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Howard Becker’s theory for the sociology of art (including music) revolves around the simple, and often overlooked fact, “All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number, of people.” Among Becker’s writing about music, he presents an idea that I find is still relevant today, namely, that sociological and ethnomusicological work seem to be two hands of a single body that have little idea of what each other are doing. Drawing on the work of scholars such as Becker and Kay Kaufman Shelemay, I propose a model for the construction of the music event that highlights the relationship among the many systems behind the musical experience. I provide a case study of Inuit throat singing to demonstrate the effectiveness of this model in trying to explore the relationships among music, culture, and society.

This paper depicts barbershop singing as a masculine social form, and compares and contrasts the original masculine form with the ways the form is feminized. Two organizations, Sweet Adelines International (SAI) and The Barbershop Harmony Society (BHS) perform and promote barbershop singing. We document the devices used to feminize the form (naming, song selection, choreography, fashion, and organizational style), and argue that an interaction between form and content takes place in the women’s organization that genders the form in spite of its original masculine meanings. Theoretically significant is the description of how feminizing a masculine form reinforces the conservative ethos of, and hence senses of membership in, the barbershop form. Demonstrating that forms can accommodate even culturally distinctive content has implications for understanding the interaction between form and content.