Playing It By Ear: Improvised Music Livestreaming During COVID-19

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 was marked by widespread improvisatory practice, be those teachers and students improvising to accommodate online learning or individuals improvising safety tactics to avoid catching the virus. Within mere weeks of the pandemic rendering in-person concerts untenable, music communities adopted livestreaming on Twitch as an alternate mode of throwing events. This thesis studies a time of mass improvisation by examining how communities built around improvised music — which themselves are often supported by improvisatory DIY event organizing practices — adapted from in-person livestreamed events. Focusing on a period ranging roughly from the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns to the advent of the racial justice uprisings following George Floyd’s murder by the hands of police, this study shows how musicians, organizers, and audiences congregating in jazz, experimental music, and DJ scenes created a widespread, dispersed livestreaming infrastructure that became, at once, an artistic outlet, a community gathering place, and a formidable fundraising mechanism. Such infrastructure was synthesized from three unique components: extent technology and livestreaming practices, social formations that spring from improvised music and improvisatory DIY organizing, and community bonds that were unique to these music scenes.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• Sugarman, Michael Philip

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Taylor, T.L.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139453

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/139453