Sound Tracks

Popular Music Identity and Place

John Connell, Chris Gibson

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134699124
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Physical Sciences
• Categoría: Geography

Sound Tracks is the first comprehensive book on the new geography of popular music, examining the complex links between places, music and cultural identities. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective on local, national and global scenes, from the 'Mersey' and 'Icelandic' sounds to 'world music', and explores the diverse meanings of music in a range of regional contexts.
In a world of intensified globalisation, links between space, music and identity are increasingly tenuous, yet places give credibility to music, not least in the 'country', and music is commonly linked to place, as a stake to originality, a claim to tradition and as a marketing device. This book develops new perspectives on these relationships and how they are situated within cultural and geographical thought.

1
Into the Music

This book explores the many ways in which popular music is spatial – linked to particular geographical sites, bound up in our everyday perceptions of place, and a part of movements of people, products and cultures across space. It seeks to develop an innovative perspective on the relationship between music and mobility, the way in which music is linked to cultural, ethnic and geographical elements of identity, and how all this, in turn, is bound up with new, increasingly global, technological, cultural and economic shifts.

The cover image for this book suggests one starting point for exploring these themes: a South American panpipe band in Times Square, New York, in 2001, providing a seemingly authentic Andean musical experience in a different hemisphere. The band, playing panpipe ballads over pre-recorded keyboards, was accompanied by a colleague selling home-made CDs of the group. In one sense, it is an unsurprising image: South American panpipe busking groups became common in cities around the world in the 1980s, especially after the international success of Inti Illimani and the rise of New Age music. Indigenous knowledge of musical traditions provided quick resources for migrants keen to earn an income, as with, in other contexts, Cantonese violinists, Caribbean steel drummers and flamenco guitarists. Yet the image reflects much more than just an incidental part of a city streetscape. It is a busy scene in a unique city, created and constantly transformed by migration. It suggests links between music, tradition and authenticity, reinvented in the public spaces of the city; it demonstrates how technological changes (notably the digitisation of music) have informed local music production, generated new home recording cultures and small-scale entrepreneurialism. Music is caught up in multiple layers of networks that come together in that one street scene. In contrast to the low-key musical economies of the foreground, the background confirms the corporate domination of music: the Virgin megastore, and the global headquarters of BMG, one of the world’s largest entertainment companies (in Times Square, perhaps the archetypal global entertainment space). Passing cars boom with a wealth of sound – R&B, techno, rock classics and current hits; MTV’s American television studios, behind the photographer, advertise exclusive interviews with Janet Jackson; souvenir stalls replay stage and show classics out into the street. Music fills the scene and affronts – or soothes – the senses.

While Times Square may be atypical, music surrounds us, in shopping malls, cinemas, lounge rooms; as a soundtrack to fashion, TV channels and video games. Yet, despite the presence of music in most people’s lives, this area of popular culture has been largely neglected as a ‘serious’ academic pursuit. This is perhaps due to music’s relative invisibility, and the apparent lack of tangible ethnographic material to be analysed and explained in ways that other material aspects of culture have been studied. As Smith has argued, it is as if a claim for ‘the non-social, implicitly metaphysical qualities of music has almost succeeded, making music perhaps the last of the arts to be looked at from a critical cultural perspective’ (1994: 235). Here, we trace the various links between music, place and spatial identity, and introduce a plethora of examples – from artists and their output to global distribution, from local ‘scenes’ to national music traditions – which map out diverse geographies of music. From its origins as sound experienced only in ‘live’ circumstances to sound waves captured in a computer chip – music in its varying forms has become almost inescapable. Similarly, popular music transcends geographical scales, from live performances in corner pubs to global tours; equally, we can shut ourselves off from the outside world in the private space of a Walkman, while governments create anthems and cultural policies aimed at representing a sense of nation. This book brings an explicitly geographical approach to popular music – thinking of music in terms of place and movement, of proud heritages and dynamic, fluid soundscapes.

