YouTube, fanvids, forums, vlogs and blogs: Informal music learning in a convergent on- and offline music community

In this paper I examine the music learning and teaching in the Banjo Hangout online music community ( www.banjohangout.org/ ) using cyber ethnographic methods of interview and participant observation conducted entirely through computer-mediated communication, which includes Skype and written narrative texts – forum posts, email, chat room conversations – along with hyperlinks to YouTube and other Internet music-learning resources. The Hangout is an example of an online community based on the pre-existing offline interests of its founding members and it is thus connected to and overlaps with the offline Old Time and Bluegrass music banjo communities. Although I focus on the Banjo Hangout online community, this study also provides peripheral glimpses – embedded in the participants’ narratives – into the offline Old Time and Bluegrass banjo communities of practice. As a cyber ethnographic field study, this research also highlights the epistemological differences between on- and offline community as reflected in music education online narrative qualitative research and research practice.