Seca, Jean-Marie <br/><br/>
The obsession with vocation among male and female underground musicians 

 -  2002.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> The psychosociological approach to alternative popular musical practices presented here synthetizes part of the results of a detailed empirical investigation (using the methods of the questionnaire, the interview, and participant observation) with 110 groups (approximately 410 individuals belonging to the currents of pop rock, punk, new wave, rap and Caribbean style), carried out from 1981–1987 and 2000, whose complete statements appear in other publications (Seca 2001a). After describing the theoretical model (acid state) used to analyze the observation data and indicating the specificity of the approach of this type of musician, the question of the place of the woman in these practices, mainly masculinized, is examined more closely. We begin from the presupposition that the conflicts of female/male roles appear more explicit in the manner in which women have to display or to claim a “place” in the social field of musical recognition. Some interpretations of the ostracism encountered by female musicians and of their provocative and paradoxical behaviors are proposed. The androgynous role structure (valid for both genders in the case of artistic activity) is invoked as the pinnacle of an artistic professionalization trajectory and as a “solution” to the excesses and identity drifts possible on the underground creative musical scene.