In many respects, the academic world has shifted in ways that make it possible to take music seriously. The move away from sometimes rigid theories of society and economy, towards studies of social diversity and heterogeneity, has illuminated the complexities of how members of communities create and sustain meanings and identities for themselves. Consequently geographers have given greater attention to the ways in which our understandings of space and place are mediated by popular cultural forms such as television, print media, film and music, hence some geographers have called for more intense examinations of musical texts in studies of society, polity and culture (Gill 1993; Smith 1994; Leyshon et al. 1995, 1998; Kong 1995a; Nash and Carney 1996; Carney 1998; Romagnan 2000). This has marked a conceptual shift within cultural geography, from its historical concern with producing ‘objective’ studies of cultural landscapes, to interpretations (or ‘readings’) of human-made spaces as a form of ‘text’ – discursively constructed arenas that are shaped by wider social relations and representative of divisions and tensions in society. As Leyshon et al. have argued, ‘space and place are…not simply…sites where or about which music happens to be made, or over which music has diffused, but rather different spatialities are…formative of the sounding and resounding of music’ (1995: 424–5). The centrality of music to youth sub-cultures (particularly since the 1950s), the links between music and social movements in the 1960s (such as soul music and the American civil rights movement), the role of music in mediating stories of place (from urban decay in punk to the rural utopias of country music), the widespread array of venues and sites in which music is now encountered (from concert halls to airport lounges) and the more globally integrated nature of music distribution are just some examples that have amplified the necessity for critical analysis.

Popular music has appeared in some university settings, gradually filtering through the curricula of music, sociology, media and communications departments, yet has been accompanied by considerable scepticism. In some circles, this scepticism stems from notions of popular culture as fanciful or irrelevant at ‘serious’ universities; at times popular music is subject to more extreme attacks, written off as a legitimate area of study by those with conservative views of music, who see it as inconsequential. While literature, film and art have been graced by an abundance of work from a cultural geographical perspective, popular culture, and particularly popular music, has remained enigmatic territory. Kong has traced the lack of popular music studies in geography to a tradition of cultural elitism – researchers privileging those ‘serious’ and enduring cultural artefacts over popular cultural forms, which have ‘been regarded with disdain as “mere entertainment”, trivial and ephemeral’ (1995a: 184). This is part of the wider priority attached to vision (Smith 1994; Ingham et al. 1994), reflected in both the empirical underpinnings of ‘science’, and in post-modernism’s origins in architecture and art. The omission of music from mainstream geographical inquiry can also be attributed both to the belief that it is not ‘geographical’ and to the complexity of its expression, engaging sight and sound simultaneously. As long as the written word remains the dominant academic medium, visually experienced cultural forms are likely to remain the most widely studied texts (Smith 1994), ensuring music’s relative neglect.

What is ‘popular’ music? Is it simply that which sells the most? Is ‘classical’ music distinct from ‘popular’ music (see Box 1.1)? Music also implies much more than just texts (whether lyrics or musical scores). Musical practices include whole constellations of social uses and meanings, with complex rituals and rules, hierarchies and systems of credibility that can be interpreted at many levels. Music can represent a highly participatory art form or a passive consumption experience, from karaoke or busking on streetcorners to hearing easy-listening ‘muzak’ in shopping aisles, or dancing in a club – hence geographies of music are inextricable from the various contexts of performance, listening and interaction in space. As a sometimes-living exhibition and art form, as fluid, invisible sound, popular music refuses to provide a uniform or static text to manipulate or deconstruct.

Box 1.1 What is ‘popular music’?

