PIC W3 L1 geograhies of music

pop culture

Why do geographers study music? 1

-              A universal human trait?

o   But incredibly diverse

-              Embedded into everyday life

o   Curate our lived experiences through and with music

-              Music involves rituals and carries traditions

o   Often with spatial contexts

o   Form and reflect ways of life

§  Culture as way of life

-              The expression of identity

o   especially in relation to place

§  culture as way of life

Why do geographers study music? 2

-              music as spatial performance

o   ‘audienceing’

o   Music forms a social and spatial context in its performance: ‘audiencing’ performs a form of place

o   Creates a certain atmosphere

-              part of the production and consumptions of places

o   New Orleans – jazz. Can be marketed as jazz and sold as an experience

o   Culture as distribution of things

-              Music may be produced and consumed ta the same time

o   Culture as distribution if things

-              Often spatially situated but also important aspect of globalisation

o   Often spatially situated: associated with particular locales or regions (e.g. ‘country’ & ‘folk’)

o   Way we understand popular music is through a globalised mediation of place and global media platforms

 

Placing music:

Long standing interest in relationship between music and cultural regions

o   Culture as doing

o   Culture as way of life

-              A ‘culture region’ approach to analyse listening practices across country music radio

o   White and day 1997

o   compared country to rock music on where it gets played in the USA

o   looked into factors of why this may be

o   might be considered to be a racially distinct question

-              Notions of ‘tradition’ and region’ gained critical attention, particularly in relation to globalisation

o   Have been problematised and re-asserted – what it means to have a certain regional identity in a global context

-              While there’s clear evidence for globalisation trends, music may be key o renegotiation of local and regional identities

o   Culture as way of life

o   E.g. k-pop

o   e.g. the beatles story Liverpool

§  Rock music in Liverpool said to have become ‘a way of life, with its own beliefs, norms & rituals’ (Hudson, 2006: 627).

§  Evident in large numbers of amateur rock musicians & their audiences, plus association with ‘Beatlemania’.

§  Cavern club

§  Penney lane – made famous in song. Surname of well-known slave trader – different stories of the same place.

§  Stories we tell in stories aren’t separate from the world/ reality we live in

music and national identity:

-              perpetual negotiation between perceived traditions and contemporary trends

o   e.g. national identity

o   Scottish bagpiper

o   Flower of Scotland – song – about against Richard 2 and English

music and national identity:v.s. adoption of globalised pop-culture, re-imagined

o   e.g. k-pop

o   certain types of regional/ national identity become detached/ sold to a global market, and reimagined

o   culture as doing

music and national identity -              negotiations of identity play out in bodily performances and the adoption of (inter)national symbols

o   carnival

o   diaspora plays into this

o   people move across the earth taking traditions with them but reimagining and recreating them

music and national identity - -              French folk dance setting itself in contradiction to ‘Morris dancing’

o   Revill 2004

o   Northern France – looks similar to Morris dancing but believe it to be considerably different

o   Cultural meaning created by performances is intention, and undergoes interpretation

o   Culture as way of life

music and national identity-              Bangalore: pop music, driving fast & attempting to perform globalised culture as the ‘everyday’

o   (Saldanha, 2002)

o   Population boom when India trying to overtake China. Youth culture focused on a growing middle class.

o   Adopt globalised symbols of youth culture into their enery day

o   Culture as meaning

Consuming music:

-              Music is a part of the production and consumption of places

o   Ambient music in places we visit/ pass through

§  A background noise (‘elevator music’) to shopping centres etc.

o   The creation of mobile spaces of consumption through iTunes, Spotify etc. ‘on the go’

§  Music on the move: Created throough the car, then ipod, Walkman, phones etc

o   A DJ in a nightclub plays music consumed by clubbers, but also responds to the crowd

-              Culture as distribution of things

Music and emotion/ affect

-              Music also stimulates bodily responses and emotions, or can pacify a listener, all through sound, pitch, rhythm etc.

o   (see Anderson, 2004)

o   Music has been often seen as the carrier of symbols of identity or political beliefs that stir emotions.

o   However, music also stimulates bodily responses and emotions, or can pacify a listener, all through sound, pitch, rhythm etc.

o   Drugs influenced how music was reinterpreted e.g. in raves

o   Culture as meaning

Examples: One direction fandom

-              Culture as meaning

-              Culture as way of life

-              Identity through:

o   Participation – content creation, groups, hashtags

o   Valuation – an economy of likes

o   Micro-celebrity – branding as super fans

-              Parasocial relationship – imagining themselves as close to the band due to access via social media (twitter)

-              Fans even ship the band members with each other or with others

 

Hedonism and dance music:

-              Hedonism, as pursuit of pleasure, undertaken by individuals but tends toward collective action.

-              Ecstasy crucial to ‘pleasure nexus’ of raves – altered conscious reactions, fed with ‘uplifting’ music.

-              Individualistic pursuit of pleasure in collective space? – post-period often very social, reflective.

-              Electronic dance music has a focus on the dance floor: a space where a disparate group of people come together for a finite period.

o   (Fraser, 2012)

hedonism:

-              Spatially contingent process of production & consumption of ‘rave’ experience constitutive of identity.

-              Hedonism, as pursuit of pleasure, undertaken by individuals but tends toward collective action.

-              Ecstasy crucial to ‘pleasure nexus’ of raves.

o   (Fraser, 2012)

Gender:

-              Mediated through popular music

-              Stereotypes often intensified through lyrics/ videos/ behaviour of popstars

Buena vista social club – the local and the global:

-              Exoticised music, ‘foreign’ genres conflated into easily understood single ‘Cuban’ sound.

-              ‘a loving portrait of a master class in Cuban music’?

-              Album & documentary driven by Americans, e.g. Ry Cooder

-              post-colonial power

-              Benevolent patriarchy’?

-              ‘sophisticated Americans expose to the world a naïve culture that is beautiful and we can marvel at’

-              Cuban music put into one category to be consumed by americans

 

Summary:

-              Music is studied by geographers as a key means by which consumption, identity and place are performed

-              Music is not only a medium by which meaning is transported, it is also has bodily affects that create spatial experience

-              Geographies of music highlight key issues and critical reflect on assumptions made in the ways in which we perform everyday life