Playing together…

Behind the scenes of writing

Existing in electronic format since the summer and published in paper version in October 2013 by Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Thinking together is a unique scientific and literary object, as innovative as it is exciting, brilliant and full of humor, whose history it is essential to retrace before discussing its content.

In 2010, the contemporary artist Franck Leibovici (preface to the work) who was interested in the work of the great American sociologist Howard S. Becker, in particular his work How to talk about society ?offered to participate in his conceptual work entitled “ life forms “. Within the framework of the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, this work was to make the works of different artists appear organically inscribed in – and relating to – “ ecosystem “. Leibovici therefore develops an eminently constructivist perspective, each work being for him the product of a history, of collaborations, of a context, determining elements in the constitution of these forms of life which are artistic and literary creations.

At the suggestion of Dianne Hagaman, photographer and Becker’s wife, Becker sent Leibovici the entire electronic correspondence he had with his colleague and friend Robert Faulkner over two years, from 2003 to 2005, while ‘they were developing what would become the book What are we playing now ?a work devoted to the knowledge and know-how common to “ ordinary musicians “. During this period, the two sociologists met only rarely, the first living in California and the second in Massachusetts, but they exchanged hundreds of e-mails to discuss from a “ simple » question: how is a repertoire of “ standards » shared by the musicians.

Becker and Faulkner are both musicians, both have visited the workplaces of instrumentalists. ordinary » (bars, clubs, weddings etc.), the first as a pianist, the second as a trumpet player. Becker was born in 1928, Faulkner in 1938, so they have immense experience, both as musicians and as sociologists, and it is this experience that they often use as basic material throughout these hundreds of emails. It is therefore this corpus, this communication between Becker and Faulkner, which is the form of life constitutive of the work (the book Do you know… ? The Jazz Repertoire In Action). The exchange was first staged by Leibovici in the form of a public reading in Aubervilliers, with the artist reading messages written by Becker on stage and Becker himself reading those written by Faulkner. Now all the material is delivered to us in Thinking togetherwithout comments (apart from Leibovici’s preface and an unsigned prologue that we owe to Becker), the simplicity of the generating principle of the work being constitutive of its radicality: hundreds of e-mails between Becker and Faulkner are linked in the order in which they were written, each message being preceded by the standard indications: From, Date, SubjectTo. Nothing more, nothing less.

The object is both confusing and fascinating, between literary and sociological experimentation. On a literary level first, the work relates to the exchange of correspondence, a genre in its own right, well identified and even canonical in French literature, from Abelard and Héloïse to Perec and Lederer. A genre which is particular in that the published texts were not written to be published, which gives them both a documentary value and a remarkable spontaneity. Thinking together does not deviate from the norm except that the letters exchanged here are electronic messages. We know that e-mail addressed to a loved one tends to situate the discourse somewhere halfway between written and oral. But this effect is reinforced here by the complicity of two ordinary musicians, accustomed to gigs in bars, sharing “ the culture of a deviant group: dance musicians » and multiplying the cryptic references and jokes of “ musicians “. Thus it is in an often very familiar language that the authors express themselves, and it is notably with the greatest casualness that Faulkner peppers his sentences with “ duh “, “ ahem » (“ uh “, “ hm ), and other marks of irony or distance from one’s own discourse and its academic dimension. The language is unvarnished, which is absolutely disorienting from academic authors. Let Howard Becker, for example, write “ fuck it “, even though it seems reasonably normal in an e-mail between old friends, and the accession of the speech to the status of a published text gives to this same speech a quality of strangeness that is both striking and why not say it, deeply joyful.

