Jamming with Urban Rhythms: Improvisatorial Place-making among Danish Youth. (August 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sand, Anne-Lene
• Other Names: Farrugia David guest-editor.; Wood Bronwyn guest-editor.; Bäckström Åsa guest-editor.; Bengtsson Tea Torbenfeldt guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Young. Volume 25:Number 3(2017)
• Page Start: 286
• Page End: 304
• Publication Date: 2017-08
• Subjects: Youth -- Research -- Periodicals; Youth -- Scandinavia -- Periodicals; Jeunesse -- Recherche -- Périodiques; Jeunesse -- Scandinavie -- Périodiques; Jeune; Mondialisation; Condition sociale; Recherche; Europe; Périodique électronique (Descripteur de forme); Ressource Internet (Descripteur de forme); 305.242
• DOI: 10.1177/1103308816671611
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1103-3088

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic multi-sited fieldwork, this article analyzes alternative rhythms of youth culture. The aim is to illustrate how young people improvise and organize rhythms in the city as a part of their place-making. I develop the concept of a spatial jam session, which provides a framework suitable for analyzing spatial dimension of contemporary youth culture. Developing Henri Lefebvre's rhythm analysis through empirical material, a phenomenological understanding of place and jazz theory contributes an analytical framework that takes bodily, material, spatial and temporal dimensions of the place-making practices of young people into account. Using the concept of a spatial jam session, I argue that a central aspect of young people's place-making is being able to improvise through materiality, sociality, cultural norms and musical expression. I illustrate how young people create spatial and temporal obstructions in order to maintain a practice of improvising, which to these young people is a way of constructing meaning in everyday life.