Popular Music Scenes: Regional and Rural Perspectives 3031086147, 9783031086144

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POP MUSIC, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY

Popular Music Scenes Regional and Rural Perspectives

Edited by Andy Bennett David Cashman Ben Green Natalie Lewandowski

Pop Music, Culture and Identity Series Editors

Stephen Clark Graduate School Humanities and Sociology University of Tokyo Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan Tristanne Connolly Department of English St Jerome’s University Waterloo, ON, Canada Jason Whittaker School of English & Journalism University of Lincoln Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK

Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial and mass-cultural has proved itself durable, tenacious and continually evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defining various forms of identity (individual and collective) as influenced by nation, class, gender and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates how this enhanced status shapes the iconography of celebrity, provides an ever-expanding archive for generational memory and accelerates the impact of new technologies on performing, packaging and global marketing. The series gives particular emphasis to interdisciplinary approaches that go beyond musicology and seeks to validate the informed testimony of the fan alongside academic methodologies.

Andy Bennett  •  David Cashman Ben Green  •  Natalie Lewandowski Editors

Popular Music Scenes Regional and Rural Perspectives

Editors Andy Bennett School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science Griffith University Southport, QLD, Australia Ben Green Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research Griffith University Nathan, QLD, Australia

David Cashman School of Arts and Social Sciences Southern Cross University Lismore, NSW, Australia Natalie Lewandowski Creative Arts Research Institute Griffith University South Brisbane, QLD, Australia

ISSN 2634-6613     ISSN 2634-6621 (electronic) Pop Music, Culture and Identity ISBN 978-3-031-08614-4    ISBN 978-3-031-08615-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Richard Watson / EyeEm/ Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book has been inspired by our work with the Regional Music Research Group. We would like to acknowledge the support of our RMRG colleagues, Cary Bennett, Alana Blackburn, Alexandra Blok, Antonia Canosa, Lachlan Goold, Ernesta Sofija. We would also like to thank the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research for their provision of a small publication support grant to assist with the editorial preparation of this book. And a very big thank you to Sue Jarvis for her invaluable assistance in the proofreading, copyediting and indexing of this book. This book has taken shape during a period of great upheaval. We thank all of our contributors for their sterling efforts in gracing us with such high quality and deeply insightful chapters during extremely challenging times.

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Contents

Part I People and Place   1 1 Music  at the End of the Land: Reflections on the Pembrokeshire Music Network  3 Philip Miles 2 Diamonds  in the Backyard: Migrant Youth and Hip Hop in Australian Regional Towns 19 Alexandra Blok 3 From  the City to the Bush: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Australia’s Urban and Rural Music Scenes 35 Graham Sattler Part II Technology and Distribution  51 4 Sounds  and Peripheral Places: Trajectory and Portrait of the Rock Scene in Tâmega (Portugal) Over the Last Decade  53 Paula Guerra, Tânia Moreira, and Sofia Sousa

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5 Indian  Electronic Dance Music Festivals as Spaces of Play in Regional Settings: Understanding Situated and Digital Electronic Dance Music Performances 67 Devpriya Chakravarty 6 ‘Take  Me to Church’: Developing Music Worlds Through the Creative Peripheral Placemaking and Programming of Other Voices 83 Susan O’Shea 7 The  Creative Music Networks of Regional Recording Studios: A Case Study of the Sunshine Coast and Gympie 99 Lachlan Goold Part III Memory 115 8 Transactions  in Taste: An Examination of a Potential Tastemaking Landscape Within Kent’s Blues Club Scene and the Conception of a Local Taste Accent117 Phil Woollett 9 In  the Middle of Nowhere: Eisenach and Its Organically Grown Blues and Jazz Infrastructure131 Nico Thom 10 ‘But  Do They Know How It Is in Pihtipudas?’ Rural and Provincial Punk Scenes in Finland in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s149 Janne Poikolainen and Mikko Salasuo 11 Building  Scene and Cultural Memory in the Weser Hills: The Case of Glitterhouse Records and the Orange Blossom Special Festival163 Robin Kuchar

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Part IV Industry and Policy 179 12 Participatory  Belonging: How Tourist Music Workshops Establish Trans-Local Music Scenes181 Leonieke Bolderman 13 Outsiders  in Outsider Cities? Expatriates in the DIY Music Scenes of Nagoya and Fukuoka195 Benjamin Duester 14 Yogyakarta’s  Jazz Activists: From Regional Scene to Local Stages209 Otto Stuparitz 15 Fragmented,  Positive and Negative: Live Music Venues in Regional Queensland227 Andy Bennett, David Cashman, Ben Green, and Natalie Lewandowski Index243

Notes on Contributors

Andy  Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. He has written and edited numerous books, including Popular Music and Youth Culture (Macmillan, 2000); Music, Style and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully (Temple University Press, 2013); and Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual (co-edited with Richard A. Peterson, Vanderbilt University Press, 2004). He is a Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for Cultural Sociology, an International Research Fellow of the Finnish Youth Research Network, a founding member of the Consortium for Youth, Generations and Culture and a founding member of the Regional Music Research Group. He is co-founder and co-convenor (with Paula Guerra) of the biennial KISMIF conference. Alexandra Blok  is a PhD candidate at Griffith University, Gold Coast, with a strong professional background in the cultural industries. She started as a manager, as the CEO of the first Russian World Music Festival, and has since created and executed a variety of projects built around world and jazz music and its multiple effects on regional cultural and socioeconomic development. Her current research project canvasses the multiple roles played by music in strategies of regional migrant’s resettlement in Australia and the cultural impact of international migration on regional development. She also is a member of the Regional Music Research Group. Leonieke Bolderman  is Assistant Professor of Cultural Geography and Tourism Geography and Planning at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Her research concerns the role of music, heritage and tourxi

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ism in urban and regional development, as well as qualitative research methods. Besides research articles, she has published the monograph Contemporary Music Tourism: A Theory of Musical Topophilia (Routledge, 2020), and the co-edited collection Locating Imagination in Popular Culture: Place, Tourism and Belonging (Routledge, 2021). David Cashman  is a pianist, arranger, researcher and Adjunct Associate Professor of Contemporary Music at Southern Cross University, Lismore, Australia. David’s research area revolves around live music with a particular emphasis on regional music and live music pedagogy. He is the author of Performing Popular Music: The Art of Creating Memorable and Successful Performances (with Waldo Garrido, Routledge, 2019) and Cruisicology: The Music Culture of Cruise Ships (with Phil Hayward, Lexington Books, 2020). David is a founding member of the Regional Music Research Group. Devpriya  Chakravarty  is a PhD student in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis, which entails an ethnographic study to understand and assess Indian youth’s motives for attending electronic dance music (EDM) festivals in India. She is familiar with the field through her previous experience in her research fellowship, which involved conducting participant observational research of Indian EDM festival sites. Her research interests include EDM culture, Indian urban youth culture and popular music. Benjamin  Duester  is an affiliate of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research and a sessional academic at Griffith University. His research explores issues related to music, materiality, technologies and DIY cultures. He is the author of Obsolete Technology? The Significance of the Cassette Format in Twenty-First-Century Japan (Palgrave, 2020) and co-author of Cassette Cultures in Berlin: Resurgence, DIY Freedom, or Sellout? (Routledge, 2019). Lachlan Goold  is a recording engineer, producer, mixer, popular music educator, researcher and Lecturer in Contemporary Music at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on practice-based music production approaches, theoretical uses of space, cultural geography and the music industry. In his creative practice, he is better known as Australian music producer Magoo, a two-time ARIA award winner. Since 1990, he has worked on a wide range of albums from some of the country’s best-known artists, achieving a multitude of Gold and Platinum awards.

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Ben  Green  is a cultural sociologist with interests in popular music and youth studies. He is undertaking a Griffith University Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, investigating crisis and reinvention in the Australian live music sector. Green’s work explores memory and heritage, cultural policy, youth and well-being through ethnographic research in urban, regional and trans-local music scenes. His first book is Peak Music Experiences: A New Perspective on Popular Music, Identity and Scenes. Paula Guerra  is Professor of Sociology and a researcher at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Porto. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research in Australia and founder/coordinator of the Network All the Arts: Luso-­ Afro-­Brazilian Network of the Sociology of Culture and the Arts. Paula is the founder/coordinator of the KISMIF (kismifconference.com and kismifcommunity.com). She is a member of the board of the Research Network of Sociology of Art of ESA and coordinates several research projects on youth cultures, sociology of the arts and culture, co-­creation, methodology and research techniques, and DIY cultures, among other subjects. She is a member of the editorial council of several national and international journals, as well as editor and reviewer of several articles and books at national and international levels. Robin  Kuchar  graduated in cultural sciences and holds a PhD from Leuphana University, Germany. Currently, he works at Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organization at Leuphana. His main fields of interest are popular music, underground music scenes and the relationship of culture and urban space. He is co-editor of Music City: Musical Approaches to the Creative City (Transcript Verlag, 2014) and co-­initiator of the Urban Music Studies Scholars Network (http://www.urbanmusicstudies.org). His PhD analysed trajectories of original DIY and underground music venues within the changing social environments of scene, city and the music industries. The related book, Music Venues Between Scene, the City and the Music Industries: Autonomy, Appropriation, Dependence was published in German in 2020. Natalie  Lewandowski  is an Adjunct of the Creative Arts Institute at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Her experience working across government, the arts, academia and commercial industries has resulted in publications and engagement with film sound, live music, music sustainability, and music and well-being.

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Philip Miles  is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and English Literature at the University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. As a cultural sociologist with specific interests in the sociology of literature (including reception studies and sociological late modernism); the study of creativity (processes and spaces); ethnographic methods; and sociological and literary theory, his research emphasises how culture is experienced and understood by individuals and groups in society via narratives of personal value, emotion, variables of geography and intrinsic sociality, and how these criteria may be utilized and maintained in meaningful ways in contemporary life. He is the author of an ethnographic account of the creative practices of musicians, fine artists, and literary authors, published as the monograph Midlife Creativity and Identity: Life into Art (Emerald, 2019). Tânia  Moreira is a sociologist (MSc), project manager and consultant at INOVA+s International Unit Team (Horizon Programme Area) and researcher at Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto. Tânia’s subjects of interest include interdisciplinarity, co-creation, arts+ science+technology crossovers, innovation and its impacts, methodology and research techniques, research ethics, policies, youth cultures and doit-yourself (DIY) ethics, among other subjects. In recent years, she has been part of S+T+ARTS projects and KISMIF (kismifconference.com and kismifcommunity.com). She is completing her PhD in sociology at the University of Porto with a research project focused on an understanding of the Portuguese electronic dance music scene and its different components. Susan O’Shea  is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and a co-founder of the research group Music and Sonic Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University (MASSmcr). MASS Manchester is a group of multidisciplinary researchers exploring the musical beats and sonic streets of Manchester and beyond, providing a space to bring together practice-based and action-orientated research on music, sound and sonic spaces. Susan teaches undergraduate courses on music, movements and protest, qualitative research methods, social theory and postgraduate quantitative methods. Current research interests include applying mixed-­methods social network analysis (SNA) to investigate festival networks, exploring women’s music worlds, digital collaborations and music mobilities. Janne Poikolainen  currently works as a university lecturer in the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. He has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Finnish Youth Research Society. His prior

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research covers various topics related to music fandom, popular music and youth cultures. In his doctoral dissertation, Janne studied the emergence of popular music fan culture in Finland from the 1950s to the early 1970s. He is co-editor of Katukulttuuri: Nuorisoesiintymiä 2000-luvun Suomessa [Street Culture: Young People in Finland in the twenty-first Century] with Mikko Salasuo and Pauli Komonen. Mikko Salasuo  is a docent in economic and social history and works at the Finnish Youth Research Society as a leading senior researcher. He has written and edited 20 books including Drugs & Youth Culture: Global and local Expressions (with Philip Lalander), Exceptional Life Courses: Elite Athletes and Successful Artists in 2000s Finland (with Mikko Piispa and Helena Huhta) and Katukulttuuri: Nuorisoesiintymiä 2000-luvun Suomessa [Street Culture: Young People in Finland in the twenty-first Century] (with Janne Poikolainen). He is an adjunct Fellow of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Mikko’s research topics include subcultures, the history of youth culture, young peoples leisure time, youth gangs and drug cultures. Graham  Sattler  is a community music researcher/educator, practising musician and arts leader who relocated to regional New South Wales, Australia, from Sydney in 2001. Apart from two years in Melbourne, Australias second largest city, Graham’s formative educational and performance practice took place in Sydney, where he was mainly orientated to the classical instrumental and vocal scene. With his move to the country came a reassessment of performance, community attitudes to the consumption of and participation in music, the place, value and valuing of a local music scene, and the permeable boundary between professional and amateur music-making. Graham holds a PhD, Master of Performance (Conducting) and Diploma of Operatic Art and Music Theatre, all from the University of Sydney, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He is a member of the Regional Music Education Research Group and was appointed CEO of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Aotearoa New Zealand, at the end of 2021. Sofia Sousa  is a sociologist (MSc) from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (FLUP). She worked as a research fellow under the project CANVAS  – Towards Safer and Attractive Cities: Crime and Violence Prevention through Smart Planning and Artistic Resistance

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(2019–21), based at the Centre for Geography and Spatial Planning Studies. In recent years, she has been part of KISMIF (kismifconference. com and kismifcommunity.com), and is a member of the Social Media Committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music and Executive Editor of the Journal All the Arts – Luso-­Brazilian Journal of Arts and Culture. Currently she is a PhD Student in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto and a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto. Her thesis is about the arts, women and migrations. Otto Stuparitz  is a PhD candidate in the Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is currently completing a dissertation titled Java Jazz: Politics of Preservation, which focuses on the role of Indonesian popular music sound archiving in the historiography of jazz in Indonesia. He has received numerous grants and fellowships to conduct fieldwork and archival research in Indonesia and the Netherlands. His research interests include popular music, archival studies, economic ethnomusicology, sound studies and South-­East Asian studies. For fifteen years, he has researched traditional and popular musics of Indonesia and helped revive UCLA’s Javanese Gamelan Ensemble in 2018. In May 2021, he released an eponymously named recording with a quartet of West Javanese jazz and traditional musicians called Bluesukan. Nico Thom  is head of the Klaus Kuhnke Archive for Popular Music at University of the Arts Bremen (Germany). He studied musicology, philosophy, science management and the didactics of higher education at universities in Leipzig, Halle/Saale, Jena, Oldenburg and Hamburg. He was awarded his PhD in musicology at Humboldt University, Berlin (The Drum & Bass Program: A System-theoretical approach). Nico has researched and taught at universities as well as universities of music in Leipzig, Klagenfurt (Austria), Weimar, Rostock, Lübeck and Hannover. His fields of expertise are jazz and popular music studies (with a focus on Europe), music in higher education, system theory, and the philosophy of music. Besides his activities in academic research, teaching and administration, he is also a jazz musician and novelist.

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Phil Woollett  is a professional British blues musician, teacher and scholar. As both a solo artist and a member of the John Doe Trio, he has released two successful albums and has been active within the British blues scene for over a decade. In addition to his creative input within the British blues scene he also takes a keen academic interest, employing deep-­immersion ethnographic methodology to examine it as one of a very few British scholars able to employ such methodology from within an active musical perspective. As a musician, a promotor – co-founding the Kentish blues club, Bourne to the Blues – and as a participant observer, Phil is able to provide a rare perspective on the blues landscape of his home country.

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2 Fig. 11.3 Fig. 14.1 Fig. 14.2 Fig. 14.3 Fig. 14.4

Number of bands per municipalities in 2020. (Source: The authors)60 Cricket net at EVC campsite 71 The Nataraja-inspired Sunburn main stage 72 Other Voices festival network of events and performers 92 Event sized by eigenvector centrality 93 Villa and garden as festival site. (Photo: Glitterhouse) 168 A typical afternoon scene at Orange Blossom Special festival. (Photo: Glitterhouse) 168 Collective experience at Orange Blossom Special festival in the Glitterhouse garden 172 Komunitas Jazz Indonesia jam session with saxophonist Samuel Robert Samual and pianist Nadine Adrianna at Omah Potorono in Bantul, 17 November 2018 216 Komunitas Jazz Indonesia, 17 November 2018. (Photo by Rachmad Utojo Salim) 217 Orkes Kampoeng Wangak playing the Meet and Greet event, 27 October 2018 222 New powerlines being installed near the festival stage 223

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List of Tables

Table 6.1 Table 6.2 Table 6.3 Table 7.1

Place codes Event codes Other Voices event network – centrality measures Details of interview participants’ studios

91 91 94 105

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Introduction: Popular Music Scenes in a Regional and Rural Context

The concept of the music scene has been in use for many years as a means of describing’ situations where performers, support facilities, and fans come together to collectively create music for their own enjoyment’ (Peterson and Bennett 2004: 3). Throughout much of the twentieth century, music scene was primarily in use as a vernacular terminology among musicians, audiences and others invested in live music, such as music promoters and music journalists. Towards the end of the twentieth century and into the early 2000s, the music scene began to gain traction as a theoretical concept, initially in the work of Straw (1991) and later in studies by, for example, Shank (1994) and Bennett and Peterson (2004). As illustrated in much of the scenes literature being published at that time, the concept of the music scene has characteristically urban roots, with many cities capitalizing on their strong association with the evolution of a particular musical style or genre and the crystallization of a distinctive local scene around this. Although some of the musical genres now strongly associated with urban scenes, notably blues, have origins in regional and rural locations (see Guralnick 1977), it was the transition of these genres to urban spaces that gave them global prominence. In other cases, the defining characteristics of particular music genres are depicted as distinctively urban, their style and sound bound up with particular aspects of city life. Examples here include heavy metal’s dark and over-driven sound being associated with its origins in the British Midlands city of Birmingham during the industrial era (Harrison 2010) and hip hop’s evolution as part of a do-it-yourself (DIY) street culture against a background of poverty xxiii

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and youth disenfranchisement in the housing projects of New  York’s Bronx (Rose 1994). Although existing work on the metropolitan experience of music scenes has contributed significantly to understandings of both the cultural and economic importance of popular music, the dominance of its predominantly metro-centric focus is increasingly out of step with the growing prevalence of popular music scenes outside urban settings. In many respects, the evolution of popular music scenes in peri-urban and non-­ urban contexts should not come as a surprise. Given the strongly mediated nature of popular music as a cultural form, particularly from the 1950s onwards (Frith 1988), access to popular music via radio, television and cinema has led to its wide trans-local appeal (Peterson and Bennett 2004). Irrespective of their location – urban, regional or rurally remote – music fans have been drawn in by the iconic appeal of popular music artists and the cultural scenes with which they have been associated. With the advent of digital media and the increasing connectivity afforded by such technology, where one lives has become increasingly less important in many respects in terms of the practice of music-making and dissemination. Indeed, an increasing number of commercially successful artists are situated in locations on the global periphery (e.g. see Prior 2015). The same applies to the broader music industry, with many record labels, studios, festivals and so on taking pride in the fact that they are able to sustain a successful business footing in regional and rural locations. At the same time, more conventional face-to-face music scene activity also manifests in regional and rural locations. Live music continues to be a sought-after form of entertainment, with regional tourism serving to further bolster this demand in many places. Similarly, just as research on the creative and cultural industries has demonstrated the integration of music into the cultural economy of cities, so it is becoming increasingly clear that equivalent trends exist in regional and rural settings (Waitt and Gibson 2013). A salient aspect of this is that local councils and funding agencies are now realizing the value of supporting local music and nurturing live music ecosystems in regional and rural locations (Green and Bennett 2019). Despite such vibrant growth, however, regional and rural music scenes remain an under-researched topic (Bennett et  al. 2020). However, as regional and rural settings across the world become increasingly important as sites of popular music production, performance and consumption, there is a clear need for research that seeks to understand regional and rural music scenes in terms of both their distinctive qualities, as non-urban local

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scenes, and their points of trans-local and virtual connection (Peterson and Bennett 2004) to other music scenes both nationally and internationally. This edited collection brings together a series of chapters by scholars from around the world that offer new insights on both the distinctive contributions made by regional and rural popular music scenes in Australia, Asia, Europe and North America, and their connections to national and transnational networks of popular music production, performance and consumption. Through invoking the dual concepts of regional and rural music scenes, we acknowledge the elasticity of such terms, given that the regional may often embrace smaller cities and larger provincial towns while the concept of rural may differ depending on proximity to larger urban conurbations. As such, the exploration of regional and rural music scenes presented in this book is also an exploration of such complex understandings in a context of economic and cultural globalization. The individual chapters in this book also reflect how such complex relations between urban, regional and rural settings in turn produce highly nuanced discursive constructions of space and place that also reflect back to varying degrees on the nature of music scenes in regional and rural locations. This book is divided into four parts. Part I: People and Place focuses on the spatial aspects of regional popular music scenes and looks at how place and locality inform the perceptions and discourses of those involved in such scenes. In Chap. 1, Philip Miles focuses on the music scene in the county of Pembrokeshire, a regional area in the south of Wales. In particular, Miles focuses on one particular artist from the region, Gorkys Zygotic Mynci, an alternative rock band that drew heavily on 1960s-inspired psychedelic influences. Charting what is now becoming an increasingly common narrative, Miles notes how the rise of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci to national prominence while continuing to emphasize its local roots and remaining strongly a part of the local music scene became part of the band’s core identity while also promoting its home town of Camarthon and the wider county of Pembrokeshire as a regional centre for music that promoted a strong sense of heritage, culture, localism, history, language, musicality, youthfulness and pride. In Chap. 2, the focus shifts to regional Australia as Alexandra Blok examines the significance of hip hop for young migrants in regional areas of New South Wales and Queensland. As Blok notes, for migrant youth in regional towns such as Wagga Wagga (New South Wales) and Cairns (Queensland), hip hop provides a rich source of creative expression for these youth through which to explore issues such as identity, friendship

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and exclusion. Existing research on hip hop and local identity has established how hip hop’s global reach is matched by its capacity for localized forms of appropriation whereby its signature textures of rhythm and sound and spoken lyrics take on new local meanings as young rappers adapt the hip hop style as a means of engaging with local issues and challenges. Blok extends this discussion to consider how young migrant rappers in regional Australia are contributing to patterns of cultural transformation in their regions, drawing on their trans-local connections and cosmopolitan influences. In Chap. 3, Graham Sattler offers a rich autoethnographic account of his own transition from an urban to a regional music scene in New South Wales, Australia. Sattler notes that such a transition can often result in significant upheaval for the individual music practitioner, as the availability of hard and soft music scene infrastructures with which to engage are significantly reduced in a regional setting. This, in turn, impacts opportunities for participation in a local live music scene and presents difficulties in securing a livelihood if one is coming into a regional music scene setting as a professional musician or with aspirations to become one. Likewise, Sattler notes other presenting challenges in terms of access to music education and training, which are often a feature of regional settings. Part II: Technology and Distribution focuses on the technologies and forms of distribution that pertain whereby regional and rural popular music scenes exist, and in many cases coexist, in forms of trans-local connection with other scenes. In Chap. 4, Paula Guerra, Tânia Moreira and Sofia Sousa consider the rock scene in the peri-urban Tâmega region of Portugal, which includes a number of municipalities that together comprise one of the most densely populated regions of the country, with a relatively young population. Despite a lack of economic and cultural support, local young people have developed a rock scene (which can be seen as a patchwork of nano-scenes) with a significant degree of informality and DIY logic. The authors draw on substantial ethnographic research, including interviews and online investigations, to consider how Facebook and other social media platforms have contributed to Tâmega’s musical (re)affirmation of recent years, including as avenues for distribution and advertising, without replacing local power and familial relationships. In Chap. 5, Devpriya Chakravarty explores the regionally located Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festival scene in India. Multi-day festivals such as Enchanted Valley Carnival and Sunburn claim regional spaces for ephemeral gatherings of mostly urban youth around the performance and

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consumption of a global popular music culture. Chakravarty considers how social media networks are utilized to promote the events, in which local and regional characteristics are coopted, as well as how they maintain the connectivity of festival participants between gatherings. This enables an analysis of how social media networks aid in the formation of affective communicative ecologies. In Chap. 6, Susan O’Shea examines Other Voices, a geographically dispersed Irish music festival and television series with a 20-year history in the remote peninsula of Dingle and a more recent presence in Ballina, as well as international programming in Berlin, London and New York. The festival contributes to regional economies and builds translocal links using new performance, distribution and participation technologies, while challenging stereotypes of Irish music. Using social network analysis, O’Shea maps the events and performers of Other Voices with close attention to place. In the core/periphery structure of these social networks, the Dingle and Ballina Music Trails are shown to be central, providing opportunities for music mobilities across Ireland and internationally. In Chap. 7, Lachlan Goold focuses on the recording sector as a regional creative network and its function within and beyond local music scenes, presenting a case study of the Sunshine Coast region of Queensland, Australia. The reduced cost of recording technology and the associated proliferation of domestic studios has enabled small businesses in the region to capitalize on their appealing surrounds and to flourish outside the city. Broadband internet access, which remains unevenly distributed, is vital to these studios and in particular enables long-distance recording services and collaborations, including with national and international session musicians, tapping into a virtual global network. However, promotion is more reliant on word-of-mouth networks than online visibility, which is generally low. Part III: Memory considers the importance of collective memory in how regional and rural popular music scenes, with their issues of isolation and smaller industry infrastructure, are constructed in both the past and the present. In Chap. 8, Phil Woollett examines the blues scene in rural Kent in the United Kingdom. Kent has maintained a flourishing rural blues scene despite the blues in the United Kingdom originating in the urban areas of London. Woollett, a professional blues musician, undertakes an ethnography of the Kent scene in the role of participant-­ practitioner. He finds that while the Kent blues scene comprises an ageing demographic, the scene is not dying off. Instead, many of his informants

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find themselves drawn to the scene later in life. Local identity is important to the scene, with many passionate tastemakers running local clubs and festivals. In contrast, musicians are routinely drawn from further afield than just within Kent itself. Woollett finds that it is the consumers rather than the producers who maintain control over the scene. They speak of seeking an alternative to the perceived artifice of the X-Factor musical generations in a scene grounded in earlier music. In Chap. 9, Nico Thom considers the jazz scene of Eisenach, a regional town in the state of Thuringia in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Despite its small size, Eisenach casts a long shadow within the history of German jazz. During World War II, jazz enthusiasts ran illegal jazz jams, and the first jazz club of the GDR opened here in 1959, followed by the establishment of the International Jazz Archive of Eisenach in 1999. Thoms ethnographic work focuses on stakeholders and their cross-generational interaction within this glocalized scene. In Chap. 10, Janne Poikolainen and Mikko Salasuo examine rural punk scenes of Finland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These punk scenes seemed a world away from the better-known scenes of London and New  York, but they are of particular interest as rural versions of urban scenes. Their development coincided with the modernization of Finland in the 1970s. However, this modernization was largely an urban development; regional towns and areas were still conservative, sparsely populated, under-developed and spread over large areas. Poikolainen and Salasuo consider the social and cultural meaning and the national characteristics of the first wave of Finnish punk culture in rural municipalities and towns. Punks DIY aesthetic permitted the development of small local scenes comprising those seeking to reach out to the cities. It disconnected with the conservative past and embraced modernist contemporary youth culture. In Chap. 11, Robin Kuchar, noting the absence of academic study of rural German scenes, seeks to contextualize the influential rural record label Glitterhouse Records and the associated Orange Blossom Special festival within the German independent music scene. The former was a significant mail-order house and record label launched in 1984 in Beverungen in east Westphalia. It promoted both American independent music and local artists, and has continued to gain significance within the German scene. The Orange Blossom Special festival has been held annually in the garden of the label since 1997, gathering an annual crowd of 2000–2500 festivalgoers. Glitterhouse is a significant German rural-based label, that

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has sought to build a community around music, shared attitudes and has been in existence over three decades. Part IV: Industry and Policy examines themes of industry and policy in relation to culture and music, as these impact on the nature and identity of rural and regional popular music scenes. In Chap. 12, Leonieke Bolderman explores participation in music-making workshops and how such workshops form their own trans-local music scenes. Based on ethnographic research across three contemporary music workshops conducted in Europe in 2016, Bolderman argues that although the workshops themselves are temporary, the scenes they create form long-lasting connections between participants. Music workshops are a niche tourism product, generating interest and income for geographical areas that may otherwise have been overlooked by conventional tourism. Perhaps unintentionally, the workshops offer a unique entry point into a music scene that could otherwise be unavailable to participants. Bolderman posits that, through their structure and location, these workshops demonstrate translocality. In Chap. 13, Benjamin Düster further extrapolates on this idea of translocality through focusing on self-organized and grassroots musicians around Nagoya and Fukuoka, Japan. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in 2018 and 2019, Düster recognizes that expatriates play an important role in these smaller music scenes. By drawing on a Western DIY ethos, he suggests that expatriate scene participants allow for the creation of overseas tour opportunities and song and album releases for Japanese musicians that may not be considered in the larger milieu of Japanese record labels. As in Bolderman’s chapter, the role of the tourist is highlighted as an aid to promote the scene, creating recognition and connection among scene participants. Düster states that engagement with expatriate communities in the Japanese DIY scenes, such as those in Nagoya and Fukuoka, provides meaningful connections between Japan and international independent music scenes. In Chap. 14, Otto Stuparitz also builds on this idea of translocal music scenes in regional and rural areas. Stuparitz analyses how small jazz festivals held in Indonesia present a way for nationally recognized jazz artists to play in remote locations while at the same time providing opportunities for local jazz musicians and organizers to interact with their metropolitan counterparts. By tracing the establishment of Yogyakarta’s jazz community, Stuparitz provides us with a further example of how a place can influence and serve as a guidepost for smaller and lesser-known music communities. Similar to the communities discussed in Bolderman and

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Düster’s chapters, Stuparitz highlights that those who engaged in Yogyakarta’s jazz community continued to be active in the scene, even if it had physically dissolved or moved on. Stuparitz also touches on the notion that in regional and rural areas, there are not always the venues and facilities that typically would be needed to facilitate live music, with hotels and resorts providing options for musicians and audiences alike. In Chap. 15, Andy Bennett, David Cashman, Ben Green and Natalie Lewandowski similarly identify this infrastructure as a common point of contention for regional musicians and venue owners in Queensland, Australia. In this final chapter, the authors reflect on how regional and rural scenes throughout Queensland have been affected by policy, tourism and the recent pandemic. The chapter highlights that geography and cost go hand in hand with the kind of live music offerings provided in these locations and note the practical consequence of the pandemic in forcing both audiences and artists to think outside the box (as demonstrated by the Queensland Music Trails festival). Building on the ideas presented by Bolderman, Düster and Stuparitz, the authors use a broader lens to demonstrate how tourism, infrastructure and lifestyle choices can shape live music scenes now and for years to come. Southport, QLD, Australia Lismore, NSW, Australia Nathan, QLD, Australia South Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Andy Bennett David Cashman Ben Green Natalie Lewandowski

References Bennett, A., and R.  A. Peterson, eds. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A., B.  Green, D.  Cashman, and N.  Lewandowski. 2020. Researching regional and rural music scenes: Towards a critical understanding of an under-­ theorized topic. Popular Music & Society 44 (4): 367–377. Frith, S. 1988. Music for pleasure: Essays in the sociology of pop. Oxford: Polity Press. Green, B., and A. Bennett. 2019. Gateways and corridors: Spatial challenges and opportunities for live music on the Gold Coast. City, Culture and Society 17: 20–25. Guralnick, P. 1977. Feel like going home: Portraits in blues and rocknroll. London: Omnibus Press.

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Harrison, L.M. 2010. Factory music: How the industrial geography and working-­ class environment of post-War Birmingham fostered the birth of heavy metal. Journal of Social History 44 (1): 145–58. Peterson, R.A., and A. Bennett. 2004. Introducing music scenes. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.A.  Peterson, 1–16. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Prior, N. 2015. Its a social thing, not a nature thing: Popular music practices in Reykjavík, Iceland. Cultural Sociology 9 (1): 81–98. Rose, T. 1994. Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary America. London: Wesleyan University Press. Shank, B. 1994. Dissonant identities: The rocknroll scene in Austin, Texas. London: Wesleyan University Press. Straw, W. 1991. Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 53: 368–88. Waitt, G., and C.R. Gibson. 2013. The spiral gallery: Non-market creativity and belonging in an Australian country town. Journal of Rural Studies 30: 75–85.

PART I

People and Place

CHAPTER 1

Music at the End of the Land: Reflections on the Pembrokeshire Music Network Philip Miles

In the far south-west of the Principality of Wales in the United Kingdom is the small, rural, historic county of Pembrokeshire. Occupying a peninsula that juts out into the Irish Sea, the geography is undulating, coastal, and agricultural; this is a place with a dispersed and numerically small population of around 123,000,1 an economy largely dependent on a mix of tourism and industry, contrasting golden beaches and oil refineries, ferry ports and rugged wilderness. Despite modernity and technology, this remains an isolated, remote place named Penfro in Welsh – which translates roughly as ‘end of the land’. This chapter is concerned with understanding a musical network in Pembrokeshire as it has developed over time and into the age of the internet. Analysis of music ‘scenes’ has concentrated on ‘trans-local’ structures (Straw 1991), ‘clusters’ of creators and associates (Peterson and Bennett 2004), and highly complex networks built and maintained over time and space (Crossley 2015); however, while there is a generic tendency to

P. Miles (*) University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_1

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perceive a ‘scene’ as being anchored into a physical place or a time, this need not be the case and ‘borders’ may be crossed (Warden 2017). Place, as I have argued elsewhere (Miles 2019, 2020), can instead be a ‘state of mind’ involving tangible creativity, an in-between metaphysical-­productive state I call the ‘mezzanine’, where – in this instance – creative people contemplate a ‘scene’ as a series of factors that determine their own potential and their happiness. In Pembrokeshire, this arguably has three strategic, observable characteristics and, via discussions with some key participants in the history of the development of popular music in the county, it is possible to detect how remoteness plays an integral part in the development of such a strategy.

The Blurred Canvas: Pembrokeshire’s ‘Embedded’ and ‘Parallel’ Scenes In the 1990s, a chance discovery by the late music industry manager Philip Hall launched the career of Blackwood band Manic Street Preachers (MSP)2 and consequently initiated an intensification of interest in rock and eclectic material broadly labelled ‘Welsh pop’ (Owens 2000). A ‘scene’ transmogrified into a ‘national’ popular musical identity, despite having an otherwise localized venue-driven focus, with Clwb Ifor Bach (Little Ivor’s Club) in Cardiff and TJ’s in Newport being examples of urban live music hubs that amalgamated the identity of bands. In areas in Wales that did not have a notable vibrant, exclusive club dedicated to live rock music, a local recognized (English language) scene did not develop sufficiently, instead seeing bands drawn to urban hubs for recognition and exposure, adding to the already colourful canvas onto which the ‘Welsh scene’ was transposed, merging influences together in a variety of styles, genres and languages (Hill 2007). Embodying the eclectic, esoteric and psychedelic, Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (GZM) added Pembrokeshire to the litany of geographical origins of those bands comprising the wider scene. In the 1990s, the band had ostensibly emerged from a Welsh-language popular music scene (backed by north Welsh record label Ankst) that had little cultural connectivity with its native south Pembrokeshire, perhaps characterizing the county as a place where music originates but does not remain, or produces musicians (such as Jeremy Hogg of Automatic Dlamini, Grape and

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P.J. Harvey’s band) who participate in wider, less geographically defined artistic output. However, origins are important, leaving an imprint on material that emerges. John Lawrence (a founding member of GZM) described the influence of the county, in parallel with GZM’s desire to connect with a Welsh-language scene, as being driven by the dynamics of passive situation; this is a place that embodies a lack of distraction, developing sense of determination, destiny and an inevitable departure for wider exposures. GZM’s origins were basic and incremental, founded among school friends with mutual interests in comedy, art, film and music, framed by the constraints of geography, embracing natural facilities around them via fostering of musicality and lyrical imagery while playing guitars on the nearby beaches. Thus, some music that emerges from Pembrokeshire may be connected to the kind of psychosocial investment that we place in the spaces of our childhoods, suggestive of the thesis of Gaston Bachelard (2014), but also of the shared experiences of the environment and how we consider ourselves shaped by it. It is in striking contrast with an image of an urban alternative, with leisure time and formal education combining to shape the trajectory of a band: John Lawrence (JL): We would go down and write tunes on the beach with an acoustic guitar; something about being out in the landscape … using that to nurture the song writing process … down on the beach, recording songs with a portable tape recorder and stuff, sea in the background. ….  [Someone] organized a coach to go a Welsh Language Society gig … so suddenly, … as we were forming the band, we were amongst the Welsh music scene bands like … Melys, Ffa Coffi Pawb, and that was very exciting at the time, like real bands on stage.

Nurtured by their immediate environment, the members of GZM were also attracted by a cultural alternative to the perceived slow-paced and conservative artistic culture of the Pembrokeshire scene, arguably finding moorings in an exciting pan-Welsh network of bands that were committed to excitement, success and a radical loyalty to the entrenched linguistic tradition of the nation. That said, while connected to a wider cultural

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structure of music and performance, the band did continue to create in Pembrokeshire, and remained attached to the county of origin via experience and thematic output. While gaining traction within the broader musical scene, transitioning from a ‘school band’ via the radio exposure of Neil Melville’s show on BBC Radio Wales, it did occasionally try to tap into the local scene, especially via the legendary Miracle Inn: JL:  there wasn’t really very much going on for us in Pembrokeshire itself … there was a bit of a local scene; I remember … a pub in Freshwater East, The Miracle Inn, some legendary rock’n’roll, heavy metal gigs there … when we were going out for the first time … We would try and get the odd gig in a pub; I remember we managed to get a gig in the pub where I drank … The Alma Inn … a kind of ‘working man’s pub’ in the Dock … I don’t think anybody really got off on what we were doing!

