TOWARDS READING SONG IN PERFORMANCE AS AURAL NARRATIVE: READING A SENSE OF SPATIALITY IN SELECT ALBUMS OF MARK KNOPFLER USING HENRI LEFEBVRE’S NOTIONS OF SPACE

Abstract

One of the chief objectives of this study is to explore and offer a strategy to read song in performance as Aural Narratives. This was necessary because verbal texts can be read in multiple ways. Perhaps the chief claim of a text’s possibility to be literary lies in its inherent potential to be discursive. Therefore sound texts require a way of understanding sound as an element of storytelling. Shifts in Humanities necessitate an expanding notion of textuality .One of the chief concerns and burdens of the writer of literature is the evocation of a sense of spatiality which can be perceived as an outcome of spatial practice. Spatial practice in turn is defined by social codes and practices. Spaces can be read therefore through the life experiences of the inhabitants of a space as spatial practices are dependent on particular spaces. This study explores the use of Sound in creating a sense of Spatiality. Singer, songwriter and guitarist, Mark Knopfler creates songs that are arranged around a central character’s lived experience. Thus the perception and conception of a sense of space that is thus evoked can be negotiated using Henri Lefebvre’s triadic notions of spatiality as a reading strategy.