About the Carnival Features of Street Music: Festivity and Work

method shows the interconnection between street music and the phenomenon of carnival. The basic characteristic features of this interconnection are disclosed: expansion of public space into loci and their transformation; the “corporeal” reality of action; the playing character; the creation of conditions of utopian freedom; the removal of the usual limitations; supra-ordinary conviviality; a specific modus of farcicality; stage appeal and poly-genre qualities. A functional approach is applied for characterizations of manifestation of carnival features in the activities of street musicians. Evidence is provided that with the disappearance of traditional folk carnival forms street music replicates carnival features in contemporary cultural space, carrying out the pertinent compensatory and creative functions: spontaneous aestheticization of public space; the creation of conditions of vivacious unmediated communication and co-authorship; the formation of a supra-ordinary festive mood. Critique is administered to approaches which absolutize in street music the tendencies of resistance to the standard social orders. Application of the contextual approach helps substantiate the specific features of the value of street music in the artistic and extra-artistic contexts. The validity and fruitfulness of application of the concept of carnival features is validated in the analysis of the interaction between street music and the institutions which regularize the ways of public space. Carnival features are shown as comprising one of the characteristic features providing the irremediableness of street music from out of the space of culture.