Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 78

74 The Popular Culture Review as in the background and apparently not in the fore of guests' attention. Guests at bashes often left without thanking the host. Even if they knew the host well they were invested with anonymity by virtue of the number of guests and the loudness of music, both of which covered or masked their individuality. Guests at snuiller gatherings almost always expressed personal thanks for the hospitality, some even having supplied food and drink as a form of thanks upon arrival. They arriv ^ expecting to be individuals and treated the host more formally. Hosts and guests at both kinds of parties realized that parties are rites of reversal (Norbeck; Jewett and Laurence). Parties are events which reverse the day-to-day, mundane norms to allow escape from them. Bashes dramatically reverse norms, a fact for which hosts must be prepared since purposefully getting guests intoxicated invites possible community sanction (Holmberg and MacDonald). Friendly gatherings also reverse norms. Daily life and the workplace do not always allow for lingering, in-depth conversation. The additional suspension of sexual innuendo is also a kind of reversal which friends give to one another. Both kinds of parties use music as a symbolic sound system which signifies the reversals. The partiers and party planners thus experienced parties as sound rituals of reversal which enabled escape from daily norms of behavior and the recovery or purgation to face the norms after leaving the party. Music nmkes parties sound rituals and is thus perhaps the most important guest for promoting interaction at social gatherings. At times its voice is the only voice heard. At times it helps us speak. Bowling Green State University Carl B. Holmberg Works Cited Cavan, Sheri. Liquor License: An Ethnography of Bar Behavior. Chicago: Aldine, 1966. Douglas, Jack D. Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge. Chicago: Aldine, 1970. Fomas, Johan. "Moving Rock: Youth and Pop in Late Modernity." Popular Music 9 (1990): 291-306.