Folk Groups And Folklore Genres Reader: A Reader

Tending Bar at Brown's: Occupational Role as Artistic Performance

Tending Bar at Brown's: Occupational Role as Artistic Performance Michael J. Bell Although a number ofdefinitions offolklore holdit to be an artistic expression, such expression has often been conceived in terms oftraditional genres such as tale, ballad, joke, proverb, or riddle. But, in one sense, art is a component ofanyactivity, even when the aims ofan activity can be described in ordinaryandutilitarian terms such as earning money, solving problems, or avoiding conflict. This is because art is a mode of attention: an attention to the form, style, and composition of virtually anything whatsoever. To characterize something as art is not to say that it is good (any more than to callsomething "business"is to imply that it is good business). Badart is stillart. It is merely to call attention to certain aspects of an activity or its products. Michael]. Bell delineates the artistic nature of the job of barmaid in Brown's Lounge-a Philadelphia bar frequented by middle-class blacks. Bell characterizes the barmaids as artists in the ways that they design and shape the socialsituation ofthe bar through the performance of their occupational roles. The activity at the bar can be viewed as a piece oftheater, with the barmaids serving as both directors and principal characters. It should be notedthat this view ofoccupationalrole as artistic performance is not Bell's perception alone, but corresponds with the barmaids'conceptualization of their own activities as well. A fuller description ofthe activities in Brown's Lounge can be found in Bell (1983). For a similar analysis of another woman's occupational performance see Johnson (1973). The conceptualization offolklore as performance can be found in Ben-Amos and Goldstein (1975), and Bauman (1978, 1986). For a discussion of the relation of aesthetics to craft and work see Jones (1987). Kochman (1972) offers a range of descriptions and analyses of black speech play. In the traditional description of the public drinking place, tending bar has largely been characterized as a passive profession.! The bartender or barmaid has been seen as the distributor of drinks and as the person ultimately responsible for order. In the enactment of either task, they are usually described as peripheral to the existence of the social world of the bar; as persons who, at best, will listen to your talk or your troubles but never become involved in either. In truth, tending bar is more complex. The bartender stands at the center of societal ambivalence over public drinking. The owner Reproduced by permission of the California Folklore Society, from Western Folklore 35, no. 2(1976):93-107. Not for further reproduction. 146 Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: A Reader of any establishment is in business to make a profit. In a bar this is accomplished by the sale of as much alcohol as possible. At the same time, the unrestricted sale of alcohol offers the real possibility of serious social and business consequences. No owner wants his patrons to consume so much that they become drunk and give the tavern a bad reputation in the community or at the local police station. Accordingly, the person tending bar must create an atmosphere in which people will keep drinking, thus satisfying the legitimate needs of his employer, and, at the same time, not allow anyone to become so drunk as to constitute a threat to social order. To achieve this, the person behind the bar cannot be just a passive listener and observer waiting until disorder arises to exercise control, but he must be an active participant engaged in creating an orderly world in which patron energy can be appropriately expressed. Tending bar thus involves the strategic manipulation of patron energy into a social order in which encounters may occur without threatening consequences to patron, bar or community.2 This paper will show that in the case of the black bartender or barmaid the accomplishment of such a process is brought about through artistic performance, and that tending bar may be understood as an artful profession in Afro-American culture. In particular, this essay will begin by formulating the systematic social knowledge which underlies the adequate fulfillment of the bartending role and which permits bar personnel and patrons to make sense of and accomplish the social world. This system will then be contextualized in terms of the actual practices and practical actions which invest this common social knowledge with existential reality. Finally, these patterns of performance will be examined as stylistically constituted artistic performances aimed at investing the social world with...