Any attempt to distinguish popular music reveals basic disagreements: criteria to differentiate ‘classical’, ‘folk’ and ‘popular’ music are artificial and at best localised. All music that is heard and enjoyed can be interpreted as ‘popular’ in some sense. Whether talking about ‘traditional’ music styles that remain important in the social practices of indigenous communities or migrant groups, the mass-produced output of major record labels, or the categorisation of music in record shops, music involves the broadcast of sound by individual performers or groups beyond the performance context (stage, radio station, recording studio), to audiences in a variety of places that understand and recognise the noises as ‘music’. This marks a spatial trajectory away from highly localised and contained origins, to absorption into the musical styles and consumption patterns of a wider community (to varying degrees). Yet boundaries of meaning are consistently erected between what is deemed ‘popular’ or otherwise. Adorno regarded popular music as a mass-produced, commodified and standardised product, involving minimal creativity. Consequently ‘serious’ music, ‘art’ music and ‘experimental’ music were portrayed as structurally distinct from ‘popular’ music (see Adorno and Horkheimer 1977), yet, considered in their own social and historical contexts (however narrow they were), these too were popular. In many societies, these divisions had no meaning. In Italy and elsewhere, opera was genuinely ‘popular’ across social classes, yet in many contemporary contexts it has been associated with refinement, and an educated ‘cultured’ elite. The notion that some musics are of ‘objectively’ higher status or quality remains common. (As an example, in 1996 court action was brought against Italian group FCB concerning their dance remix of Carl Orff’s O Fortuna (entitled ‘Excalibur’), in which the companies who owned the rights over the original piece claimed the techno remix ‘debased’ the original. FCB won the case.) Similar perspectives exist over what constitutes folk music or world music. Others have consulted more quantitative, seemingly democratic techniques to define genres – ‘popular’ music is simply that of the masses, that which sells the most copies, or draws the largest crowds. Manuel (1988) argued that popular music could be distinguished from other types of music, since it was largely disseminated by the mass media, and this substantially influenced its form. Then there is presumably some sales number (or level of media exposure) below which music of all sorts is ‘unpopular’ or merely the domain of cult enthusiasts. Yet highly influential releases by artists are sometimes distributed within very narrow parameters (such as dance tracks, popular in clubs but the sales of which are limited to a smaller number of DJs). Aesthetics and economics are not easily unravelled. Grossberg provides some clarity to this ambiguous notion of the ‘popular’ by warning against quantitative or aesthetic judgements about particular artists, recordings or ‘scenes’ (such as arbitrary record sales criteria or distinctions based on personal taste):

[the ‘popular’] cannot be defined by appealing to either an objective aesthetic standard (as if it were inherently different from art) nor an objective social standard (as if it were inherently determined by who makes it or for whom it is made). Rather it has to be seen as a sphere in which people struggle over reality and their place in it, a sphere in which people are continuously working with and within already existing relations of power, to make sense of and improve their lives.

(1997: 2)

This approach is central to this book, and further suggests that notions of authenticity, and credibility, however these are defined, are key elements of much popular culture. Given the fluidity of meaning that surrounds the term ‘popular music’, we have sought throughout this book to avoid narrow definitions and boundaries (although it would be impossible not to implicitly reflect our own tastes and perspectives). We have referred to a number of examples and case studies of popular music in very different spatial contexts, and to musicians of varying commercial ‘popularity’. Much can be made of these comparisons, yet it remains impossible to cover all contexts, regions and interpretations of musical spaces, across the multitude of genres, performers and time-periods in which musicians have created sound. Moreover, the ‘popular’ not only involves cultural products (CDs, music videos, concert performances) that are numerically or financially successful in different countries, but constitutes the whole realm within which tastes come and go, the social contexts in which ‘fans’ emerge with distinct cultural attachments to a sound or artist, and the human spaces that are created for the enjoyment of music. There can be no formal definition of popular music.

See: Adorno 1988; Brackett 1995; Kassabian 1999; Middleton 1990; Shuker 1994.

