“role organizer”, yet never hiding the fact that he was involved in social
research. His secondary data-gathering technique was that he conducted several
informal interviews with several members of these rock groups that he was
associated with. These interviews were conducted during “down-times”, usually
times where the group was hanging out, eating, traveling, etcetera. The size of
the sample Stith studied and the ways in which the data-gathering techniques
were administered differed from group to group, usually because his role within
the population wasn’t always constant. The interview questions that were asked
were hardly ever uniform, they were administered differently to suit different
individuals in specific situations.
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