While GZM was beginning its transition away from Pembrokeshire and towards artistic and commercial recognition, some musicians were already both in situ and happy to remain there. Discussing the origins and development of a Pembrokeshire scene, or even a ‘Pembrokeshire sound’, The Miracle Inn venue features heavily in recollections of participants. Richard Lloyd, songwriter and guitarist with established local band Angelfish and active in the creative musical community of the county for nearly five decades, mentioned the Miracle Inn immediately. Dragging back his long black hair and smiling, Lloyd summarized its importance as an otherwise unremarkable ‘shack down in Freshwater East … we used to go down there in the summer of ‘76 … a magical place in your memory you know?’ The Miracle, since immortalized in the title of Euros Child’s first solo album post-GZM and recalled in Lloyd’s own song ‘What We Need is a Miracle’, figures as a legendary place of communion among the older generation, encompassing detectable nostalgia and recognition of the shift away from the ramshackle, make-do, happily rustic and unconventional towards the myopic orthodoxy of the modern entertainments industry. The Miracle – a ‘sort of nightclub’, as Richard Lloyd explains – existed as an antidote to the lack of mainstream bands visiting the region and interminable waits for the latest records and films to arrive in the locale in the 1970s and 1980s, functioning as a little escape pod from local

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conservatively inclined culture, giving a fledgling ‘scene’ something of a lifeline and embodying, by its very existence, how ‘cultures rub up against each other and how dynamic the entertainment scene can be’. Richard notes that elders were ‘only get[ting] a picture of it from a distance’ and, in time-­honoured fashion, were naturally ‘dismissive of things that they don’t understand’. Doing it yourself was the way to create distance between the traditional and the contemporary, making space for the ownership of music, style and defiance of norms. Richard remembers Pembroke punks dressing for a Stranglers gig in Carmarthen in 1977 ‘on the train, there and back!’ and, many years later, watching GZM at The Alma Inn and noting the bewilderment within those present relating to what appeared  – and was heard  – on stage, embodying the challenge that it presents to the artist to be understood and the audience in attempting to understand. ‘Doing your own music,’ added Richard soberly, ‘that’s the courage of it, isn’t it?’ John Lawrence concurred: JL: the scene in Pembrokeshire at time [late 1980s/early 1990s], there were bands playing but, you know, it wasn’t a counterculture scene really; I don’t think they would have really got what we were doing … we weren’t a good band that would appeal to Joe Public, we weren’t good like that, we weren’t playing rock covers … [thus] we weren’t that interested in playing in Pembrokeshire!

GZM played in the odd youth club – sans rock covers – accompanied in performance by ‘the sound of ping pong tables and people playing pool’, but the band’s interest lay predominantly in ‘the Welsh language pop scene’ rather than attempting to convert the locals to a form of pastoral psychedelia – later described by Mojo magazine as ‘crepuscular’ (Irvin 2000: 726) – that arguably mixed the sophisticated jazz styles of Soft Machine and Gong with the developmental innocence of a quirky DIY punk essence. This was not de rigueur in Pembrokeshire; success lay elsewhere: JL: I don’t think we wanted to dislocate, but I just think there wasn’t anything in Pembrokeshire for us as a band … something to give the band a bit of momentum … You wouldn’t have got us, at the time, into some busy pub in Pembrokeshire that has bands on because no one would get what we were doing.

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While not the springboard for GZM’s ascent, Pembrokeshire impressed itself upon the band’s art, developing a sense of intrinsic rootedness.3 Richard Lloyd suggested that the lived experience of the county may ‘stain’ music audibly with texture and permanence, influence being measured not as social or performative, but cultural, experiential, educational, and circumstantial. For ‘situated’ bands and artists such as The Boneshakers, Bikini State, Joe Rawlings, Elephant Gerald, Rumpus and others, regular performances on Fridays at The Rectory, a pub in the village of Nash, isolated and free to pump up the volume, raised a challenge as this was a scene dominated by covers, emphasizing the problem of creating original music as a ‘draw’, and getting the punters in (and money over the bar). Richard Lloyd: It’s still a challenge, to be honest, to play original music in a pub because that’s the only venues that we [Angelfish] ever get and that’s why I tend to not play now – I prefer to record  – because playing live … we don’t play cover versions at all, we play our own music, and that can be a big ask sometimes. People shout for covers … Pub rock informs your writing … thinking ‘if we play this live, how is this going to go down’?

If GZM’s manager’s remark that ‘very few people over 20 seem to go out’ in Wales was true, the die was cast somewhat conventionally in Pembrokeshire (Thompson 1998: 50). A generational difference between Richard’s material and the music being created by local singer-songwriter Rob Parker’s contemporary alt-rock band Down With The Enemy (DWTE) is possible, but it is also possible that a latent anxiety creates conservatism, reproducing the scene in the image of the embedded conventional audience taste. Rob Parker (RP): Life is so much harder for your ‘originals’ bands … A cover band … is going to pick up gigs easier than an … originals band because venues want people to be entertained … you can go along, get drunk and sing to Oasis and Coldplay.

These days, venues are driven by the serving of food; in the past it was the problems of licensing itself that limited performances to duos  – usually

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acoustic and adjustable to the venue – and created a strong foothold for a continuing trend of light, occasionally folk entertainment that is supported by a vibrant Pembrokeshire folk network and associative online community.4 It was harder for rock bands: the old Haggars Cinema on Pembroke Main Street initially seemed to have the potential to challenge the Narbeth Queens Hall or Tenby De Valence Pavilion, but the chance was lost to more conventional nightclubbing (now Paddles), sending rock back to the local pubs where it remains in places such as The George in Pembroke, The Tiddley in Freystrop, The Lifeboat and The Lamb (both Tenby) and the continually vibrant Eagle in Narbeth. This is pub rock by necessity, the loudness and the audience shoehorned into bars away from the more fertile commercial opportunities of folk, acoustic, duos, and cover bands for hire. The ‘scene’ therefore has tended, over the years, to concentrate on survival on its own terms. Nowadays, bands that wish to play rock have split characteristics, forced out of Pembrokeshire for exposure and experience like GZM before them, but also committed to their own scene in parallel in a way that embodies a survival technique. With rehearsal spaces temporal and scarce, the available venues limited and recording facilities rarer still (Nick Swannell’s Studio 49 in Narbeth being a notable success), a scene makes way for the necessity of exposure and experience. Rob Parker of DWTE stated early in our first meeting that his band had been forced to be creative with its self-identity, embellishing the tag of its origins to be noticed: RP: Tagging yourself as a ‘Swansea-based band’ is good for opportunity – it works – and I’m ashamed to say that it works because I have always been very proud of being local, being from Pembrokeshire, but the second we pretended – shall we say – to portray ourselves as a Swansea-based band we got opportunities … We went from ‘Pembrokeshire-­based band’ to ‘west Wales-based band’ to ‘Swansea-­ based band’ and then eventually you just call yourself a Welsh band and there’s almost like there’s shame and embarrassment in being from the rural area.

The ‘Welsh scene’ has moved back from prominence to ordinariness and periphery, and is engaged in a battle for survival as a distinct offering. The

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ephemeral circulation of tourists in Pembrokeshire masks an embedded sense within the indigenous population that a binary choice is present to ‘stay or go’, the ‘exit’ being eastwards only. Such transience appears to have a subconscious effect on the structure of music making in the county – the influences are ‘inward’, but the requirement to succeed in cultivating such influence and progression towards a desired goal is ‘outward’. The impermanence of the population is mirrored in the impermanence in musical participation and this was acutely observable in 2020.

The Present: The Ephemeral Essence of the Network Defining a ‘scene’ is not without difficulties because an observer often grapples with dynamics of environment as well as people, the perception of the network as well as the practicalities of space, functionality of communications, acceptance of shared spaces and the fluctuating desire to pursue creativity. Is research considering creative processes, geographical practical functionality, perceptions of togetherness, or the dynamic of what I term remoteness? The ‘scene’ in Pembrokeshire is not necessarily driven by creative labour and the ‘aura’ of music-making (Benjamin 2008), or social participation, but framed by distance from the urban, effects of low population on creativity, and strategies of coping with remoteness. Acceptance of limitation, and  – most interestingly  – the freedom to create without boundaries, sees impermanence as positivity. Despite being just 28 years old, Rob Parker has seen a lot of change over time, including many bands practically decimated by human transience. He sees Pembrokeshire music, via a footballing metaphor, as ‘a feeder club’ for bigger bands elsewhere, poaching talent from the local ‘brotherhood’, a ‘support network’ that is constantly under existential threat: RP: One of the main [problems encountered] with this area – and one of the hardest things to keep a band together – is, once you get to an age, you have a choice to make as a young man in Pembrokeshire, and this is whether you stay local and try to make it in whatever you want to do or you go to pastures new. We’ve … lost quite a few band members to moving up to Bristol, Cardiff or further afield to go to uni … We seem to have a never-ending conveyor belt of young talent

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and when it gets to a point they move further afield and you are left then with kind-of half a band.

Richard Lloyd also acknowledges this, noting that, ‘you’re constantly making adjustments and getting people to sit in and it’s never the same.’ This causes worry about gigging, no-shows and irreplaceability. ‘You get tight and then you are less tight,’ he concludes. It is an ongoing matter of continuity. Those who have moved on are in search of other things: career, success, alternative lives. Those who remain continue creating as modes of individualization, conversely encountering less risk than the leavers and driven by a sense of empowerment. Rob notes that ‘you end up connecting with bands a lot easier, but it’s what you do with that connection that is difficult.’ Strategies involve pooling resources to stage multi-genre gigs that involve creating bespoke ‘phases’ that manipulate the diversity within the audience. It is an impressive approach, and not hierarchical. RP: You start off … with an acoustic act, you build up then to some indie and rock and then you end with quite heavy music … you would not have a ‘headliner’ as the best, biggest band; usually one of the most popular people there would be an acoustic artist opening or second or third on.

This shared, traditional form of performance and assembly is both offset and augmented by the shift towards technological facility: modern recording capabilities and the rise of the internet as a tool of promotion and dissemination. The choice to publicly participate – or the need to do so for exposure – is now in decline. The development and success of a community radio station, Pure West, bolstered by local music shows of DJ’s BB Scone and Rob Parker himself, help to showcase the endeavours of local artists, thus elevating exposure above the old ‘analogue’ requirement to promote gigs and releases, an era that John Lawrence recalls as being defined by ‘putting posters up’ and that has now become ‘a lot more digital … more saturated’, perhaps providing unbounded exposure while simultaneously taking the novelty of live performance away. This ‘ecosystem of connective media’ (Van Dijck 2013: 22) does not just comprise interfaces, but also infrastructure, embodying technological inclusion with tiered social closure. However, such detachment can lead to

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the empowerment of a localized creative culture, resulting in it being largely free from judgement and open to uncensored ideas. Thus, the rise of the internet doesn’t necessarily damage a local scene or the generation of artistic novelty. As Martina Löw (2016: 83) suggests, where the ‘global’ can be understood as the potential muscle of the internet and its possibilities for artistic propagation, promotion and commerce, the global is still merely a messenger for local action. The ‘local’ remains where things are made – decisions and artefacts – so, thus, all the internet does is illustrate and disseminate. Arguably, Pembrokeshire has an in-between music scene – neither ‘local’ (as it was in the 1970s and 1980s) nor ‘global’ – despite the prevalence of the internet. A balance exists, incorporating two dynamics of music scene identity-formation and exposure, an interplay between freedom and conformity, but also eroding some localized influences in musical style. Rob states that people were previously influenced by music that they were ‘accessing in real time, in a venue’, but nowadays via YouTube and Facebook: RP: you can now access any music from anywhere in the world … we are now not just influenced by the bands that we are watching … I think that the music has evolved; we’ve almost lost a lot of our Celtic roots … your musical gene pool is far greater and therefore the evolution of your music knows no bounds.

Nowadays, Pembrokeshire’s ‘scene’ is beyond local or trans-local networks, sitting in a mezzanine that envelops the micro-local and the worldwide boundless expanses of the web. Rob Parker and his colleague Ian Davies are at the forefront of this interconnectivity, founding and running Stargazer magazine, initially dedicated to Pembrokeshire bands and events but now with a global reach. Utilizing entrepreneurial spirit that combines Davies’ journalistic and music industry past and Parker’s local music knowledge, the online enterprise aims to conceive a scene and its connection with the outside world, shrinking geographical, psychosocial and cultural spaces:

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Ian Davies (ID): Wales is the land of song … but I’m still waiting [for suitable reactions] … it’s like the Pembrokeshire promise, isn’t it? There is fantastic talent here … RP: … but no urgency. ID: … they’re not coming forward … PM: Is that insularity holding some people back? ID: Yeah, they can’t see across the border.

The ‘Pembrokeshire promise’ is an idiom meaning a relaxed approach to getting things done, a mañana attitude that contributes to an easy-going demeanour but also occasional potential for damaging lack of progress. However, some artists do see ‘across the border’. Rosie Cale, a local artist/vocalist, is someone, according to Ian, who chooses to use the internet to project her music out of Pembrokeshire to a wider audience, beyond the scene, the place, and its cultural boundaries. Recognizing remoteness can be all about embracing its limitations. As John Lawrence states, GZM ‘wouldn’t try to be “city cool” or do anything like “urban” or “modern”’. There was, he continues, ‘this effort and consciousness about being timeless’ that drove the band’s ambition and approach, interposing a problematic into Will Straw’s (1991) idea that trans-localism can somehow make scenes ‘whole’. By recognizing the embedded difference caused by rural upbringing  – as John does here  – it seems that, rather than becoming whole by negotiation, instead it occurs by appropriation, a set of unwritten rules relating to acceptance. GZM sought compromise by being ‘out of time’, so to speak, elevated beyond the constrictions of any scene, but the pressures are evident in his appraisal – ‘city cool’, ‘urban’ and ‘modern’ are bywords for acceptance and assimilation. It is a testimony to GZM that it resisted; maybe Rosie Cale is doing the same. Remoteness may therefore empower bands to resist such absorptions and make up the rules to suit their own agendas, to disengage from cultural assimilation in their bounded locales. John Lawrence suggests that being based in Pembrokeshire permits a creative space that provides freedom to musicians in being distanced from urban scenes and pressures to conform to dominant fashions and participate in established networks. ‘I think that’s what it is about remote places,’ he said. ‘There’s no

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established scene there so you’ve got to do what the hell you want or make your own.’ This, however, does not make things easy: JL: because you haven’t got that scene … it’s harder to make contacts … it’s harder to find places to play, places to be heard, so yeah I think initially, when you’re not established, it’s much harder  – it’s like you’re playing to no one … On the other hand, that’s a two-way thing: if you’re in a city there’s a lot more people competing … you have to be even better to stand out.

This mezzanine is not exclusively metaphysical, but simultaneously theoretical and practical: remoteness is an in-between state of geography, timespace and the attentive/inattentive distraction from everyday life (Highmore 2011: 116). Beyond the geo-physical, it is also tactically exploitable as a strategy of innovation; on one hand, the fear of losing members causes bands to work hard  – as Rob says, ‘cramming in a bit more’, instrumentally exploiting music as a project of the self but working together, detecting that structure of feeling that the music is owned by everyone as part of ‘Pembrokeshire’ (Williams 1961) – and on the other hand, the artist may disengage, become ‘virtual’ and resist relying on, or being defined by, the vagaries of others (this latter approach reminds one of the career trajectory of Penboyr’s Cate Le Bon). It is clearly a generational thing. Rob Parker signed off with a defining comment, separating the embedded and parallel and ephemeral dynamics of the scene with a glance to technology and time: RP: Lots of bands, older people, still rockin’ – like the Penny Thousand and Persona B – are more eccentric, more ‘Pembrokeshire’ … For me, growing up with social media and the internet, … my influence was changed and adapted by social media. For those older gentlemen in bands, they have their influence ingrained in them … less influenced by what they see from the outside.

Time passes, and music and geography remain constant while strategies and methods of artistic creativity embrace the age of liquid modernity (Bauman 2000). The rural ‘scene’ is gradually situated further away.

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Conclusions In Pembrokeshire, I found evidence of a temporal, almost liminal, creative scene that appeared to be under constant reinvention as a result of the continual disruption caused by human transience. I detected a ‘sense of place’ that enveloped locations of creativity (Ashley and Weedon 2020; Miles 2020), as well as historical, emotional, and practical influences on creative work, situating music making and organization within such frameworks and exploring the role of perceived ‘remoteness’ upon such strategies of creativity. This involved a sense of togetherness amongst participants as well as an understanding of how a rural dynamic might be affecting songwriting and ambition. Here, the diverse ‘nodes’ of participation (Crossley 2015: 233–4), are smaller, less sophisticated, less determined by genre than in the city, existing in rapture with one another. The scene is arguably less a network and more a situation distinguished by time and segregated by the incentive to gain status; it is metaphysical as well as strategic, driven by a tension between satisfaction of creation and performance and willingness to ‘get on’. This has created three distinctive ‘elements’, not dissimilar to Thompson’s (2020) focus on interrelated and embedded rural scenes, augmented here with strategy rather than thematic bounded evaluations. It is all about what is desired. Thus we observe an embedded element of Richard Lloyd and his contemporaries, perceiving music and art for self-efficacy and personal satiation; a parallel element of John Lawrence and GZM, existing in a place where localized attention is evanescent at best, bewildered at worst, requiring strategic attachment to other scenes elsewhere for progression; and, finally, an ephemeral element of Rob Parker and colleagues and friends, driven by youth, associative transience and risk, and eroded by such uncertainty and, via the dissociated internet, open to continual revision – neither ‘home’ nor ‘abroad’, ‘rural’ nor ‘urban’, but always somewhere in-between, disembedded and ‘free’. The Pembrokeshire scene exists as something of a boundless collective dedicated to making music, occasionally liminal and ad hoc, but leaving traces, understood as where you can gather and how inspired people are to do it. This makes a linear Pembrokeshire ‘scene’ possible, gives it its somewhat indeterminate character and keeps it functioning. ‘That’s why The Miracle was so great,’ Richard Lloyd reflected as he recalled the value of that long-gone rock haunt on the beach at Freshwater East. ‘It kept the flame burning.’

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Notes 1. See https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/statistics-­and-research/2020-05/ summary-­statistics-­south-­west-­wales-­region-­2020-­958.pdf. Accessed 20 August 2021. 2. MSP went on to have substantial commercial success after 1992, arguably achieving an artistic pinnacle with the release of the album Everything Must Go (1996) following the much-publicized disappearance – and widely considered (though continually unconfirmed) suicide – of the band’s chief lyricist and rhythm guitarist Richey Edwards in 1995. 3. Most notably, GZM’s 1997 album Barafundle is named after a beach in the county. 4. The Fishguard Folk Festival was the spearhead of local folk music, initially served by the website http://www.pembrokeshire-­folk-­music.co.uk, but currently in hiatus.

References Ashley, T., and A. Weedon, eds. 2020. Developing a sense of place: The role of the arts in regenerating communities. London: UCL Press. Bachelard, G. 2014. The poetics of space. Trans. Maria Jolas. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bauman, Z. 2000. Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Benjamin, W. 2008. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Trans. J.A. Underwood. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Crossley, N. 2015. Networks of sound, style and subversion: The punk and post-punk worlds of Manchester, London and Sheffield, 1975–80. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Highmore, B. 2011. Ordinary lives: Studies in the everyday. London: Routledge. Hill, S. 2007. ‘Blerwytirhwyn?’ The place of Welsh pop music. London: Routledge. Irvin, J., ed. 2000. The Mojo collection: The ultimate music companion. Edinburgh: Mojo Books. Löw, M. 2016. The sociology of space: Materiality, social structures, and action. Trans. Donald Goodwin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Miles, P. 2019. Midlife creativity and identity: Life into art. Bingley: Emerald. ———. 2020. Creative routine and dichotomies of space. In Developing a sense of place: The role of the arts in regenerating communities, ed. Tamara Ashley and Alexis Weedon, 212–226. London: UCL Press. Owens, D. 2000. Cerys, Catatonia and the rise of Welsh pop. London: Ebury Press. Peterson, R.A., and A. Bennett. 2004. Introducing music scenes. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.A.  Peterson, 1–15. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

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Straw, W. 1991. Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 53: 368–388. Thompson, B. 1998. Seven years of plenty. London: Victor Gollancz. Thompson, E. 2020. Three rural Scottish music scenes – An ethnographic study. Popular Music and Society 43 (4): 389–400. Van Dijck, J. 2013. The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Warden, C. 2017. ‘Wide margins’: Finding performance in the border and borders in performance. Keywords 15: 23–39. Williams, R. 1961. The long revolution. London: Pelican.

CHAPTER 2

Diamonds in the Backyard: Migrant Youth and Hip Hop in Australian Regional Towns Alexandra Blok

Although ‘migrant hip hop’ has been a focus of academic work (e.g. Alim et al. 2009; Kaya 2015; Mitchell 1996; Williams 2018), significantly less attention has been paid to the role of hip hop among migrant youth in regional spaces. This also applies in the case of Australia, a country where most of the population lives in the cities while the remainder are scattered across regional towns that are often large distances apart (Bennett et al. 2019). This lack of attention to migrant hip hop in Australia’s regions may be explained by the fact that regional migration is a comparatively recent phenomenon for Australia, starting at the beginning of the 1990s with the introduction of regional skilled migration (Hugo 2008). In the early 2000s, regional areas began to accommodate humanitarian entrants from Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia, as well as skilled migrants. Despite this regional influx of non-Western migrants, international migration cannot be compared with the major urban migrant areas of resettlement, such as Melbourne and Sydney. Therefore, even though a trend

A. Blok (*) Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_2

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towards international migration to regional areas may have commenced, the regional migrant population has remained fragmented and scattered. Australian regional cultural settings, with their thin and highly dispersed layers of migrant community presence, make answering any questions regarding racial and cultural belonging hard to address for migrant youth. Nevertheless, this is a central aspect of their migrant experiences, and is reflected in their different forms of cultural expression, including the hip hop music produced by a number of migrant youth. Drawing on research conducted in regional areas of New South Wales and Queensland, respectively the second and third largest states in Australia, this chapter aims to reveal existing utilization of hip hop by migrant youth as a vehicle of ‘juggling the cultures’ of belonging (Sushytska 2019) as an outlet of self-­ expression for translocal identity and a career pathway. As the chapter illustrates, a distinctive feature of the Australian ‘regional case’ is that when young people settle in regional areas, they bring an ‘urban’ hip hop culture into the regional setting, thereby placing themselves ‘on a map’ of international hip hop geography. By doing so, they highlight issues of diverse cultural expressions, artistic pathways in regional areas and issues of cultural recognition that constitute regional Australian hip hop localization.

Background and Methodology The research informing this chapter is focused on hip hop activity in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales and Cairns, Queensland. This study forms a part of a larger project on regional migrant musicians in New South Wales and Queensland. The musicians identified in Wagga Wagga and Cairns included a diverse underground cohort of hip hop artists, five young men and a young woman with an age range of between 19 and 32 years. Four of the five musicians consider themselves ‘first-generation Australians’, having relocated to Australia at a young age. One of the artists, Aztec Flow, based in Wagga, has a family background of Hispanic ancestry. Three of the five participants are the children of migrants from African countries: Kenya, Liberia and South Sudan. The parents of D’crae, from Cairns, are of Indian and New Zealand Māori descent. Migrant pathways and circumstances of migration vary. Families of two of the artists interviewed came as refugees, fleeing from conflict zones in Liberia and Sudan. Parents of the other musicians relocated as international students or skilled migrants, with existing family connections to

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Australia. The educational profile of the artists is equally heterogenous. Two of the five didn’t complete high school, although both of them established successful music careers after several years. A further two artists enrolled in university courses, receiving degrees in social work and music respectively. A further artist interviewed for the study had graduated from a community college. Despite drastically different social, educational and cultural backgrounds, there are some distinctive commonalities between all five musicians. Each represents a combination of unusual steps and pathways in achieving their musical goals and cultural expressions.

Regional Settings of Migrant Youth Belonging The comparatively recent history of regional migrant settlement of non-­ Western heritage in Australia is a main feature that frames the regional cultural landscape and discourse of belonging for young migrants. If migrant communities are small and comparatively recent phenomena in the regional areas, the number of culturally diverse teenagers and young people is even smaller – sometimes those people presented in single numbers, just themselves. This singularity of cultural belonging, race and age creates the pivotal point of orientation in a discourse of non-belonging: From my understanding, I think it’s gotta be a condition, an environment they [the majority of local teenagers] raised around, and they kinda used to it … That’s why I’m so pro-integration … and I think because these kids weren’t enough around African kids, they saw somebody who looked different, and they looked like an alien! That’s why I think regional areas are very different to metropolitan areas. They all talk shit, but they don’t put racism to it (laughing). There is lot more acceptance [in urban areas]. In these areas there is not enough people from different backgrounds so they can get used to it. I think it’s more an ignorance thing in a sense. It’s more lack of knowledge about it. (Aztec Flow, Wagga Wagga)

The question of identification for young people from migrant backgrounds inevitably reflects regionally established parameters of belonging, built upon racial and cultural demarcations between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Regional settings, as Radford (2017: 498) argues, are specifically sensitive to ‘visible’ migrants, as these places are associated with an ‘Australian identity (Australian-ness)’ that is ‘being intimately linked with its Anglo-Celtic, and European, heritage’. For those young people, the answers to typical questions of youth, such as ‘Who am I?’, ‘What do I belong to?’ and

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‘What is my group?’ will inevitably be underpinned by questions of racial and ethnic belonging: Schooling probably was the hardest part … When I first had a racism act done on me, I really didn’t understand what they were trying to say, until they said: ‘Black pig go back where you come from’. This is where it kind of occurred to me that not all the people have the same values as me. I just wanna live, be loved, love and that stuff … I had no idea, I’m still learning, I didn’t know me being ‘African’ … I didn’t know I was an African, and a white person calls [themselves] ‘Caucasian’, I didn’t know that they were ‘Aboriginals’ … I mean, eventually you get to those understandings, education teaches you that, but then it was just flooded down like ‘You black, go’. (Robmokot, Wagga Wagga)

The shift towards regional areas of non-Western migration gradually changes the historically established ethnically ‘white’ landscape, bringing new experiences of ‘otherness’ to less densely populated regional communities. This process of negotiations of regional identities signifies a challenge of rethinking regional identity from Western and ‘white’ to culturally and racially diverse. At this point, though, regional places are lacking even visual experience of otherness, where culturally and visually different ‘strangers’ are often perceived as a threat of the unknown: I am a walking big question mark. They don’t know who I am, they don’t know my background, and they just have to know. (Aztec Flow, Wagga Wagga)

This may also reflect the everyday mentality of less populated regional areas, built upon principles of familiarity with neighbours and shared by the majority social and cultural practices of belonging. To some degree, visual ‘otherness’ is received as a challenge to established regional identities and groups, and therefore as a threat to social cohesion. The transition to Australia for the parents of migrant youth can be a traumatic, and sometimes a tragic, experience. In some cases – particularly for those migrants accepted on humanitarian terms – not all family members receive permission to relocate to Australia. A lack of immediate family members, such as a father or mother, can significantly accentuate feelings of isolation in Australia. In addition, the experience of being culturally and racially ‘other’ impacts migrant youth’s sense of isolation:

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There is no people of my age from the same background to come and talk to you. In school you talk to someone and they say: ‘Get over it mate, this is who they are, this is what they do, don’t think about it, racism is ­everywhere, he is only a joke’, and this, and that … Over time it dwells in you too much and you just want to blow up. (Robmokot, Wagga Wagga)

Moreover, the lack of models for the migrant youth’s social inclusion can also be related to parents’ success (or lack of success) in gaining cultural and social acceptance. In other words, migrant youth inherit the ‘message’ of cultural exclusion as part of their family upbringing and domestic culture. Positive role models who could impart to migrant youth important knowledge that would be valuable in helping them gain social and cultural acceptance are therefore largely absent.

Hip Hop as a Space of Belonging: Juggling Contradictions, Connecting Cultural Worlds Got a chip on my shoulder And I know they notice my odor Gotta live for pops and my mumma Imma play that part for my mumma Watch out watch out I’m a diamond Shine bright when the times is right Imma shine so bright like a full moon night And I’m thanking God for this brand new life (Robmokot, Moonlight; lyrics reproduced by kind permission of artist)

The scarcity of social and cultural role models draws the context in which hip hop culture becomes a space that reflects everyday frustration and provides meaningful answers to questions of belonging: I was going through all that stuff with bullying, there was a stuff at home that was going on, you know, my dad was pretty abusive and stuff. Pretty much I would hang out with my homies and they were into rap, and I was relating more and more to music. Because it was more and more like ‘Fuck the system’, ‘fuck everything’, and I was about that. Like everything in a world, fuck the world. I remember listening to Tupac, and I started studying his lyrics, really heavily. Tupac is a great lyricist, there is no doubt about that … Eventually you started to write your stupid little lyrics. I had no

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concept of how to write anything like that, I just kind of started. (Aztec Flow, Wagga Wagga)

For young people of migrant background, global hip hop becomes a cultural space that reflects their local issues of non-belonging and cultural alienation. At the same time, hip hop provides an example of creative expression through poetry and music, which young artists follow. This writing becomes a first experience of self-made art, and therefore a discovery of personal creative potential: I used like a poem like genre, you know, like Shakespeare, I was really into that type of thing. I started writing and it really kicked off when I got a feedback from people, they couldn’t believe it. It gave me a bit of hope for me. I have got something. I was made for something. Because back in my mind … I was thinking that I was nothing. I have got nothing to give. But always, for some reason, where was a little speck of light that was saying that you are something. And from that, and a feedback from people I was able to build my own personality, and my own confidence. (D’crae, Cairns)

Through innovative usage of language, music, accents and rhythms, hip hop becomes a space where often conflicting cultural ‘worlds’ are juggled and played with. The duality of cultural belonging may be reflected in the language strategies and accents of regional youth. Regional migrant musicians utilize their multiple belongings by rapping in Spanish, or Kenyan, or Liberian. Ben Jones, from Cairns, utilizes derogatory language, such as ‘niggers’ as a symbol of brotherhood with his Kenyan and Cairns friends. Such a strategy may be viewed as another way of reworking alienation into belonging: I faced a lot of racism, especially in my first school, everyone was always making fun of me because I’m from Africa – no one came from Africa in my school, they call me ‘an African kid’  – ‘it’s an African kid!’ But when I become more mature and grew up, I thought that I’m actually proud of being African. Why am I ashamed of it?! That’s why I started making afro-­ beats in my music, everything … speaking even with my African language. People really liked that, now it’s good. Now people want to be part of the culture, even dress like me. (Ben Jones, Cairns)

Video clips and artwork for Ben’s releases may be seen as a reflection of a hybridity of belonging, which Ben describes as a situation of being ‘black

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in Australia and being white in Kenya’. He experiments with both colours, white and black, placing an image of his face on both a dark and a light side of the artwork for his releases. He has also created several video clips, with his friends in Kenya portraying parallel scenes of his home country and his native Cairns. Despite a dual self-identification – such as African-Australian – most of the artists interviewed avoided defining themselves in a fragile compromise with respect to the dichotomy of hybrid belonging. Instead, discovery of their past and cultural background becomes a rich source of new inspirations and identification. Directly through their speech, and indirectly through their lyrics, migrant youth continually attempt to transcend the dichotomy of hybrid belonging with a willingness to create connections with and within multiple cultural coordinates. Hip hop as a space of rhymed poetry provides a chance for linguistic freedom and experiments that simultaneously helps to create their own definitions, connections and topics of self: Powerful I’m a woman I’m wonderful Full of wonder I’m colourful! I’m not a drop in the ocean I’m the ocean you try containing In the drop that you are waiting for Nor realizing I have no fear Of falling with no ferns on the ground One fails to catch me Amongst the flowers I will be found … (Spoken word artist and musician, Wagga Wagga; lyrics reproduced by kind permission of artist)

Some artists underline that poetry, and an eventual usage of music, help to find an inner speech by dismantling constructions contained within the English language: I don’t need to follow any rules with it. Language is flexible, versatile, changing. I use language, but I don’t need [to] follow literary constraints. I can say that I want, why I want, when I want. I can talk about what I want

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and a way I feel, and it’s just me and my words. I feel this is a way I convey a lot of emotion. I write a lot of essays, I’m at uni now, but I feel like the more I dismantle my previous language knowledge on how to write and how to speak English, it sort of gives me a freedom to express my own English, my own speech, my own way of communicating. Just a freedom that allows me to express myself. (Spoken word artist and musician, Wagga Wagga)

Aztec Flow treats his songs as a reflection of his discoveries of history, particularly the history of conflicts, such as World War II, the Vietnam War and conflicts between the US government and native Americans – even the United States and Mexico. Each of these bigger stories is used to represent some part of his direct family history, so is related to his own being. His song ‘1862’ portrays ‘his native cousins’, American Indians, and an imagined story of their lives in the 1800s. Historical context provides an imaginary space within which belonging is recreated. It can therefore be observed that a continual attempt to categorize regional hip hop artists in frameworks of national cultural identity is a flawed assumption that doesn’t reflect the artist’s state of being: I am Mexican. I am Irish. I am Scottish. I am German. I am Prussian, and then I am Cuban and Mongol. If I have to identify myself, I just can say that I am human. (Aztec Flow, Wagga Wagga)

Universalism of human experiences and relations to multiple cultural belongings may be seen as regional youth’s attempt to build alternative versions of their selves, reflected in their music. Regional migrant youth utilize hip hop as a space of belonging in the situation of scarcity of such spaces within regional settings. Doing that, they also undertake an effort to diversify and transcend established borders between cultural identities in regional areas, and therefore their right to belong to the Australian cultural space. Through experiments with accents, innovative metaphors of self, rhythms and languages, regional migrant youth are engaged in what they consider to be the necessary work of ‘stiching’ different cultural worlds through fusing them together in hip hop music, thus placing these new cultural expressions and practices of belonging on the Australian regional map.

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Regional Places for Hip Hop The hip hop scene in Wagga Wagga stems from a mixture of initiatives by Sydney and local art organizations. As young musicians in Wagga Wagga recall, an important role for forming a cohort of local hip hop artists from migrant backgrounds belongs to long established collaborations between Sydney and Wagga Wagga. Important in this respect is Heaps Decent, a Sydney based non-profit organization that undertakes music workshops for young people from diverse backgrounds. Since the 2010s, Heaps Decent, with significant support from the Multicultural Council of Wagga Wagga, has run music workshops that have stretched over several days. During these sessions, children and teenagers have been given an opportunity to gain their first experience of creating a musical product, from composing lyrics for their songs and sampling tunes and rhythms to releasing an LP. In some years, performing tours to Sydney and Canberra were arranged for the most successful students, including performances in theatres. The long-term musical presence of Heaps Decent in Wagga created a hub for various young artists, including those taking their first steps in hip hop. Trips to Sydney and Canberra for some became a first way of connecting with young artists from these cities and establishing long-term professional networks and friendships. Riverina Community College was a ‘venue and vehicle’ (as a Wagga Wagga Multicultural Council officer described it) for workshops and concerts by hip hop musicians in the late 2000s. This period saw an influx of migrant youth from South Sudan and eventual tensions between them and Wagga’s Indigenous youth. In addressing this issue, the project ‘Hip Hop for Harmony’ was launched to establish a stream of communication between Wagga Wagga’s multicultural youth and Sydney-based musicians. As a result, Wagga Wagga’s artists were exposed to a growing hip hop scene in Sydney, including graffiti artists, skateboarders, DJs, musicians such as True Vibenation and MCs from the hip hop church Krosswerdz. To a significant degree, these initiatives, created and promoted by Wagga Wagga-based music activist Thom Paton and supported by the Riverina Community College and Multicultural Council, provided regional engagement with Sydney’s urban street culture. These interactions facilitated the professional growth of regional musicians, building social connections and networks with the ‘metropolitan’ hip hop scene, which some regional musicians utilized in their further careers. However, these short-term grant-based projects have become scarcer in recent years.

