The Semiotics of the Encore :: Concert Music Audience Papers

The semiotics of the encore IntroductionIn this reflexive paper, I wish to add a brief addendum to the literature about the semiotics of performance by examining the semiotic acts that surround the ritual of the encore in a have it away concert performance. I will bring to my analysis of this phenomena my twenty-some years of perplex witnessing rock concerts in venues of tout ensemble sizes and with a wide variety of audiences and performers. I will argue that there ar specific elements to this ritual that ar of particular interest to semioticians. I am going to attempt an true incomplete semiotic analysis of the encore based on Daniel Chandlers guidelines for D.I.Y. Semiotic Analysis, as found at http//www.aber.ac.uk/dgc/sem12.html.The Umwelt of the Encore What are the important signifiers and what do they signify? - What is the system within which these signs make sense? - What connotations seem to be involved? (Chandler, based on Berger, 40-41)The Umwelt of the concert goer , or semiotic stage of this event, includes the genuine stage, which is raised to a greater or lesser degree higher up the seats on the main floor of the concert hall the levels of seating--the kinsperson structure, to put it in Marxist terms the ushers and/or security the tickets which are required to gain admittance as well as the undercoat of prior experiences that the concertgoer brings with him or her, and an infinite number of other looking ats.Of course, this Umwelt, like all Umwelten, is not identical or universal for all of the concertgoers. Each private member of the audience builds up their own particular knowledge structures of this benevolent of event these structures form their own particular Umwelt. The more experiences of concerts, the more multiplex the Umwelt constructed around them. For instance, the Grateful Dead often performed two sets without an opening act. nearly concerts feature two acts with an interim between them. A friend of mine, unknown with the way the Deads music and the way they structured their concerts, went to her first Dead interpret and in the intermission between sets, said loudly, as it had been twenty legal proceeding or so since the band had left the stage, Gee, when are the Dead culmination on? This was greeted with howls of derision from her surrounding neighbors, whose Dead-concert Umwelt was more developed. The most important aspect of the rock-concert Umwelt, I would argue, isnt directly observable the invisible ring or seawall around the stage which separates the performers from the audience.