Book Chapters by Jordan Zalis
Football and Popular Culture: Singing Out from the Stands, 2021
"Capital culture, political performance" focuses on the invention of a new musical tradition in O... more "Capital culture, political performance" focuses on the invention of a new musical tradition in Ottawa, Canada. Drawing on fieldwork conducted with two supporters' groups of the Ottawa Fury FC, the author explores how the Stony Monday Riot and the Bytown Boys Supporters Club successfully lobbied the club's owners and operators to cease broadcasting pre-recorded music and allow fans to develop new sonic traditions. In doing so, Zalis explores the intersections of tradition, position, and place in Ottawa's football stadium and the plurality of experience and meaning that accompanies the negotiation of space.
Book Chapters (translated) by Jordan Zalis
Poderes do som - Políticas, Escutas e Identidades (Powers of Sound: Policies, Listening, and Identities), 2020
Decibel levels climb, fanatics stand and scream, workers wave their flags, commanding speakers an... more Decibel levels climb, fanatics stand and scream, workers wave their flags, commanding speakers and screens: "GET LOUD!" "MAKE SOME NOISE!" "ON YOUR FEET!" "Don't tell me what to do!" "Sit down!" I can't see!" "The bass is too loud!" "We have to leave!" With that, under "sonorities," we learn a lot from listening. Altogether, this chapter assembles four years of critical ethnomusicology, studying sound, music, and sport; "creatively." The work makes a critical case both for and against the powers of sound in one of Canada's most contemporary sports settings. It writes about cosmopolitan people, billions-of-dollars of business, and the politics of the largest national and international leagues. It comments on the application of tradition, popular music, and group identity. It seeks some understanding of the sonic diktat of professional sport; part of what it is and part of how it means. Because the Canadian sportscape is typically sounded electronically, its participants are usually pounded to pieces, singing along rather than being dialogically (BAKHTIN, [1974] 1986). This theatre of belief; this cathedral, represents both structure and agency. In the stadium, the "Ottawa Box" is removed and The Riot come to be. The supporters listen, hear, sound, and sing. Using contemporary sonorities research (MARRA and TROTTA, 2019) and classic phenomenology (IHDE, [1976] 2007) this chapter messes with the ideas of interpellative practice (ALTHUSSER, 1971, BOURDIEU, 2000), soundscape (SCHAFER, [1977] 1994), and acoustemology (FELD, 2015). It queries the work of art and society beyond performing the individual in group identity. While mapping some discourse concerned with "being told what to do" while "watching sports" from the seats, it is a case-study in contradiction; even as resistance, musical sounding is imperial technology.
Articles by Jordan Zalis
SEM Student News, 2017
Framing The Brier as a site of social behaviour, we follow Lindquist’s (2006) position that spect... more Framing The Brier as a site of social behaviour, we follow Lindquist’s (2006) position that spectator sport serves multiple socio-cultural and ideological purposes. Interpreted as a public enactment and secondary genre, it functions simultaneously as a festival, ritual, tradition, and celebration. Regarding the aural experience of The Brier, we examine its soundscape and apply Feld’s (2015) concept of “acoustemology” to inform our listening practice. By treating sound as a way of knowing in our experience of The Brier, we were exposed to a range of meanings concerning sound, music, and expressive culture. The sounds of the crowd and, in turn, each individual enmeshed with the movements of the players, their decisions, and the rocks as they went “roaring” down the ice. Sounds are not just sounds—here they are contemplation, encouragement, and celebration.
Thesis (MA) by Jordan Zalis
This thesis presents my personal experience and ethnographic research into some
of the sounds and... more This thesis presents my personal experience and ethnographic research into some
of the sounds and musics heard while participating as an active spectator at soccer and Canadian football games inside of TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s field-theory in combination with Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ideas of invented tradition, I query identity, place, and position with reference to selected social actors and institutions through case studies concerned with two different ways power can be exercised into influence: grassroots and top-down. The first case study examines the invention(s) of supporters’ culture in Ottawa from the grassroots level through the Ottawa Fury Football Club and their official supporters’ groups: The Stony Monday Riot and the Bytown Boys Supporters Club. The second case study examines an invented tradition, and its associated reinvention of existing traditions, vis-à-vis the performance of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ folk-song, “Big Joe Mufferaw,” by famed Ottawa musician Lucky Ron at the half-time of an Ottawa REDBLACKS football game. As a more monological and institutionally mediated form of discourse, this second case study will be characterized as a top-down power structure relative to the activities of supporters' groups.
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Book Chapters by Jordan Zalis
Book Chapters (translated) by Jordan Zalis
Articles by Jordan Zalis
Thesis (MA) by Jordan Zalis
of the sounds and musics heard while participating as an active spectator at soccer and Canadian football games inside of TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s field-theory in combination with Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ideas of invented tradition, I query identity, place, and position with reference to selected social actors and institutions through case studies concerned with two different ways power can be exercised into influence: grassroots and top-down. The first case study examines the invention(s) of supporters’ culture in Ottawa from the grassroots level through the Ottawa Fury Football Club and their official supporters’ groups: The Stony Monday Riot and the Bytown Boys Supporters Club. The second case study examines an invented tradition, and its associated reinvention of existing traditions, vis-à-vis the performance of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ folk-song, “Big Joe Mufferaw,” by famed Ottawa musician Lucky Ron at the half-time of an Ottawa REDBLACKS football game. As a more monological and institutionally mediated form of discourse, this second case study will be characterized as a top-down power structure relative to the activities of supporters' groups.
of the sounds and musics heard while participating as an active spectator at soccer and Canadian football games inside of TD Place Stadium in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s field-theory in combination with Hobsbawm and Ranger’s ideas of invented tradition, I query identity, place, and position with reference to selected social actors and institutions through case studies concerned with two different ways power can be exercised into influence: grassroots and top-down. The first case study examines the invention(s) of supporters’ culture in Ottawa from the grassroots level through the Ottawa Fury Football Club and their official supporters’ groups: The Stony Monday Riot and the Bytown Boys Supporters Club. The second case study examines an invented tradition, and its associated reinvention of existing traditions, vis-à-vis the performance of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ folk-song, “Big Joe Mufferaw,” by famed Ottawa musician Lucky Ron at the half-time of an Ottawa REDBLACKS football game. As a more monological and institutionally mediated form of discourse, this second case study will be characterized as a top-down power structure relative to the activities of supporters' groups.