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Another hub for fostering hip hop in Wagga Wagga was Raw Rear, a grass-roots movement of the spoken word that initiated a contest featuring improvisational poetry. This small group, which gathers once a month, provides one of a handful of opportunities for young artists to acquire experience of the stage by reciting their lyrics to others in the group. Some hip hop artists started out as poets and then eventually began to experiment with sounds, incorporating jazz and hip hop into their lyrics. In its turn, this little poetry group in Wagga Wagga has become part of a national spoken word movement, with a strong presence in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. Such grass-roots poetry networks create professional pathways for those Wagga Wagga hip hop artists who predominantly gravitate towards improvisational poetry with elements of music. The presence of Raw Rear creates a strong infusion between two independent movements and scenes, hip hop music and spoken word. There is a significant absence of avenues for those hip hop musicians who don’t relate to a spoken word community. The Heaps Decent program is limited in terms of providing further steps in musical education and career. Hip hop and other creative artists who graduated from the Heaps Decent program and who want to proceed with a musical career, have to find their own route to professional growth, be it recording and releasing albums, finding relevant contacts with record labels, promoters and venues, or finessing musical production skills. In the challenge of achieving further professional growth, regional opportunities are limited for local hip hop artists. Riverina Conservatorium offers courses in music theory and performance in classical music. However, these are both unappealing and unaffordable for hip hop artists. Riverina Community College launched a trial course on the basics of music production in May 2021. Local hip hop artists describe Wagga Wagga and Cairns as places with very limited performance opportunities for artists beyond blues and rock cover bands. Regional performance spaces comprise pubs with regular cover bands plus a handful of events, such as the Fusion Festival, arranged by the local council. Hip hop musicians admit that the situation has gradually been changing for Wagga Wagga.1 However, the overall situation is described by the artists as involving a constant process of ‘kicking the walls’ in an attempt to arrange a musical space, particularly one based upon an unconventional (from the perspective of their location) genre and format. Even though Wagga Wagga and Cairns both hold annual events that present an opportunity for creative diversity, young artists, while

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expressing gratitude towards existing events, also readily voice their concerns about the lack of regular musical platforms. Moreover, young hip hop artists do not associate themselves with the formats of multicultural festivals that portray mostly ‘traditional’ cultural expressions. Those in the younger generation of migrant artists see themselves as Australian contributors to a global hop-hop movement, with the ambition of bringing new ideas, sounds and topics for conversation into diverse hip hop culture. Consequently, the lack of key elements of the hip hop industry, such as producing actors or performing platforms, prompts the regional artists to gravitate towards urban areas with existing hip hop scenes. A further reason why the regional hip hop scenes find it difficult to leverage development is the broader issue of how the arts, and particularly hip hop, are perceived in regional areas. Regional Australian areas have an embedded image of the arts as an urban feature, and consequently local hip hop created in regional spaces is viewed as not being the “real thing” (D’crae, Cairns). The traditional regional economy, focused as it is upon farming and its support services, does not include the arts as a regional economic feature. Rather, the regional arts are viewed very strongly as a peripheral side of regional life. This lack of recognition of emerging young artists who produce original content as a part of the regional and national art ecosystem constitutes a fundamental issue for Australian regional art, according to hip hop musicians. Regional communities, including younger generations, would more likely consume mainstream products of hip hop, rather than support talent ‘in your own backyard’ (D’crae, Cairns). Furthermore, hip hop as an art form may find little appreciation in regional areas, as it seen as culturally alienated from the Australian musical art genre: [The] black industry of hip hop is not sort of wanted and is not acknowledged as much. That’s what I learned. For me personally, I had to go out of Australia to do my music and come back as a wave before I got noticed. (D’crae, Cairns)

Migrant youth in Cairns, according to D’crae, are ‘limiting themselves’ and their musical pursuits because the achievement of success is a function of skin colour. Migrant and Indigenous youth believe that regional history has taught them that black artists cannot succeed. Even when admitting that the culture has been changing for the last fifteen years, the inherited ethos is one of culturally divided opportunities, which become an additional factor in hip hop artists’ marginalization.

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Music Pathways of Regional Migrant Youth How do regional hip hop artists respond when faced with an environment that is non-respondent to their art? Some, due to family financial obligations, have to choose from the range of professions on offer within the existing regional economy. They have a local audience that can obtain their songs through streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Soundcloud and YouTube. The regional hip hop scene is therefore forced to migrate to media platforms where local audiences blend with global listeners, resulting in atomized listening. There is no listening or performance event. Home events, often for a single person or at best a home party, are the only real chances many regional hip hop artists have to generate an audience. The career pathways available to hip hop musicians vary, but tend to follow common patterns. These involve DIY musical self-education through media-platforms and channels, or learning from YouTube how to DJ, sample or use technical equipment. Most musicians have to find ways to sustain themselves while earning enough income to cover necessary technical equipment or production expenses. Therefore, as a result of the financial struggle they endure, a desperation is instilled into their way of life and their desire to be respected for this choice; as a result, these subjects become frequent themes for their songs (e.g. ‘Rage’ by Ben Jones). The alternative to these DIY strategies is to ‘become the X, Y, Z of the hip hop equation’ (Aztec Flow, Wagga Wagga). This phrase speaks to the creation of the necessary means of hip hop production in regional settings. Creating a regional hip hop hub involves a pool of local artists, necessary production equipment for filming and sound production, and a producer with local, national and international connections. An example of such a strategy is provided by Aztec Flow, who invented such a pathway to remain a productive musical entity while living in Wagga Wagga. Aztec has his own label, Tical Records, named after a classic hip hop album by US rapper Method Man (1994). The label provides production facilities and also acts as a booking agency. Such positioning allows Aztec to create his own hip hop hub in a regional area that transcends regional borders. Tical Records releases songs by local Wagga Wagga hip hop artists, as well as young national artists  – for example, from Sydney and Canberra  – and international artists, including from the United States. Another way migrant hip hop artists in regional Australia attempt to negotiate the limitations of the local music scenes is to connect translocally with hip hop scenes in other places. Indeed, many regional migrant

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hip hop artists aspire to achieve career opportunities that are more likely to come from the United States than from the national Australian music industry. In doing so, they heavily utilize streaming platforms, such as Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube and Apple Music to gain an international audience, as well as the attention of hip hop agents and artists. These platforms allow them to acquire an audience and demonstrate their commercial potential to gather a large number of followers: No one starts taking seriously your music until you start putting numbers. You may be the best musician in a world, ever, but unless someone can see numbers, like, ten thousand streams or twenty thousand, when people start taking you seriously. So, people could see me through the years, but I only started putting on numbers this year, the end of last year (2019). It took many, many years. So, when people started to see these numbers, then I started to get respect. (Ben Jones, Cairns)

However, even high traffic on SoundCloud and Spotify, measured in thousands of downloads, is hard to monetize. An artist’s income for a hit song, per month, may be around $150,2 which is an unviable return given the many hours of effort required to make, produce and promote the song. Marketing skills in navigating those platforms and reaching out to the ‘right people’ become equally, if not more, important than creative talent and technical skills. Currently, however, the utilization of digital platforms mostly serves as a PR and marketing instrument in creating career connections rather than as a way to maintain financial independence while living in a regional area. The utilization of streaming services as a platform for grass-roots expressions with commercial potential can be a career path for those who manage to attract the attention of the international hip hop actors. In the case of D’crae, rotation of his song ‘Mama’ on the radio in Los Angeles caused a ‘Mama craze’ involving press-releases from a significant music distributor, Global Sound Group (UK), rotations on radio stations in the United States and a number three position on the Trend City Radio charts which resulted in a record deal with Bentley Records (owned by R & B artist Luke Dayz). International attention resulted in D’crae’s ‘discovery’ by the Australian national and local media, with multiple press appearances on ABC radio, Triple J and Cairns Star FM, and articles in the Cairns Post and local tourist guides. Such a successful pathway may be seen as rare for a regional musician. Moreover, local recognition only followed after D’crae had achieved a level of international success.

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Conclusion This chapter has focused on young migrant hip hop artists in regional Australia. Interviews with hip hop artists in Wagga Wagga and Cairns provided compelling insights into young migrants’ experiences and their images of regional life. A thin layer of cultural diversity becomes a limitation for ‘alternative’ public cultural expressions. Hip hop musicians associate themselves with a contemporary and non-conformist global culture, which raises questions about the relevant regional avenues that would accommodate experimental and unorthodox music. In their search for relevant outlets, regional young migrant hip hop artists attempt to create networks in association with ‘neighbouring’ networks, such as spoken word contests, artists and musicians of various genres. Some of them take the opportunity to build their own local hubs for hip hop infrastructure, setting up the necessary production and promotion facilities. Building national and international professional networks, as well as an international fan base established through streaming services, may be the main feature of the existing regional hip hop scene. However, despite multiple barriers, the emerging cohort of young migrant hip hop artists speaks to the ongoing process of regional cultural change. If recognized and facilitated, this could lead to various significant cultural outcomes, such as the diversification of regional cultural expression and the enrichment of regional music scenes, including the contribution of regional migrant hip hop artists to national and international hip hop scenes.

Notes 1. For instance, the opening of a MusicNSW office in Wagga Wagga in 2020 has triggered a series of initiatives for young people, in which some migrant artists had a chance to participate. 2. There is a very limited research available about the streaming services business model. However, some recent investigations reveal the significant challenges faced by artists in their efforts to earn an income through streaming platforms. See https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-­02-­12/uk-­streaming-­ inquiry-­peaks-­under-­the-­hood-­of-­the-­music-­business/13143718, accessed 20 May 2021.

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References Alim, H.S., A. Ibrahim, and A. Pennycook. 2009. Global linguistic flows: Hip hop cultures, youth identities and politics of language. New York: Routledge. Bennett, A., D. Cashman, and N. Lewandowski. 2019. ‘Twice the size of Texas’: Assessing the importance of regional popular music scenes – A case study of regional Queensland. Popular Music and Society 42 (5): 561–575. Hugo, G. 2008. Immigrant settlement outside of Australia’s capital cities. Population, Space and Place 14 (6): 553–571. Kaya, A. 2015. Sicher in Kreuzberg: Constructing diasporas: Turkish hip hop youth in Berlin. Berlin: Transcript Verlag. Mitchell, T. 1996. Popular music and local identity: Rock, pop and rap in Europe and Oceania. London: Leicester University Press. Radford, D. 2017. Space, place and identity: Intercultural encounters, affect and belonging in rural Australian spaces. Journal of Intercultural Studies 38 (5): 495–513. Sushytska, S. 2019. Metics and the art of playing with contradictions. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 2 (1): 408–425. Williams, J. 2018. Performing multiculturalism in UK hip hop: The case of Riz MC. In ‘Who is British music?’ Placing migrants in national music history, ed.. F. Scheding. Special issue of Twentieth-century Music 15 (3): 439–492.

CHAPTER 3

From the City to the Bush: An Autoethnographic Reflection on Australia’s Urban and Rural Music Scenes Graham Sattler

I moved from Sydney, the most populous city in Australia and the coastally located capital of New South Wales, to the central western region of the state in 2001, having been alert to the attractions of life in a smaller, less expensive setting for some time. At the time, 20 years into my career as a portfolio professional musician and educator (Bartleet et al. 2020), I was teaching, performing freelance as a singer and trombonist, and conducting largely amateur and school-based ensembles – in other words, leading a not-atypical freelance musician’s existence. In 2001, having completed my Masters in Conducting from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, I accepted the full-time position of Music Director at the principal community music education organization in Orange, 256 kilometres inland from Sydney; the job involved responsibilities of music leader, artistic programs G. Sattler (*) Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Christchurch, New Zealand Mitchell Conservatorium, Bathurst, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_3

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manager, educator, performer and regional music advocate. Since my arrival in the regional environment, I have established, built on and become passionate about the place of and opportunities for the musician in the non-metropolitan setting. Regional centres, their communities and conditions vary according to local dynamics, demographics, and socioeconomic and socioeducational (ACARA 2015) status. Two decades of involvement with organizations and settings similar to my own have given me a practical familiarity with variations across and between regional communities, as well as making me keenly aware of the similarities relating to participation, challenges and attitudes in rural music scenes (Bennett 2020; Bennett et al. 2019; Rogers and Whiting 2020). This perspective brings into relief several points of comparison with the urban scenes I have experienced and with which I still engage on a regular basis from my home in non-metropolitan New South Wales. While living and working in ‘the bush’ for two decades, I have maintained something of an insider-outsider perspective (Reed-Danahay et al. 2020) due to two significant factors. First, my move into academia shortly after relocating has required that I develop and maintain an international perspective on community-based music activity, demanding a global lens on my community/ies and comparisons with those across the broader international experience (Sattler 2013: 206). Second, after twelve years in Orange, I changed jobs to take up the leadership of another non-­ metropolitan music education organization in a similar-sized rural city (Bathurst), 75 kilometres from my home. This second professional relocation reframed my sense of place and purpose to operating professionally out of one community while living, and continuing to contribute to the musical life of another. Three questions that have emerged from my transition from city to bush, supported by my observations of and interaction with other gigging musicians in regional Australia, are: 1. What is it to be a gigging musician based in a non-metropolitan city or town? 2. How does one’s self-perception of validity morph or develop after moving scenes? 3. What are the career and status implications of the shift? Is it opting out of the (major city) scene, transferring or extending to another? This chapter addresses these three questions from an invested personal viewpoint, and proposes a way forward to substantiate and strengthen

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research data on the phenomenon of established professional musicians relocating from the city to the bush.

Some Definitions For the purpose of clarity in their application throughout this chapter, some context-specific terms are defined below; others are defined as they first occur within the body of the text. The terms ‘regional’, ‘rural’ and ‘non-metropolitan’ are largely interchangeable and used variously, in reference to the context. While the term ‘regional’ is increasingly used to differentiate from major city/metropolitan/urban settings, some political, administrative and bureaucratic applications include metropolitan jurisdictions as regions (NSW Government 2021). ‘Major city’, ‘urban’ and ‘metropolitan’ are similarly interchangeable. In the vernacular, non-metropolitan cities, towns and villages can also be referred to as ‘the bush’ (Baxter et al. 2021; Davison 1978, 2012; Garner 2012). The term ‘musicking’ refers not only to the act of making music, but also to listening, preparing for, organizing, producing, selling tickets for, even cleaning up the rehearsal or performance space after an event (Sattler 2016: 44); ‘to pay attention in any way to a musical performance …whether actively or passively’ (Small 1998: 9). The principal non-metropolitan locus of this reflective analysis comprises the regional cities of Orange and Bathurst. With populations of 42,503 and 43,996 respectively (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021), they are classified as cities (NSW 1993), although their direct service area populations are each approximately 1 per cent of Sydney’s.1

The Autoethnographic Approach and My Insider/ Outsider Perspective While there is no shortage of major city fugitive musicians in ‘the bush’, many of whom I collaborate with regularly, my particular mix of performer/educator/researcher/advocate with an even split of 20  years’ practice in each environment is not so common. Autoethnography therefore presented itself as the most viable, and I hope the most valuable, lens. I have reflected a great deal on what is a pervading sense of insider/ outsider, and while I initially attributed this to having established much of my identity and musical perspective during my formative years in Sydney, I have realized that what more realistically compromises my ‘sense of

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belonging that comes from being an existential insider’ (Relph 1976: 491) are the following factors: • I commenced ethnographic research into non-metropolitan music activity five years into my relocation, necessarily becoming the participant observer. • I took on a statewide role with the peak body for seventeen similar organizations, responsible for advocacy for the collective (ANSWRC 2021) two years into my relocation. • I switched regional organizations after twelve years, continuing to live in the initial community and commuting daily to my new job, its community and the multitude of professional relationships it required. The methodology for this study is one of personal narrative based on immersion in the social context, ‘considering the self as embedded in cultural meanings … to untangle the inextricable connections between categorical and personal knowledge’ (Van den Broucke 2019: 7). While the orientation of the study is based on personal experience, I believe my ongoing and deep interconnection with the careers, conditions and experiences of colleagues on similar professional trajectories provides relevance and a reference point for the broader experience of musicians who have made, are in the process of making or are planning a transition from city to bush. I support the notion that writing about one’s own experiences is not solely relevant to the autoethnographer, but also to others (Bennett and De Vries 2017; Ellis et al. 2011). In reviewing the literature on autoethnography, one becomes aware of the definitions and subsets identified by the researchers responsible for framing and validating the approach, such as Heider (1975), Hayano (1979), Ellis (2004), Holman-Jones (2005), Wall (2006, 2008) and Stahlke Wall (2018). Notwithstanding, I was determined not to be restricted by firm guidelines around the analytic form (Anderson 2006; Denzin 2006; Ellis and Bochner 2006) versus the evocative form (Ellis 2004; Ellis et al. 2011; Ellis and Bochner 2016). I felt that the very justification for the method – to acknowledge the link between the personal and the cultural (Bartleet and Ellis 2009; Méndez 2013; Van den Broucke 2019) – demanded a personalized account that would arguably be a hybrid, or a continuum (Breen 2007; Van den Broucke 2019) of the ‘analytical … evocative … and everything in between’ (Ellingson and Ellis 2008).

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The following sections explore the emergent themes of resources, definitions of and between professional and amateur, the performer–educator nexus, community ownership and valuing of music and musicians, musician-performer attitudes to local scenes, meaning-making of ex-major city relocation, connectedness and contextual relevance to the broader music community, and sense of place in a smaller musical ecology.

Emergent Themes Resources It seems obvious, and quite logical, that smaller communities have fewer physical resources, broadly proportionate to their population. What is less obvious is that in a smaller community, opportunities arise for collaboration and sharing of resources that can be disproportionate to scale. In some cases – for instance, regional theatres or entertainment centres with capacities of 500–1000 – there can be a disproportionately high level of technical capability, and performer and audience experience, compared with major city venues with many times the capacity. This is often due to local government ownership or funding of such facilities. Run commercially, they frequently offer more affordable rates to local performers and industry-standard adequacy for touring groups. While touring acts can present as an imposition on a local scene, they can provide valuable stimulation through engagement of local support acts and technical crews, venue income support, live music promotion and so on. Non-metropolitan institutions in Australia, other than some government and independent schools, are also typically more scantily resourced than those of major cities. Not uncommon in regional communities, though, is a collaborative approach that maximizes collective resources and enables activity. In relation to human resourcing and smaller populations, much can be scaled down to make an event viable. There is a point, however, at which paucity of resources can invalidate a project or activity; this is a particular factor when planning events with minimum requirements for a particular number or type of performers or support staff. Human resourcing in a regional centre also includes audience members as a factor. Events that require ticket sales, which are or have proven historically unrealistic due to the sheer number of prospective supporters in a small town, are a serious liability to presenters and performers alike. Major cities and urban scenes are far less likely to have such definitive human resourcing challenges.

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Another human resource consideration in regional music scenes, which is further expanded in the next section of the chapter, is that professional performance activity in the bush often involves a broader range of skill levels. This is a characteristic of grass-roots, locally produced and resourced performance across the country. Having organized multiple events in regional music scenes, I can say with confidence that the supply of appropriate musicians is always a consideration. In non-metropolitan communities, the task of planning  – based on likelihood rather than confident knowledge of sufficient performers (of the appropriate type and skill level) for a convincing, commercially viable performance – is less forgiving than the equivalent in a major city scene. That dynamic brings into consideration aspects of performer identity, definitions and perceptions of professional and amateur status, connection to the broader musical scene and the performer–educator nexus, all of which are discussed below.

What Is Professional? The issue of what constitutes professional in the music industry can be a problematic and contestable one. Often the term is used to identify demonstrable performance skill rather than employment status, with the large proportion of freelance musicians in Australia (Bartleet et al. 2020) evidencing this reality. What is commonly accepted, however, is that a professional musician is someone who performs or creates music, substantially for payment, and has the demonstrated ability to render a performance (or piece of work) successfully and reliably with a high level of technical, sonic and emotionally communicative efficacy. This is a personal definition formulated from my experience in and with music scenes since my teenage years in the late 1970s, when I entered the world of paying gigs. The measure of what constitutes successful, reliable and high level is, of course, subjective and depends on local conditions and expectations. A broader range of technical and musical prowess can be considered adequate in a smaller community, with the definition between professional and amateur engagement less clearly defined than in larger, better resourced population centres. A linear trajectory from student through to professional musician, as my cohort experienced in the late 1970s and 1980s in Sydney, would conventionally include transitioning during adolescent years through some type of pro-am or partially paid, apprentice-­ type performance engagements, with this stage often spanning up to five years prior to achieving industry recognition as a professional. In the

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classical, and to varying degrees jazz and contemporary, scenes, this transition would often be accompanied by formal study and post-school qualifications. An important difference in this regard between urban and regional music environments, which I have seen experienced by many colleagues since my move to the bush, is that the professional/pro-am/community gig-differentiation in the city is not as relevant or apparent in regional Australia. An uncomfortable consequence of this less formal construct of career and recognition trajectory is a disparity in levels of both payment for musicians and community appreciation of the (professional) musician’s value as a representative of an industry, not simply a pastime. Fees for the most accomplished regional performer are typically and disproportionately lower (in comparison with other professions) than those in the city.

The Performer/Educator Nexus and Diversification A notable, if subtle, point of comparison between professional musician cohorts in metropolitan and non-metropolitan Australia settings is that performers, the musical role-models in the smaller community, frequently hold equal identities of practising musician and teacher. In regional communities, students intending to make music a career commonly articulate ambitions of being a music teacher  – in contrast with my metropolitan experience of a disproportionate ambition of equivalent city-based students to be professional performers. It took me a few years to understand that regional students’ role models, the specialist musicians in town, were principally known and identified as teachers; and those teachers, prominent and known in the community, were also performers. When I was growing up, my experience and perception of role models were of undeniably outstanding performers who also taught selectively, not teachers who also performed. Consistent with the dual identity described above and articulating with the previously discussed issue of human resourcing in smaller communities is the phenomenon of greater diversification in the application of a musician’s skills and the phenomenon of the ‘specialist generalist’, which is much less apparent in urban settings. Coming from a scene in which multi-instrumental practice rarely extended beyond doubling across related woodwind, brass or string instruments, or combining keyboard and vocals or vocals and guitar, it has become clear that to be a gigging musician in a non-metropolitan setting is to be more open to versatility – to embrace not only an educational function as part of one’s

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core business, but to be prepared to develop and share ancillary instrumental, vocal, technological and theoretical capabilities. This is in contrast to the more common city-scene convention, in which even within a portfolio career, a musician’s practice more commonly comprises plying one (or two) musical trades in which one is formally qualified and/or professionally proficient (Bartleet et al. 2020).

The Value of Music and Musicians When I relocated to Orange, which is home to a large cohort of ex-­ Sydneysiders, I was struck by how cohesive a community it was. As vital and prosperous as any non-metropolitan centre, there was an apparent, substantial appreciation of the arts and a clear pride in locally generated music performance. As the leader of the local specialist music education facility, I was given a responsibility to provide and contribute to performance activities beyond the purely educational. An already established culture of mixed amateur and professional musician groupings constituted the necessary resource for what would otherwise be the comparatively discrete realm of professionals in a metropolitan setting. For some time I framed this environment with the conventional, more formal major city sensibility of pro-am or semi-professional – by way of definition from professional. I realized over time that these terms and distinctions are impractical and likely meaningless in the regional town or city setting (again, due to uncertain human resources). An illustrative example of this  – more interesting as it unfolded contemporaneously with my gradual enculturation into non-metropolitan life – is that of a regional symphony orchestra founded in the mid-2000s. It was initially funded to operate as a professional ensemble, by which players understood they would be paid per rehearsal and performance session; however, it morphed over a decade or so to comprise an increased cohort of student and advanced recreational players, with industry-standard career players holding leadership positions only. That case study is of particular interest in that it gradually changed from professional to pro-am or semi-professional, from a specialist cohort to a community ensemble. While that change of status did nothing to degrade the local community’s sense of pride in and ownership of the organization  – indeed the ensemble often included adult community members of significant standing as professionals in non-musical fields, themselves identifying as supporters of the arts rather than arts professionals – nor did it encourage a greater valuing of music and musicians in line

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with other skilled professions. This consideration connects to the earlier discussion around definitions of and between amateur and professional, and the consequent implications for perceived status. The rural professional orchestra case serves as a neat example of the interconnected dynamics of limited resources, access to comparatively advanced performance activity by performers from a broader range of skill and experience, and a compromised sense of the value of the art form and its practitioners in the bush.

Going Bush, What Did It Mean and Am I Still Relevant? I went bush to take up a job. The purpose of that job was to overtly impact the local music scene. My experience of entering and being gradually accepted into that scene was one of proving my worth as the figurehead of an organization, then proving my worth as a musician and performer. The process of newcomer-proving-validity-and-value to the rural scene was and is complicated by a significant factor that does not exist in major city scenes: the majority of formally trained professional musicians practising in a regional centre are trained elsewhere (in a major city). This means that those who are active performers, participants in the scene, have made a conscious decision to relocate to the smaller scene, wherein they will have worked to establish their place among well-known local performers and other imports, prove their value and maintain their niche. In some cases, individuals have grown up in the town, left to achieve qualification and training and then returned home to the country. This means that the establishment of hierarchy is more complicated and can be structurally restrictive. While it may be more inclusive of technical and artistic capabilities, the rural scene is typically one cohesive (cross-genre) cohort where all the players are visible. In my case, the physical relocation from city to bush meant a comfortable half-day’s car trip distance from Sydney, so no real sense of remoteness. As Orange and Bathurst are generally considered attractive, easily accessible weekend (or even day trip) locations, as well as being established touring circuit locations for city-based performers, staying connected and maintaining networks with the broader state and national scenes is possible. Participants in regional music scenes with lesser access to, and situated further from, major cities have fewer opportunities for maintaining such

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connections and sustaining a sense of industry relevance outside their discrete community, a challenge that is apparent with each of my visits to, and in regular conversations with colleagues from across, the regions. As a relocated, willingly transplanted musician, I am highly aware of the journey involved in personal meaning-making of such a relocation. There is definitely a process of re-evaluation and paradigm reset that takes place upon a move to the smaller and less industry-esteemed location that a regional community in Australia typically presents. Twenty years of immersion in regional scenes has shown me that such a reset is necessary among musicians for whom the change is successful in the long term. For me, and for many colleagues I have observed over the years, finding personal validity and place in such a community has involved appreciating and owning one’s own intentions, expectations, capabilities and limitations.

Sense of Place and Identity in the Bush For me, sense of place rests with my role in society. My role as a regionally based musician, educator and advocate involves making, curating, training and promoting music in the community  – across all possible levels and demographics. In several ways, the nature of my professional relocation provided me with a privileged position in comparison to others. My day job is typically unique in a regional centre, presenting as both professional and community musician – leading, training, and employing musicians for a range of activities in and for the community. My role allows me to operate across the community, and in partnership with other non-metropolitan communities, without the limitations of representing one specific player, such as a school, music club or association, individual community ensemble, music theatre company or commercial business. Identity and place, or place-identity (Proshansky 1978), intertwine to create meaning as one psycho-social condition: ‘a complex pattern of conscious and unconscious ideas, feelings, values, goals, preferences, skills, and behavioural tendencies relevant to a specific environment’ (Proshansky 1978: 147). In her critical comparison of identity theories, Hauge (2007) breaks the concept down further to the constituent components that include memory as an aggregation of personal experiences and impacts. It is the development and assembly of memories, thoughts, values and settings, and the role-based relationships among the different settings, that after 20 years has set my sense of place and provided my clear sense of identity. I can honestly say

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that I did not establish such a coherent sense of place and identity while living and working as part of the urban scene.

Concluding Thoughts, Limitations and Future Directions As a professional participant observer in a rural musical ecology, with multiple roles of performer, administrator, curator, educator and academic, I have been uniquely privileged to develop an understanding of the place and function of music and musicking outside the major city setting. Reflecting on my own professional transition, and my ongoing interaction with colleagues and musical acquaintances with a similar trajectory, I offer the following responses to the three guiding questions raised in the introduction. First, to be a gigging musician in a non-metropolitan setting is to be open to the need for versatility, to embrace an educational function as part of one’s core operational activity – not merely as an adjunct or sideline – and to be open to a broad categorization of ‘professional’ gigs, with a broader range of acceptable fees. Versatility in this context includes embracing more of a generalist approach, being comfortable with developing and sharing ancillary musical skills in which one may not be as qualified or proficient as one’s main instrument or skill area. Becoming comfortable with such versatility leads to a practical re-evaluation of the place and function of a professional, gigging musician, and allows one to engage in and be identifiable by the community as a trusted contributor to its musical, social and cultural wellbeing. My experience has been that such a re-evaluation results in a successful morphing of one’s own sense of validity (question 2), given a mindset of commitment to the relocation and acceptance of the new setting, attendant opportunities, and community expectations. By moving from ‘city to bush’, I have become a more versatile musician, more engaged in community and more connected to a greater and more diverse range and number of communities. The impact of the shift on my career, and my standing in the industry (question 3) has been entirely positive, and it is clear from my 20 years of professional involvement with, and observation of, professional musicians relocating that while opportunities for fulfilling musicking in the bush may not have the same level of industry or remunerative recognition, they can be as

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rewarding as those in a major city, and are likely to be more integrated and integrating with the broader community. The increase in connective technology over the last 20  years has enhanced my capacity to continue to develop national and international relationships from my regional base while increasing my status locally. The attendant ability to grow programs and nurture the local activity means that the shift has resulted in an extension of the scene in which I situate, encompassing and in fact connecting the rural with the bush. The principal limitation of this study is a lack of formal comparative data outlining similar experiences and reflections. I have attempted to minimize the vulnerability of this limitation by highlighting the individualistic lens and nature of the autoethnography while offering, within that personal lens, the benefit of long and thorough observation of the experiences of colleagues in similar positions across non-metropolitan New South Wales and beyond. Having put forward my perspective, I look forward to collaborating on more and broader ethnographic research into the experiences, conditions and impacts of long-term relocation of professional musicians from city to the bush. I have deliberately not considered the impacts of COVID-19 as part of this study. The effects of the pandemic and consequent restrictions on face-to-face activity in rural and regional communities will be investigated and discussed in future studies.

Note 1. Discrete city populations of Bathurst and Orange are closer to 0.7 and 0.8 per cent, but their direct service area populations, including villages and towns within their postcodes, better reflect the size of cohesive community akin to the connective structure of the Greater Sydney population centre.

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Wall, S. 2006. An autoethnography on learning about autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (2), Article 9. http://www. ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_2/html/wall.htm. Accessed 20 Mar 2021. ———. 2008. Easier said than done: Writing an autoethnography. International Journal of Qualitative Methods 7. https://doi. org/10.1177/160940690800700103.

PART II

Technology and Distribution

CHAPTER 4

Sounds and Peripheral Places: Trajectory and Portrait of the Rock Scene in Tâmega (Portugal) Over the Last Decade Paula Guerra, Tânia Moreira, and Sofia Sousa

Disturbing the Scene Portuguese society is no longer defined by a division between the urban and the rural (Lobato and Weck 2014). The lines separating the two contexts have become diluted, giving rise to peri-urban areas such as Tâmega – an amalgam of the intensive industrialization of the 1980s and the post-modern city – since the concept of periphery no longer fits the features of areas surrounding city centres. The work of Domingues (1985) presents other related concepts, such as territorial ‘pulverization’ or ‘deconcentration’; for other authors, such as Allen (2003), these peri-­ urban areas can be seen as a halfway point in the sense that they have shed their rural attributes but have not yet acquired enough urban characteristics to be considered fully fledged cities. Duràn (2006) states that peri-­ urban areas are a physical expansion of the city, but also of the cultural and

P. Guerra (*) • T. Moreira • S. Sousa University of Porto, Porto, Portugal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_4

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socioeconomic patterns inherent to the urban phenomenon. Based on this, a discussion of economic opportunities and ease of access to equipment and infrastructure by artists and audiences in such peri-urban places is important (Gibson 2002). This is due to the difference in investment when compared with urban centres, causing online scenes to take on a leading role, especially when it comes to the continued existence of music scenes in these places. This symbolic polarization strongly impacts music production and consumption (Seman and Virani 2016), and this is all the more evident in Tâmega, since it is one of Europe’s youngest regions and part of a country with marked developmental asymmetries at an economic, urban and social level. This chapter therefore reflects on rural and peri-­ urban music scenes – focusing mostly on rock – with the Tâmega region of Portugal as a backdrop. According to Guerra et al. (2018), over the past few years the Portuguese music sector has undergone a profound reconfiguration process due to the effects of digital culture. As a consequence, its interaction with physical media has been transformed, enabling digital platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Bandcamp and Spotify to become ‘new players’ on the scene, as well as creating new contact networks between artists, audiences and venues (Leyshon et al. 2016; Webb 2017). Through them, ‘provincial’ rock has attained some visibility in a country compressed by an incipient music industry concentrated in its two main metropolitan areas, Lisbon and Porto (Guerra 2010). To account for these transformations, some concepts are evidenced as key supporting pillars of our approach. These are the concept of the music scene, as well as those of local, translocal and virtual scenes (Bennett and Peterson 2004). These theoretical devices are particularly useful for explaining and understanding the crucial nature of regional, peripheral and peri-urban scenes. We have undertaken this task in the Tâmega region of Portugal, starting in 2015, through an in-depth ethnographic approach, including 40 interviews with venue managers and promoters, and a systematic follow-up of the pop rock programming agenda on social networks (mainly Facebook and Instagram). We chose to study this particular regional context because, at a national level, Tâmega possesses a peripheralized status that was compounded by the 2008 financial crisis. As in other artistic sectors, the largest (quantitatively and qualitatively) dynamics of creation/production, intermediation and consumption of rock have a central, coastal and urban distribution in Portugal (Guerra 2016, 2017). Our research aims to outline and characterize the vitality of the rock scene in Tâmega despite its underprivileged status, based on an intense network

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of venues (and their events programming). Through a very unusual and completely informal partnership and collaboration agenda, these venues have been resisting a scenario of utter dependence on Porto – a large and nearby metropolitan area. To do this, the network of Tâmega venues has resorted to a multiplicity of strategies, mainly through a concentrated promotion effort on social media with the ultimate goal of introducing and bolstering the scene. Data processing followed the qualitative and quantitative logic of the data and was accompanied by the analysis of social network content. It was thus possible to analyse and interpret a rock scene of a local, virtual and affective nature, bound by venues, actors, institutions and particular channels, which does not compete with more central Portuguese music scenes but has been the driving force behind the musical (re)affirmation of Tâmega.

Methodological Approach Since the goal that guides this chapter’s structure is exploring the perception of social media and the impact of new digital worlds on maintaining a healthy pop rock scene in Tâmega, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to define our methodological approach. We proceeded with an extensive document search and analysis that, beyond the usual and necessary work of theoretically and empirically contextualizing our study subject, also encompassed creating an overview of Tâmega’s rock music creation, production and promotion. We built a web survey based on publicly available information (blogs, forums, Instagram, Facebook, Bandcamp and Spotify). Although basing this research on online data had its advantages – namely, free access to all available information, including some data that most interviewees or survey responders would not have been able to provide – it is also important to mention its drawbacks: there were limitations when it came to accessing older information, since massive-scale internet use is relatively recent in Portugal. The scene’s degree of obscurity among locals is also considerable since, as will become evident, Tâmega’s music dynamics do not reach professionalization levels that could make it more prominent. Along with the document search, we conducted 40 semi-structured interviews1 between 2013 and 2019, a flagship technique of qualitative analysis used in our research to deepen our understanding of Tâmega’s rock scene’s diachronic and synchronic evolution, as well as interviewees’ experiences of that scene. We made use of the snowball sampling

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technique, and interviewees were chosen based on two key factors: their role and level of importance in the scene; and/or their availability or ease of contact. Social media played a central role in this process. Besides native or local Tâmega residents, we also approached key players in other regions to obtain a comparative matrix that would allow us to better place Tâmega in the wider national music context.

Sound Check in the Countryside: Regional and Rural Music Scenes Tâmega seems to have small groups of people and venues that sustain the rock scene (Moreira 2015). Some local initiatives grow roots over the years, while others disappear almost instantaneously – something that is a frequent feature of music scenes. Tâmega’s regional rock identity (Cramer and Hallet 2010) is both independent and interdependent: interdependent because there is a certain degree of exchange between Tâmega’s different areas, but also independent of each of its municipalities in several levels of the music scene. It could be said that Tâmega’s rock music scene is a patchwork of several nano-scenes  – some of which are mostly self-­ sustainable, and others that need some external support. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the main driving forces of this rock scene appear to have been the municipalities of Paredes, Penafiel and even Castelo de Paiva. With the advent of the new millennium, other municipalities began to emerge: Marco de Canaveses and Paços de Ferreira. In effect, regional and rural music scenes (Bennett et  al. 2020) are defined as non-urban and sometimes considered uncultured and creatively stagnant because of their geographic distance from major urban centres. As a result, the survival of Tâmega’s rock scene has been arduous, mainly due to the lack of investment – concentrated in major cities – for which digital media have proven something of a solution. Statistically speaking, and according to the 2011 Census (INE 2012), the Tâmega region had around 5.2 per cent of the total Portuguese population (550,516 inhabitants), meaning it was the fourth most populous region of the country. It also featured one of the largest proportions of young people relative to the total population in Portugal, with around 35 per cent of its people aged between 16 and 40  years.2 This region’s youthfulness enables a certain degree of confidence in affirming the existence of active dynamics of

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production and consumption of music and culture surrounding youth culture (Pilkington and Johnson 2003), particularly rock music. This chapter’s authors have maintained strong ties with the Tâmega region, making it possible to observe, over the years, the burgeoning ‘night out’ culture among its younger people. Simultaneously, there has also been an increase in the number of young people becoming music-­ makers (Bennett 2001), especially in the field of rock music, along with a marked musical development around small events in venues such as cafés or bars that otherwise would remain under-appreciated. Because of this increase in the number of individuals and venues dedicated to rock, and the perception of creative evolution (original music, album releases) (Leyshon et al. 2016) of up-and-coming bands, we contend that Tâmega possesses rock dynamics that can be considered distinct from those of other scenes, even if they sometimes converge. This can be seen both in the region’s characteristic informal dynamics and in others of a professional nature that seem to prosper alongside those less formal relationships. Furthermore, since this region is under-developed in both an economic and a cultural sense, we suggest that these musicians hope to find in music a gateway to a different quality of life. Lastly, we consider that, in the Tâmega region, the global phenomenon of the digitalization and virtualization of music has been felt perhaps more than in any other Portuguese context, even though we maintain that those processes do not drown out the ‘local’ power in the evolution of Tâmega’s pop rock.

