Interpretive Labor

Why did so many musicians in the postwar era engage with experimental practices, and why do artists continue to do so today? What happens when we acknowledge the work that goes into performing this repertoire? What kind of work is it to be a contemporary musician, anyway? To address these questions, Interpretive Labor: Experimental Music at Work presents the theory of Interpretive Labor, or the creative work of interpretation. This book introduces and develops Interpretive Labor as grounded in a vast network of participants in new music between c. 1960 and the present, establishes several models of musical work, and explores the myriad connections between music and labor in the neoliberal present. Experimentalism's practitioners may rely on different codes and norms than most classical or popular musicians, but the underlying work that individuals do to create, understand, prepare, and produce their music is quite ordinary. At the same time, because these musicians did not initially have access to a normative performance practice, the work involved is often especially pronounced, and sometimes takes unusual forms. The story of Interpretive Labor thus demonstrates the value of a marriage between labor studies and music studies and provides a novel conceptual framework for the economy of musical activities. Its various forms can be instructive to anyone whose work involves some degree of creativity, from computer programmers to social-media influencers, interior designers to event planners--and, of course, musicians.

Kirsten Speyer Carithers is Assistant Professor of Music History at the University of Louisville, where she specializes in music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Research and teaching interests include music and technology, experimentalism, ludomusicology, and the connections between indeterminacy, improvisation, and creative labor. Carithers has published in Contemporary Music Review, the Journal of Music History Pedagogy, and the Journal of the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present.