@article{Carrillo_Echeverría-Valencia_Vaca_Prado_2021, title={Musical Totem: A Collaborative Composition Methodology During the Covid-19 Pandemic}, volume={49}, url={https://caml.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/caml/article/view/40393}, DOI={10.25071/1708-6701.40393}, abstractNote={<span id="docs-internal-guid-86eb9a1c-7fff-b047-4551-510d63f7b888"><span>As part of the </span><span>Action Research Network of the Americas,</span><span> the Musical Learning Community is a collaborative group, founded during the COVID-19 global pandemic, that has </span><span>brought together musicians, artists, and educators to generate shared experiences</span><span>. </span><span>As members of this community, we explore new ways for collaborative music-making. Through creative, cultural, and conceptual influences, the idea of the </span><span>Musical Totem</span><span> emerged as a collaborative music composition methodology to transcend geographical distancing. We sought interpretative freedom by adopting methods of the surrealist technique </span><span>Cadavre Exquis (Exquisite Corpse)</span><span> while relying on the rich concept of </span><span>totems</span><span> to find thematic material and set compositional parameters. The process was carried out using </span><span>arts-based</span><span> and </span><span>autoethnographic</span><span> research approaches, which provided insights into our creative musical responses and remote collaborative working processes. This endeavor showed us that symbolism can provide compositional and performative challenges and that, as a methodology, the Musical Totem can create freedom and constraints depending on the musician, the conceptual influences, and the instrumentation. We also learned that engaging in a collaborative music-making process led to increased community bonding through shared creative expression. </span></span>}, number={1}, journal={CAML Review / Revue de l’ACBM}, author={Carrillo, Víctor Manuel Rubio and Echeverría-Valencia, David and Vaca, Eliana Sofia and Prado, Sebastián López}, year={2021}, month={May} }