Big Dreams Without Traditional Stages When it comes to rock venues, most of our interviewees indicated a decline in their numbers in Tâmega. In fact, in the time since Moreira (2015) reached the same conclusion, the situation has deteriorated, in large part due to the pandemic, the effects of which continue to be felt, substantially impacting venue viability and survival (Guerra et al. 2021). Some venues, such as the already shut-down Ribeira Bar in Paredes and Castelo de Paiva’s Sindicato, have existed for several years and played significant roles in the transition into the twenty-first century; currently, according to our October 2020 to April 2021 ‘net-graphy’, Paços de Ferreira’s Canecas Bar, Marco de Canaveses’ Wood Rock and Roque Bar in Lordelo stand out as core venues. From this brief characterization of some of Tâmega’s more emblematic venues, we must stress the existence of two kinds of movement within this

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rock scene: on the one hand, there is a sub-scene that aspires to a professional music career, anchored in a certain degree of formality; on the other, a faction defined by its informal nature. These movements were visible throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, despite a tendency towards convergence. Interviewees mention the existence of bars exclusively dedicated to rock music, featuring regular live acts, or ‘big festivals’ recognized by Tâmega’s rock milieu, along with underground movements backed by rock fanatics in their private lives. Currently, there is a kind of precarization of live venues, since artists who played for free in the past in these venues now play for free in semi-public spaces of rock consumption. However, the network of venues exclusively dedicated to rock music was upset by the arrival of live acts in cafés and other venues, whose purpose is not to enhance rock music, but other musical genres as well. So while the number of rock venues may have diminished, there has certainly been an increase in performing opportunities: [When I was younger] sometimes, when I wanted to go out, I’d go to Guimarães. I went every Saturday because it very limited here. There was only one place, you’d get sick of it, too, after a while. There aren’t any [events] here. It all ended. (Luís, 38, bar owner and manager, Marco de Canaveses)

The interviews tell us that Tâmega’s rock scene has a physical dimension, which adds to the scene’s regularity and collectivization – key aspects in terms of understanding its inner workings. Despite this, the network’s low density is a determinant in, as well as being conditioned by, the region’s structure of social and economic development. Thus, there is a systematic struggle when organizing rock events in local venues such as bars such as JAMROCK (Marco de Canaveses), Croka’s Rock (Castelo de Paiva) and Formula Rock (Lousada). Despite the pre-pandemic recurrence of rock events, there has been an evident lack of support by local government in licensing events, providing financial support or endorsing initiatives aimed at promoting rock music (Guerra 2018). Simultaneously, the demand for these events by local Tâmega residents is weak, fusing with a preconceived notion that values major city centres as the nexus of cultural and artistic production and consumption. The metropolitan centre is socially lauded and heavily emphasized in the media to the detriment of the regional, rural or local. The issues of crises and post-crisis complications (Silva et al.

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2017) that have haunted the country since 2008 have also been pointed out as a major limitation: We’re lacking support and local interest. People aren’t really interested because they think it’s not profitable, that they won’t make any money from this, that hosting a rock band won’t generate any money, they don’t care. [We’re] lacking financial support for the bands, for the venues, for everything you need to throw a festival. (Manuel, 29, gas station attendant, amateur musician, Penafiel)

From our interviews, we can look at the issue from the artists’ point of view: it is vital to understand how rock venues are key to their survival and, of course, how the pandemic reinforced the importance of social media. Despite all the hardship endured, there are always bands that count on the support of legions of fans – mostly friends – who promote activities and concerts. In fact, motivation is high among the younger residents of Tâmega, making them one of the main driving forces of the rock scene, giving it visibility, regularity and collectivization. It is important to note the relevance of bars dedicated to rock, namely Wood Rock and Associação Compaços in Paços de Ferreira, or music schools and other rehearsal-­ ready venues that exist throughout Tâmega as places that influence local young people’s tastes and act as the main promoters of youth meetings and idea exchange: Castelo de Paiva is like a desert. There’re underground bars, but that’s it. Now, another interesting thing about Castelo de Paiva is that it has ten thousand people, and we have plenty of bands and projects with albums put out by recording companies. We’re one of the few towns that have a Music Academy – and every kid, like 80 per cent of kids go into the academy when they turn five. (Tiago, 31, multimedia designer, amateur musician, Castelo de Paiva)

In our ‘net-graphy’, we were able to identify 160 bands native to the Tâmega region, mostly formed between 2005 and 2013. Rock (17 bands), heavy metal (seven bands), alternative rock (five bands) and pop rock (four bands) are the most prevalent genres, and we highlight bands such as #41, Affirmation, Carnival Tales, Hell Sweet Hell, Out Run, Colosso or Daily Routine, among others. Figure 4.1 synthesizes information relating to bands and their municipalities of origin.

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Fig. 4.1  Number of bands per municipalities in 2020. (Source: The authors)

These are mainly amateur bands, the majority being ‘garage bands’ with no formal music training. In fact, very few young people have had access to music academies, meaning a do-it-yourself (DIY) praxis is present. Another hurdle is the lack of music schools dedicated to rock music and similar music genres; rather, they focus on forming amateur symphonic orchestras, something quite common in peri-urban areas (Bennett et al. 2020). This makes digital platforms such as YouTube an important aspect of these young people’s artistic and musical training, bolstering DIY and do-it-together (DIT) practices, since it is through this amalgam that some bands are formed. One of the main traits of Tâmega’s rock scene is the fact that it is guided by informality, almost as if it were a family network. Many band members are long-time friends who studied together, or simply shared musical tastes, eventually forming a band. Although some bands have a long connection with the digital universe (Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp or their own website), they may not be active there or may not know how to take advantage of the digital universe; on the other hand, bands such as Carnival Tales found in social media – especially Facebook – a means of asserting themselves within Tâmega’s rock scene.

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Based on these examples, we can infer that social media have played an important role in the continued survival of rural/peri-urban rock bands, as well as in their advertising and booking in the Tâmega region. Following Bosman and Dolley (2019), social media and other digital platforms have become a kind of third space for these young artists, in the sense that they create and foster community bonds, as they are neutral, open places that act as levellers and bring together residents of different ethnicities, ages, genders, socioeconomic statuses, education levels and interests, all while playing an important role in improving social interactions in neighbourhoods. There is a markedly weak connection between these artists and different cities since, as stated by interviewees, the region’s bands largely comprise hobby musicians, even though digital platforms have ramped up the intensity of this hobby. One curious aspect of these bands’ digital platform use is that most of them do not have a YouTube channel, the most obvious means of disseminating musical work. Facebook is the predominant social network, with concerts and new releases announced there, as well as the sharing of photographs and comments between friends, corroborating the affective nature of Tâmega’s rock scene and its strong connection to the digital sphere. It has only been since 2017 that some bands have created Instagram accounts. Focusing only on Facebook and the affective ties and relationships it facilitates, after analysing the bands’ accounts it becomes clear that, although most of the time using Facebook proves an advantage for the bands (since it offers an easy way to attract an audience to their gigs), it can give rise to rivalries between groups that cannot be ascribed to the inter-municipality animosities often mentioned by interviewees. The increased number of bands in this area, along with the dearth of concert opportunities caused by Tâmega’s small number of venues, has caused competition to increase, and with it the likelihood of clashes between bands. Even this is a symptom of just how domestic this scene is. It features a significant affective relational density exacerbated by digital networks, which is crucial to fostering the creation of social capital (Bourdieu 1998) and increasing the effectiveness of reputations: since actors know and interact with each other, trust, cooperation and informal reciprocity are bolstered (Crossley 2008). In fact, as one interviewee remarked, ‘the network is restricted to people who already know us or people who would be there anyway, whether there was a concert or not’ (Luís, 21, student, amateur musician, Cabeceiras de Basto). Or, as another interviewee observed:

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We had something very family-like. For example, if we played in a bar, our friends and family would show up. Then, when we started focusing on social networks as well, like Facebook, for example, we realized it was a way of reaching more people. (José, 27, worker, amateur musician, Amarante)

Once again for financial reasons, and also because of the omnivorous nature of audiences’ music tastes (Guerra 2016), this region has witnessed the rise of a number of disc jockeys (DJs), often belonging to these bands, who try to make up for the lack of event supply that could better sustain the existing number of bands. However, the small number of venues willing to host these DJs  – many of them often not truly spaces of music consumption while for others rock is not their preferred genre – means they do not have many chances to succeed either. We can posit that the scene favours live performances, since live performance is one of these artists’ greatest distinctive assets (Auslander 2008). Nevertheless, the many struggles faced by artists are still coloured by prejudice from the general population. The old prejudices that associate rock artists with drugs, alcohol and delinquency still exist, along with a lack of recognition of the work of these musicians – even though sometimes they prefer obscurity. Rock music is judged as a mere hobby, a perception that is enhanced by the casualness of the social relationships that permeate the digital networks, because Portugal is still ‘a country where people see’ music as a ‘whim’. It is a place where the artists ‘have to do everything’, meaning that the artists live in ‘obscurity’ in comparison with the urban centres where artist have better opportunities to perform live and gain exposure. These observations illustrate the need for a certain subset of conditions necessary for belonging to this sub-scene, even if they are mixed with the requirement of performing other paid tasks aimed at daily sustenance and securing a future. There is an attempt at mercantilization that is, in practice, denied by the reality of the scene (Guerra 2010: 456). Thus, the scene becomes an almost tribal network guided by an irregular structure that, even when it confers some general advantage to all participants, distributes it unevenly, creating possible conflicts between personal satisfaction and community acceptance, or between family acceptance and economic compensation (Crossley 2008). This community of interests and belonging, to echo Maffesoli’s (1998) conceptualizations, points to a very specific lifestyle among rock musicians. These musicians are not afraid of rolling up their sleeves and, as part of the authentic DIY movement, doing all the work pertaining to their music, from the creation and

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recording of originals to the promoting of the band – out of necessity, if nothing else, since there is no money to pay recording companies to do it for them. For this, the emergence of new digital media freely available online has brought these bands an even greater autonomy and a certain professionalizing touch.

Conclusion This analysis of the Tâmega region’s rock scene shows an evolution in the means of recording and development of music, trending towards the dematerialization – or ‘internetization’ – of music. In the past, pirated cassettes or CDs brought young people together and enlivened their conversations. The rise of platforms such as YouTube, Spotify and Soundcloud has caused a dematerialization of the music scene in this region. Furthermore, the use of social media and other digital platforms is now seen as a way to counter the uncertainty and precariousness of this scene’s artists (Bosman and Dolley 2019). In Tâmega, the digitalization of music and consumption (Seman and Virani 2016) is key to the maintenance of a rock scene. Facing a set of significant changes, music has necessitated revisions in the processes of production, intermediation and consumption of music. Tâmega has faced similar transformations, influencing the design and contours of the established rock music scene. Some key changes relate to the greatly facilitated access to music, the increase in the number of bands, the fragmentation and eclecticism of musical interests, the capillarity of dissemination and critique means and the multiplicity of supported devices. However, despite these somewhat positive impacts, artistic production and creation continue not to be seen as sources of income capable of guaranteeing a proper way of life; rather, they are regarded as means of sociability and leisure, and as a pastime (Webb 2017). In fact, these were described by our interviewees as something ‘for youngsters’, and it is these youngsters who – due to their connection with the digital sphere – keep Tâmega’s rock scene alive, often without any financial support, making use of a DIY logic (Guerra 2017) and intra-family and inter-group relations. Music scenes bring together musicians, promoters and fans who share a common interest in a particular musical genre, and they can take on local, translocal and virtual contours (Bennett and Peterson 2004; Crane 1992). If we consider the evolution of the number of virtual platforms frequented and used by Tâmega bands, there is a clear trajectory of

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constant and significant evolution from the early 2000s onwards, making Tâmega’s local scene one with an extensive virtual tradition. Artists’ expansion into the digital universe has contributed towards greater autonomy, enabling them not only to make their music available free of charge, but also avoiding any of the costs of advertising associated with record companies. This may explain the relative decline in the number of record releases despite the increasing number of bands, but also to reach wider audiences. In that sense, even if a ‘like’ does not necessarily translate into concert audiences, it maintains the importance of communication between friends and family in the dissemination of existing events. Acknowledgement  This chapter owes much to the work of Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson who, through their inspiring book Music Scenes, have allowed us a permanent investigation of music scenes since 2008. We are also thankful for Susan Jarvis’s precious editing and revising of the text. This publication was supported by FCT  – Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of UIDB/00727/2020.

Notes 1. Names of interviewees have been changed, since both the region and the music scene itself are small-scale, making everyone easily identifiable. As such, we opted to preserve interviewees’ privacy and anonymity. 2. Despite being one of the Portuguese regions with the largest population and also having the youngest population, it should be noted that according to the 2011 Census data, the levels of education are relatively low when compared with other regions such as Greater Porto, with the majority of young people only having completed basic education. Furthermore, it is also notable that, also according to 2011 Census data, young people aged between 15 and 34 years had unemployment rates above 20 per cent, which is indicative of the standard of the living in the region.

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CHAPTER 5

Indian Electronic Dance Music Festivals as Spaces of Play in Regional Settings: Understanding Situated and Digital Electronic Dance Music Performances Devpriya Chakravarty

The growing popularity of electronic dance music (EDM) in India is evident from its now annual commercialized EDM festivals, including the Enchanted Valley Carnival (EVC), Sunburn, VH1 Supersonic, Magnetic Fields and Submerge, attracting a combined audience of around 200,000 (Lobo 2015). These popular, multi-day festivals claim non-urban spaces for the staging of ritualized, ephemeral gatherings of young Indian EDM fans from urban settings. The arguments presented in this chapter are focused on two major themes: first, how the key characteristics of the regional EDM scene in India, operating through the commercialized festivals, aid in shaping electronic dance music culture (EDMC) participation, performance and consumption; and second, how the paradigmatic shift in the urban Indian youth’s choice of party music has not taken place

D. Chakravarty (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_5

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in a technological vacuum. Given how the regional fest-scapes are transient in nature, digital platforms play a significant role in aiding the EDMC members to remain connected between liminal festival gatherings. In this chapter, I argue that the commercial popular music scene in India has been marked by three crucial ruptures: first, the transition of the national broadcasting media from state control to an open market system in the 1990s, which introduced urban Indian youth to global pop-culture and music; second, the inauguration of the country’s biggest EDM festival (Sunburn) in 2007; and third, the launch of the state-driven Digital India initiative in 2015. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Indian EDMC members along with ethnographic fieldwork visits to Indian EDM festivals from 2016 to 2018, this chapter aims to explore the formation of affective communicative ecologies for EDMC members. Digital technologies not only help in disseminating information about EDM events, but also allow for a means of collective cohesion that transcends temporary situated EDMC gatherings. Through this project, I explore how a global popular music culture is rearticulated in localized regional spaces of performance while relying on digital technologies to reify the music-based (trans)local youth belongingness within the cultural context of contemporary India.

Regional Sites as Festal Performative Spaces Understanding the existing links between sounds and sites in the formation of a popular music scene helps to unpack how such scenes integrate the socio-spatial qualities of the physical environment (Connell and Gibson 2002). The two Indian EDM festivals being discussed in this chapter, Enchanted Valley Carnival (EVC) and Sunburn, can be similarly contextualized in respect of the significance of their regional sites of operation. The Sunburn brand is owned by Percept Limited. Given its increasing popularity among attendees, Percept has over the years expanded the brand to offer more EDM-based experiences to its patrons, such as Sunburn Arena (a series of one-day events in major Indian cities), Sunburn Campus (college campus events) and Sunburn Select, which offers dance club events in select metropolitan Indian cities. Sunburn Digital, the online team of Sunburn, also launched various online events like Sunburn@ Home and Sunburn Home Festival during the COVID-19 pandemic when the Indian Government suspended outdoor live music festivals as part of the state-initiated health and safety protocols. The annual Sunburn

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Festival, however, continues to be the flagship event. Since its commencement in 2007, it has been based at Vagator Beach in Goa. In 2016 and 2017, however, there was a temporary shift of the Sunburn Festival to a hilltop location in Kesnand village in regional Maharashtra, located 171 kilometres from Mumbai and 50 kilometres from Pune city. EVC, inaugurated in 2013 and owned by Twisted Entertainment, is held on a barren hilltop, dubbed by the organizers as ‘Enchanted Valley’, which lies adjacent to the commercialized township of Aambey Valley, 100 kilometres from Mumbai. The Enchanted Valley comes alive exclusively for the duration of the annual EVC festival. For the three to four days in the year during which the EVC festival takes place, a ritual transformation of the site occurs, transforming it into a secluded camp site with tents, outdoor music stages, food and beverage stalls, temporary sponsored merchandise stores and outdoor activity areas. Sunburn’s usual site, Vagator, the northmost beach of Goa, has become far more easily accessible over the years. Much like the Enchanted Valley, Vagator also undergoes an annual transformation with temporary local shops and stalls coming into existence for the duration of the Sunburn festival. Sunburn’s temporary site in Kesnand village, on a hilltop, was much harder to reach from both Pune and Mumbai since it is a remote village with little to no mobile network, and few cab services and bus routes. In order to reach any of these venues, the optimum mode of travel would be one’s own car or a hired vehicle. Since these festival sites are located on the outskirts of major towns and cities, if any attendee does not have ready access to a private vehicle, public transportation would not only cost more money and necessitate a longer journey but could also make the festival reasonably inaccessible given the dearth of reliable public transport services beyond a certain distance from urban areas. The features of these festival sites aid in facilitating an escape from everyday urban life. This is achieved by the organizers by allowing site artefacts such as camping, outdoor activity areas and fusion food kiosks to amplify the ambient regional features of the venue and reinstate the idea of escaping everyday urban life. Most of my respondents are corporate employees and they live in densely populated urban metropolitan Indian cities. For these individuals, everyday life entails coping with heavy city traffic during their Monday to Friday job routine, while their weekends are planned around their domestic chores. For them, urban life has become a symbol of adult responsibilities, whereas festival getaways become

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vehicles facilitating a temporary escape. For the attendees, this aspect of the EDM festivals is of major significance: Earlier, people from Mumbai would go to Lonavla, Khandala … you know these are the local hill stations, outside the city. Then we started to go to the clubs to dance in the city. That’s the Mumbai nightlife. Here, at EVC, you get to be near the hills, away from the city and you get to dance to good music. It is simply the best deal! (Henil) I have been told how Vagator was the neglected beach [of Goa]. Even though it is not that far away from Calangute or Bagha, Vagator just was remote. Empty also. Ever since Sunburn started happening there, look how it changed! Sunburn made Vagator what it is today. (Trisha) You get the nightlife feels minus city things like traffic, cars honking. Why would you not like to take the trouble of making the journey to these locations? (Ashray)

Cultural frictions occur when the local cultural expressions interact with deeply globalized sites of commercialized EDM festivals. The resultant tensions become apparent through the visual markers present in the design elements of these festival sites. This also serves as a comment on the translocal qualities of these contemporary music-based youth cultures. While EVC and Sunburn emulate certain tropes, like the greenfield carnivalesque aesthetics (Anderton 2007, 2011), borrowing heavily from commercial global EDM festivals, the space simultaneously maintains purposeful linkages with select regional and local cultural expressions. The associations of regionality in these festivals are anchored by the presence of Bollywood music, local artists, cricket and local regional cuisine at camp sites. The EVC campground features a cricket net (Fig. 5.1) along with outdoor activities such trampolining and bungee jumping. Given that cricket cannot necessarily be grouped with the other options of available outdoor activities, its presence is an homage to the massive popularity of the sport in India (Appadurai 1995; Majumdar 2008). Cricket and Bollywood continue to act as significant social capital across the contemporary Indian urban and regional populace (Dasgupta et al. 2012), with more than half of televised cricket viewership comprising regional and rural audiences (BARC India 2016). Sunburn achieved a similar sociocultural linkage through the design of its main stage in 2017 via a huge structural depiction of Nataraja, a manifestation of the Hindu deity Shiva as the

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Fig. 5.1  Cricket net at EVC campsite

divine dancer (Fig. 5.2). The larger-than-life idol of the god of dance on the main stage of a dance music festival acted as an astute metaphor while tying in well with the Sunburn Festival’s own self-prescribed brand motto of ‘Live, Love, Dance’.

Situated Experiences of Festival Bodies For the purpose of this study, the definition of youth, contextualized within the Indian milieu, is borrowed from the state-endorsed definition – that is, individuals who fall into the 15–34 years age group (Government of India 2019). From here, however, a specific subset of youth is focused

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Fig. 5.2  The Nataraja-inspired Sunburn main stage

specifically on those who are directly associated with Indian EDMC. These are individuals from the country’s English-educated, globalized, socioeconomically privileged urban gentry. To understand their form of Indian youth culture and their choice of popular music, it is necessary to note that they belong to the generation that was born during or after the 1991 Indian economic liberalization. There was a subsequent rise of commercialized and mediatized youth culture post 1991, as the nation underwent a socioeconomic flux (Ganguly-Scrase 2009). This came about due to the adoption of the state’s new economic policy following a liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG) model of growth (Jain 2016). Under the new economic policy, the broadcasting industry transcended its previous state ownership and was subjected to an open market system (Dasgupta et al. 2012). This meant that until 1991 there was only one television channel available in India: Doordarshan, the public service broadcaster. The liberalization movement allowed the entry of private broadcasting under its new economic policies. With the advent of satellite television channels and a shift from the state-driven broadcasting service, Indian youth were exposed to global media. Channels like MTV and Channel [V] became important mediums of popular music consumption for urban youth (Juluri 2002, 2003). The underlying reason for this phenomenon being more localized to urban middle-class audiences was the

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inequal distribution of affordances along the urban–rural divide. Resources ranging from television sets, electricity and satellite dishes to knowledge of the English language were more easily accessible to those residing in the urban centres of India. In addition to these resources, the urban middle class also had more leisure time, allowing them to seek out entertainment-­ based television content. This led advertisers, producers and content creators to cater to urban middle-class lifestyles, preferences and choices. The resultant mainstream media of the early satellite television era in India began to concentrate on catering to the urban gentry of the Indian polity while excluding those who fell outside this specific socioeconomic class identity (Singhal et al. 1998). The late-modern urban Indian youth who coopted the cultural flux of globalization (Juluri 2002, 2003) were also subjected to the complicated and perpetually evolving nexus of local and global cultures. This resulted in the formation of bicultural identities among India’s urban educated youth. A main characteristic of this hybridity is the continual cultural negotiations between traditional and cosmopolitan social performances (Favero 2005; Saldanha 2002). Individuals who make up the membership of the Indian EDMC belong to the same social cohort that has been greatly impacted by the recent forces of liberalization, urbanization, globalization and digitization in the country. A significant facet of Indian EDM youth’s bicultural identity tendencies is the prevalence of Bollywood-­ influenced music at EDM festivals. This shows how commercial Indian EDM festival sites explore cultural artefacts bearing social capital for establishing localized and regional linkages. Bollywood and Bolly-EDM have become the prima facie construct for establishing a common link between the global popular culture inculcated at these festivals and the larger sociocultural ethos. In EVC, for instance, there are five outdoor stages, each named after different elements: cosmos, terra, pyro, aero and akva [aqua]. Each stage is assigned a genre of music and the performances are coordinated accordingly. The stage dedicated to Bollywood live performance is dubbed terra, a synonym for earth. This choice of name for the Bollywood stage reinforces the cultural identity and regional roots of the participants. Even when the Bollywood artists invited exhibit little or no connection with the other genres playing at the other stages, the larger cultural capital at play still proves effective:

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Why call the Bollywood stage terra? Terra is earth and earth is home. Bollywood is closer to our home culture. I am sure that is the logic of that name. (Ashwini) It has to be a clever pun of home and India and our culture. (Jatin) There must be Bollywood artists at such festivals. It is happening in India. EDM also became this mainstream only when Bollywood started using it (Karan)

The observations made by the above noted respondents display how the attendees at these festivals feel about the fusion with which they are presented at these events. Adoption by the mainstream hegemonic mass culture still plays a vital role in deciding what becomes an alternative popular music culture scene in India. Apart from Bollywood music in EVC, Sunburn also features local Indian EDM artists who have gained prominence in the recent past with their unique style of fusing EDM with regional and folk sound sensibilities.

Performing EDMC: Festival Bodies at Regional Sites In this section, I focus on how the arguments presented through the ethnographic observations and participant interviews help in building an understanding of performative contemporary Indian EDMC within the context of regional sites being coopted by commercial EDM festivals. I conducted a multi-site ethnography of Sunburn and EVC between 2016 and 2018. An in situ ethnographic approach was informed by participant observations and interactions with festival-goers. In-depth interviews of a sample of respondents willing to participate were conducted in post-­ festival settings, including coffee shops, bookstore cafés, pubs and restaurants. The festivals discussed here constitute the popular music scene and space for the enactment of belongingness for the EDMC members. These particular festivals can be categorized as annually occurring multi-day events with the following embedded characteristics: the selected venue is far removed from urban cityscapes, and the event organizers offer on-site accommodation in the form of camping tents as an added feature that can be purchased. In their physical layout and style, these festivals bear a distinct homology to the global tradition of music festivals operating at greenfield sites (McKay 2000). The space and place that become the site

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of the festivity are deemed critical as they aid in the creation of the images and experiences linked with the festival itself: What is the point of having a multi-day festival and no option of camping? It is better, then, to simply attend a standalone gig somewhere in the city [Mumbai]. Besides, it is the camping that makes EVC special. You get to live on site with others who have come to the festival for similar reasons and to listen to the same kind of music you like. (Karan) I look forward to an EVC or a Sunburn because I get to travel away from the city. Attending one-day events like Sunburn Arena is fun for a Saturday night activity, but you still come back to the same old apartment. Where is the adventure in that? (Rizul) It is so nice to have this break from work. You travel away from a regular city life, come to a ‘countryside’ location like this and groove to the music of your choice. (Kunal)

As highlighted by Karan, Rizul and Kunal, attendees attach great importance to the location of the festival site. Through this, it becomes apparent that the attendees do not limit their focus to the music, but are also invested in the experiences linked with the spatial qualities of the festival sites. The act of seeking escape into the regional locales for the purpose of attending an EDM festival when situated within the context of the recent socioeconomic changes in India becomes a crucial aspect of EDMC that requires analysis. The 1991 liberalization, privatization and globalization (LPG) movement enabled a section of society to move higher in the class hierarchy. The changing socioeconomic state of the Indian polity encouraged the rise of consumerism among the middle-class family units. This also resulted in the migration of middle-class families from smaller towns and suburban locations into more urban and modern metropolitan spaces. Migration from the regional to urban centres in the 1990s was fuelled by the availability of opportunities in cities that better suited their changing lifestyle patterns. The contemporary urban youth cultures posit a significant cultural dialect reflected by their growing interest in commercial popular music-based festivals at regional sites. Attendees are seeking out regionally situated ephemeral EDM festival experiences to escape the same urban lifestyle their parents and family members moved to the city to seek back in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

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Translocal Sounds of EDMC Over the last two decades, EDM has permeated the nation’s mainstream popular cultural fabric via forces including globalization, digitization, festivalization and through collaborations with Bollywood (Bhat 2014; Kappal 2016). Local artists like Nikhil Chinapa, Nucleya, DJ Chetas and Ritviz play a pivotal role in bringing regional sounds into EDM’s sonic diversity (Gurbaxan 2020), which in turn informs and shapes the contemporary zeitgeist within Indian EDMC.  This reinstates the music-based trans(local) youth belongingness within the cultural context of contemporary EDMC. Each of these popular cultural figures plays a distinct role in the contemporary popular music scene. Given how these artists have an established pan-Indian presence, their work connects and influences members across localities. Nikhil Chinapa, a popular MTV host from the late 1990s who was also among the co-founders of Sunburn, has been at the forefront of shaping the current EDMC scene in India (Nadadhur 2018), popularizing the alternative genre of Bollywood dance music through mashups and remixes of popular Hindi film songs since 2016 (Roy Chowdhury 2018). A key local artist, Nucleya, gained popularity because of his experimental fusion of bass with traditional Indian sounds. He is known for his 2015 album Bass Rani, featuring a series of tracks such as ‘Chennai Bass’, ‘Mumbai Dance’ and ‘Bangla Bass’. He brings together the folk and ethnic popular sounds of different regions in India with bass-inspired beats (Arora 2017; Dubey 2018). Nucleya is also featured regularly at both the Sunburn and EVC main festivals. In 2018, the Indian EDMC community discovered a new local artist, Ritviz, whose tracks explore regional classical sounds through EDM. Ritviz’s tracks exhibit the purposeful fusion of bass with Hindustani classical, allowing his music to gain massive popularity on YouTube (Upadhye 2019) with tracks such as ‘Liggi’ (127 million views) ‘Udd gaye’ (59 million views) and ‘Jeet’ (37 million views). Through the introduction of heritage musics, folk culture and regional sonic qualities in an otherwise global popular music text, EDMC’s presence is made visible across spaces and places. This, in turn, is strengthened through trans(local) networks of the EDMC scene members. Global music-based youth culture such as EDMC is simultaneously being performed locally at regional EDM festivals and experienced translocally through shared collectivities. This also aids in affording the members of the EDMC community the

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opportunity to reshape their identity through local and regional elements within a translocal EDM scene in India. Thus, even though EDMC has had a visible impact on urban India, regional aspects find expression in the contemporary popular culture, affording it a translocal quality. This ranges from international artists such as Marshmallow and DJ Snake infusing parts of popular Bollywood tracks into their own playlists for the purposes of paying tribute at Sunburn events, to local artists such as Nucleya performing their own regionally influenced EDM sounds at both EVC and Sunburn as a regular, compulsory and ritualized feature. Sunburn is also known for hosting the Sunburn Holi Weekend events that take place in greenfield settings in major cities. This annual weekend event coincides with the Indian spring festival of colours, Holi, at which artists dressed in traditional attire and playing regional folk-inspired EDM sounds are a common sight. Expanding on this point, I argue that the contemporary EDMC among the urban Indian youth can be regarded as translocal, with its manifestations from one region to another being connected though shared tastes in music, lifestyle and cultural performances.

The Role of Technology in the Perpetuation of EDMC The introduction of the government’s Digital India initiative in 2015 (Chakravarty and Patra 2019), coupled with the launch of an affordable 4G internet telecom service by Reliance Jio in 2016 (Mukherjee 2019) increased internet penetration in the Indian milieu. As of February 2021, the Indian digital population numbered 624 million active users (Keelery 2021). With its flagship service Jio, the multinational conglomerate managed to effectively capture a sizeable portion of urban, suburban and non-­ urban regional areas. In 2016, Reliance Jio was offering 4G telecom services, fibre broadband facilities, free voice calls and ‘unlimited’ data streaming. This aided in the disruption of the Indian digital ecology and allowed for digitization to increase at a staggering rate (Keelery 2021; Mukherjee 2019). Social media has played a key role in engaging youth online, with multiple platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik-Tok (although the last of these is currently banned in India), Snapchat and WhatsApp (FICCI-KPMG 2020).

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The respondents to this study not only identify with Indian EDMC, and enact the performative culture through actions such as attending EDM festivals, but are also part of the ‘digital generation’, which is highly active on social media networks. This section of Indian youth actively explore the affordances of social networking sites in the formation, articulation and performances of their EDMC identities. Newly formed digital networks based on shared cultural interests, like EDMC, aid them in performing key aspects of their identity, belongingness and community-­ building. They frequently indulge in posting and sharing social media posts related to EDM. Their social media activity also increases dramatically when they are at an EDM event since they indulge in live posting: I meet so many new people at these annual festivals. Sometimes, we become really good buddies. We would exchange numbers. Plan chill scenes. But sometimes, we would just keep in touch say on Facebook, Snapchat or Instagram. (Romit) There are so many times we would start randomly talking on one of those EDM Facebook groups and connect then and there. (Henil) See, I would post on Instagram the really good pictures. Constantly Snapchat during the festival. Put [a] story up on Instagram too but hide it from a bunch of my followers. Facebook gives me information. And WhatsApp is for my friends’ groups. (Ekta) I have a WhatsApp group of friends wherein we just discuss EDM scenes. Facebook and Twitter gives me information to share in that group. (Karan)

Here it becomes important to reflect on the role played by digital networks in enabling new modes of communication between festival organizations and their followers. With the engagement having moved to digital networks, and more specifically to social media, EDM event organizers are able to effectively interact with their patrons and reach out to potential audiences. As the respondents to this study, who are also members of online EDM groups, talk about the varying affordances of different social media platforms, they mention how they follow the official Instagram pages of the EDM festivals they are most likely to attend, follow Twitter handles of popular EDM artists and also keep in touch with each other through platforms such as Snapchat and WhatsApp. YouTube is particularly helpful to them for updates on trending music and artists. Mediating

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in situ activities while participating in EDM festivals becomes a crucial part of the attendees’ EDMC performances. Given how the annual festivals last for three to four days, it was very common to see the festival goers constantly post on their preferred social media platforms. These posts varied from blurry photos from the evening events and dance floor experiences to daytime pictures that captured the greenfield aesthetics of the regional festival sites – be it the hills of EVC or the beaches of Sunburn. The prevalence of digital networks becomes even more apparent with event organizers relying heavily on social media platforms for promotional and engagement purposes. Sunburn, for instance, posts an after-movie as a post-festival tribute to attendees. Both EVC and Sunburn use the Facebook space to make important announcements regarding festival dates, artist lineup, availability of tickets for purchase and exhibit picturesque views of their greenfield venues in regional settings. Another recurrent strategy is the use of official hashtags as a promotional tool to help with cross-referencing of similar thematic digital content. EVC’s most commonly and popularly used hashtag is the name of the festival site, ‘Enchanted Village’ and Sunburn’s online after-movie allows EDMC members to digitally re-experience the regional aspects of the festival-­ scape in urban contexts.

Conclusion The cooption of local, regional and indigenous characteristics in the commercialized Indian EDM festival scene has been the major focus of this chapter. Urban Indian youth exhibit a desire to have a shared cultural artefact, such as EDM, to address the cultural negotiations of everyday life. EDMC membership provides the participants with a space wherein they can perform the cultural hybridity embedded within their identity. Additionally, the concurrent requirement for a site to facilitate the enacting of belongingness and community building is addressed by EDM festivals. The additional quality of commercial festival grounds being located in greenfield regional settings aids in creating an escape from the everyday urban lives of the attendees. The regional locations of the festival sites are frequently featured across the social media pages of event organizers. The appeal of escape into the regional locations has also emerged as a key theme in interviews and during participant observation in this study. Simultaneously, however, the constant commodification and appropriation of the ‘regional’ becomes evident at these sites. Commercialized

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licensed events such as EVC and Sunburn continue to cater to the urban audiences at regional locales while excluding authentic regional bodies. Even with the close proximity of these sites from local villages and towns, residents of these regional areas largely continue to be excluded from participation due to the ticket prices at these events. Despite being regionally located, these sanctioned spaces are far removed from grounded regionality, reinstating internalized urban–rural schisms. The functioning of these late modern, commercial EDM festivals thus simultaneously draws from and transcends the carnivalesque framework in the original Bakhtin (1968) sense. These sites display certain qualities and enable ludic modalities in festival behaviours of scene members, reinforcing the carnivalesque – however, not by an absolute subversion of hegemonic cultural norms but rather by coopting these sociocultural forces. The arguments presented in this chapter also draw attention to how the digital is explored as a means of maintaining the EDMC networks that emerge at liminal festival spaces. The significance of these digital networks became even more apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. With nationally imposed health and safety protocols leading to a suspension of outdoor music festivals, event organizations began exploring digital means to host virtual festivals. Sunburn, for instance, introduced Sunburn Digital in May 2020, which offered an array of new online experiences including Sunburn@Home, Sunburn Home Festival (paid entry) and weekly music-­ based live streams (free) in order to maintain engagement with the community. These digital events, while being a much-needed response to the inherent need of the scene members, could not replicate the regional festival experience which, as seen in the discussions in this chapter, makes for a significant impetus for urban Indian EDMC members. Given that Sunburn did not follow up its Sunburn Home Festival of 2020 in 2021, even while continuing with its other digital events, is indicative of how crucial the outdoor regional festival experience is within the Indian EDMC performance space.

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Juluri, V. 2002. Music television and the invention of youth culture in India. Television & New Media 3 (4): 367–386. ———. 2003. Becoming a global audience: Longing and belonging in Indian music television. Vol. 2. New York: Peter Lang. Kappal, B. 2016. How EDM became young India’s poison of choice. The Hindu: BusinessLines, 16 September 16. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ blink/watch/how-­e dm-­b ecame-­y oung-­i ndias-­p oison-­o f-­c hoice/article21687362.ece. Accessed 21 May 2021. Keelery, S. 2021. Digital population across India as of February 2021 [Census]. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/309866/india-­digital-­population. Accessed 21 May 2021. Lobo, K. 2015. EDM nation: How India stopped worrying about the riff and fell in love with the beat. Rolling Stone, 30 December. http://rollingstoneindia. com/edm-­nation. Accessed 21 May 2021. Majumdar, B. 2008. Soaps, serials and the CPI(M), cricket beats them all: Cricket and television in contemporary India. In Television in India: Satellites, politics and cultural change, ed. N. Mehta, 124–139. London: Routledge. McKay, G. 2000. Glastonbury: A very English fair. London: Victor Gollancz. Mukherjee, R. 2019. Jio sparks Disruption 2.0: Infrastructural imaginaries and platform ecosystems in ‘Digital India’. Media, Culture & Society 41 (2): 175–195. Nadadhur, S. 2018. Nikhil Chinapa’s toast to EDM. The Hindu: Entertainment, 2 January. https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/nikhil-­chinapastoast-­to-­edm/article22352499.ece. Accessed 21 May 2021. Roy Chowdhury, R. 2018. Bollywood fused with EDM: DJ Chetas is popularising ‘dance music’ in India. SundayGuardianLive. https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/culture/bollywood-­fused-­edm-­dj-­chetas-­popularising-­dance-­music-­ india. Accessed 21 May 2021. Saldanha, A. 2002. Identity, spatiality and post-colonial resistance: Geographies of the tourism critique in Goa. Current Issues in Tourism 5 (2): 94–111. Singhal, A., J.K.  Doshi, E.M.  Rogers, and A.  Rahman. 1998. The diffusion of television in India. Media Asia 15 (4): 222–229. Upadhye, A. 2019. Ritviz: ‘I cannot make music just for the heck of it’. The Hindu: Entertainment, 13 March. https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/ music/ritviz-i-­cannot-­make-­music-­just-­for-­the-­heck-­of-­it/article26521322. ece. Accessed 21 May 2021.

