Defining the Groove: From Remix to Research in <i>The Beat of Boyle Street</i>

Abstract

This paper represents musical remixing practices as a means of conducting leisure research. Our research engaged urban Aboriginal-Canadian youth through The Beat of Boyle Street, a music technology program used to teach young people how to produce their own remixes. Through this program we developed a “research remix” of narrative, Indigenous and arts-based ethnographic methods attuned to processes of making sense through making music. We examined the ways young people (re)produced not only songs but also stories, cultures and identities. Our research remix connects leisure practices and popular cultural processes by informing understandings of music and leisure in young people's lives. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Leisure Sciences for the following free supplemental resources: sound clips of El Jefe remix (a capella), “Broken Home,” “Street Life,” and “Turning Point (a capella).”]