Performing Confession in Indie Music: William Fitzsimmons and 'The Sparrow and the Crow'

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Ariana Phillips, Faculty of Music
• Tuesday 10 March 2015, 13:10-14:00
• The Richard King Room, Darwin College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Duncan Needham.

Confession is a word laden with connotations, whether of a religious rite, a salacious exposé, or even a crucial tool in the arsenal of every hard-bitten TV detective. It is not a word that has been frequently applied to music but I suggest that people use musical performance as a vehicle for confession and as a means of requesting forgiveness. Within this broad field of musical confession through performance, I focus on the work of indie singer-songwriter William Fitzsimmons and on his album The Sparrow and the Crow (2008). I argue that Fitzsimmons’s performances can be profitably understood as ritualised performances of confession that successfully blur the borders between the public and private worlds or between the person and the artistic persona. The result is a confession that is directed at an individual and yet enmeshes the listener in the spectacle as a witness.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Chris Davis' list
• Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars
• Darwin College Research Talks
• Darwin Lectures and Seminars
• ESRC DTP
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• The Richard King Room, Darwin College
• custom

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.