CHAPTER 6

‘Take Me to Church’: Developing Music Worlds Through the Creative Peripheral Placemaking and Programming of Other Voices Susan O’Shea

Other Voices has been building ‘alternative’ music worlds and embedding peripheral music-making and performance into its programming since 2001. From Dingle to Derry, Ballina to Berlin, Other Voices attempts to disrupt popular perceptions about Irish music, highlighting the emerging creative diversity of the country, and more specifically from its geographical margins. The small Church of St James in Dingle, at one end of the Wild Atlantic Way tourist trail, has provided emerging musicians with the opportunity to reach new audiences by performing with established acts through the eponymous television series for two decades. However, the ambitions of the festival and the scale of associated events have shifted significantly over the years. Making a substantial contribution to regional economies, Other Voices now promotes an Ireland far removed from the S. O’Shea (*) Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_6

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stereotypes of folk music and forced migration of less affluent times. By harnessing the soft power of the Irish diaspora, it looks beyond, rather than towards, the metropolitan giants of music that are more readily associated with the concept of the music city. Other Voices attempts to build links between regional cities, rural Irish towns and global music cities such as London, Austin, New York and Berlin by embracing new technologies of performance, participation and distribution. Using social network analysis, this chapter maps the music worlds of Other Voices events and performers, paying close attention to where events occur. Recent research on music worlds (McAndrew and Everett 2015; O’Shea 2020) extends Becker’s (1984) idea of art worlds, empirically testing the network thesis by using formal social network analysis methods to explore the relationships between a diverse range of actors and events concerned with making music worlds work, and understanding the multi-layered structures of festivals (Crossley and Emms 2016; Jarman 2021). While Other Voices attempts to promote regional place-based music, new artists and translocal connections, the structure of the network may have an influence over the success of its aims as well as revealing new hybrid music worlds.

Thar Áit (Beyond Place) Other Voices operates across multiple creative spaces, cultivating music mobilities that are place based yet have the potential to shift narratives beyond place. The beginnings of Other Voices were very folk heavy, perhaps reflecting the perception of the strengths of Irish music – at least as it might be seen on an international stage. Other Voices has, to a degree, followed this path with the first few years of the festival being heavily dominated by folk, alternative folk and Celtic-influenced music as it intersects with American folk traditions and these genres maintain a strong presence. Despite the over-reliance on folk musicians in the early years of the television series and the subsequent festival that has developed around it, it has attracted some big international names to perform in the intimate space of the church in Dingle, Co. Kerry, and more recently in St Michael’s Church Ballina, Co. Mayo. These include Elbow, Rufus Wainwright, Brett Anderson, Hozier, The xx, The National, Snow Patrol, John Grant and, most famously, Amy Winehouse. The presenters of the series also help set the tone, with some of them also included in the festival network as performers. The series started with Glen Hansard of The Frames, followed by Jerry Fish of An Emotional Fish (now Gerry Fish & the Mudbug Club).

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John Kelly, a well-known national Irish broadcaster, hosted the series for the next five years with Jenny Huston (RTÉ 2FM radio DJ) stepping in to co-host in season six. Aidan Gillen, an Irish actor and music enthusiast, perhaps better known for his role as Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones, presented seasons 10–13. Since then, Huw Stephens (BBC Radio Wales), Annie Mac (BBC Radio 1) and MayKay (Fight Like Apes, Le Galaxie) have presented the series in various combinations. MayKay also presented the online event ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ while musician Loah presented ‘Other Voices: Home at the Guinness Storehouse’, a 2020 online event. The discourses that surround legendary Dingle performances evoke the imagery of pilgrimage. Because of the effort required to get to such a remote location for the performer and music fan, with the added complication of winter weather, it is anticipated that a unique experience will be the reward for such efforts. The narrative of the pilgrimage to Dingle has become somewhat clichéd for musicians and audience members alike. However, many remark on the intimacy and welcoming atmosphere of the festival; without greenrooms or a physical back stage, it is a place where barriers are broken down between performer and fan, regardless of level of fame. The greatest testament to this is the willingness of some of those big names to make more than one journey. Winehouse’s performance in 2006 was a turning point for the festival, reigniting a sense of importance and reputation enhancement. The documentary, Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle (Linnane 2012), produced by South Wind Blows and released a year after her death, solidified that reputation. The documentary, which sells itself as focusing on Winehouse’s music and not the associated drama, received an additional airing in July 2021 on Channel Four in the United Kingdom to mark the tenth anniversary of Winehouse’s death. This provided yet another opportunity for the festival to promote Other Voices and Dingle to a UK and international audience. O’Flynn (2020: 209) interrogates the meaning of ‘otherness’ as represented by the Other Voices festival in the context of the wider Irish media landscape, suggesting the festival itself has been ‘mediated and mediatized’. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Other Voices has succeeded in drawing tourism and investment into Dingle and subsequently Ballina in Mayo. It is the formal partnerships and sponsorships that help shape the festival and foster innovation, yet the ebb and flow of these partnerships simultaneously place it in a precarious position. In 2009, the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) began sponsoring the ‘Other Room’. This

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provided an additional opportunity for performers to record and be seen, and has become a coveted slot for aspiring Irish musicians. In 2011, Other Voices began to internationalize its brand. It is telling that the first music event outside of Dingle took place in New  York in 2011. The Irish diaspora certainly still mattered, but this time the aim was to foster creative, innovative and technological links between the United States and Ireland. It was time to look towards the future, rather than back into a nostalgic past. This was followed up with London events in 2013, Derry/Londonderry in 2014, back to the United States with Austin in 2016, Belfast in 2017 and 2019, and more locally Ballina, Co. Mayo in 2018 and 2020. The event in Ballina was the last live Other Voices event to take place with an audience just before pandemic-related restrictions hit. However, by 2019, as the reality of the impact of Brexit on music mobilities began to emerge, Other Voices was already building links with Wales, as a Celtic nation, and looking towards Germany in Europe to forge connections. As well as Irish music industry sponsorship, the festival has received support from a range of different sources, including The Guardian newspaper, Lonely Planet, Intel Ireland and telecommunications organizations Eir and Virgin Media, along with various government culture and heritage schemes. Perhaps the most significant, in terms of longevity and impact, has been support from Fáilte Ireland (the Irish tourist board) and the Wild Atlantic Way tourist trail, firmly placing the festival and its somewhat remote locations on a highly marketized map. As a festival, it has taken some time to start showcasing the musicians creating music in the country in a more equitable way. Migrant musicians have an impact on Irish regional music scenes that results in the transformation of traditional venues into new diasporic music spaces where migrant experiences can be explored through music interactions. These multicultural music experiences are happening more frequently outside of the capital city, Dublin. The more recent incarnations of Other Voices have certainly succeeded in showing how the festival has developed to include a greater diversity of genres and performer representation. While it would be inaccurate to describe Other Voices as cultivating distinct place-based music scenes, it does shift the discourse away from the capital city, where popular music (alternative or mainstream) enjoys a core position in the cultural landscape with all the advantages of size, position and resources that it offers musicians. The analysis that follows suggests that, when international acts are excluded from the total count, almost a quarter of Irish performers can be

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considered as coming from regional cities or rural areas across the whole island of Ireland. While Dublin, and to a lesser extent Belfast, still produce a large share of the overall distribution of acts, it is possible that the decentralized nature of Other Voices helps to disrupt the idea of what contemporary Irish popular music looks like. This may be enough to allow opportunities for musicians to collaborate and perform, where otherwise their distance from metropolitan centres may have hindered them. Whether intentional or not, new music worlds become possible – something that the social network analysis begins to reveal. For example, the music scene in Limerick in recent years has been well represented at Other Voices events. As a regional city, Limerick is grappling with change and embracing hybrid musical styles and cultural identities, producing a new generation of performers, such as Zambian-Irish rapper Denise Chaila and Zimbabwean-Irish MC God Knows, a member of the popular festival band Rusangano Family. Rollefson (2020: 291) describes the band as ‘the best of an emergent polycultural Ireland’, with other members consisting of MuRli of Tongolese descent and MyNameisJohn, the band’s ethnically Irish producer and DJ. All of them appear frequently in the Other Voices network as performers in their own right as well as in the band. Limerick already has a strong tradition of sociopolitical rock music with bands such as The Cranberries reaching international fame decades earlier. However, Chaila’s hip hop-influenced brand of Irish rap speaks to contemporary Irish experiences that include racism, exclusion, inclusion, gender, identity, language and cultural hybridity, all of which can be heard play out in her music and enacted through her collaborations. Chaila’s spoken word piece ‘Duel Citizenship’, recorded in Ballina for Other Voices (February 2020) epitomizes most of these themes with a powerful emotive performance in St Michael’s Church. The musical landscape of Ireland is changing along with its migration narratives, the difficult and the triumphant.

Bonds and Borderlands: Methods, Networks and Edges Much of the discourse surrounding Other Voices centres on positioning the festival ‘on the edge’. In an obvious geographical sense, this is as a rural/ regional festival on the periphery of Ireland, an island on the edge of Europe. However, the edge discourse also alludes to having ‘an edge’ over other nations or regions by using music, culture and creativity to bring

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people together for the social and economic good of local communities and the wider country, including the perceived benefit for artists performing at events. In more recent years, the festival has hosted a series of debates on specific themes in different locations under the broad banner of Ireland’s Edge, and the subtitles in this chapter borrow from those themes. It is the connections among people in the liminal spaces between science and the arts that have inspired a diverse range of curators, performers, cultural innovators, academics, policy-makers and audiences to develop new social relationships and creative collaborations, at least in theory. The ‘edge’ metaphor is useful when discussing the social network analysis methodological approach taken here to empirically explore the wider network. An ‘edge’ in network terms denotes the social relationship, or tie, that exists between two nodes, or actors, in a network. On a graph, this is the line that connects two points. This section provides an overview of social network analysis and examines why it is appropriate to use in this context, and it also presents a description of how the festival network datasets were created and what they represent. The rationale for the application of social network analysis techniques is introduced by exploring the following two questions: first, is there a core/periphery structure to the Other Voices network, much as we might expect to see between capital cities and regional music scenes, or between city centres and the suburbs; and secondly, which events and where are central to the network? A social network is a defined set of relations between specific actors or nodes. Social network analysis is rooted in graph theory, and most network studies aim to visualize the networks of interest either as an exploratory method to better understand the data or as a means of representing aspects of complex social relations. In theory, the larger a network, the more opportunities there are for people to connect. However, this also introduces complexity and constraints. Network complexity can, in part, be dealt with by using graph theory to help make sense of multi-layered social relationships, quantitatively by using standardized statistical methods for social network analysis, or qualitatively through network visualizations  – in this case, the network of interest is the Other Voices universe. This universe is made up of a range of different music worlds, which share conventions, aesthetics and attributes. The data comprise all events and activities using the Other Voices brand since it first started recording in December 2001 for the first television series broadcast in February 2002. Events include in-person performances (with or without an online streaming element); conference events or talks that have a

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music element, with at least one named performer; a musician in conversation, including an element of performance; and online only streaming events (without an in-person audience) filmed on location. Performers appearing at the same event are likely to have an equal opportunity for forming equivalent tie types (e.g. with other bands, the media or industry), and may experience relative exposures to new audiences. In social network terms, the venues at which performers play (usually pubs) can be said to be structurally equivalent. This is because they occupy the same neighbourhood space by being connected to the same others in the programming space. There are some limitations in the data collection. For example, some artists, such as Hozier, have had special programmes dedicated to them. Although branded as Other Voices, these types of events are not included in the dataset if there are no opportunities for other bands and musicians to play and form ties across the network. Data have been collected up to the time of writing, with the most recent online event staged in Dublin, Ireland’s Edge ‘The Known World - What We Know Now’, live-streamed in June 2021. The majority of events fall within the core remit of the festival. However, a growing number of fringe and affiliated events are occurring, either run in partnership with Other Voices directly or with permission to use the brand name in association with a band or musician who is a frequent performer at Other Voices core events. This increases the geographical and audience reach, although these kinds of events are more likely to take place in the bigger cities. An example of this is SOAK’s one-­off performance in support of Girls Rock Dublin’s ‘Play Like a Riot Grrrl’ event for their under-18 s music workshop at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 2019. As well as information on events, the network also contains data on performers. Performers include musicians, singer-­ songwriters, solo artists, DJs and bands, and a small number of spoken word artists if there is an obvious music element to the performance. For the purposes of clarity, from now on all actors will be referred to as performers. Although attribute data has been collected on events (including type, location, venue, mode) and performers (including gender, genre, geographic location), this exploratory analysis focuses on the structural properties of the network using attribute data to aid interpretation of these structural features. Several archive data sources were used to construct the networks, starting with the Other Voices website. Most of the network was constructed using this source, including from official posters and flyers available on the website or, if missing from there, through Google Images. The television series was the easiest aspect to map with the most complete data available;

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it represents the highest profile performers. However, the Other Voices website has a proportion of missing or incomplete data. For example, events are sometimes listed with only a partial lineup or with key dates missing. Archiving has improved in more recent years and a newly designed website is imminent, which may give greater access to archived material. A wider internet-based search was conducted, which took into account online newspaper and magazine features on the festival or associated performers (e.g. The Irish Times and Hotpress), as well as public Twitter and Facebook posts from performers and the festival to fill the scheduling gaps. This resulted in the construction of a two-mode network. A two-­ mode, or affiliation, network usually consists of set of relationships (edges) between people and events. In this case, the edge in question is ‘playing at’ an Other Voices-branded ‘event’. Overall, 124 events were recorded that met the criteria, featuring 1368 performances between December 2001 and June 2021. The festival celebrated its 20th anniversary in Dingle in December 2021 and several events were scheduled before that date, but these are not included in the network. The data were checked for name duplications and spelling errors, and data sources were cross-referenced for accuracy. Sources included: Breaking Tunes, a comprehensive database of Irish bands and performers containing media links and biographical information; AllMusic and Discogs, both widely used crowd-sourced music-based archives; and band pages on Wikipedia where performers did not have their own website. I have previously used most of these sources and found them to be robust (O’Shea 2020). In this analysis, all performers are included, even where it was not possible to collect attribute data, as it is the structural properties of the network that are of interest. The most common reason for missing data is performers using only a first name, making them almost impossible to track online. This tended to occur at regional fringe events operating an open-mic style performance system. This type of event remains of interest, so it is included in the network, but it would need to be removed, along with other missing data cases, to carry out an attribute-based analysis. The final two-mode dataset of the Other Voices universe consists of 124 events and 830 unique performers. Analysis was carried out using Ucinet 6 (Borgatti et al. 2002) and visualizations were generated using NetDraw 2 (Borgatti 2002). In this exploratory analysis, network visualizations help with understanding network interactions and structures. This is supplemented by quantitative social network measures. Event labels indicate the year an event occurred with a code that denotes the place or event to which they are connected.

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Table 6.1  Place codes DIN

AUST CARD

Dingle Austin Cardigan Bay

BAL

BEL

NY

Ballina Belfast New York

DUB

GRhald BER

DON

Dublin Haldern Berlin Donegal

Table 6.2  Event codes EP: Electric Picnic Festival WaxL: Waxing Lyrical IMRO: Other Room

Anam: ‘Soul’ DCU showcase

iEdge: Ireland’s Edge intelOS: Intel Orchard Sessions RoRua: Róise Rua Festival Riot: Play like a Riot Grrrl BANT: Banter talks Art: Fifty Arts and Social Club Dark: After dark festival party Coasts: Our Coasts, Our Voices Cogar: Talks/workshops in Irish BIABH: Bringing It All Back Home Note: Given Note music & TV: Recorded tv series reconciliation Aiken: COUR: Courage Series Aiken Promotions – fundraiser online Arte: Irish President state visit BobDYL: ‘Dignity’ A tribute to Dylan

Club: OV club 2 FM: 2FM Rising Hub: Ticket Hub Lum: Lúimna eirSS: Eir Sound Studio Sun: Sunday breakfast session Trail: Music Trail LAT: Latitude Festival Late: Late night Home: Guinness Storehouse

Table 6.1 provides the coding list for places and Table 6.2 the coding list for events. The network graphs display a selection of the labels indicating core events and performers. Figure 6.1 is a graphic representation of the Other Voices universe. The light-grey circles represent performers and the dark squares represent events with the line (edge) being the tie ‘played at’. Events are then linked if they share one or more performer. A quick review of the graph suggests that there is a core/periphery structure, as there is a greater cluster of activity towards the centre of the graph with fewer overlapping events towards the edge. Events operate differently in relation to audience interaction, potential to network with industry professionals as well as opportunities to develop contacts between higher status bands and musicians, and to reach new national and international audiences.

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Fig. 6.1  Other Voices festival network of events and performers

To better explore the core/periphery structure, it is necessary to convert the graph into one-mode networks creating two valued datasets: an event network and a performer network. In the case of the Other Voices universe, it is important to note that playing at specific types of events has different advantages and disadvantages. In this sense, not all events are created equally. The opportunities for performers are wide-ranging and can include: playing a peripheral conference event to a small in-person audience; appearing on national TV to tens of thousands of viewers alongside high-profile international acts; and securing a slot at a themed online event like ‘Bringing It All Back Home’, or ‘Courage’, with the potential of reaching millions of viewers.

The Known World, What We Know Now: The Centrality of Events The following analysis focuses on the Other Voices event network, as where events take place is of particular interest. This network consists of 124 distinct events with 1662 ties between events  – that is, the number of

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connections shared by performers across the whole network. Out of all events, only seven are isolates, meaning performers only play these events and do not appear elsewhere in the network. This is a higher degree of integration than might be expected for a geographically dispersed network. First, a core/periphery analysis is conducted on the event network. This is based on a continuous model that is recommended by Borgatti and Everett (1999), as it uses a core score similar to standard centrality measures and is useful for dealing with valued data. Using the correlation method this model returns a recommended core membership of 20 events. Figure 6.2 displays the core/periphery structure sized by eigenvector centrality scores. Borgatti and Everett (1999) suggest that eigenvector centrality is actually a core/periphery measure, which is a specific type of

Fig. 6.2  Event sized by eigenvector centrality

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centrality measure. In other words, it is a measure of the influence an event has on the network because the relative positions of the events are taken into account in relation to the whole network. In the case of the Other Voices event network, it could be argued that involvement in an event tied to other central events increases the chances of a performer gaining access to these events or events of equivalent status. Degree centrality is a measure of the level of activity within the network – for example, the number of ties an event has with other events. Betweenness centrality takes account of the whole network and is a measure given to the position of a node in the network located between two dislocated others. For example, an event may act like a bridge between other events that would otherwise be unconnected. Closeness centrality scores all nodes based on how close they are to all other nodes in a network – for example, it helps to determine the shortest path between events. Eigenvector centrality, according to Prell (2012: 101), ‘is the sum of an actor’s connections to other actors, weighted by their degree centrality’. In this case, it is a measure of how an event is connected to other highly connected or influential events. As the core/periphery analysis suggests, there are 20 events in the core, and it is useful to consider this number across the different measures of centrality. Table  6.3 presents the top 10 core events ranked in order, starting with the most central. Table 6.3  Other Voices event network – centrality measures Degree

Closeness

Betweenness

Eigenvector

1 2 3 4

DINGtrail18 DINGtrail14 DINGtrail17 COURrte1s20

DINGtrail18 DINGtrail14 COURrte1s20 DINGtrail17

DINGtrail18 DINGtrail14 DINGtrail17 COURrte1s20

5

DUBanam18, EPov18

DINGtrail19

6

DINGtrail15, DINGtrail19 COURrte2s20, DINGtrail16

DUBanam18, EPov18, DINGtrail19 DINGtrail16

DINGtrail14 DINGtrail18 DINGtrail17 COURrte1s20, DUBanam18 EPov18

COURrte2s20

EPov19, EPov17

DINGtrail15, COURrte2s20 DUBhome20 DINGtv08

DINGBant18

COURrte2s20

DINGtrail16 DINGtrail15

EPov15 DINGtrail15

EPov15

NYov11

DINGtv08

7 8 9 10

EPov19, EPov17 DUBhome20, EPov15, DINGtv08 EPov14

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Across all centrality measures, the Dingle Music Trails from 2014 onwards emerge as the most central events in the network, along with Electric Picnic Festival from 2015 onwards, the Anam Dublin City University showcase gig in 2018 and the online Courage series and Home at the Guinness Storehouse in 2020. The core TV series events rarely feature in the top 20 with only the Dingle TV series from 2008 making it into the top 10 and the 2016 Dingle TV series making an appearance in 18th place for both betweenness and eigenvector scores. This suggests that events like the Dingle Music Trails, and to a lesser extent the newer music trail in Ballina (ranked 15th on betweenness), are important as they provide opportunities in subsequent years to connect with other festivals, such as Electric Picnic and additional Other Voices-branded events. Yet, despite the outreach nature of Other Voices’ international programming, it is still the Dingle Music Trails that appear to have the greatest impact on the network for participating musicians. The data also suggests that Ballina may also become more central if there are regular similar events in the future. However, it is unlikely to outstrip the importance of the Dingle pilgrimage. It will be interesting to see how the festival develops, and the types of events that will be programmed and where in the coming years in a post-­ pandemic festival landscape. The music industry in Ireland was hit particularly hard by COVID-19, and in particular by the severe restrictions imposed on it by government with over half of all music-based jobs at risk once the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) scheme drew to a close in September 2021. Many were expected to be forced onto Jobseekers Allowance, making musicians and affiliated roles ineligible for self-­ employed work. Even when live performances return, the opportunities will be greatly diminished. As the first sector to close and the last to open, various music organizations decried the hypocrisy of an all-out ban on music to audiences indoors, with outdoor capacities restricted to fewer than 200 socially distanced people, when the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) hosted 40,000 at the All-Ireland hurling final in August 2021. These restrictive measures have forced the cancellation of most of the country’s music festivals, including Electric Picnic. Bands that played the Other Voices stages in previous years had no opportunities to play in Ireland despite being able to play equivalent festivals like Latitude in the United Kingdom. Other Voices has always been at the forefront of technical innovation and digital distribution through sponsorship support, and the Irish

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Government’s recent COVID-19 recovery scheme for the arts has allowed it to be even more ambitious than previously. The TV series schedule was quickly adapted to include online performances aimed at a home audience and an international Irish diaspora, which benefited some of the show’s more popular Irish artists in recent years. There is little to suggest that this approach will change anytime soon, even with the return of in-person gigs. Hybrid performances are likely to continue along with the diversification of the music on offer. However, the unique networking opportunities, associated with Dingle and Ballina, for emerging talent dried up during the pandemic. Perhaps other opportunities will emerge for musicians from more rural and remote areas, as we see with Other Voices’ partnership with Féile Rósie Rua (see Fig. 6.1). This traditional Irish singing festival was broadcast online from the island of Arranmore in Donegal in 2021, raising awareness and funds for the island, which was badly impacted by the pandemic. Even when musicians’ mobilities are curtailed due to geographical remoteness coupled with external factors, a hybrid model opens up possibilities.

Bringing It All Back Home Social network analysis was presented as a way to empirically explore the structure of Other Voices music worlds. This was a first step to understanding Other Voices as a unique, geographically dispersed, 20-year-long networked music and cultural ecosystem with a focus on regional and rural events. The exploratory social network analysis revealed a core/periphery structure. On closer examination, it would appear that where events take place matters as much as the type of event. Across all measures of centrality, the Dingle and Ballina Music Trails and the Other Voices festival stages came out on top, with the TV series being surprisingly less prominent. This indicates that the fringe events provide the greatest opportunities for performers to become involved with additional Other Voices events in the same and subsequent years, while they are also likely to offer the greatest networking opportunities with other musicians and industry professionals. Additionally, it could be argued that involvement in an event tied to other central events increases the chances of a performer gaining access to these events, or events of equivalent status. The festival now plays its part in facilitating new diasporic music spaces and multicultural music opportunities outside the capital city, even if this was not intended originally. The conversation then becomes more about the promotion of place, rather

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than the promotion of music from those places, but it does encourage music mobilities between regions within Ireland and internationally with, for example, branded events in Germany, the United States, Northern Ireland and Wales, and digitally, in light of necessary innovations post COVID-19.

References Becker, H.S. 1984. Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Borgatti, S.P. 2002. NetDraw: Graph visualization software. Harvard: Analytic Technologies. Borgatti, S.P., and M.G.  Everett. 1999. Models of core/periphery structures. Social Networks 21: 375–395. Borgatti, S.P., M.G.  Everett, and L.  Freeman. 2002. Ucinet 6 for Windows: Software for social network analysis. Harvard: Analytic Technologies. Crossley, N., and R. Emms. 2016. Mapping the musical universe: A blockmodel of UK music festivals, 2011–2013. Methodological Innovations 9: 1–14. Jarman, D. 2021. Festival to festival: Networked relationships between fringe festivals. Event Management 25 (1): 99–113. Linnane, M. 2012. Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle. Documentary. BBC Arena, South Wind Blows, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). McAndrew, S., and M. Everett. 2015. Music as collective invention: A social network analysis of composers. Cultural Sociology 9 (1): 56–80. O’Flynn, J. 2020. ‘Other Voices’ in media representations of Irish popular music. In Made in Ireland, ed. Á. Manaoang, J. O’Flynn, and L.Ó. Briain, 203–220. London: Routledge. O’Shea, S. 2020. Activate, collaborate, participate: The network revolutions of riot grrrl-affiliated music worlds. Punk & Post Punk 9 (2): 309–325. Prell, C. 2012. Social network analysis: History, theory & methodology. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Rollefson, J.G. 2020. Hip hop interpellation. Rethinking autochthony and appropriation in Irish rap. In Made in Ireland, ed. Á. Manaoang, J. O’Flynn, and L.Ó. Briain, 285–299. London: Routledge.

CHAPTER 7

The Creative Music Networks of Regional Recording Studios: A Case Study of the Sunshine Coast and Gympie Lachlan Goold

As the recording industry sector further detaches from the hegemonic record company structures of the pre-internet era, this chapter analyses the status of the recording studio sector in the regional areas of the Sunshine Coast and Gympie in Queensland, Australia. This research focuses specifically on the function of recording studios within a creative network of regional music scenes and hopes to build upon the growing literature on this topic. Recording studios are considered a network of cottage industries predominantly run by individuals and small partnerships as the result of a general movement into technology-driven do-it-yourself (DIY) modes of production (Goold 2018; Théberge 2012). This chapter investigates whether this change in recording practice enables an increased recording capacity for regional areas. Factors such as ‘sea change’ migration (Burnley and Murphy 2004) have led areas such as the Sunshine Coast to experience greater population growth than its nearest

L. Goold (*) University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_7

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metropolitan neighbour, Brisbane. Considering these factors and natural increases in population, the Sunshine Coast has an estimated population of 319,922 (as of 2018) and is expecting a population growth of 2.3 per cent, more than 1 per cent higher than the nearest metropolitan centre (Brisbane 1.2 per cent) over the next five years (ABS 2020). Conversely, with an estimated population of 51,586 (as of 2018), Gympie has a growth rate of 1 per cent, which is lower than Brisbane (ABS 2020; Gympie Regional Council 2017). The Sunshine Coast comprises three local government areas (LGAs), which fall into two categories as defined by Burnley and Murphy (2004): those that are comparatively close to a city centre and those that are more isolated. The City of Caloundra is classed as peri-­ metropolitan, with a large proportion of residents commuting to Brisbane for work; the Maroochy LGA and Noosa shires are classed as high-amenity growth regions and rely on locally generated jobs; Gympie too is classed as a high-amenity growth area and relies on local employment (see map 5 in Burnley and Murphy 2004: 4). While the number of venues supporting original live music is growing, a burgeoning number of music festivals are occurring in the summer months. Despite this, there is little consistent support for the original local music scene to sustain an income in the local area amidst this population increase. Running counter to regional growth is an associated rise in the cost of housing, pushing young locals out of the first-home property market, a phenomenon common to other coastal destinations in Australia (Gibson and Robinson 2004). I am writing this chapter as the Sunshine Coast (and to a lesser extent, Gympie) move in and out of lockdowns and economic downturns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. I will consider these factors and focus on the nature of the recording sector as a regional creative music network and its function within the local original music scene. The research drew on in-depth interviews to investigate the emic issues of the recording studio scene in the Sunshine Coast and Gympie areas. I aim to determine the efficacy and reliance on broadband infrastructures to enable regional studios to engage in the creative networks of the wider music industry. The Sunshine Coast and Gympie recording studio sector will be used as a case study in an attempt to understand creative agglomerations appearing outside of a close urban neighbour.

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The Sunshine Coast and Gympie Compared The Sunshine Coast’s location is on the traditional lands of the Gubbi Gubbi and Jindabura First Nations Peoples. During the early colonization period, the Sunshine Coast was an agricultural area and port town. Shortly after World War II, the area became known as a holiday destination. Agricultural activities declined in favour of tourism and the service industry (Carter et al. 2007). The region was officially named ‘The Sunshine Coast ’ in 1960 to reflect its new tourism focus (Carter et al. 2007). While the Hinterland region retains some of the farming for which the area was renowned, both pre- and post-colonization, it too is typified by ‘tree change’ migration, with residents seeking reduced land costs and a relaxed lifestyle (Carter et al. 2007). The region’s tremendous economic diversity is best represented by the contrast between the multi-million dollar beachfront mansions of the Noosa Shire and the lowest socioeconomic area of Nambour (at the foot of the hinterland, 20 minutes to the beachfront), demonstrating its heterogenous circumstances (id 2011). The Sunshine Coast’s growth is predominately attributed to sea change migration, mostly from interstate (52 per cent) with the remainder from within Queensland (37 per cent) and overseas (11 per cent) as of 2018 (Sunshine Coast Council 2018). The median house price on the Sunshine Coast is $595,130, more than $136,000 higher than the average for Queensland (id 2011). The Sunshine Coast LGA is large at 1633 square kilometres (four times the size of the Gold Coast) and is between 90 and 145 kilometres from Brisbane’s city centre. Apart from the Caloundra LGA, commuting to Brisbane is reserved for the most tenacious, leaving most of the area’s employment local. While this chapter will not address the effects of COVID-19  in detail, it has been reported in the media that there is a greater propensity to bring forward sea change migration to the Sunshine Coast area (Devine 2020). The traditional custodians of Gympie are mostly Gubbi Gubbi people, with the Waka Waka people in the west and Badtjala people in the north-­ east. Gympie derived its name from the Aboriginal word for a local stinging tree, gimpi. Land use and agricultural activities have been the focus of the Gympie area from the local Aboriginal people through to post-­ colonization. The discovery of gold in 1867 changed the focus for many years; however, today agriculture is the largest contributor to the local economy (Gympie Regional Council 2017). The Gympie housing market is significantly more affordable than that of the Sunshine Coast, with a

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median house price of $270,000 as of 2017, and is listed as a driver for the area’s population growth (Gympie Regional Council 2017). At 170 kilometres from Brisbane, Gympie is also reliant on its local economy for employment. Gibson and Robinson’s (2004) research shows the geography and growth of regional areas are irregular compared with those of metropolitan centres, which is evident in this diversity of the regions in this case study. These population and geographic descriptions form the backdrop of this research. Before discussing my interview findings, I will briefly discuss the increasingly fluid creative networks of the recording studio in a music scene.

The Protean Nature of the Recording Practice and Associated Creative Networks Elite recording studios often emerge at the sites of major creative musical movements in Western culture (Connell and Gibson 2003; Théberge 2004; Watson et al. 2009), with many recognized as a locus of musical activity within a scene (Gibson 2005). The latest technology and boutique nature of recording was most readily available in the cities. The city is often a central site for sustained, but fluid networks, and fixed places of musical creativity including venues, recording studios and associated satellite industries (Watson et al. 2009). However, the current democratization of recording technologies has led to a significant delocalization of recording practice (Gibson 2005). While democratization is an over-­simplification, due to ongoing entry barriers to setting up a recording studio, such as socioeconomic circumstances, education and equal gender representation (O’Grady 2020), the lower cost of technology appears to have dispersed geographic barriers. In other words, technological advancement has provided the ability for the recording process to be carried out in a combination of formal and non-formal spaces, resulting in a shift from the large-format recording studio as a fixed network of creativity. Increasing numbers of studio businesses are appearing in commercially run domestic studio spaces and small affordable industrial spaces (Goold and Graham 2018). DIY recording is often associated with a person or producer rather than the mythical status of a built environment or the associated recording equipment (Gibson 2005). In locating creative networks outside the city, Flew (2012) notes that creative industry workers often move away from urban centres to the

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suburbs for personal rather than economic reasons. Gibson and Robinson (2004: 86) argue that creative networks located in regional centres, such as the Far North Coast of New South Wales, are less concerned with the economic aspects of their creative production. They add that this music scene ‘is mostly informal and already socialized, occurring in and through socio-political subcultural scenes’. For this case study, I am concerned mostly with social aspects of creative networks formed around the recording studio sector as a central actor within a scene. Bennett and Peterson (2004) define a music scene as a collection of common musical tastes shared by musicians, producers and fans in a manner that enables them to separate themselves from other scenes. In the development of a place-­ based scene, Johansson and Bell (2009) connote three major influences: the culture, economy and geography. With those major influences, many smaller factors are part of a scene’s efficacy (Ballico and Watson 2020). Those relevant to this research are: influences from the physical environment – the Sunshine Coast is renowned for its beaches, and sunny weather; influences from physical music industry-related infrastructure, such as recording studios  – a successful recording studio or producer can be a ‘nexus of activity’ for a particular scene; and the ‘spatial flows of tourism’ – transient visitors can shape a local music scene (Johansson and Bell 2009: 199–201). These influences are the focus of this chapter. Lee and Peterson (2004) have shown that internet-based virtual scenes can show similar attributes to those of place-based scenes. In the same way, a recording studio is often central to a scene; indeed, I argue that the recording studio is mimetic of the characteristics of a scene. The internet has enabled extended virtual networks to thrive with much greater ease by removing the economic and organizational challenges of travel, and reliance on a face-to-face network  – the recording space has also benefited from these circumstances. Connell and Gibson (2003) argue that the internet has served to decouple a music scene from a locality and create an imagined community  – although scenes continue to rely on fixed infrastructure for survival. Over time, technology has dramatically increased the speed and capacity of the internet, allowing for virtual networks to flourish outside of urban centres. The cost of video collaboration software is hardware dependent and much more accessible than in previous times; coupling this with DIY recording approaches and internet-based collaboration, the previously solely fixed networks of recording are becoming redundant. The next section of the chapter will look at the findings from recording studio businesses of this case study.

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Research Findings from the Sunshine Coast and Gympie I used interviews to investigate the emic issues of the recording studio scene at the Sunshine Coast and Gympie areas. I approached participants via their online advertising contacts and through my personal networks to take part in an hour-long semi-structured interview. Interviews allowed me to obtain ‘unique information or interpretation held by the person interviewed’ (Stake 2010: 95). I used a common schedule of questions to all participants in a semi-structured format, which allowed me to control the interview but be open to new leads if they arise (Bernard 2011). I focused on recording studios that advertise themselves as a business or record music other than their own, and charge a fee for service. However, I acknowledge there is a broad array of recording happening in a non-­ commercial manner, albeit with commercial goals, and many artists with no need to seek the skills of an external producer or engineer. The initial contact stage of this research provided the first obstacle. Googling ‘Sunshine Coast Recording Studios’ revealed four results, with further results hidden within a local search styled ‘BEST Recording Services in Sunshine Coast QLD’, which led to third-party aggregators. From this search I conducted seven interviews. All respondents were white males, with one studio having a female non-paid intern. Similarly, a Gympie search gave three discrete Gympie-based results with many more inside the ‘local search’ styled aggregators. Sunshine Coast studios also featured heavily in the search results. The Gympie Google searches mostly provided phone numbers that were disconnected. The only business with a publicly listed email address was the Australian Institute of Country Music (AICM). After responding to my email after more than a month, a phone call revealed its ‘Bunker’ recording studio did not have a local in-­house engineer. These circumstances resulted in conducting one interview in the Gympie area with Aboriginal elder and owner of Darkwood studios, Kevin Starkey. Table 7.1 outlines the details of the studios of the interview participants. Table 7.1 shows the diversity of businesses operating in the Sunshine Coast region with the antithetical conditions of the Gympie area, from the large-format styled purpose-built studio of Heliport to the domestically located studios with minimal fixed construction. Points of interest that emerged in this research were the number of domestic operations; the role of material networks and internet connectivity; and the spread of client base and income.

