About the Carnival Features of Street Music: Festivity and Work

Abstract

The article provides interpretation to the contradictory aspects of the phenomenon of street
music on the basis of carnival traits as its essential features. The application of the typological
method shows the interconnection between street music and the phenomenon of carnival. The
basic characteristic features of this interconnection are disclosed: expansion of public space into
loci and their transformation; the “corporeal” reality of action; the playing character; the creation
of conditions of utopian freedom; the removal of the usual limitations; supra-ordinary conviviality;
a specific modus of farcicality; stage appeal and poly-genre qualities. A functional approach is
applied for characterizations of manifestation of carnival features in the activities of street
musicians. Evidence is provided that with the disappearance of traditional folk carnival forms
street music replicates carnival features in contemporary cultural space, carrying out the pertinent
compensatory and creative functions: spontaneous aestheticization of public space; the creation of
conditions of vivacious unmediated communication and co-authorship; the formation of a supraordinary
festive mood. Critique is administered to approaches which absolutize in street music
the tendencies of resistance to the standard social orders. Application of the contextual approach
helps substantiate the specific features of the value of street music in the artistic and extra-artistic
contexts. The validity and fruitfulness of application of the concept of carnival features is validated
in the analysis of the interaction between street music and the institutions which regularize the
ways of public space. Carnival features are shown as comprising one of the characteristic features
providing the irremediableness of street music from out of the space of culture.

Keywords: street music, carnival and carnival features, public space, festivity.