“It was cute”: An emotional geography of place through oral history interviews with buskers

Keywords: emotion, memory, oral history, place, gentrification, busker, Montreal
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

This presentation examines emotions related to public places that surfaced in oral history interviews with buskers in Montreal. It draws on twelve oral history interviews done with street musicians and performers in the city in 2019. The interviews include in-situ and walking interviews apart from more traditional sedentary engagements with the life history format. Attending to the affective telling of stories – expression of emotions in words, gestures, tears and pauses and intonation of speech – makes it possible to investigate bottom-up experiences of postindustrial transformations and gentrification on street musicians and performers.

I bring together the fields of emotional geography and oral history – both of which engage with the entanglements of emotions, feelings and affect in research – to explore experiences of power and marginality in place. Emotions related to place in oral history memory offers the possibility for an interdisciplinary engagement to further examine gentrification and cultural economy and center the lives of those who are socially and economically marginalized in this new economy. It engages with buskers as cultural workers in the city, and foregrounds the street as a site of informal work.