“Bring your A-game and leave your ego at the door”: Songwriting camps as sites for the (re-)production of practice-based knowledge

Abstract

The established industry practices of collaborative songwriting sessions and camps are vital sites for the acquisition and transferal of songwriting skills and knowledge. While there is a limited body of research into collaborative songwriting and writing camps as such, there is even less academic work done on their role as (informal) settings for training and education of songwriters. Based on fieldwork in an international songwriting camp, the article maps out and explores how aspiring songwriters are socialized into the creative practices of songwriting. Understanding collaborative songwriting as a form of social interaction, and thus inherently characterized by unequal distributions of and negotiations over (creative) power, it analyzes its frameworks of knowledge as an assemblage that is continuously (re-)produced through its ongoing interactional practices.