Learning Habits and Attitudes in the Revivalist Old-Time Community of Practice

Abstract

Abstract The revivalist musicians who participate in the old-time music scene constitute what Lave and Wenger (1991) term a “community of practice. ” This study seeks to analyze the learning habits of revivalist old-time musicians from the perspective of Lave and Wenger and to explain how their approaches to and attitudes toward learning can serve to position cohort members within this community of practice. To do so, the study provides a framework for positioning individuals in the revivalist community of practice, establishes the criteria for “full” and “peripheral” participation in that community, examines the learning approaches and attitudes reported by revivalist old-time players, and demonstrates that approaches to learning are tied to community position. The data for this mixed-methods study was collected in 2017 at 5 old-time music festivals and camps in the Southeast United States, where 100 adult musicians completed a questionnaire containing demographic items, Likert-type items, and open-ended questions. This study concludes that the most significant marker of full participant status in the community of practice is a strong aversion to the use of notation and tablature, while a preference for learning from field and historical recordings, a tendency to learn tunes at jams, the possession of historical knowledge about tunes, and the ability to identify regional playing styles are also markers of full participant status.