The overall structure is also confusing, as it only presents the messages one after the other in the order in which they were written. The response to a message is sometimes immediate (up to twelve messages are exchanged during certain days) or delayed for several days while in the meantime a parallel exchange will perhaps be (re)launched on a related object. Thus the themes intersect, the discussions drift, asides generate new questions, bring out new subjects for reflection. We feel better, we see the intellectual profusion at work and the excitement of the authors when a path proves fruitful, or when they thought of the same thing at the same time. From a vague idea (“ A thought on a thought » is the “ subject ” of the first e-mail) we quickly arrive at a much clearer project, when Becker, from the second day of exchange and already the ninth message exchanged, writes to Faulkner at the opening of a long message “ Rob, this is fabulous. We just keep writing back and forth, we’ll have a whole Thing, if you know what I mean. » From then on the process is launched and the authors will not stop working consciously on what will become Do you know… ? The Jazz Repertoire In Actionunfolding in the dialogue (even if certain private jokes are sometimes hermetic, which contributes to the poetics of the text) everything that would have remained implicit in the notes of a solo author.

In complete freedom

As is often the case in the interactionist tradition, and with Howard Becker in particular, an initial idea which seems relatively simple and almost anecdotal quickly turns into a powerful investigative tool to open up a number of questions as complex as they are fascinating. It would be impossible to provide here a complete account of the avenues explored by the authors during their two years of discussions on the constitution and circulation of “ directories » musical and on the profession of musician in general.

We will simply point out as a central theme the question of interactions with the different types of actors likely to define what must be played during a musical engagement (a gig). First type: the group of peers, the musicians, among whom the knowledge of a repertoire as extensive as possible and/or the ability to adapt to play pieces that one does not know are essential professional skills. But who knows what ? How, depending on the generation (Becker is ten years older than Faulkner and their references, their “ standards » are not the same) or depending on the type of network to which one belongs, do we know or not this or that (type of) piece ? Second type of actors, the public. It is largely in the relationship with the public that the repertoire of ordinary musicians is constituted, often more artisan service providers than independent artists, free from commercial constraints. In other words, to make a living from your musical performances in public, you must adapt to the audience and be able to play what they ask. Finally, employers, bosses » with whom we negotiate what will happen in the evening – from the style of music to the amount of the fee – and who very often consider the musicians as their employees (which they objectively are). The latter are also important actors in the construction of the “ directory “, of what we must know how to play for “ do the job » going from a modern jazz club to an Italian wedding or a bar mitzvah. These different actors are summoned throughout the exchange of emails through the memories of the two authors, in particular Becker who no longer really plays in public but draws on more than 60 years of experience. We also find peers, the public and bosses in the field work in which Robert Faulkner engaged for the book. In fact, he always plays and does not fail to take advantage of his activity to observe and discuss with his fellow musicians, but also to carry out formal interviews.

There are numerous discussions on the treatment of empirical material, particularly on the relevance of the notions and concepts used in the analysis and interpretation. As an example (or counter-example), we can mention a passage (p. 60) where Becker dissuades Faulkner from using Bourdieusian sociology, on the grounds that Bourdieu was, according to him, “ a fucking philistine » (Becker’s arguments being very debatable on this point). On the other hand, in the great constructivist-relativist tradition of the Chicago School in sociology, particularly after Everett Hughes (one of Becker’s masters), one of the most useful tools for authors is comparison. Between eras (1950s, 1970s, 2000s), between places (bars, restaurants, cabarets, concert halls), but also between different professional spaces such as the kitchen or surgery where we are also required to coordinate in sharing common knowledge and practices in an environment in perpetual recomposition (“ all the other places where people come together on an occasion to do something they have perhaps never done before together, or not in that way, or not in that place, or not with those other people in the audience, or whatever », p. 135).

With Thinking togetherHoward Becker and Robert Faulkner, at an average age of 80, give us a wonderful example of youth and freedom. Today retired and freed from all constraints, they can all the better allow themselves academic irreverence and demonstrate a freedom which will leave active social science researchers dreaming, whose daily practice tends to always move away. more than one ideal of intellectual autonomy, enmeshed in the bench marking and standardization resulting from neo-management of research. Without having to conform to respectable attitudes and an ever more present and heavy academic conformism, Becker and Faulkner (and Leibovici who initiated the operation) achieve here a real tour de force: crossed throughout by spontaneity and the humor of the two authors (who paradoxically do not think they are “ authors » when they write), Thinking together is an astonishing literary work which also shows a real rigorous scientific process, as opposed to a learned mandarin discourse, tirelessly questioning itself without ever losing its youthful enthusiasm.