Where’s it at tonight? Discovering an urban jazz festival in Gothenburg, Sweden

Abstract

This report is the result of a close study of the organization behind the GMLSTN JAZZ music festival. It comes out of a participatory study of the week-long GMLSTN JAZZ festival, which was held in Gothenburg, Sweden between April 23 and April 30, 2016. The focus is directed towards the marketization (or commercialization) of cultural heritage, which I will approach by utilizing the concept of festivalization, as exemplified through the GMLSTN JAZZ music festival. The aim of the report is twofold. On the one hand, the focus is directed towards the assemblage of the GMLSTN JAZZ festival, namely an empirical overview of the orchestration of ideas to practices. On the other hand, the focus is directed towards the two aforementioned theoretically-anchored concepts of festivalization and cultural heritage, both of which will be explained further. By positioning GMLSTN JAZZ under what might be called a cultural heritage “looking glasWs,” the report aims to answer the following questions: 1. What form(s) of cultural heritage does GMLSTN JAZZ produce/reproduce? 2. How is cultural heritage marketed? 3. Is cultural heritage important to the festival committee?