Domestic: Under house

Beerwah, Sunshine Coast

Buderim, Sunshine Coast

Buderim, Sunshine Coast

Glasshouse: Angus Woodhead

Heliport: James Russell

Dan Brown Audio engineer: Heliport Studio B

Commercial: Separate facility on private property

Commercial: Separate facility on private property

Domestic/ commercial

Studio name & Studio location respondent

Partial

Complete

Complete

Income source

Table 7.1  Details of interview participants’ studios

Under house: Minimal construction, moderate amount of acoustic treatment Yamaha PM2000 console, extensive equipment 2” tape Ground-up construction, professional acoustic design and treatment Large-format 48 Ch SSL Duality console, extensive equipment, high-end facility 2” tape Post-production facility Ground-up construction, professional acoustic design and treatment Software-based

Studio description

Local/ virtual

Local/ transloacl/ national/ virtual

Local/ translocal/ virtual

Client base

None

(continued)

Guitar amps

Instruments, but also incorporates an elaborate Facebook Marketplace scenario

Extent of borrowed equipment

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Glenwood,Gympie

Maleny, Sunshine Coast

Darkwood – Gympie: Kev Starkey

Spark 1: Mark Paltridge

Partial

Income source

Commercial: Portable container studios on private property

Partial studio/ music practice/ studio construction. Music industry comprises complete income

Domestic: Complete Separate section of house

Nambour, Sunshine Domestic: Coast Separate building from the house

Domestic/ commercial

Matrix productions: Matt Rosser

Studio name & Studio location respondent

Table 7.1  (continued)

Some construction in the tracking space Control room not soundproof Yamaha PM1532 console (preamps) plus Cadac console (summing), moderate amount of equipment Minimal construction Allen & Heath 32 ch console, minimal equipment Acoustic design, Yamaha PM1532 console, moderate amount of equipment

Studio description

Local/ virtual

Local/ translocal: South-East corner

Local

Client base

Minimal

None

None

Extent of borrowed equipment

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Paperbark: Alex Rottier

Domestic: Under house

Nambour, Sunshine Domestic: Coast Under house

Yami-Nui: Paul Kiels Mountain, Bromley Sunshine Coast

Some acoustic design and treatment, extensive internal construction with acoustically isolated recording spaces Dynasonics console, extensive equipment selection Partial studio/live Some acoustic sound design and Music industry treatment, moderate comprises complete internal income construction, not soundproof Yamaha PM1532 console, moderate amount of equipment 2” inch tape soon to be an option

Partial studio/ music practice Music industry comprises complete income

Local

Local/ national/ virtual

Minimal

Console

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Domestic Operations Unsurprisingly, James Russell of Heliport bemoaned the difficulties of running a high-end studio in a regional area by saying that ‘trying to make a regional recording studio work is just a fucking nightmare’ (Interview 27/10/2020). Since this interview, Russell still occasionally works at Heliport but is no longer the in-house engineer as they look to diversify their business. All the studios, except the post-production facility, had some sort of console-based hybrid DAW set-up, with half the studios having a Yamaha PM series console. Such a concentration of these consoles in one region is most likely a coincidence, but worth further investigation. Five of the eight studios were DIY setups with the place of business physically connected to a domestic site. The other three studios have commercial arrangements with a landlord, all located on rural private property, and featured some sort of expert acoustic design. Spark 1 studios is on a rural property and both the control room and recording space are assembled in shipping containers for easy transportation and location to another site. Mark Paltridge of Spark 1 has a side business constructing these shipping container studios with a global client base. Heliport and Dan Brown’s studios are located on the same acreage. The five domestic studios had a range of formalized and non-formalized setups, with varying levels of professional acoustic installation. Yami-Nui was built as part of a new construction with the house situated above. These five studios incorporated a mixture of professional, non-professional and self-researched internet-­ based design into the studio fit-out.

Material Networks Five out of the eight studios borrow equipment from within the local network to extend the capacity of the studio. This equipment ranges from instruments to effect units to the console on ‘permanent loan’ at Yami-­ Nui (Bromley, Interview 30/10/2020). Angus Woodhead took it to the extreme of servicing equipment that was not his simply so he had access to specialized gear: I’m happy for people to leave stuff and loan me stuff on the condition that they’ll let me make sure it’s ready to record well. If I’m going to have a tool here, I’m going to use it. It has to be good. I don’t want something here and if someone picks it up and plays it – they love the instrument but it’s

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outta tune, the intonation’s outta whack, and it’s got fret buzz. (Interview 26/10/2020)

Additionally, Angus is the curator of several Facebook groups for trading studio equipment and instruments in Australia. Some groups have more than 6000 members. Often Angus will buy high-end equipment and use it for several months before on-selling it (he described it as ‘flipping’), often for a similar price. This technique gives him the opportunity to use sought-after equipment with the only cost being the labour involved in on-selling it.

The Internet, Client Base, Income and Type of Practice A stable broadband connection was vital to most studios, from internet marketing through to sharing files with session musicians nationally or internationally. While most studios had a reasonable broadband connection, Mark Paltridge from Spark 1 tethered his mobile phone to download session files from overseas. Most studios used local session musicians when required or sourced musicians from the internet, with interstate drummers being a popular option. Angus Woodhead of Glasshouse studios summed up his practice: Sixty per cent of what I do is producing/mixing here and 40 per cent just mixing. I do a lot of producing here, but often the musicians aren’t here, they don’t come here. I use musicians [from] around the world – all different musicians from around the world. (Interview 26/10/2020)

Every studio had a certain proportion of local clientele with many using a combination of local, translocal and virtual clientele. The studio owners that were previous residents of Brisbane would source translocal musicians from time to time. However, Angus Woodhead of Glasshouse Studios thought his geographic position was a hindrance to gaining local and translocal clients; however, he chose his studio location of Beerwah for personal reasons: I get a little bit of work from Brisbane. I’ve always felt that if I was closer to Brisbane, I would do better. I’ve lived in Brisbane. I just think this is a nicer area to live. (Woodhead, Interview 26/10/2020)

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This anecdote is similar to Flew’s (2012) analysis of the Australian suburbs. Many use the Sunshine Coast’s location in their marketing, mentioning both the hinterland and the beach in their online narrative (Spark 1, Heliport, Yami-Nui). Paul Bromley of Yama-Nui spoke of the ‘place’ of his studio: The name of the studio Yama-Nui is Japanese and Polynesian, and it means the mountain of abundance. And we literally are on the side of a mountain. Our website talks about that you can see trees from every window in the studio. There is a lot of natural light. It’s a really calm place to come. Feel refreshed. Ocean’s right down the road. Like, we definitely sell the recording experience of being on the Sunshine Coast. (Interview 30/10/2020)

All the studios relied mostly on word of mouth for new clientele, supplemented by their internet advertising, except for Alex Rottier of Paperbark who often approached the live sound clients responsible for the majority of his income. Studios such as Spark 1 and Yama-Nui gained clients through their music-making practice. Paul Bromley from Yama-Nui spoke of these connections: ‘My associations with that national touring pool of musicians that I was talking about. They’re available for sessions interstate. They’ve got great recording set-ups’ (Interview 30/10/2020). He then listed several drummers who regularly record drums on tracks where the performer has not met the artist. Additionally, he mentioned a session where a locally based musician from a national touring act, Thirsty Merc, recorded some guitar tracks for a production taking place in Sydney. So too Mark from Spark 1 studios supplies his PA for a popular ‘open mic’ acoustic night where he meets many potential clients. His PA is also used for other small local events in other locations. Many of the studio’s client base were singer-songwriters looking to expand their sound. Most studios would build their recordings using session musicians rather than using MIDI and sample-based technology. This is partly due to the studio types selected in this case study. Further research is required to find DIY-based music practitioners. James Russell from Heliport discusses the nature of the recording projects he undertakes, from interstate Studio Connect voice-over sessions to podcasts, to tracking drums on home-recorded sessions destined for an international mix and the complete band recording projects. In referring to the more ecclectic voice-over work, Russell said, ‘So those kind of things happen a fair bit, but you know, there’s bits and pieces. It’s such an eclectic mix running a

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studio, isn’t it?’ (Interview 27/10/2020). None of the studios gained itenerant clients passing through their region. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the industry with studios being unoperational during lockdowns, apart from Yami-Nui, which got busier. Glasshouse Studios said there was no change. Three studios earned their total income through their recording practice, with many using the studio to augment their music or live sound practice. Those that earned their complete income from music industry-­ related practices used the studio as incentive to extend the capacity of their portfolio-styled practice. Some participants would be considered dedicated hobbyists with the goal of building their studio practice into their primary source of income. While I did not inquire about their annual incomes, Kev Starkey of Darkwood Studios summed up the general feeling with this statement: ‘It’s an investment of passion. Yeah, it truly is an investment of passion’ (Interview 2/11/2020).

Discussion and Conclusion The status of the recording sector as a regional creative music network in this case study is complex. Without a similar historical study, it is impossible to measure a true growth in recording practice. Overall, the Sunshine Coast has a healthy creative music network built around the recording studio sector. However, the visibility of the studios online dispalys a lack of concerted online markereting professionalism and a distinct disparity between the Gympie and Sunshine Coast areas. The volatility of the recording sector is clearly demonstrated in the closed business of the Gympie area, and internet searches indicating that the nearby Sunshine Coast is the only choice to find a recording studio. This would suggest that while the Sunshine Coast studio sector is relatively robust, Gympie struggles to maintain studio capacity with a lower population base, lower growth and limited accessibilty to creative network infrastructures. Most of the studios have a good connection to the local scene, with an additional feature of internet-based collaboration negating the reliance on face-to-face interactions. The studios’ broadband connections allowed recording possibilities to extend beyond the scope of their region and gain the perceived benefits of the cultural milieu of another place or well-­ known musician. Many participants recounted using a session player from Nashville or Ireland, or a musician with a national profile, to lift the perceived authenticity of the artefact they were creating. It was evident from

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the studios under investigation that a reliable broadband connection allowed their studio practice to grow beyond their local resources and tap into a wider virtual global network. I would argue that the efficiency of the broadband network has allowed the studios under analysis to proliferate in regional areas where location was previously perceived as a disadvantage. Producers are acting as a central network node within a greater music community, obviating the reliance on one fixed physical space for recording. Scholarly accounts of the recording studio are often over-­mythologized as a fixed technology and creative space, with little emphasis on the producer (McIntyre 2012). The producer’s own recording space is central to combining and arranging the performances from local, translocal and virtual performance spaces. The proliferation of the domestic studio has enabled the Sunshine Coast and Gympie to capitalize on their non-urban and idyllic surrounds without the overheads required of a commercial operation. This case study shows that the reduced cost of recording technology has allowed this regional recording sector to flourish outside the city and remain a vital part of the music economy. While many participants would borrow equipment to augment their studio’s offering, this is an indication of the goodwill extended by the local community to the network of the studio. All were satisfied with the functionality of their studios and the economically efficient use of domestic space. The domestic scenarios of the studios mostly did not affect the agency of the producer and enabled a network between social and material processes within the recording space. Additionally, all participants indicated that they were capable of producing a professional, high-quality sound. All the respondents were male and, looking exclusively at the Sunshine Coast, they were all Caucasian. This is a demonstration that while a robust regional recording studio sector would indicate that democratization has occurred, the lack of gender and racial diversity shows there is still some way to go. While the state of the recording sector in this case study seems clear, how this increased studio productivity has affected the greater music industry of the regions under examination is less obvious. A thriving music industry requires venues to play, areas for networking, opportunities for other income streams and exposure, and a cultural milieu often only available in more densely populated city centres. This interaction requires more research not only with regard to the music industry, but to the greater creative networks in regional areas.

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Acknowledgements  The Chair of the USC Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) has reviewed and granted expedited ethics approval for this project with the HREA approval number, A201470. Please email [email protected] if you have any concerns regarding ethical considerations of this research. I would like to acknowledge the participants for giving up their valuable time and discussing their practice, and also for agreeing to be part of this research. Thanks also to my colleagues at the University of the Sunshine Coast and my wife, Tylea, for helping me with interview transcriptions.

References Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). 2020. Population projections. https://www. abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/Latestproducts/3222.0Main%20 Features82017%20(base)%20-­%202066?opendocument&tabname=Summa ry&prodno=3222.0&issue=2017%20(base)%20-­%202066&num=&view=. Accessed 18 Aug 2020. Ballico, C., and A. Watson. 2020. Music cities: Evaluating a global cultural policy concept. Cham: Springer. Bennett, A., and R. Peterson. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bernard, H.R. 2011. Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Lanham: AltaMira Press. Burnley, I., and P.  Murphy. 2004. Sea change: Movement from metropolitan to Arcadian Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press. Carter, J., P. Dyer, and B. Sharma. 2007. Dis-placed voices: Sense of place and place-identity on the Sunshine Coast. Social & Cultural Geography 8 (5): 755–773. Connell, J., and C. Gibson. 2003. Sound tracks: Popular music identity and place. London: Routledge. Devine, A. 2020. Sydney and Melbourne residents bring forward sea-change plans due to COVID-19. The Daily Telegraph, 13 August. Flew, T. 2012. Creative suburbia: Rethinking urban cultural policy – The Australian case. International Journal of Cultural Studies 15 (3): 231–246. Gibson, C. 2005. Recording studios: Relational spaces of creativity in the city. Built Environment 31 (3): 192–207. Gibson, C., and D.  Robinson. 2004. Creative networks in regional Australia. Media International Australia 112: 83–100. Goold, L. 2018. Space, time, creativity, and the changing character of the recording studio: Spatiotemporal attitudes toward ‘DIY’ recording. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. Goold, L., and P. Graham. 2018. The uncertain future of the large-format recording studio. In Proceedings of the 2017 Art of Record Production Conference,

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Royal College of Music, Stockholm. Stockholm: Journal on the Art of Record Production and Royal College of Music (Stockholm). Gympie Regional Council. 2017. Gympie region economic profile. https://www. gympie.qld.gov.au/documents/40005057/41353017/Gympie%20 Region%202017%20Economic%20Brief.pdf. Accessed 13 Aug 2020. id. 2011. Sunshine Coast: SEIFA index of Advantage and Disadvantage Share. https://atlas.id.com.au/sunshine-­coast/seifa-­index?MapNo=socio-­economic-­ disadvantage. Accessed 19 Nov 2020. Johansson, O., and T.L.  Bell. 2009. Where are the new US music scenes? In Sound, society and the geography of popular music, ed. T. Bell and O. Johansson, 219–244. Farnham: Ashgate. Lee, S.S., and R.A. Peterson. 2004. Internet-based virtual music scenes: The case of P2 in alt country music. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson, 187–204. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. McIntyre, P. 2012. Rethinking creativity: Record production and the systems model. The Art of Record Production 3: 149–161. O’Grady, P. 2020. Sound City and music from the outskirts: The de-­democratisation of pop music production. Creative Industries Journal 14 (3): 211–225. Stake, R.E. 2010. Qualitative research: Studying how things work. New  York: Guilford Press. Sunshine Coast Council. 2018. Population Growth: Sunshine Coast 2016–2026. https://www.sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au/Experience-­S unshine-­C oast/ Statistics-­and-­Maps/Population-­Growth. Accessed 1 Aug 2021. Théberge, P. 2004. The network studio: Historical and technological paths to a new ideal in music making. Social Studies of Science 34: 759–781. Théberge, P. 2012. The end of the world as we know it: The changing role of the studio in the age of the internet. In The art of record production: An introductory reader for a new academic field, ed. S.  Frith and S.  Zagorski-Thomas, 77–90. Farnham: Ashgate. Watson, A., M. Hoyler, and C. Mager. 2009. Spaces and networks of musical creativity in the city. Geography Compass 3 (2): 856–878.

PART III

Memory

CHAPTER 8

Transactions in Taste: An Examination of a Potential Tastemaking Landscape Within Kent’s Blues Club Scene and the Conception of a Local Taste Accent Phil Woollett

Describing a musical scene is not always a particularly straightforward task. Straw (1991: 373) suggests that a scene is a ‘cultural space in which a range of musical practices coexist’, whereas Bennett and Peterson (2004: 1) take this further, considering the notion of personal or collective identity, describing the term ‘music scene’ as ‘designat[ing] the contexts in which producers, musicians and fans collectively share their common musical tastes and collectively distinguish themselves from others’. On the face of it, either description (despite the latter predominantly being taken from a recording industry rather than a live-performance perspective) would appear to be suitable when describing today’s blues club scene in the English county of Kent. Looking more closely, however, these descriptions perhaps fall short in a number of ways. For example, how

P. Woollett (*) Sittingbourne, Kent, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_8

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involved are the musicians in this collective? If they are simply hired guns, arriving to perform before heading off to play another gig elsewhere in the country, then perhaps not very. Do the members of Bennett and Peterson’s collective truly have a shared musical taste, or are senior members of the collective driving, or at least heavily influencing, it? Is the notion of distinguishing oneself from others now the main factor, given the ability to project a chosen self-image via social media? Even this becomes problematic when considering a local scene, as locality is potentially being removed from the equation. Finally, if this is the case, then one must consider whether any of this really matters. In a world where social media diminishes the significance of geographical boundaries within social interaction and the internet provides access to music globally, is there actually a place for the genuinely local music scene within today’s digital environment, and with it the potential for subsequent parochial styles or sounds to evolve? Such geographical sounds have long been a feature of British popular music. Originally, these were based on simple geographical associations as in the case of 1960s Merseybeat, which Inglis (2010: 11) describes as representing, ‘the first time in the history of British popular music when a sound and a city were bracketed together in this way’. However, this soon evolved to conjugate with the trans-local, as exemplified by Bennett’s (2004) largely retrospective ‘Canterbury sound’, born of a music scene that, while intellectually centred around the avant-progressive rock of 1970s Canterbury in Kent, relied on an abstract collective of enthusiasts, made possible by technology, to enable it to persist. While such scenes flourished, perhaps only the most prescient of commentators could reasonably suggest that such relationships between local scenes and musical characteristics would not endure into the twenty-first century, while allowing for Bennett’s trans-localism to thrive. However, when it comes to actual live music performance, the advent of the digital age has rather shifted the goalposts. Although twenty-first century genres such as grime, and its close association with inner-city London, offer support for an argument of regional endurance, other musical genres and their relationships  – or lack of them  – with geographical areas begin to raise questions about the entire notion of local popular music sounds within places such as Britain, with small physical footprints. Chaney (2012: 45) explains that ‘the appearance of digital music redesigned the sector and thus the way in which music is consumed. The shift induced in the music industry by the digital era lies incontestably in the dematerialization of music’. However, in a live music context, this dematerialization is not

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always so pronounced, as one must still actually attend a live gig to fully appreciate it. Still, a disaggregation of geography, distinguishing the physical and the digital, is an inevitable consequence of a digital world. While, within areas like the United States, the large distances of physical geography may mitigate a foreshortening of its digital counterpart, potentially allowing regional sounds to endure, this is not necessarily the case in much smaller countries such as Britain. Here, there is a tangible risk of digital geography eroding the notion of regional music sounds altogether. Before the advent of the internet and social media, the primary barrier for music promoters booking artists from outside their own geographic area was simply that they were not aware of them and had little or no way of assessing their artistic worth. With this barrier removed and Britain’s diminutive geography providing little resistance, there may be, without intervention, little to prevent the country from emulsifying into one broad musical region or scene. This being said, I am not yet tolling the death knell of local sounds within Britain, but rather considering a potential way they might evolve. To begin this, I will examine the small blues club scene of my home county of Kent, England. Kent sits at the south-easterly point of England, situated between London and the English Channel ports of Folkestone and Dover, the main sea and vehicular routes into mainland Europe. Often referred to as ‘the Garden of England’, on account of a perception of widespread rurality, a more accurate representation would be of areas of urban overspill from neighbouring London, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with remnants of Kent’s rural and industrial past. The result of this is a relatively densely populated area when compared with other British counties, which enjoys a broad range of sociopolitical and economic diversity. As the birthplace of the Rolling Stones, Kent can boast an indelible link with British blues; however, as in Britain as a whole, the blues is best considered as a niche musical genre, with limited popular appeal. It endures through a network of small, independent blues clubs and collectives, along with a number of local or regional festivals, generally advertised through social media and word of mouth. While it is almost impossible to suggest that Kent’s blues scene, or even that of the wider region of South-Eastern England, has propagated a synonymous musical character without a wider, comparable, study of the country as a whole, it is possible to examine the potential for a localized steering of regional taste by those with power to influence. This chapter is by no means definitive, conversely, it seeks to simply act as a vehicle for

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discursive conception. Aided by Brocken’s (2010) observations of Liverpool’s popular music scenes, I suggest that a process of tastemaking is likely occurring, led by Kent’s club promotors. Whilst not claiming that this process is in any way novel, within the context of local live music, I highlight a potential changing of the tastemaking guard, from musician to non-practising enthusiast. I do, however, demonstrate that this is not a new phenomenon; Schwartz’s (2007) account of something akin to a form of musical manipulation by early British blues aficionados, and their subsequent impact on the sound of the blues performed in Britain at the time, is extremely illuminating and helpful in terms of offering a historical precedent for what I suggest could be occurring today. I go on to consider whether, if not already apparent, such acts of tastemaking are perhaps paving the way for the evolution of a local taste accent within the musical consumers: the audiences of Kent’s blues club scene. This chapter is broadly reliant on a deep-immersion ethnographic methodology. I am able to draw upon my experience as a professional musician, working within the UK blues circuit (including Kent) as a participant observer, patronizing clubs as an audience member and occasional promoter, having been actively involved in the initial inception of Sittingbourne’s now well-established blues club. Finally, the term ‘scene’ should be mentioned. The limitations of this chapter do not make it possible to satisfactorily consider whether the term is wholly appropriate to describe the collective blues clubs of Kent, although the importance of holism, when potentially evolving a taste accent, will be addressed. Despite this, the term will largely be accepted as doing so throughout – although, when considering the informal relationship between promoters, musicians and club patrons, Straw’s ‘older (1991: 373) notion of a musical community’ may seem more appropriate. Despite this, when considering the complexities of musical and sociological diversity, and the need for an encompassing term, the previously cited descriptions of a scene seem to offer enough for this author’s leap of faith to be made: essentially coining the phrase ‘Kent blues-club scene’ for the purposes of this chapter, and leaving others to consider the appropriateness of the wider term.

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Kent’s Scene When considering a music scene, such as Kent’s blues-club scene, it is easy to conjure up images of a single organized collective working together to create an assimilated whole. Spring (2004) considers that although scenes may appear to emerge with a degree of spontaneity, in reality a diverse variety of individuals must work collectively for a scene to flourish. Bennett and Peterson (2004: 5) describe small scene-led musical industries as ‘largely the domain of small collectives, fans turned entrepreneurs and volunteer labor’. While this is largely accurate with regard to Kent’s scene, a more fragmentary picture emerges, revealing six individual clubs operating within pubs or small halls, largely independently, although still exhibiting a degree of coordination between promoters/organizers. Geoff Pine, the promoter of the Wrotham Arms Blues & Roots Club assisted in the formation of a second Thanet-based club in Deal, Spooner’s Blues (sadly no longer operating at the time of publication, but forming part of my 2018–19 research), also maintaining close personal links to the promoter of Sevenoaks’ Blues with Bottle Club. He even describes, when asked by artists to help source tour venues, trying to place them into Blues with Bottle and Spooner’s, along with his own club (Pine, interview 2018). Similarly, Steve Borkowski, former promotor of the Kent Bluesrockfest festival, now co-promotes Sittingbourne’s Bourne Music Club with founder, Mark Matthews, and both maintain strong ties to the promoters of Gillingham’s Blues at the Woodlands. Having retired Kent Bluesrockfest, they briefly conceived an alternative music festival, branding themselves as the Kent Blues Collective before Borkowski and Matthews disaffiliated themselves to incept a new, regular festival in Sittingbourne, Bourne Fest, drawing on their local club’s branding. Promoters in particular areas will also often support each other’s events/clubs by attending and will sometimes travel together to, or meet up at, national blues festivals and events where they will seek to identify the next big act, often then attempting to beat the others to the punch by booking them first into their club. When promoters neglect to coordinate outside of close geographical areas, issues can occasionally arise: the promoters of Bourne to The Blues (the previous name of Bourne Music Club) were somewhat dismayed, for example, when a band they presented on a paid-ticketed bill then appeared twice, later in the same week, at non-ticketed venues, including the Wrotham Arms Blues and Roots Club (Borkowski, interview 2018). It is interesting to note, however, that Pine displays no such concern when sending acts to

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nearby Deal, stating that this ‘never affect[ed] each other’s audiences’ (Pine, interview 2018). Rochester’s Bottleneck Blues Club appears to operate in almost complete isolation, with little interaction with other clubs – albeit this view is generated largely by my own experience, as I was unable to speak to the organizers directly. So how should we look upon this scene? Spring’s (2004: 49) description of an anonymized small US city’s local rave scene offers some assistance. Describing his very local scene as being born of the work of ‘a few exceptionally driven individuals who set goals and followed them through to the end’, he hardly considers a wider scene outside of what is essentially one block of a small city. This is, however, perfectly appropriate as his scene is essentially self-contained. Although the presence of festivals, which by their very nature seek to draw from a larger geographical area, promote the notion of an all-Kent scene existing, perhaps considering each club as its own micro-scene, akin to Spring’s (2004) rave scene equivalent, is helpful. This does, however, beg the question of whether one can consider such a narrow perspective in an online world bristling with social media. While online interactions must contribute to knitting the wider scene together, the emphasis is still on actually going out and attending something in the flesh. In contrast, Bennett’s 2004 ‘virtual scene’ describes a network of online participants pursuing a common interest – the music of a number of 1960s bands loosely associated with the Kentish city of Canterbury  – who effectively generate an almost fetishized image of a music scene that simply does not exist corporeally. Such online distortion of the actual is not directly evident in Kent’s blues scene; however, the widespread online presence of festival brands such as Bournefest or Broadstairs Blues Bash (a long-standing festival) do promote the notion of an encompassing scene in a similar way to Bennett’s (2004) Canterbury scene, making a micro-scene argument more problematic. One might wonder why this is even important within such a condensed area as Kent, whereas it is in fact fundamental to the question at hand. The notion of a degree of holism within the anatomy of the Kent scene offers the opportunity for a similar notion with regard to taste – an important requirement for a local taste accent to evolve. In addition to this, like most forms of evolutionary change, a catalyst is required: in this case taking the form of the protagonists of the Kent scene. It is to these men and women that I now turn.

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The Tastemaking Process Within his study of Liverpool’s popular music scenes of the 1930s to the 1970s, Brocken (2010: 199) applies the term tastemaker to describe those individuals responsible for influencing the musical tastes of those around them, through their positions as independent record shopkeepers, local radio DJs, independent record labels and small, niche live music venues. While focusing on a small group of independent record shop operators and employees, he describes an environment being created, distinct from the mainstream, where these individuals were able to forge relationships with the clientele, ‘getting to know the customers and their musical tastes, and recommending music on repeated visits’ (2010: 207). It is this relationship that is of particular interest as, despite specifically referring to the learning of the customers’ taste, what appears to be inferred is that the tastemaker was, to some degree at least, actually driving tastes by means of stocking unusual items or retaining sale-or-return items in order to sell them as collectors’ items should a revival of interest occur. It is this last point that perhaps holds the key to the art of tastemaking. One could easily dismiss the notion of retaining unsold stock as purely speculative – an exercise in asset appreciation – which Brocken acknowledges, however he is keen to emphasize a general ‘lack of out-and-out profit making’ (2010: 207), promoting a view of them as aficionados or enthusiasts rather than entrepreneurs. Schwartz (2007) offers a useful insight into how tastemaking can adopt almost hegemonic proportions in her description of Britain’s early blues aficionados of the 1950s. She describes them as having a very rigid (and largely unfounded) view of what they considered to be authentic blues, with them essentially imposing this upon early British audiences by means of booking only artists who exemplified their self-styled perspicacity. By having such rigid genre perceptions, they ironically failed to bring the true sound of the contemporaneous American blues, being instead essentially played by artists such as Big Bill Broonzy. Schwartz (2007: 39–41) describes a 1950s scene where, following the success in Britain of Josh White (his style being considered authentic enough by the aficionados), Broonzy, whose music had waned in popularity in the United States, came out of retirement to seek success in the United Kingdom. Although not a member of the New York folk scene, as White was, by astutely recognizing that the British enthusiasts – still largely members of the jazz fraternity – had the greatest interest in the early blues,

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which they considered to be more authentic, he was able to deliver a style of music that proved popular. He did this by employing a simpler, rougher style of singing, revisiting and learning earlier blues material and, performing solo, employing a simpler, rawer guitar style. This was, in many ways, contradictory to the style of music he had developed himself in America, where he employed drummers and pianists to accompany him in a more standardized form of blues, more akin to the jazz-like city blues – a style that the British enthusiasts were extremely sceptical about and generally dismissed as lacking authenticity. (Schwartz 2007: 40–41). By bringing this authentic repertoire to Britain, Broonzy effectively shaped the perceptions and opinions of these early British blues enthusiasts, delivering what he thought they would consider the real blues. As the enthusiasts-cum-music promoters and writers embraced this, they delivered Broonzy to audiences, presenting him as they perceived him thus effectively shaping the wider perception of the blues in Britain at that time and for the following years. A notable side-effect of this was that Broonzy himself became, in many ways, the authority on what should be considered real blues, even dismissing the city blues style he had played a role in developing as sub-standard when compared with the older, more authentic styles (Schwartz 2007: 41). This played a part in the perception and reception of other American blues artists appearing in Britain after Broonzy, with artists who were perceived not to conform to the old-style music, as championed by Broonzy, being poorly received. This is exemplified by the rather cold reception of Broonzy’s American contemporary, Lonnie Johnson, whose more sophisticated ballads were dismissed as unauthentic and whose reception only improved when he was advised to play more simple, expressive blues later in his tour (Schwartz 2007: 42–45). Such misappropriation of non-indigenous music is apparently not limited to 1950s Britain. While giving consideration to the discourse, reception and authenticity implications with regards to a musical other, Frith (2000: 307) offers the following opinion: Folk song and rock record collecting, with its obsession with fact, its pursuit of the original, its hierarchy of experts, had long been a route through which African American music … had been appropriated by Europeans.

With the blues taking on the role of other, for the purposes of my current argument his views, especially when considering the attitudes of Schwartz’s

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early aficionados, appear extremely pertinent. In an age when Schwartz (2007: x) describes the blues as being ‘without radio play, mainstream media attention or BBC sanction’, this handing on of music perceived as being authentic by so-called experts (to coin Frith’s term) to their eager flock, exemplifies his claims of European appropriation perfectly, and perhaps offers a word of caution with regard to their twenty-first century counterparts.

Kent’s Tastemakers It would be grossly unfair to suggest that Kent’s promoters are exhibiting attitudes or behaviour akin to that of Swartz’s early enthusiasts, yet their own perceptions of what is the blues are very important. By examining club listings and attending gigs, varying stylistic offerings are dished up. It is noticeable that different clubs generally favour slightly different styles of blues. The former Kent Blues Collective clubs tend to offer more rock-­ influenced fayre, while their East and West Kent counterparts broadly offer lighter or more cosmopolitan fare. This being said, certain popular bands tend to draw in healthy crowds, regardless of whether they perform the music associated with the club. Generally, these will be those bands that the promoters have discovered at festivals around the country, which they perceive as being a badge of honour to book. The exception to this is Sevenoaks’ Blues with Bottle club, as it is a very small venue, only suitable for acoustic or very light styles; however, artists from far afield can still prove to be of particular interest to its clientele. Despite the pictures painted by Brocken and Schwartz appearing to reflect a bygone age, they may retain a note of familiarity, albeit personified a little differently. The images of independent 1970s record vendors or 1950s jazz and blues afficionados invites comparison with those of Kent’s contemporary blues promoters: determined to share the music that they are so passionate about without favouring fiscal considerations above the artistic. Steve Borkowski describes himself as a hobbyist who, far from being involved to make money, is actually content with small losses, explaining that for him promoting is ‘my hobby, and hobbies cost money’ (Borkowski, interview 2018). A simple head count at most gigs – from club-to-club, around 30–60 people – compared with a rough idea of the going rate for band fees bears out that this is not necessarily a profitable business to be in. Clearly some events do make money and occasionally a promotor may benefit financially, but normally any such profits will be

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ploughed back into the scene – perhaps as risk-mitigation when booking a higher profile, more expensive artist at a later date. As well as demonstrating more than a passing resemblance to some of Brocken’s tastemakers, in terms of motivation, their role as drivers of musical taste is also favourably comparable. Brocken’s (2010: 213) description of the employees of one 1970s shop as being widely considered ‘arbiters of “good taste”’ suggests a potentially transactional relationship being generated between tastemaker and patron  – albeit perhaps a rather one-sided one. Similar relationships seem to exist within Kent’s scene. The simple sight of so many familiar faces returning repeatedly to each club suggests that it is not necessarily the particular artist on offer that draws the audiences, but rather a trust in the promoter to always serve up high-quality fare. When asked about this, Geoff Pine simply said that he thought ‘they [his audiences] respect my judgement’ (Pine, interview 2018), which suggests that a form of transactional feedback is also apparent: the promoter relying on the patrons’ acceptance of their taste in a similar way that they rely on the promoter’s judgement. Similarly, Mark Matthews describes actually altering the name of his club, from Bourne to The Blues to The Bourne Music Club, in order to broaden the appeal of music that he firmly considered to be within the blues sphere, but that his patrons at times did not (Matthews interview, 2020). He is effectively manipulating the transaction by removing what he sees as a potential barrier produced by the term ‘blues’. Of course, such promoter–patron relationships, or transactions, could still simply be one way  – the promoter simply being astute or lucky enough to mirror their clientele’s taste with their choice of artists, however, this seems unlikely. More probable, especially when considering Brocken’s views, is that a form of tastemaking is taking place: with the tastes of the promoter percolating through to their audiences, at least to a certain extent. Pine takes pride in trying to mix things up as much as possible, offering his audiences a wide variety of blues-related music and, when considering the apparent enduring success of his particular club, it seems reasonable to opine that he has cultivated a culture among the patrons that allows them to appreciate such diversity with open minds and, importantly, engage with it as genre-appropriate. Borkowski largely echoes this sentiment, describing trying to attract bands from afar that his audiences wouldn’t usually have the opportunity to see (Borkowski, interview 2018). In light of his stated festival attendances having risen considerably since 2015, while he was in sole charge of lineups, his tastemaking efficacy appears similarly laudable.

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With so much attention being directed at the promoters, one might wonder about the musicians of Kent. Whereas Schwartz’s (2007) early British blues scene was ideologically driven by followers of the music, subsequent incarnations – such as the British blues revival of the 1960s and 1970s  – were more identifiably musician led, as described by Allen’s (2006) reminiscences. This is largely typical of twentieth and early twenty-­ first century scenes, exemplified by Shank’s (1994) observations of Austin, Texas’s rock’n’roll scene – a term he uses loosely to describe various nonmainstream popular musics. He describes a city-scene predominantly steered forwards by individual bands and their followings, knitted together by informal and largely extemporaneous cooperatives of musicians and venue owners. A cursory glance at Kent’s current blues scene reveals something different: a scene largely devoid of local talent, with non-­ musicians carrying the scene forward. To examine why this is the case, it is necessary to look outside of the blues. An examination the listings of social media gig guides in Kent reveals an overwhelming abundance of bands, best described as mainstream covers bands. When asked to consider the reason for this, Neil Tegg, a local radio blues DJ and former landlord of The Windmill pub in Ashford – reputedly regarded as one of the best live music pubs in Kent – describes issues with a ‘fickle’ audience base: ‘Blues stuff is harder to put on in pubs to get an audience … it’s very niche. In pubs, people want to hear the songs that they want to hear: Sex on Fire, Alright Now. (Tegg, interview 2018). Given that Tegg is a self-confessed music lover and keen to put on less mainstream music, it is hardly surprising that many of his – perhaps less artistically committed – contemporaries are disinclined to do so. It therefore stands to reason that, with limited local opportunities to perform, enduring blues artists will not emerge in any great numbers and a musician-­ led scene is unlikely to flourish. In reality, it is probably rather unrealistic to expect anything else in an area such as Kent, especially while setting such strict genre parameters – something Shank does not do. One could argue that the promoter-led scene could help cultivate a musician-led scene and vice-versa, but again I would suggest that this is unrealistic, as it would involve promoters essentially ignoring proven national talent in favour of local unproven (and sparsely available) acts. With audience numbers always a concern, this seems unreasonable to expect, particularly when considering the diminution of geographical barriers in Britain.

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Conclusion The idea of promoting the notion of regional taste accents in a country as geographically small as Britain is certainly bold. However, at least to some extent the necessary components do seem to exist. While limited opportunities for non-mainstream musicians mean they must consider the entire country to be their scene, for promoters and audiences theirs can still be easily circumscribed to enable genuine locality. With this comes a potential propagation of localized tastemaking transactions, and a resulting morphosis or emulsification of tastes. Whether there is sufficient relativity between the individual clubs, promoters and patrons to allow for this to occur on a county-wide level is less clear – or, conversely, perhaps there are not sufficient numbers of clubs in Kent alone to allow for a holistic accent to evolve. What does seem more apparent is that the processes undertaken by each promoter when delivering their product are very similar, including the thought processes, conscious or unconscious. Pine, Matthews and Borkowski all feel a responsibly to deliver quality, original music to their audiences, and with that comes both a consideration of their own personal tastes, audience tastes and, importantly, an almost intangible wider taste cloud that, when extrapolated, suggests an upper plane of tastemaking, driven by the national or international mechanisms, such as festivals, social media and the written blues press. This is evident in Pine’s desire to bring overseas talent to his diminutive club or the apparent clamour by promoters to book the next big name before anyone else does. In such cases, the local promoters now appear to be the consumers within the tastemaking transaction, then trading on their produce to their club patrons. Such processes leave the musician largely abstracted from the equation; however, in light of the incursive mainstream, this is hardly the fault of the local scene activists. With non-mainstream music becoming ever-more niche, blues musicians must spread themselves wider, or perhaps take a more active role in  local scenes by doubling as promoters rather than expecting to drive the scene from a purely musical base. I must, therefore, conclude inconclusively – thus, I hope, opening the door for future discourse. While Kent’s scene has the individuals and institutions – for example, in the form of the Borkowski/Matthew axis – to influence more widespread taste, leaving the likes of Pine largely abstracted, there is no certainty about whether there is enough of a Kentish identity to allow for a taste accent to evolve. A wider, regional perspective is likely

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to be required for this to be examined successfully, along with further examination of the wider tastemaking tiers. What can be suggested with a reasonable degree of confidence is that, within the environs of small scenes such as Kent’s, wherever transactional relationships exist between music facilitators and consumers, a process of tastemaking is virtually inevitable.

