"The more you're simply present with it, the more musicyou’ll have in your body." : An Exploration of the Information Practices of Folk Music Students inSweden

Sammanfattning

This study examines the information practices of folk music students in Swedish higher education through qualitative interviews with 5 students from 4 artistic folk music programmes in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm. An abductive, theoretically-sensitised analysis of the interview data was made, with coding drawing on a practice theoretical “toolbox” (Nicolini, 2012), including attention to Lloyd’s (2010) modalities of information as well as themes found in the empirical material. The study shows that participants' information practices are oriented towards five distinct focuses: information for repertoire building, information for historical and socio-cultural understanding, information for technical development and understanding, information for creativity, and practical information. Further, it shows that the students engage with information in epistemic, social and corporeal modalities, with the two latter, and especially corporeal modalities being central to the ways in which the participants access, process, conceive of and value information.