Jam sessions in Madrid’s blues scene: musical experience in hybrid performance models

Examining the differences between presentational and participatory music, this paper explores the importance of jam sessions as hybrid participatory-presentational performance models and collective musical practices. As such, they display democratic and hierarchic devices that produce complex social and cultural settings, providing particular frameworks for community gathering and interaction between the different participants. Based on my field research in Madrid’s blues scene, where jam sessions have proliferated widely, I will discuss two significant and distinct jams that take place every Sunday. The aim is to practically analyse what type of musical experiences and relationships they produce, considering the significance of the blues genre production and the underground status of the scene. I intend to broaden the academic interpretation of jam sessions, suggesting hybridity as a theoretical framework for analysing the social life of situated live music experiences in different genres.