References Allen, D. 2006. Feelin’ bad this morning: Why the British blues? Popular Music 26 (1): 141–156. Bennett, A. 2004. New tales from Canterbury: The making of a virtual scene. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.  Peterson, 205–220. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A., and R. Peterson. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Brocken, M. 2010. Other voices: Hidden histories of Liverpool’s popular music scenes, 1930s–1970s. Farnham: Ashgate. Chaney, D. 2012. The music industry in the digital age: Consumer participation in value creation. International Journal of Arts Management 15 (1): 42–52. Frith, S. 2000. The discourse of world music. In Western music and its others: Difference, representation, and appropriation in music, ed. D. Hesmondhalgh and G. Born, 254–279. Berkeley: University of California Press. Inglis, I. 2010. Historical approaches to Merseybeat: Delivery, affinity and diversity. In The beat goes on: Liverpool, popular music and the changing city, ed. M. Leonard and R. Strachan, 11–27. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Schwartz, R.F. 2007. How Britain got the blues: The transmission and reception of American blues style in the United Kingdom. Aldershot: Ashgate. Shank, B. 1994. Dissonant identities: The rock’n’roll scene in Austin, Texas. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Spring, K. 2004. Behind the rave: Structure and agency in a rave scene. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R. Peterson, 48–63. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Straw, W. 1991. Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 5 (3): 368–388.

CHAPTER 9

In the Middle of Nowhere: Eisenach and Its Organically Grown Blues and Jazz Infrastructure Nico Thom

Given the regional location of the small German town of Eisenach and the historical context of its music tradition, the presence of a stable (and mainly US-influenced) blues and jazz infrastructure1 may seem out of place. Nevertheless, there are organizational forms and locations that were constituted slowly over decades by a small group of visionary people to support blues and jazz (as well as related styles of popular music). Eisenach is anything but a metropolis. On the contrary, it can be considered more of a peripheral town or region that has been struggling with a declining and ageing population for many years.2 Eisenach is part of Thuringia, one of five new federal states in Germany. Although considered part of Eastern Germany, the state is actually located in Central Germany. With its 2.1 million residents (Thüringer Landesamt für Statistik in Erfurt 2020) Thuringia is relatively sparsely populated with

N. Thom (*) University of the Arts, Bremen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_9

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many forests, a strong agricultural industry and little industry. The city of Erfurt is the state capital. Eisenach is located in the far west of Thuringia, about 70 kilometres from Erfurt; it is a relatively small town with 42,250 inhabitants (Thüringer Landesamt für Statistik in Erfurt 2020). During the German Democratic Republic (GDR) era, Eisenach was near the West German border, so the city has a diverse geopolitical identity, being located simultaneously in the East, the Centre and close to the West. Eisenach’s landmark and important site of cultural history is the Wartburg, a medieval castle that towers high above the city, which is thematized in Richard Wagner’s well-known opera Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg (1845). However, the fact that the baroque composer and musician Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was born in Eisenach and spent the first ten years of his childhood there is more important to the music world. The Bachhaus Eisenach museum is a pilgrimage site for many German and international music tourists.

Swing on Shellac, Illegal Jam Sessions and a Book Some enthusiastic fans of swing music were already in Eisenach in the 1920s. Later, during the National Socialist era, they were called the Swing Kids, a youth subculture that emerged during the interwar period and became one of a number of groups opposed to Nazi ideology during the 1930s and early 1940s (Ueberall 2015): The first American jazz records were available for purchase here [in Eisenach] at the relevant shops starting in 1925. At that time, the record was the sole source of information about this new kind of music since there was no jazz literature or jazz programmes on the radio. In 1926, the bands of Bernhard Ette and Alex Heyde played in Eisenach and were oriented towards the music of Paul Whiteman. In 1926/27, the Hardörfers Jazzsyncopaters also performed at the Alt Heidelberg entertainment venue … This band played the jazz music that they listened to on records … When the drummer of this band became ill, Erich Böttger of Eisenach stood in for him. Erich Böttger tells the story that at that time there were about eight to ten jazz fans in Eisenach who bought jazz records, were devoted to this music and in 1927 attended a concert by the American Sam Wooding Orchestra that was on a tour of Germany … This is where they heard the lively American Negro [sic] jazz for the first time. (Jazzclub Eisenach 2009: 11)

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During the Nazi period (1933–45), there were both local bands and travelling orchestras that played upbeat dance music – even though this was frowned upon by the fascists: During the years 1943/44, Georg Korn secretly organized … jam sessions with French, Danish, Czech and Belgian musicians, who at that time were forced to work as Fremdarbeiter (foreign labourers) in Germany. (Jazzclub Eisenach 2009: 11)

In the mid-1950s, an Eisenach old-time jazz formation called the Down Beat Stompers was formed and existed for several decades. In 1958, the Eisenach-based Erich Röth Verlag published the first book in German about jazz (Dauer 1958). It was received with great interest not only in Eisenach but throughout the entire German-speaking area (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).

The Jazz Club, the Blume Family and Old Companions After World War II, Eisenach was first occupied by US and later Soviet troops. From 1949 onwards, it was part of the GDR.  On 27 January 1959, the first jazz club of the GDR was formed at the car factory in Eisenach: The driving force of this idea was the unforgotten Manfred Blume (1938–86). Like no one else in Eisenach, he … believed in jazz and that it would spread … Together with his brother Roland and Kurt Zöller, who worked in the car factory, … Manfred Blume convinced the FDJ [Free German Youth] functionaries with his many words and sweeping gestures3 … The pact was made and AG4 Jazz was created within the FDJ organization of the Eisenach car factory. (Jazzclub Eisenach 2009: 2)

During that same year, a club magazine called Die Posaune (The Trombone) was published.5 This title was chosen because Manfred Blume played trombone as a hobby. In addition to him, other young, semi-professional musicians gathered in the AG Jazz and supported the spread of jazz in Eisenach and its surroundings.

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In January 1960, the first Eisenach Jazz Days were held. The chronicle shows that the Down Beat Stompers had positioned themselves in the hall of the train station in order to blow New Orleans Jazz for the Jena Oldtimers’. (Jazzclub Eisenach 2009: 2)

Manfred Blume established himself as the powerful engine behind the club’s activities and was its first chairman. He was even able to attract jazz musicians from the West to come to Eisenach: Through the years, Manfred Blume worked from Eisenach with unflagging dedication to create a national and international jazz labyrinth. People still remember concerts such as those of Leo Wright, Carmell Jones and Etta Cameron. Blume found like-minded or even similarly dedicated individuals in the jazz clubs of Moscow, Slany and Warsaw. A mosaic of lectures, record evenings, photo exhibitions and film screenings … ensured that the jazz bacillus remained a contagious entity in Eisenach. (Jazzclub Eisenach 2009: 3)

Even Reinhard Lorenz, who was still young at that time and came from the Eisenach area, became enthusiastic about the jazz club due to Manfred Blume and his companions. He wrote about the experience: When life washed me into Eisenach’s jazz history in the mid-1960s, it already had greying hair. I wasn’t even fifteen years old when this music came over me on 7 April 1965 at the Thüringenhalle (Thuringia Hall) in Erfurt. It was the ‘coppery sound of Louis Armstrong’s voice and trumpet’ that changed my life in two hours. Manfred Blume had personally handed me the ticket for this unforgettable concert. This was a momentous affair since jazz became a projection space for all of my yearning for faraway places from that time on. (Lorenz 2005: 272)

When Blume passed away in 1986, Lorenz took over as chairman of the Eisenach Jazz Club, a position he held until 2009 (Jazzclub Eisenach 2020a), when Daniel Eckenfelder assumed the role. This means there were just two chairmen until the club’s 50th anniversary in 2009, each holding their term of office for about 25  years. Daniel Eckenfelder (b. 1968) has been chairman of the club since 2009. This indicates a continuity of personnel that has created quite a sustainable infrastructure for the Eisenach blues and jazz community. With each of the three club chairmen, further individuals and institutions have permanently been integrated into the town’s blues and jazz activities. For example, both of Manfred Blume’s sons have become professional blues

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or jazz musicians and still live in Eisenach. Alexander Blume, blues and boogie-woogie pianist as well as singer (Blume 2020) and his brother Stanley Blume, jazz saxophonist (Blume 2015) have lived and worked in Eisenach for decades and help shape its music landscape. The brothers frequently perform together and with other family members: Alexander with his son Maximilian (drummer and singer) and Stanley with his wife Jana (singer). The Eisenach Jazz Club is the centre of the Blume brothers’ professional activities. They have been performing there since the early 1970s, in various formations and project ensembles, often sharing the stage with other professional blues and jazz musicians from Eisenach and its environs, such as jazz and tango pianist Stefan Kling (2019), swing guitarist Marco Böttger (2020) and double bassist and tuba player Christoph Gottwald (2020). A few amateur ensembles from Eisenach and the surrounding area – such as the folk band Spätlese (2016) from the nearby town of Mihla – perform ‘every year again at the Eisenach Jazz Club’ (Sobko 2019). Ines and Jörg Andraczek form the centre of this band and are also active in the Jazz Club, which has about 200 members (Jazzclub Eisenach 2020a). Many make up the club’s audience, but some assume other tasks such as bar service, setting up and cleaning the venue or ticket collection. The venue’s artistic direction has fallen to the respective chairmen, who have organized an unbelievable number of concerts during more than six decades; particularly in the music areas of jazz, blues and folk,6 sometimes 40–50 concerts per year (Rommel 2007). A traditional orientation and consistency of the programme is evident. Many solo artists and bands have performed various times in Eisenach, sometimes over decades. Examples include drummer Trevor Richards with his New Orleans Trio,7 which plays classic old-time jazz; the Frank Muschalle Trio (Muschalle 2020), which performs boogie-woogie; or B.B. & the Blues Shakes (2012), who play R&B and are among the ‘“old friends” of the Eisenach Jazz Club’ (Krauss 2019a). Many others could be added to this list, either from or living in Germany. Some are open to more modern styles, such as jazz guitarist Susan Weinert (2020) and her band, who play fusion jazz or merge ‘jazz, classical music and world music’ (Schellbach 2019) or the duo Friend’n’Fellow (2016), who perform acoustic soul music with guitar and vocals and sometimes contemporary blues (Krauss 2019). International musicians also come to Eisenach regularly to perform at its traditional Jazz Club, which is the oldest jazz club in Eastern Germany. In West Germany, there is one jazz club that is older (Frankfurt/Main), and has existed for more than 60  years (Jazzclub Eisenach 2020a;

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Schellbach 2017).8 For example, the American jazz pianist Brad Mehldau (2020), who was still young and little-known at the time, performed at the club in the Rising Stars series (Schm6idberger 2016). The highly versatile flute virtuoso Jiří Stivín (2020) from the Czech Republic was also a guest at the Eisenach club, including at a concert honouring Bach, entitled Reflections in Jazz (Kaschke 2012). Finally, the Spanish folk musician Ana Alcaide (2020), an acclaimed nyckelharpa player, made a guest appearance.

The Alte Mälzerei (Old Malthouse) The association provides information on the location of its club online and has only had a permanent venue since 1989. This is the Alte Mälzerei, a building that was constructed in 1875. The Alte Mälzerei has a beautiful, vaulted cellar, which was renovated by the Jazz Club members and has space to accommodate up to 350 guests (Jazzclub Eisenach 2020b). This building was originally used to make brewing malt and later for roasting malt coffee (by the Heintz company). The building stood empty from 1952 to 1989. In 1989, it was purchased from the City of Eisenach and made available to the Jazz Club (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung 2019: 23). The club has been organizing concerts, readings and symposiums in the spacious basement ever since. In addition, the basement is also rented out by the Jazz Club to generate additional revenue through private celebrations or company parties. The industrial monument is under the special protection of the local monument protection authority. Nevertheless, it was possible over the past 30 years for Jazz Club members to renovate it because the city has always supported these activities, both in terms of their ideas and finances. A major reason for this was the fact that Reinhard Lorenz, head of the Jazz Club until 2009, had simultaneously served as the head of the City of Eisenach’s cultural office in his main profession (from1990 until 2017) and was able to exert a strong influence on the promotion of culture in the town. Since 2016, the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation, which is closely connected with the Jazz Club Eisenach, has owned the historic Alte Mälzerei property. Reinhard Lorenz was also on the board of the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung 2019: 3).

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International Jazz Archive Eisenach Reinhard Lorenz is also the spiritus rector of the International Jazz Archive Eisenach, established in 1999. Members of the Jazz Club had collected cut-out newspaper articles and self-recorded tapes and cassettes because original sources on the topic of jazz music were scarce in the GDR and it was difficult to get hold of vinyl records, and jazz magazines or books. But there was also a sense of commitment to the blues, which had been practised in Thuringia since the later 1950s (Lorenz 2008: 189). In 1978, Reinhard Lorenz met Günter Boas – known in professional circles as the ‘German Blues Pope’ – in Berlin. Boas (1920–93) was a blues and jazz pianist, record dealer, radio moderator and music journalist, and a passionate collector of sound carriers, and music magazines and books. His collection also contains correspondence and manuscripts from his own radio broadcasts (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung 2020b). He had been in an active exchange with many American blues and jazz greats, ranging from Big Bill Broonzy to Louis Armstrong, and Victoria Spivey to Ella Fitzgerald (Heidkamp 2007). Lorenz allowed himself to be enlightened by Boas about the close connection between blues and jazz, and he adopted the latter’s unbiased way of seeing the bigger picture since Boas also collected lively Schlager (German pop) and Tango music. The many years of friendship between Lorenz and Boas ultimately led to his extensive collection being given to the Eisenach Jazz Club in 1999, some years after Boas’s death. This collection – in connection with the materials Jazz Club members had gathered over the decades – formed the basis of the Eisenach Jazz Archive, which is run by volunteers and housed at the Alte Mälzerei. This occurred exactly ten years after the Jazz Club association had moved into the basement. From then on, live music was played downstairs with the music archive directly above. This was a momentous combination, since the archive also served as a change room for artists, allowing them to marvel at the many materials. On the one hand, this ensured that the performing musicians were able to present their own promo materials or private collections to the archive; on the other, it sent news of the archive’s existence out into the world. As a result of word-of-mouth promotion, other collectors became aware of the archive. One example was Fritz Marschall (business economist, resident of Frankfurst/Main) whose collection is by far the most extensive in the archive, having a weight of 8 tonne and being delivered in three stages (2002, 2006 and 2010). Marschall commented on the intention of his collection as follows:

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‘It has the goal of comprehensively documenting the Afro-American music in the USA from about 1890 to 1960. This goal has been largely achieved, but just the time period from 1945 to 1960 has been documented with regard to “modern” jazz on the basis of examples.’ There is no doubt that the heart of this collection is the blues (all varieties, from country to city). Nevertheless, it would be inappropriate to speak of a “pure” blues collection since rock, soul, funk, rhythm’n’blues, gospel, spiritual, pop and ethnological materials can also be found here in addition to jazz. The collection covers all forms of written, audio and visual media, also containing a large amount of cultural-historical literature that only refers to music on the periphery (e.g. an extraordinary comic collection). In terms of numbers, the Fritz Marschall Collection can be summarised as follows: approx. 12,000 LPs; 10,000 CDs; 4000 magazines/catalogues/periodicals; 1200 books; 1000 comics; 800 magnetic tapes; 600 audio cassettes; 500 12-inch singles; 200 DVDs and 100 VHS video cassettes, as well as some 78 rpm records, posters, t-shirts, figures, etc. Fritz Marschall has meticulously documented his entire collection in about 400 folders. (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-­ Stiftung 2020a)

Another unusual collection in the Eisenach Jazz Archive which has garnered some attention is (e.g. Von Schenk 2009): Originally from England, the drummer Trevor Richards was born in 1945 and is one of the last experts on the traditional New Orleans way of playing his instrument. He lived in the city on the Mississippi for many years until 2005, until the flood (in the wake of Hurricane Katrina) almost completely devastated New Orleans. As a result, Trevor Richard’s New Orleans Jazz Collection was also submerged. As a result, Richards  – who now lives in Germany – decided to bequeath his partially damaged collection to the … Archive. It is now being successively restored and made accessible here. In addition to the approx. 5000 LPs with a main emphasis on early jazz, the original drums from New Orleans are worth mentioning. (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung 2020c)

The three large collections of Boas, Marschall and Richards mentioned here also made the Eisenach site interesting for other collectors who were toying with the idea of handing over their personal collections.

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Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation As the archive grew, the Eisenach Jazz Club Association had to consider the financial and legal framework for putting it on a more formal basis. The archive work – the preparation of the handover modalities, picking up the collections, viewing and structuring them, and cataloguing the holdings – simply became too much work for the association members, as none had adequate archival know-how. So the idea arose of establishing a foundation that could act as an umbrella organization for the archive. Reinhard Lorenz, head of the cultural office, recalled that Horst Lippmann (1927–97, see Rieth 2010), one of the two former operators of the Frankfurt-based concert agency Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau, was born in Eisenach. Around this fact, Lorenz developed a narrative: Horst Lippmann set out from Eisenach into the wide world to revolutionize the history of popular music and now the fruits of his labour were returning to his birthplace, being archived there and preserved for posterity.9 What was so special about Horst Lippmann? Together with Fritz Rau (1930–2013, see Rau 2005), he developed and managed a concert agency that was both nationally and internationally successful in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s: The list of artists who they ambitiously represented reads like a Who’s Who of jazz, blues, rock and pop history: Joan Baez, The Rolling Stones, Peter Maffay, Scorpions, Tina Turner, Michael Jackson, Charles Aznavour, Bob Dylan, Marlene Dietrich, Ella Fitzgerald, The Doors, The Les Humphries Singers, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Rory Gallagher, The Who, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Udo Lindenberg, Udo Jürgens, Gitte Hænning, Nana Mouskouri, Madonna, Prince, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Harry Belafonte, ABBA, Ton Steine Scherben, Albert Mangelsdorff, Katja Ebstein, Jethro Tull … just to name a few. (Thom 2010: 44)

Around 2000, the resourceful Reinhard Lorenz contacted Horst Lippmann’s daughter and got hold of his estate. In addition, he convinced Fritz Rau to hand over his record collection to the Eisenach Jazz Archive. He was also able to win over some well-known German rock and pop singers, such as Udo Lindenberg and Peter Maffay (who had once been represented by the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau concert agency) to the idea of a foundation. In Daniel Eckenfelder, who had already been involved in the Jazz Club, he found a businessman based in the vicinity of Eisenach10 who supplied economic know-how in realizing the idea of a foundation:

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In 2006, Daniel Eckenfelder and Reinhard Lorenz established the initially dependent Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation – not as financially strong patrons but as people looking for a way to establish the International Jazz Archive, which was founded in 1999, in the future, to expand its structures and therefore preserve the unique industrial monument of the Alte Mälzerei through active use. Until this day, the necessary financial means (operating costs and investments) have been raised as donations and project funds. The work of the foundation is done exclusively by volunteers. The organs of the foundation are the foundation board and the foundation council. The work of the foundation is inspired and supported by an advisory board with prominent people on it. (Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung 2019: 12)

With this clever move, Lorenz and Eckenfelder connected with the brand Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau, which is well known among experts but without holding any rights to the defunct company or its products (the agency also had its own record label called L PLUS_SPI R Records) (Discogs 2020). Although the foundation was not legally binding until 2016, Lorenz and Eckenfelder peddled it, won over further allies and acquired grants: Since 1 July of this year, the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation for Music Research has been a foundation with legal capacity; the City of Eisenach, the Städtische Wohnungsgesellschaft mbH (Municipal Housing Company, SWG) and the Jazz Club Eisenach have contributed to it with their donations. The SWG donated the Alte Mälzerei as the property of the foundation, the City of Eisenach contributed the Günther Boas Collection that had been given to it in 1993 and the Jazz Club Eisenach provided its archival holdings. (SWG 2016: 10ff)

After 50 years, there was no longer any doubt about the artistic or cultural value of the association’s activities. Yet the idea that the association members could maintain and scientifically develop an archive was questionable. So the team around Lorenz and Eckenfelder looked for a connection to a university, approaching the only music university in the federal state, the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar, located about 90 kilometres east of Eisenach. Through the mediation of the former rector of the Bauhaus University Weimar, an open ear was found, and the director of the university’s Musicological Institute, Dr. Detlef Altenburg, recognized the possibility of creating a professorship for popular music research (Hufner 2009: 19). Ultimately, it was a happy coincidence that the federal

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state of Thuringia launched a funding initiative called ProExzellenz. The Weimar University of Music and the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation applied for a grant of €500,000 (Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur 2012). The project entitled “The History of Jazz and Popular Music” was accepted and funded for the period from 2009 to 2011 (three years). The objectives of the cooperation project were: • scientific indexing of the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Music Archive: Review and indexing of the archive holdings, cataloguing of written documents (magazines, programmes, posters, correspondence, etc.) • online presence of the archive through a website and an online catalogue • organization of a conference on jazz and popular music • initiation of research projects on the history of jazz and popular music in Germany and Europe that is specifically linked to the archive holdings. (Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar 2020)

Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Music Archive Thus, the International Jazz Archive founded in 1999 became the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Music Archive ten years later (2009). From that time, it had the subtitle of the International Archive for Jazz and Popular Music of the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Foundation (Thom 2010). Within the scope of the ProExzellenz funding programme, a professorship for the history of jazz and popular music was created at the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar and Dr. Martin Pfleiderer was appointed to it. He was also appointed scientific director of the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Music Archive in 2009. I became his research associate. While Pfleiderer mainly worked in Weimar at the University of Music and only occasionally visited the Eisenach Archive, the opposite was true for me. I moved to Eisenach for two-and-a-half years and spent the major portion of my working hours in restructuring the Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau Music Archive, systematically recording the holdings and making them accessible to the public. I was assisted by Antje Wagner, a competent colleague from a different field who is trained as a foreign language secretary. She was employed at the Archive from 2009 to 2011, as I was. The new scientific supervision of the archive met with media interest. Within a short period, there was newspaper and television coverage, mainly in the local press (e.g. Tiesler 2009: 2). Special media attention was

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received by a conference with the (translated) title of ‘Is Popular Music a Cultural Memory?’ that took place at the Eisenach Archive in September 2010 (e.g. Breidecker 2010; Hellmann 2010; Kaschke 2010; MDR 2010). Topics of discussion were ‘Perspectives of documenting, archiving and scientific reappraisal of popular music from the past, as well as its significance for our understanding of history and culture, for our cultural identity, but also for contemporary music creation’ (Pfleiderer 2010: 2). In 2011, the results of the conference were published in book form (Pfleiderer 2011).

Conclusion Even though these historical achievements are impressive, some setbacks blocked the further infrastructural development over the period 2012–21 (Zlotowicz 2017; Schellbach 2018). But especially Lorenz and Eckenfelder continue to put it forward and they even try to expand the infrastructure for blues and jazz music in Eisenach (Helbing 2015; Lippmann PLUS_ SPI Rau-Stiftung 2019). From an outside perspective, these small-town activities can be seen as megalomania, or at least as a utopian dream. In fact, the long-lasting and tight cooperation between the two is their key to success – as was the cooperation between Blume and Lorenz. Besides personnel continuity over 60 years, the second main factor seems to be the non-profit thinking in combination with authentic enthusiasm. Obviously, active volunteering for music can sometimes be more important than genuine music expertise and formal music education. For example, Reinhard Lorenz can neither play an instrument nor sing, yet the graduate sports scientist and theatre scholar is capable of finding suitable colleagues, binding them to him and installing an original blues and jazz infrastructure that people would not expect to find ‘in the middle of nowhere’.

Notes 1. The term ‘infrastructure’ has been chosen deliberately to avoid the term ‘(music) scene’. Eisenach has less a local scene of active blues and jazz musicians but more a very good environment for blues and jazz musicians as well as researchers from outside. Some theoretical approaches term this a cultural infrastructure (Institut für Kulturpolitik der Kulturpolitischen Gesellschaft e.V. 2010).

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2. Cf. Thüringer Landesamt für Umwelt, Bergbau und Naturschutz in Jena (2020); Stadtverwaltung Eisenach (2017). 3. The Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ, Free German Youth) was the youth organization of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (GDR) for almost 40 years. 4. AG is a German abbreviation for Arbeitsgemeinschaft (working group). 5. In 1971, the club magazine was refused official authorization and had to be discontinued. 6. In recent years, some folk concerts with international artists have been organized by the Andraczeks, who also perform at the club on a regular basis with their Spätlese band. 7. See Richards (2009). The regional newspaper wrote: ‘Not even the bandleader knows how often the Trevor Richards Trio has already had guest appearances in Eisenach.’ There is also a mention of the ‘Jazz Club old-­timers’ and their ‘frequent presence’ (Kaschke 2011). 8. Only the Jazzkeller, a club in the nearby metropolis of Frankfurt am Main, is older. It was founded in 1952 (Jazzkeller Frankfurt 2020). 9. What was intentionally omitted in this narrative is the fact that Horst Lippmann – apart from his brief time in Eisenach – ‘spent his childhood … in Frankfurt’ (Rieth 2010: 197). 10. Daniel Eckenfelder and his brother Christof form the general management of the Eckenfelder company in Wenigenlupnitz near Eisenach. It has a staff of about 80 and produces various printed materials (Eckenfelder GmbH & Co. KG 2020).

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utsche.de/kultur/archiv-­f uer-­p opulaere-­m usik-­t otal-­a nalog-­1 .1002616. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Dauer, A.M. 1958. Jazz. Seine Ursprünge und seine Entwicklung. Eisenach/Kassel: Erich Röth Verlag. Discogs. 2020. L PLUS_SPI R Records. https://www.discogs.com/label/33651­LR PLUS_SPI Records. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Eckenfelder GmbH & Co. KG. 2020. Unser Team. https://www.eckenfelder.de/ portfolio-­posts/unser-­team. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar. 2020. Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-­ Musikarchiv Eisenach. Friend’n’Fellow. 2016. About. https://www.friendnfellow.de/en_about. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Gottwald, Christoph. 2020. Lebenslauf. http://www.christophgottwald.de/lebenslauf.html. 15 Nov 2020. Heidkamp, K. 2007. There is a house in Eisenach. Die Zeit, 30 August. https:// www.zeit.de/2007/36/Blues-­Eisenach. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Helbing, M. 2015. Stararchitekt plant für das Jazzarchiv in Eisenach. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 3 July. https://www.tlz.de/kultur/stararchitekt-­plant-­ fuer-­das-­jazzarchiv-­in-­eisenach-­id221017995.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Hellmann, L. 2010. Bewahrer des Zeitgeistes. Das Freie Wort (DFW), 17 September. Hufner, M. 2009. Der Professor, das Archiv, die Musik. Martin Pfleiderer lehrt in Weimar Geschichte des Jazz und der populären Musik. Jazzzeitung, 5. https:// www.jazzzeitung.de/jazz/2009/05/education-­pfleiderer.shtml. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Institut für Kulturpolitik der Kulturpolitischen Gesellschaft e.V. 2010. Jahrbuch für Kulturpolitik 2010. Band 10, Thema: Kulturelle Infrastruktur. Edited by B.  Wagner. Essen: Klartext. https://kupoge.de/Jahrbuch/Jahrbuch_2010. pdf. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Jazzclub Eisenach. 2009. Ausstellung zum 50. Club-Jubiläum. Eisenach: Jazzclub Eisenach. https://jazzclub-­eisenach.de/wp-­content/uploads/2017/06/ Ausstellung_Jazzclub_Eisenach_2009.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2020a. Clubgeschichte. https://jazzclub-­eisenach.de. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2020b. Location. https://jazzclub-­eisenach.de. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Jazzkeller Frankfurt. 2020. Jazzkeller Frankfurt am Main – Weltstars hautnah seit 1952. https://www.jazzkeller.com. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Kaschke, K.-P. 2010. Teil des Gedächtnisses. Wissenschaftler diskutieren über den Einfluss populärer Musik auf die Kultur. Thüringische Landeszeitung (TLZ), 21 September.

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———. 2011. Jazzclub-Urgestein in der Alten Mälzerei. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), June 21. https://www.tlz.de/kultur/jazzclub-­urgestein-­in-­der-­alten-­ maelzerei-­id218416139.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Kaschke, Klaus-Peter. 2012. Konzert mit Juri Stivin in Eisenach entzückte Bach-­ Kenner. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 29 February. https://www.tlz.de/ kultur/musik/konzer t-­m it-­j uri-­s tivin-­i n-­e isenach-­e ntzueckte-­b ach-­ kenner-­id218170303.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Kling, S. 2019. Biografie. https://stefankling.de/biografie. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Krauss, S. 2019a. Bluesabend im Eisenacher Jazzclub. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 11 February. https://www.tlz.de/kultur/bluesabend-­im-­eisenacher-­ jazzkeller-­id225117413.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2019b. Duo Friend‘n Fellow gastiert in Eisenach. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), October 7. https://www.tlz.de/regionen/eisenach/duo-­friend-­n-­ fellow-­gastiert-­in-­eisenach-­id227293015.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung. 2019. Sound der Freiheit. Konzeptionelle Überlegungen zur Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung Eisenach. Eisenach: Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung. https://www.lippmann-­rau-­stiftung. de/l-­r-­stiftung/aktuelles. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2020a. Sammlung Fritz Marschall. https://www.lippmann-­rau-­stiftung. de/l-­r-­musikarchiv/sammlungen/marschall. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2020b. Sammlung Günter ,Bessie‘ Boas. https://www.lippmann-­rau-­ stiftung.de/l-­r-­musikarchiv/sammlungen/boas. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2020c. Sammlung Trevor Richards. https://www.lippmann-­rau-­stiftung. de/l-­r-­musikarchiv/sammlungen/richards. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Lorenz, R. 2005. Letzte Ausfahrt Eisenach: Eine Jazzgeschichte aus der Provinz. In Freie Töne. Die Jazzszene in der DDR, ed. R. Bratfisch, 272–277. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. ———. 2008. Sag mir, wo du stehst. Im Unterholz des thüringischen Blues. In Ich hab den Blues schon etwas länger. Spuren einer Musik in Deutschland, ed. M. Rauhut and R. Lorenz, 188–197. Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. Mehldau, B. 2020. About. https://www.bradmehldau.com/brad. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR). 2010. Das Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-­ Musikarchiv in Eisenach. Thüringen Journal, 17 September. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=krZTshuu0a8. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Muschalle, F. 2020. Info. http://www.frankmuschalle.de/index.php?id=1264. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Pfleiderer, M. 2010. Populäre Musik als kulturelles Gedächtnis? In Programmheft zur Tagung, Populäre Musik als kulturelles Gedächtnis?’ im Lippmann PLUS_ SPI Rau-Musikarchiv Eisenach, 17–18 September, ed. M.  Pfleiderer, 2–6. Eisenach: Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-Stiftung. https://www.hfm-­weimar.de/

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fileadmin/Jazz_Pop/Publikation/L_R-­Archive_Programmheft.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———., ed. 2011. Populäre Musik und kulturelles Gedächtnis. Geschichtsschreibung, Archiv, Internet. Köln: Böhlau. Rau, F. 2005. 50 Jahre Backstage. Erinnerungen eines Konzertveranstalters. Heidelberg: Palmyra. Richards, T. 2009. Biography. http://www.trevorrichards.de/english/biography_en.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Rieth, M. 2010. Horst Lippmann. Ein Leben für Jazz, Blues und Rock. Heidelberg: Palmyra. Rommel, C. 2007. Der Jazzclub Eisenach. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR), 22 January. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rwHMuPgz_I. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Schellbach, B. 2017. Eisenacher Jazzclub ist einer der ältesten in Deutschland. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 27 January. https://www.tlz.de/kultur/ eisenacher-­jazzclub-­ist-­einer-­der-­aeltesten-­in-­deutschland-­id222319469.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2018. Eisenach: Endlich wieder Konzerte in der, Alten Mälzerei’. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 24 August. https://www.tlz.de/kultur/ eisenach-­endlich-­wieder-­konzerte-­in-­der-­alten-­maelzerei-­id224536639.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. ———. 2019. Gelungener Auftakt für das 60. Geburtstagsjahr des Eisenacher Jazzclubs. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 21 January. https://www.tlz.de/ kultur/gelungener-­a uftakt-­f uer-­d as-­6 0-­g eburtstagsjahr-­d es-­e isenacher-­ jazzclubs-­id225043129.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Schmidberger, K. 2016. Vom Privileg, 50 Jahre im Eisenacher Jazzclub mitgewirkt zu haben. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 9 April. https://www.tlz.de/ leben/land-­u nd-­l eute/vom-­p rivileg-­5 0-­j ahre-­i m-­e isenacher-­j azzclub-­ mitgewirkt-­zu-­haben-­id221654099.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Sobko, S. 2019. Spätlese bringt Wärme und Freude in die November-Tristesse. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 24 November. https://www.tlz.de/Lokales/ spaetlese-­bringt-­waerme-­und-­freude-­in-­die-­november-­tristesse-­id227737429. html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Spätlese. 2016. Musiker. https://www.spaetlese-­folk.de. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Städtische Wohnungsgesellschaft Eisenach mbH (SWG). 2016. Ein klingender Schatz. Die Alte Mälzerei ist eine international renommierte Kulturadresse. SWG Mieter-Journal 6: 10–11. Stadtverwaltung Eisenach. 2017. Sozialmonitor. https://www.eisenach.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rathaus/Stabsstellen_und_Beauftragte/Sozialmonitor.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Stivín, J. 2020. Diskografie. https://www.stivin.info/diskografie. Accessed 15 Nov 2020.

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Thom, N. 2010. Unglaublich, was man unter dem Himmel von Eisenach so findet … Audiovisuelle Medien im Eisenacher Lippmann PLUS_SPI Rau-­ Musikarchiv. In Archive in Thüringen. Audiovisuelle Medien in Archiven. Tagungsband 2010, ed. B. Fischer, 43–47. Weimar: Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur. Thüringer Landesamt für Statistik in Erfurt. 2020. Bevölkerung der Gemeinden, erfüllenden Gemeinden und Verwaltungsgemeinschaften nach Geschlecht in Thüringen. https://statistik.thueringen.de/datenbank/TabAnzeige. asp?tabelle=gg000102%7C%7C. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Thüringer Landesamt für Umwelt, Bergbau und Naturschutz in Jena. 2020. Stadt Eisenach  – Bevölkerung. http://www.tlug-­jena.de/uw_raum/umweltregional/ea/ea04.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur. 2012. Evaluierung des Landesprogramms ‘ProExzellenz’ (2008–2011). https://www.thueringen.de/imperia/md/content/tmbwk/wissenschaft/forschung/2013/evaluierungsbericht_proexzellenz_i.pdf. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Tiesler, A.-K. 2009. Neue Töne im Jazzarchiv. Allgemeiner Anzeiger Eisenach (AAE), 5 August. Ueberall, J. 2015. Swing kids. 2nd ed. Berlin: Archiv für Jugendkulturen Verlag. Von Schenk, S. 2009. Jazz in Eisenach. Zehn Jahre Jazzarchiv. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 18 May. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/jazz-­in-­ eisenach.1001.de.html?dram:article_id=156800. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Weinert, S. 2020. Projects. https://site.susanweinert.com//index.php/en/ rainbow-­trio. Accessed 15 Nov 2020. Zlotowicz, J. 2017. Lippmann & Rau-Stiftung bricht auf zu neuen Ufern. Thüringer Landeszeitung (TLZ), 15 September. https://www.tlz.de/leben/ l a n d -­u n d -­l e u t e / l i p p m a n n -­r a u -­s t i f t u n g -­b r i c h t -­a u f -­z u -­n e u e n -­ ufern-­id223222223.html. Accessed 15 Nov 2020.

CHAPTER 10

‘But Do They Know How It Is in Pihtipudas?’ Rural and Provincial Punk Scenes in Finland in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s Janne Poikolainen and Mikko Salasuo

London kids say they’re bored, London kids say they have nothing to do. But do they know how it is in Pihtipudas? Here, rock’n’roll is damn rare. (Translated from Finnish)

This is what the members of Finnish punk band Ratsia sang in their classic song ‘Lontoon skidit’ (London Kids) in 1979. The band members knew what they were singing about as they were from Pihtipudas, a rural municipality of 6000 inhabitants located in Central Finland. Without a doubt, the lyrics of the song were a fundamental factor behind its success as the band succeeded in crystallizing the experiences of many provincial music

J. Poikolainen (*) • M. Salasuo University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_10

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fans in the late 1970s and early 1980s of the cultural peripherality of their living environment. Late-1970s Finland offered a fruitful soil for Ratsia’s manifestation of frustration. At that time, a significant share of Finnish youth lived in rural municipalities or small towns. Their everyday living environments often had very little in common with international images of youth culture that were transmitted to them by youth magazines, radio and television (Puuronen 2003). Many rural and provincial young people felt that the ‘real’ youth culture existed somewhere else. The frustration articulated in ‘Lontoon skidit’ was not only about the cultural distance from the lifestyles of London and other international metropolitan areas, but also about domestic cultural differences. In the Western context, Finland’s modernization took place exceptionally late (Kettunen 2001) and the cultural gap between major cities and other localities remained generally wide until the 1970s. This also applied to youth culture. In the late 1970s, modernization of youth as a cultural stage of life had only partly reached smaller municipalities, whereas the golden years of youth culture had already started in the biggest cities (Heiskanen and Mitchell 1985). A contributing factor to the differences in youth culture’s progress between major cities and smaller municipalities was Finland’s low population density in a large country by area (at this time less than five million inhabitants). Distances between the urban centres were large and rural areas between them were sparsely populated, which slowed down the spreading of youth cultural phenomena. Experiences of cultural differences were further strengthened by post-war migration. The massive domestic migration brought a large number of young people from smaller municipalities to urban areas in Southern Finland. As a result, many young people who stayed in their home regions felt they were forgotten about and left behind. Drawing on this background, this chapter examines the experiences and recollections of being a punk in rural and provincial contexts during the so-called first wave of Finnish punk culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. We approach this little-examined subject by exploring the social and cultural meanings of the punk phenomenon in rural municipalities and small towns. We also examine how small punk scenes were able to respond to the aspects of material and cultural scarcity that characterized many local contexts. Finally, the distinctive national features that characterized Finnish punk culture are considered.