Ironically, the allure of popular music as a site of research inquiry is intensified because it is so tangled up in the activities of everyday life. Ward has even argued, ‘music-making is, more than anything else you can think of quickly, the cement of society’ (1992: 120). While this might be exaggerating the social role of music somewhat, many everyday understandings about places (whether particular sites such as concert or festival venues, regions with music traditions, or national institutions) are mediated through engagements with popular music. Everyday associations with places may come to be defined by musical expressions, on a number of levels. Just as Hollywood has become a mythological site through its proximity to the global film industry, so too Nashville, Seattle or Memphis in the United States, Liverpool and Manchester in England or Tamworth in Australia have come to be known as key sites of musical production, dissemination or festivals for particular audiences. Myths of place are often reinforced in music itself; examples cut across genres and eras: the many music texts dedicated to the cities of New York or Los Angeles (from Frank Sinatra and Billy Joel to Public Enemy and 2Pac); the numerous country and western artists, such as Willie Nelson, who are nostalgic about home and the land; or the often heavily geographical discourses of hip hop or reggae. Analyses of popular music therefore demand diversity, considering the cultural forms, ideologies, identities and practices in place that provide the individual a ‘plausible social context and believable personal world’ (Eyles 1989: 103), both in material trends and matters of popular discourse.

Music as culture and commodity

In order to understand music’s spatial dimension, we explore a series of dialectical relationships that define how music operates in places and across geographical distances. One such dialectic stems from a tension between music as a commodified product of an industry with high levels of corporate interest, and simultaneously as an arena of cultural meaning. The initial stages of the production process for music (whether a work ends up as a recording or a performance) involve small-scale creativity – bands and songwriters creating music in garages, recording studios or local pubs, illuminating ‘the ways in which music is used and the important role that it plays in everyday life and in society generally’ (Cohen 1994: 127). Beyond its importance as a cultural pursuit, music is captured, transformed and broadcast in a range of ways, involving complicated trajectories of production, distribution and consumption. These reveal tensions about how sounds circulate as both economic and cultural value. Sheet music captured melodies, words and arrangements, allowed rapid dissemination of songs and also established publishing companies as pivotal players in the emerging music industry. Later, recording technologies were established by music companies as attempts to capture clearer sounds and sell more copies of albums, yet in many contexts they also allowed more complex and more numerous grassroots musical cultures, and new informal networks of small-scale production (Chapter 3). However, academic study of music has largely evaded complex connections between cultural and commercial trends, assuming either that music, as an immediately cultural expression, ‘belongs’ in cultural studies or cultural geography, or that questions of culture and identity are frivolous diversions, compared to the ‘real’ tasks of examining music’s function as a nucleus of economic growth or a possible means of job creation (Sadler 1997: 1919). There are many potential reasons for this. Aspects of popular culture such as film, music and television lend themselves to cultural analyses; much of the rich mythology surrounding these activities is related to their distinctive consumption and interpretation by audiences in cultural milieux. These include sub-cultural settings, where heterogeneous visual markers confront researchers most quickly (for example the safety pin and mohawk fashions of punk, or the pan-African imagery of reggae); geographical settings (the festival, the cinema, the theme park); depictions of cultural encounters in television serials and films (such as Hi-Fidelity or Brassed Off); and in academic arenas themselves, where certain styles, movements, artists or cultural products are afforded authenticity in intellectual circles. Academic celebrations (and alternatively, deconstructions) of musical texts can return to old debates, variously affirming key expressions, such as ‘art’, against the tainted stuff of ‘commerce’. Notions of academic credibility, attached to selected musical styles, artists or pieces, without self-reflexive critique, stimulate acts of snobbery associated with everyday music consumption (the more ‘credible’ inner-city clubs, more ‘genuinely alternative’ bands, a more ‘refined’ classical music). Academics actively add critical currency to cultural products, as do music critics, retailers, recruiting agents and sub-cultural elites. As Breen has put it, ‘we have been too eager to be culturalists – promoters of our musical obsessions – rather than analysts and critics’ (1995: 490), writing and reflecting on music’s affective qualities as consumers with particular tastes, ideological predilections and preferred readings of musical texts. Such distinctions cannot be sustained: all music, of ‘high’ or ‘low’ culture, is commercial in some way, while all cultural materials, even those of mass consumption, provide openings and alternatives for audiences.

Recognition of the commercial dimensions of music has informed a...