Abstract
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Festival activities lure us in and arouse emotions that have the potential
to encourage us to be more open with others. We stop for a moment and
listen, perhaps sing along with performances, smile, talk, buy trinkets, eat
the local foods, and generally get caught up in the festival moment. Or, at
times we may feel quite alienated by these events, rejecting the sorts of
activities and performances we come across, and not wishing to be part of
these activities, we grimace, cover our eyes and ears and hurry past. At a
festival, then, any notion or feeling of belonging is most deeply created
out of the bodily and emotive experiences of being ‘in the groove together’
(Keil & Feld, 1994: 167). Emotions are activated through festival activities
that encourage crowd inter-mingling, such as listening to music performances,
joining in dance, the aromas and tastes of food and other forms of
shared experiences.