Konstituering av en semiprofesjonell jentekorpraksis. En retrospektiv empirisk studie om frambringelsen av varige kulturelle verdier i et jentekor

Among children and young people, girls in particular sing in choirs. Some girls’ choirs can refer to a particularly high artistic level that falls into the sub-category semi-professional choirs or «elite choirs». One might say that Sandefjord girls’ choir (1956–1997) belonged to this category. This chapter is based on material from a survey among Sandefjord girls’ choir former members, qualitative interviews and supplementary sources based on the following research question: How is a girls’ choir practice constituted over time, and which values in the social practice emerge as lifelong learning for the choristers? In Bourdieu’s cultural sociology, values are understood as accumulated resources or capital. The purpose of the study is to contribute to the development of knowledge about the values which generates in the semi-professional girls’ choir culture as a specific practice in the field of music. Implicitly, this involves a contextualization of the girls’ choir practice in historical time and in geographical place. The study shows that «vocal-musical», co-singing and educational values are most prominent in girls’ choir practice, also as a foundation for lifelong learning. Through this, habitus emerge as a specific kind of «girl’s-choir-singers’ habitus». Despite significant structural changes since the 1950s and into the present, both in the field of music and in society in general, it is clear that new generations of choristers have been regulated and shaped through a reproduction of the values that exist in the social practice.