In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conclusion The Scope of Ethnomusicology In the final days of my stay in Cleveland, I began to think about how I would conclude this ethnography. While driving to a final interview or doing some other repetitive task, I kept thinking in terms of dramaturgical or cinematic tableau. In a dramaturgical tableau Chris Ozimek and Al Ricci would be set in a standard scene performing some characteristic activity like writing a song in the practice room or posting flyers at a club. Posed and blocked, they freeze at some critical moment that is both typical and revealing . At other times, I thought that cinematic tableau would be moreeffective . Here, for example, Dann Saladin and John Ziats would be filmed at a bar chatting. Dann has just finished setting up his amp, John has just placed the last flash pot on the side of the stage. We cannot hear their words —a metal soundtrack obscures them—but we see their lips move, and their silent gestures in some way capture the feeling of the scene more effectively. Thick fog from the last band's set blurs our vision as the camera pans across the bar, revealing Rob Toothman drinking a beer with some friends. The camera pulls back but the action continues, diminishingin size and enveloped by the smoke. In both of these tableaus the effect of the trope is to give the impression that the actions and experiences described earlier will continue indefinitely. Tableau is reassuring if the images it captures in amber are positive ones, chilling if the images are negative. In either case, tableau is the trope of the synchronic. Synchronic time, the only time comprehensible by structuralism , is the time in which small activities and changes are captured within the rubric of larger, changeless systems. Thus, in the synchronic time of the Dann Saladin tableau, we imagine Dann going through all of the activities depicted in the ethnography. Nevertheless, the series of shows does not Conclusion / 295 T W E L V E add up to a career;the songs written do not add up to an ever-growing corpus ; the moment-to-moment changes are not part of the never-selfidentical flow that is history. We think in synchronic terms whenever we conceptualize "a period" of our lives. Casting my mind back to my sophomore year of college, I recallscenesin tableau: going to class, playing music with friends, working, making lunch. I don't think of a particular lunch as the thirtieth of the semester, incrementally closer to the end,incrementally further from the beginning, and fully unique in the flow of the semester. I think, and thought, of each lunch as an example of a type, a set of acts caught in a larger, changeless period. The trope of the synchronic is a common one because it is almost impossible to think of each and everyeventas located uniquely in history, impellingus through history, and in fact constituting that history. The trope is common—common, but misleading. While our reflective descriptions may obscure the differences between particular events, in immediate experience the events themselves are unique and colored by their ever-expanding past. The thirtieth lunch I ate that sophomore semester , however identical it might have been to allthose that preceded it, is unique in experience precisely because it is colored by those past lunches. And as attractive as a romantic tableau might be, it does great violence to the fullness of the experiences.During the writing of this work, Winter's Bane, Max Panic, and Dia Pason all broke up, the Whisler Quartet disbanded, and Leonard Burris and Jerome Saundersleft Cleveland to further their music careers. Though Rizzi's scaled back its live music offerings , Dick Schermesser still plays there, and Bill Roth, Jack Hanan, Eric Gould, and Alvin Edwards are all actively performing. The late 19805 style of commercial hard rock was routed from the scene by a variety of alternative musics, and both Flashes and the Akron Agora closed. Blood Coven, Dann Saladin's group, is currently recording a new version of "The Final Silencing," while Erik Rueschman performs in area clubs with Somnus. Timmy Owens went on to sing with Judas Priest. More recently , Winter's Bane reformed with a slightly different lineup, and the Akron Agora reopened as a country bar. As necessary as it is to our sense of things to capture the seeming permanence inherent in the fact of expectation , it is also necessaryto see each new event—no matter...

Share