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We suggest that for punks in peripheral environments – or those experienced as such – participation in punk culture signified, above all, distinction in relation to traditional lifestyles. Punk, and the DIY activities associated with it, offered young punks a possibility to shorten the cultural distance between their own localities and urban centres. Being a punk also enabled the experience of belonging to a larger domestic and international subculture and community. In short, for Finnish youth in rural and provincial localities, punk culture represented a way to disconnect from the past, seen as conservative and backward, and reach for the modernist promises of contemporary youth culture (see also Poikolainen 2013). Our analysis is based on autobiographic written reminiscences gathered over two periods. The 2015 collection Mihin jäi punk? (Where’s the punk?) was organized by the youth association Oranssi. Altogether, 36 individuals born between 1957 and 1967 responded to the survey, reporting their experiences with punk culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many of the respondents come from rural municipalities or small towns, where they had experienced the arrival of punk culture into Finland. Our secondary data consists of Kilju reminiscence data of 521 respondents, collected by the Finnish Youth Research Network in 2019. In this data, the respondents recall the production and drinking of the fermented DIY alcohol kilju, popular among Finnish punks. In some of these recollections, punk culture in small municipalities is described. As social historians, we acknowledge the limitations of reminiscence data as the primary data source of a study. We do not take written punk reminiscences as an explicit source of ‘what really happened’, but we interpret the writings as the respondents’ subjective recollections, and as a medium to give meanings to the past (Tamke 1977). We look for hints and tips in the data that, together with the existing research literature on Finnish punk and youth, expose the punk phenomenon’s social and cultural meaning structures (Shopes 2011). Hence, instead of details, we are interested in the shared experiences (Halbwachs 1992) of young Finns and the role of punk culture in the modernization of Finnish youth (Poikolainen 2015). The chapter draws on the Nordic tradition of subculture research (e.g. Hoikkala and Suurpää 2005), where we have repeatedly observed that, due to distinctive features related to national characteristics and the welfare state, youth subcultures often appear different in the Nordic context compared with the way comparable phenomena are represented in Anglo-­ American research literature. This also applies to Finnish punk culture.

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The rise of punk in Finland was not primarily related to social class or the experience of social injustice; instead, its national and local meanings were influenced by youth’s attitudes towards the prevailing conservative values and practices in society (Raippa 2002).

The First Wave of Punk in Finland: A Brief Overview While it is difficult to pinpoint the origins of Finnish punk culture to any single point of time, the year 1977 is generally seen as a turning point (e.g. Saaristo 2003). Ramones’ concerts in Finland during spring 1977 were an important milestone in embracing punk as part of the Finnish music scene. Moreover, the first Finnish punk record by the band Briard was released at the end of that same year (Hänninen 2019). Wider audiences became aware of punk culture in 1978 (Heiskanen and Mitchell 1985), when plans to bring the Sex Pistols to Finland made the mainstream media interested in the ‘new’ youth phenomenon. The biggest Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, published a story in January 1978 about the Sex Pistols and their forthcoming concert in Helsinki, in which the band was reported to admire violence and the use of drugs, and its music was described as ‘vulgar roaring’ (Forsström 1978). The Helsingin Sanomat story initiated a broad and morally loaded debate in the mainstream media (Heiskanen and Mitchell 1985). Public pressure and moral irritation led the Ministry of Labor to decline the band’s work permit application and the concert was cancelled. Yet the scandal was not over. Liberal youth media condemned the politicians’ actions as restricting the freedom of speech. A new media scandal about the conservative attitude of the Finnish mainstream media towards popular music and youth arose. Prolonged discussion around the Sex Pistols’ concert brought more and more publicity to punk music, and the conservative attitudes exposed through the scandal finally worked against the objectives of those who had promoted the idea of refusing the work permit as the heated debate only increased youth’s interest in punk (e.g. Jalkanen and Kurkela 2003). It created a spontaneous rebellion forum for Finnish youth during the late 1970s, many of whom who thought the contemporary atmosphere in society was backward, inward-looking and bleak (Heiskanen and Mitchell 1985; Saaristo 2003). After the media scandals, punk quickly developed into a considerable part of Finnish youth culture. From early on, Finnish punk culture was

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characterized by mixing international influences and national features. With regard to music, Finnish punk combined earlier domestic rock styles with features of both British and American punk (Saaristo 2003). The Suomipunk (Finnish punk) style, performed in Finnish language and drawing many of its lyrical themes from the Finnish society, was born. Along with music, other elements of punk culture emerged in Finland. The often daring and provocative dress of punks was the most visible of these elements. From the punks’ perspective, at least as important was the DIY ethos adopted by the punk subculture. As a result, an independent market of self-published music was created, besides the more commercial music industry (e.g. Saaristo 2003). Additionally, zines, self-made subcultural magazines made and distributed by the fans themselves, were established as part of the Finnish punk culture from early on. This resulted in more than 200 individual zine titles during the first wave of punk (Hänninen 2019). In Finland, the first wave of punk is generally considered to have ended around 1982. At this time, Finnish punk culture had already started to fragment into different sub-genres (Hänninen 2019). However, the elements of the first wave did not disappear altogether, but remained as part of Finnish rock music and youth culture – albeit in more mainstream and less obvious formats.

The Social Frames of Peripheral Punk Punk researcher Kevin Dunn (2016) notes that even though musical practices are an essential element in the formation of music scenes, the local social context is at least as important in defining the direction of the scene’s development (see also Peterson and Bennett 2004). This was also obvious in the first-wave rural and provincial punk communities, where experiences of marginalization and being an outsider constituted the essential social frame of the scene. In our data, these experiences were also articulated as feelings of loneliness. A male research participant born in 1957 thinks about his home town of 11,000 inhabitants when rewriting Trade Winds’ ‘New York’s a Lonely Town’ song: ‘Äänekoski was a lonely town when you were the only punk around’. Due to the late modernization of Finland, the lives of many provincial youths in the 1970s were still tightly attached to old traditions and an agrarian mindset. This meant that, even though punk culture led to many normative tensions in major urban centres as well, being a punk in rural

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and provincial contexts was an even more adventurous choice – ‘a considerable leap of faith’, as Paul Cobley (1999: 171) puts it. A male born in 1966 writes in his recollections that he was frustrated how other people perceived his punk style in Sysmä, a rural municipality of 6000 inhabitants: In a village the size of Sysmä I got the reputation of being a bastard, nobody understood what I did, nor those slogans on my t-shirts, badges, rivets and band logos on my leather jacket, that was simply too much to those country bumpkins.

Punk music and fashion were unfamiliar or alien to most young people in small municipalities in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In their written recollections, several respondents shared the experience of their peers simply not knowing or understanding what punk was all about. The recollections emphasize a strong desire to distinguish oneself from the ‘country bumpkins’ as an essential element in the peripheral punk culture. Distinctions were also made from another direction. A male born in 1958 writes in his recollections about how he had experienced the ‘ruling out’ effect of the new style of music not complying with existing norms, even before the breakthrough of punk, when he came across the ‘godfather of punk’, Iggy Pop: I went to the parish hall to tell them that I had found the new future of rock’n’roll, Iggy Pop, who did not care about the comfort of his audience but went behind the amplifier to cut himself, just to come back bleeding to his audience, in New York’s Max’s Kansas City Club. Well, that was the last time I was invited to the parish youth tea parties.

If punk music was unfamiliar to many provincial youth, it was even more unfamiliar to most of their parents. Older generations’ knowledge of new popular music genres and subcultures associated with them was mainly based on what they learned from mainstream media, in which attitudes towards the topic were often suspicious or sarcastic (Heiskanen and Mitchell 1985). Many adults had their first encounter with punk during the Sex Pistols scandal and the gloomy images it painted of the punk phenomenon. These images and the attitudes of the adult population are well illustrated by a citation originating from a prime time current affairs TV show in 1978:

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Good evening again. Punk fashion, openly spreading anarchy and violence, pours into Finland. Parents are terrified and that is probably exactly the aim of the punk youth. With fascist uniforms, rivets and chains, and safety pins through their cheeks, punk rockers proclaim their protest against the status quo. (YLE 1978)

When talking about foreign punk music, the meaning of language cannot be ignored either. The Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the like sang in English, which in 1970s Finland was a foreign language to most of the adult population. Hence, the lyrics and the message of the songs remained unclear. Adults’ conservative approach towards new music genres and the subcultures associated with them is also pronounced in our data. As an example, a reminiscer born in 1962 writes about his parents and grandparents whose poor knowledge of the subject was based on their experiences of the rock’n’roll related lättähatut subculture in the 1950s: My childhood and early teenage years passed by in a very, very, very controlled environment. Both my parents and grandparents talked about, with trembling voices, some lättähatut whose deeper essence remained unclear to me. They were terrible, that much I understood.

This kind of sociocultural environment led to a very narrow cultural space for rural and provincial punk youth. The contrast they represented caused repeated astonishment and amusement, especially among adults. Many respondents also reported how adults disapproved of or even despised young people who dressed and behaved ‘strangely’. A male participant born in 1965 reported: How was it to be a punk in Finland at that time? … Thinking about the first years, it was very difficult. The smaller the place, the more suspicious looks and more bullying. In smaller localities, constant threatening and assaults, mainly by 30–50-year-old men.

Many reminiscers expressed their deep frustration about when punk youth were labelled as clowns, by both adults and other youth, without proper understanding of the societal message of punk music and punk culture. Punk fashion was laughed at and punks became the target of bullying and even violence. A male born in 1960 writes in his recollections:

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Rebellion was quite frustrating and pointless because nobody in the countryside understood what it was all about. It was just better not to care and spend time with those youngsters who understood at least something about punk. I wanted to move to the city as soon as possible because our village was the last place to live as a punk.

Frustration and the experience of being excluded brought provincial young people together, including across subcultural borders. Sometimes punks, teddy boys and rockers spent time together, feeling that they were all part of the ‘deviant group’. In this sense, small localities seemed to differ in terms of their youth culture dynamics from, for example, the capital city of Helsinki, where sometimes severe conflicts occurred between the punks and teddy boys. Mixed subcultural communities also existed in small towns, as the recollections of a male born in 1964 illustrate: In Jyväskylä, young people were divided into punks and teddies but it didn’t mean any bigger confrontation between the groups, as far as I can remember. Different gangs, but we got along. We also had hippies and prog-rock fans and, in a small town, we also got along with them. Division into different groups was not so clear there.

In many ways, conservative attitudes that surrounded rural and provincial scenes, as well as experiences of ignorance and cultural peripherality, affected the nature of these scenes and the social meanings that punk was given. In this context, punk music and punk fashion became a way to distinguish oneself and also a way to communicate one’s desire to live the life of a non-traditional, modern youth. On the other hand, the working class ethos often associated with punk seems to have been less pronounced in these scenes. This is how a male born in 1958 recalls punk culture: In fact, all my punk friends knew a lot about all sorts of rock music and their parents had middle class and/or academic backgrounds. So punk did not originate from any low-class circles but from a totally different direction.

According to Katajala and Söderholm (1987), Finnish punk culture was an intellectually oriented, alternative movement of middle-class kids. Instead of offering a channel for rebellion to working-class youngsters, it was a way for small scene youth to identify themselves as part of something bigger than the possibilities offered by their immediate surroundings, through being part of the international punk community.

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The Cultural Infrastructure of the Scenes The growth and sustainability of a local music scene requires that the local context provides sufficient cultural and social resources for the activities of the community – or, as Kevin Dunn (2016) puts it, the ‘infrastructure’. The infrastructure of the scene consists, first, of material and physical structures and, second, of individual and communal practices maintaining the scene (Dunn 2016). In this sense, the concept of infrastructure includes, for example, record shops, newspaper stands, hangouts, band practice places and venues, but it may also cover various subcultural networks and the social capital in them. With regard to provincial and rural punk scenes in Finland, the existence of sufficient infrastructure was not self-evident. Knowledge of punk culture and punk music often had to be gathered from many sources; there were often no record shops in small municipalities, and setting up a band and finding musicians was not always easy either. On the other hand, Anglo-American youth culture had already established its presence in Finnish society, so punk and other new manifestations of youth culture eventually found their way even to small localities, provided there were at least a few people interested in them. Music magazines were important sources of information in early local punk scenes. The rock magazine Soundi seems to have been a particularly important transmitter of punk knowledge from the centres of youth culture to more remote localities. Some young people also sought out foreign publications, such as New Musical Express and Melody Maker. Foreign music magazines had a special subcultural relevance (see also Poikolainen 2015), as they opened a direct symbolic link between the local scenes and the birthplaces of punk, bypassing the mediating and filtering effect of national media. Due to music magazines, the most active rock fans discovered punk culture quite early, and before its breakthrough in Finland: I came across punk rock in Soundi articles in 1976 and, inspired by that, started to learn English by reading Melody Maker in Ämmänsaari library [located in the rural municipality of Suomussalmi] as they had subscribed to it.

For many future punks, knowledge transmitted by music magazines paved the way to punk recordings. Mail orders of recordings had started in

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Finland during the late 1960s (Poikolainen 2015), which contributed to the narrowing the youth cultural gap between urban centres and smaller municipalities. In addition, affordable cassette players with a recording function became popular from the 1970s onwards. They improved access to recorded music and reduced youth’s dependence on record shops. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, public libraries also began purchasing popular music records, which created an easy and affordable way for young people to explore new music (Poikolainen 2015). The importance of mail order record services to small local scenes is also apparent in our data. In particular, Epe’s Music Shop seemed to be an important source of recorded music for many music fans in small municipalities. One rural punk fan recalls how he picked forest berries to earn money for Epe’s record orders. Another reminiscer describes how Epe’s also provided rarer recordings, ‘which were definitely not available in the cassette rack of the local book shop’. In addition to purchased recordings, the reminiscers write about recording music played on the radio or copying one’s favourite music to cassettes and forwarding them to friends. Music media also served as a source of style inspiration that members of the scenes used to create their local variations of punk fashion. In this way, even the most extravagant styles of punk fashion found their way outside the major centres of youth culture. A male participant born in 1967 recalls his punk years in the small town of Rauma: My own dress style started to change when my mom gave me a denim waistcoat and I wrote band names on it, and decorated it with badges, safety pins and chains, as the style dictated.

In small localities, the shock effect of punk fashion was probably much bigger than in the heartlands of punk in big cities (see also Cobley 1999). The more daring expressions of punk fashion evoked counter-reactions even inside the scene: Well, my life in Southern Savonian village went on, even after the arrival of punk. I went to school in a good old jeans outfit and the other kids had no particular fashion items either. Little by little, red haired kids dressed in ragged leather jackets started to appear on local school buses. They were a bit younger than my classmates. Ragged jeans, shirt not tucked in, safety pin on their chest. I think they looked ridiculous [although] I knew what it was all about. That just some John Doe from Hinterland had taken punk so seri-

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ously that he had dyed his hair with his mom’s or sister’s hair color and crafted SEXPisTols on the back of his jacket bought from a local store!

This citation may also be seen as a manifestation of what Frank Cartledge (1999: 143) terms heterogeneous stylistic reality at a local level. Cartledge points out that as a distinction from the canonical representations of punk style, characterized by ‘a series of fixed iconographic images and cultural symbols’, local punk fashion was constantly adjusted and modified. Due to this, a great degree of variation in dressing and in its degree of rebellion may have appeared even inside individual scenes. A distinctive, shared subcultural style was not necessarily even formed in every small scene. A female born in 1958 recalls: I got some attitude in my own dressing, but not that much. We had our own style to dress anyway … In Kajaani, [a provincial town of 34,000 inhabitants] we didn’t have any large punk population, and very few wore any so-­ called punk clothes.

The infrastructure of punk scenes also relied heavily on the DIY ethos. The ethos sparked alternative forms of production and consumption and, importantly, complemented the more commercial elements of punk culture. Another powerful feature of DIY culture was that it offered the members of even the most peripheral scenes an opportunity to participate in a global subcultural movement, as its active and productive members, and hence narrowing the cultural gap to urban centres. In this respect, the empowering aspect of DIY activities (Dunn 2016) may be seen as particularly emphasized in rural and provincial contexts. From the perspective of small scenes, zines appear to have been a particularly important component of the DIY culture. Zines were read and also written in smaller localities, where magazines and the DIY activities related to them also functioned as a means to establish contacts with other scenes (Hänninen 2019). This may have meant reaching out to bigger scenes, but also networking with other small punk communities. Correspondingly, networking experiences may have mitigated the feeling of peripherality or – as the following citation suggests – strengthened this feeling in the form of a shared experience of marginalization: We were doing this zine together with my friends and while selling it, we got to know other punks. By exchanging magazines and letters we learnt to

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know other rural punks across Finland. And not only punks because in the countryside everybody who was ‘not normal’ belonged to this group.

Such networks added new features to trans-locally linked scenes. With the concept of translocal, Peterson and Bennett (2004) refer to the interaction and networking between geographically separated scenes. The concept correctly emphasizes the fact that even the most local scenes were rarely purely local. Indeed, the translocal connections of local scenes often extend to foreign countries as well. A good example of this is Stalin, a short-lived punk band that originated in the rural municipality of Mäntyharju, whose self-released vinyl EP finally ended up on the radio waves of Brazil and Switzerland (Parta 1996). The ways offered by the DIY culture to compensate for the cultural scarcity of small scenes also included forms of event production. Events organized using a DIY ethos enabled fans to experience live punk music locally, in environments where it was not usually offered. This is how a reminiscer from Äänekoski recalled it: There were basically no gigs unless you organized them yourself. We had some band events, rock concerts on the market square and events of the local music associations inspired by Elmu [a pioneering live music association founded in Helsinki in 1978] and so on … Ratsia … had a concert in Äänekoski with a lasting impact that led to friendship and correspondence with the [band members] Jyri and Rudi. To me, punk has meant taking the initiative. You can do things on your own instead of waiting for everything to be ready.

When successfully executed, such DIY concert activities offered the members of small scenes an efficient way to mitigate the experiences of backwardness and marginalization, and to enjoy the feeling – even if it was a transient one – of standing in the heart of the subcultural action.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have examined the social meanings and cultural frames of the first punk wave as they appeared in the recollections of Finnish punks from small municipalities. In their experiences, punk appeared as the opposite to the traditional lifestyle found in these places and the conservativeness this lifestyle represented in the eyes of the punks as well as to

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(youth) cultural peripherality. For many young Finns living in rural or provincial environments, punk became a vehicle for the transition from the past to modern youth. On the other hand, the meaning of social class, often emphasized in the international canon of punk histories, remained less pronounced. In rural and provincial contexts, punk culture led to strong confrontations. As a result, the social space available for the articulation of a punk identity remained restricted in small municipalities. It was defined by experiences of marginalization and exclusion. The stereotyping of punk as abnormal was prevalent among adults, but the punk phenomenon also built tensions within the young generation. Another challenge in small scenes was the scarcity of material and cultural resources. The recollections of rural and provincial punks draws a picture of a diverse field of subcultural activities where commercial resources and public services (e.g. library collections) were combined with different forms of DIY culture, together enabling the formation of punk scenes even in small localities. In this way, despite their material and cultural limitations, even the smallest punk communities could fulfil the primary functions of a local scene  – that is, to ‘provide the lens through which global punk forms are understood and put into practice’ and to support the scene members in their subcultural identity work (Dunn 2016: 83).

References Cartledge, F. 1999. Distress to impress? Local punk fashion and commodity exchange. In Punk rock, so what? The cultural legacy of punk, ed. R.  Sabin, 143–153. London: Routledge. Cobley, P. 1999. Leave the capitol. In Punk rock, so what? The cultural legacy of punk, ed. R. Sabin, 170–185. London: Routledge. Dunn, K. 2016. Global punk: Resistance and rebellion in everyday life. London: Bloomsbury. Forsström, R. 1978. Parasta lapsille? Helsingin Sanomat, 3 January, 12. Halbwachs, M. 1992. On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hänninen, J. 2019. Gendered participation in 1970s punk in Finland: Lack of female musicians and fanzine makers. In Keep it simple, make it fast! An approach to underground music scenes, ed. P.  Guerra and T.  Pereira Alberto, 60–72. Porto: Universidade do Porto.

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Heiskanen, I., and R.  Mitchell. 1985. Lättähatuista punkkareihin: Suomalaisen valtakulttuurin ja nuorisokulttuurien kohtaamisen kolme vuosikymmentä. Helsinki: Otava. Hoikkala, T., and L. Suurpää. 2005. Finnish youth cultural research and its relevance to youth policy. Young 13 (3): 285–312. Jalkanen, P., and V. Kurkela. 2003. Suomen musiikin historia 6: Populaarimusiikki. Helsinki: WSOY. Katajala, K., and S.  Söderholm. 1987. Rockkulttuuri ja kulttuurikonflikti: Valtakulttuurin ja nuorisokulttuurin törmäys vuonna 1978. In Näkökulmia rockkulttuuriin, ed. S. Söderholm, 78–99. Helsinki: Otava. Kettunen, P. 2001. The Nordic welfare state in Finland. Scandinavian Journal of History 26 (3): 225–247. Parta, H. 1996. Kolme sointua puristuu vinyylille. Pitäjänuutiset, 22 February, 14. Peterson, R., and A.  Bennett. 2004. Introducing music scenes. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. R. Peterson and A. Bennett, 1–16. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Poikolainen, J. 2013. Anglo-American pop music, Finnish tango, and the controversial images of modernity in Finland in the 1960s. In Finnish consumption: An emerging consumer society between East and West, ed. V.  Heinonen and M. Peltonen, 124–149. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. ———. 2015. Musiikkifanius ja modernisoituva nuoruus: Populaarimusiikin ihailijakulttuurin rakentuminen Suomessa 1950-luvulta 1970-luvun alkuun. Helsinki: Finnish Youth Research Society. Puuronen, V. 2003. Pihasakeista alakulttuureihin: Nuorten ryhmätoiminta Suomessa 1900-luvun jälkipuoliskolla. In Nuoruuden vuosisata: Suomalaisen nuorison historia, ed. S. Aapola and M. Kaarinen, 372–395. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Raippa, R. 2002. Punkin kaksi vuosikymmentä: Etnografiaa ja punkkareiden elämäkertoja. Joensuu: University of Joensuu. Saaristo, K. 2003. Me noustiin kellareistamme: Suomalaisen rockin uusi aalto 1978–1981. In Hyvää pahaa rock’n’roll: Sosiologisia kirjoituksia rockista ja rockkulttuurista, ed. K. Saaristo, 91–112. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. Shopes, L. 2011. Oral history. In The Sage handbook of qualitative research, ed. N.K. Denzin and Y.S. Lincoln, 4th ed., 451–466. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Tamke, S.S. 1977. Oral history and popular culture: A method for the study of the experience of culture. Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1): 267–279. YLE. 1978. Ajankohtainen kakkonen [Television broadcast], 12 January. Helsinki: Finnish Broadcasting Company.

CHAPTER 11

Building Scene and Cultural Memory in the Weser Hills: The Case of Glitterhouse Records and the Orange Blossom Special Festival Robin Kuchar

This chapter explores and illustrates  the role of rural1 scene actors by analyzing their embedding in and capability to build scene-related cultural memory in a peripheral area in Germany, the Weser Hills. The record label and mail-order company Glitterhouse and its associated annual festival, the Orange Blossom Special, will be central objects of analysis. As previous research implies, focus on scene and space-related analysis of popular music in Germany have predominantly been linked to the city. Existing studies on scenes, as well as on the development of independent labels, genres and venues, discuss similar processes and results according to international research so far (Grimm 2005; Kuchar 2020; Stahl 2014).

R. Kuchar (*) Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_11

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In contrast, there has been very little research among rural music scenes in Germany. Apart from some notions regarding the rural backgrounds of single members of distinct music scenes in Hamburg and Berlin, such as the so-called Hamburg School (Grimm 2005), rural or regional phenomena have barely been analyzed from a scene perspective. Instead, the relationship of popular music and rural space is focused on specific performances and festivals or examines the adoption of popular genres in regional or rural areas (Gebhart et al. 2000; Kirchner 2011; Klose 2019; Schwetter 2016; Verlan and Loh 2006; Zanger 2013). In order to reveal scene and memory-building processes among rural scenes, the first section of the chapter will discuss a theoretical and analytical framework. Therefore, it will refer to and combine approaches from heritage studies, rural studies, post-subcultural studies and the theory of space. The second section will describe Glitterhouse Records and the Orange Blossom Special festival as rural actors in the German independent music scene and discuss some methodological aspects. The final section will examine the building of scene and cultural memory by these actors within their local region, the Weser Hills, and beyond. For this purpose, the findings of ethnographic research among the two institutions will be illustrated and further discussed.

Scenes, Rural Space and Cultural Memory In order to reveal processes and potentials of scene-building and scene-­ related memory in rural areas, it is necessary to conceptualize the relationship of scene, cultural memory and rural space. In the case of festivals, the countryside has long played an important role for scenes to meet and strengthen their sense of community (Kirchner 2011; McKay 2015; Paleo and Wijnberg 2006). As spatially and temporally composites (Del Barrio et al. 2012; Perry et al. 2020), festivals might be able to connect scenes and specific localities in the countryside in order to produce memorable narratives and – at least for a recurring and limited period of time  – scene space as ‘places devoted to practices of meaning making through the pleasures of sociable consumption’ (Silver et  al. 2010: 2297). Whereas the potential of festivals as temporary sites of ‘rural scenes’ easily seems to find acceptance, the question of how scene actors based in rural regions might be able to build scene and produce scene-based memory in a permanent way is much more complex.

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Urban space, from which where scenes usually originate, represents a dense semiotic ground where numerous cultural influences, symbols and identities are encountered (Reckwitz 2012). The city is also a spatial constellation, where a critical number of people forming a scene can easily be reached (Krims 2014; Stahl 2014). In contrast, the rural used to be associated with ‘environmentally embedded, decentralised and relatively self-sufficient and self-reliant living patterns’ (Halfacree 2007: 132). But taking a closer look at the cultural and semiotic gap between urban and rural space, scholars describe an increasing urbanization of the rural. Following the approach of Henri Lefèbvre’s (1991) trialectic of space, Keith Halfacree (2007) describes a concept of ‘radical rural locality’ challenging the uniform traditional and agricultural view of the rural by using Lefèbvre’s spatial categories of constructed, conceived and lived space. ‘This reflects the nascent character of … ideas, representations and values undergoing trial by space’ (Halfacree 2007: 132). Especially in the realm of culture and cultural practice, rural studies increasingly identify a convergence of social and cultural leverages between the city and the countryside: Urbanizing the rural has occurred via an interwoven tapestry of cultural, social and economic trends. The urbanization and indeed globalization of cultural dissemination through broadcast and print media and especially the Internet, means that most seemingly rural places in the Western world are effectively culturally urbanized. (Cloke 2006: 18)

Therefore, festivals could also have an impact, but generally the cultural enrichment comes along with major trends of individualization and cultural consumerism (Chaney 2004; McGuigan 2009). ‘The rural locality may have agriculture as a backdrop but its key spatial practices are consumption-­orientated, notably leisure, residence and attendant migration (counter-urbanization)’ (Halfacree 2006: 57). In fact, artefacts of popular music and access to scene related practices have been available in rural areas for a long time. Local appropriations of genres such as hip hop or (sub)cultural activity such as the ‘progressive countryside disco’ – similar to a festival – have also enabled the building of ‘rural memories’ related to specific practices and spaces of popular music (Del Barrio et al. 2012; Schwetter 2016; Verlan and Loh 2000). In an age of social media and online connectivity, it is also possible to contribute online or be part of virtual scenes such as vaporwave (Whelan 2020). One

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difficulty in rural settings seems to be the lack of soft infrastructure ‘on site’ (Stahl 2014), or the people necessary to build a scene or at least a community around specific sets of musical practice. According to Brandellero and Janssen (2013: 227), ‘places and sites of heritage acquire value and meaning only in our interaction with them or with a given social and cultural context’. There has to be social exchange and discourse about practices and potential sources of identity and memory. Hence, rural actors such as festivals, labels or venues, which are part of, or at least connected with, greater local or trans-local scenes are only able to build collective memory connected to their spatial origin if they produce experienced or lived spaces that represent social values and collective experiences (Lefèbvre 1991). As part of a certain (trans-)local scene or as the nucleus of an emerging scene, they have to mediate and produce meaning among their specific cultural practices, local narratives and their rural neighbourhood. As ‘rural islands’ of scenes or as ‘socio-cultural leaders in the countryside’, rural scene actors might be able to produce a scene-related symbolic space that can inscribe into the history of scene-specific practices. However, this mainly depends on their historization, or at least the presence of and interaction with other scene members in order to make scene experience occur – for example, at festivals. Hence, the way scene actors handle rurality and the strategies they apply to build community and memory in rural space are highly interesting and little explored questions. The aim of the following empirical analysis is to examine this. Therefore, the study will consider the case of Glitterhouse Records and Orange Blossom Special festival. The analysis was conducted in form of ethnographic fieldwork using document analysis and the secondary examination of qualitative data (Babbie 2004; Girtler 2001). The material analysed contains 53 documents, including interviews, press and experience reports representing a timespan of more than 20 years and an empirical study on value-creation processes using the example of the Orange Blossom Special festival (Flath 2017a, b). Additionally, three qualitative interviews of Orange Blossom Special festival visitors2 has been considered for secondary qualitative content analysis (Medjedovic 2014). Finally, some personal observations by the author from ten years of Orange  Blossom  Special festival attendance complete the data. Taking into account specific methodological notions of insider research (Bennett 2003; Hodkinson 2005), these impressions also include insights from behind the scenes – for example, the backstage area – and

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finalize a holistic picture of the subject of study. As most of the material was originally in German, all quotes have been translated into English.

Glitterhouse and Orange Blossom Special as ‘Rural’ Scene Actors When analysing rural scene actors and their capability for cultural memory production, the cases of Glitterhouse Records and Orange Blossom Special provide significant insights at an empirical level. Situated in the Weser Hills, a provincial area between the Ruhr Valley and Hannover, the label and mail-order company has had an eventful history. Located in Beverungen, ‘a small town at the tri-border area of North Rhine-­ Westphalia, Hesse and Lower Saxony with about 13.000 inhabitants’ and ‘as many small towns … affected by an ageing society and migration’ (Flath 2017b: 1), Glitterhouse was originally a DIY fanzine founded by Reinhard Holstein back in 1981 (Glitterhouse 2020). As Rembert Stiewe, co-founder of Glitterhouse and head of the Orange Blossom Special festival, describes the beginning of the label, the idealist and DIY orientation of Glitterhouse stands out: Well, we realised that it was terribly difficult to get new records … And so we thought, it can’t be that difficult, let’s do it ourselves. We had no idea … (Stiewe, interview 2004)

Glitterhouse’s role in the German independent and underground music scene quickly grew from pioneer to one of the most traditional players in the scene (Intro 2011; Ox Fanzine 2016; Neue Zürcher Zeitung 2001). In the early 1990s, Glitterhouse Records moved into an old villa in Beverungen, which has also been the location of the Orange Blossom Special festival since 1997 (Figs.  11.1 and 11.2; Glitterhouse 2020). Similar to the early days of the label, the festival derived from the concept of an open mic day for friends and mail-order clients: When the bands were on tour in Europe, they liked to drop in on us between concerts … In the garden behind the company building … the band then got their acoustic instruments … and played for a few hours. We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do this more often.’ The following year we held a small festival in our garden … Because it was so much fun for the visitors and for us, we simply continued this every year. (Stiewe 2018)

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Fig. 11.1  Villa and garden as festival site. (Photo: Glitterhouse)

Fig. 11.2  A typical afternoon scene at Orange Blossom Special festival. (Photo: Glitterhouse)

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Since then, the festival has developed into a multi-generational familiar meeting of locals as well as international music lovers (Breitsprecher 2019; Staats 2006; Wegener 2016). The kind of music played takes the course of the different styles produced on the label and by personal connection – ‘I only book bands and people I like. I put so much work into it, so at least I want to have some fun’ (Stiewe, quoted in Bäckler 2016). As with the label, the festival’s philosophy and almost every detail of the organization are based on DIY practice and include some special features and rituals as well as measures of social responsibility: We have a wooden main stage that is only 6 metres by 6 metres. Next to it there is a cherry tree. We offer art to participate in. We do handicrafts for a good cause, give to social initiatives like Sea-Watch and flush the urinal with waste water from the sink. A shrine is always set up to commemorate a person who has died in the past year. We have a high percentage of female artists and female members in the production team without any quota discussion. (Stiewe, quoted in Breitsprecher 2019)

There is always a surprise act on Sunday morning (Westfalen Blatt 2019), a warehouse sale of the Glitterhouse label and mail-order out of the garage or the moderation of the festival program by the Glitterhouse founders (Staats 2004). Another striking aspect of the festival is its connectivity to the local, which broadly corresponds to the possible positive impacts of festivals in the countryside: One characteristic of the Orange Blossom Special is that the organizers of the festival are local and integrate local gastronomy and enterprises, so that over the years the Orange Blossom Special festival has become an essential part of Beverungen … also in terms of identity, relations, pride of the inhabitants and image. (Flath 2017b: 1)

As part of the rural neighbourhood of Beverungen, the founders of Glitterhouse have never moved out of their provincial home. In contrast, working in music for more than 35 years, it is interesting to see how they understand themselves as rural actors in the context of the German as well as the trans-local independent music scenes. Having established a notable range of permanent alternative music infrastructure in Beverungen, both

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the label and the festival play a significant role in the German ‘indie-­ network’ (Spencer 2008: 285ff) – despite, or even because of, not being situated in one of the scene-related centres such as Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne. Therefore, Stiewe emphasizes the need for being highly enthusiastic about music: If you wanted to get involved with underground music, you really had to do a lot of work to gain access to it. To be able to see concerts, you had to spend much more effort than you would have had in the city. (Stiewe, quoted in Ox 2016)

In contrast, with regard to the conditions for running a label and pursuing one’s own ideas, Lutz Mastmeyer3  – ‘everything is cheaper here’ (Mastmeyer, quoted in Clarkson 2004) – and Stiewe see advantages deriving from the rural setting: After all, one is a little stubborn in the province and not necessarily dependent on scenes. I don’t know how it would have developed if we had been in Hamburg, Cologne or Berlin. You could have made discoveries faster there, but you probably wouldn’t have been left alone so much and would have put more pressure on yourself. (Stiewe, quoted in Ox 2016)

Even at the level of community, Stiewe (quoted in Ox 2016) said a strong bond exists between the few like-minded people from the area, though it would be more difficult to find comrades-in-arms and experienced staff for the label. Reflecting about the combination of international scene contacts on the one hand and the rather place-specific binding and familiar socialization on the other, ‘someone once described us as “cosmopolitan farmers” – that really sums it up’ (Stiewe, quoted in Ox 2016). In summary, rural scene actors such as Glitterhouse seem to unite cultural practices of urban scenes and the specific socio-spatial conditions associated with the province. The rather familiar social constellation and at the same time lesser extent of socio-cultural distinction and scene conventions may foster the capability of rural scene actors to also integrate inhabitants of the countryside into their cultural practice and to build local community.

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Building Scene and Cultural Memory in the Weser Hills Coming from the notion of Glitterhouse and Orange Blossom Special as ‘cosmopolitan rural actors’ of the trans-local independent music scene, and taking into account their history and the spaces they have been creating, their building of scene and cultural memory encompasses several levels. These contain tangible and intangible components and the production of local scene space, as well being viewed in relation to the wider scene and the varying activities of being fanzine, label, mail-order company and festival. First, the mail-order business that developed following the launch of the Glitterhouse fanzine has established itself as an important source of music: ‘For decades, the mail-order has been a source par excellence for guitar music fans’ (Dembowski 2020). As a kind of decentralized record shop, publishing catalogues and sending out records from Beverungen, Glitterhouse has been an important hinge between the indie-scene and the distribution of US underground music in Europe. Hence, Glitterhouse has not only been a vital part of the indie scene, but its physical location is a significant scene-related record shop. As Bennett and Rogers (2016: 104) point out, the perceived contribution of record shops ‘to the musical and cultural life of particular scenes becomes ingrained in the collective cultural memory and indelibly woven into the emotional geography of place’. In this sense, Grüner Weg 25 in Beverungen, the sender of all the records sold by Glitterhouse, has become historicized and inscribed in the collective memory of the trans-local indie scene. For instance, during the Orange Blossom Special festival, at least for visiting clients, this record shop materializes in form of the experienced Glitterhouse villa and the warehouse sale. There, similar processes of memory production, as observed by Frith (1988), can be recognized: exchanges about the different records, ‘people who are invested in music to “hang out”, get to know each other and form bonds that extend into other spaces of musicalized activity’ (Bennett and Rogers 2016: 102). So, referring to the conceptualisation about rural scene building and memory, the mail-order business, as one part of the Glitterhouse infrastructure, is able to produce intangible memories and a music-related space that, combined with the festival, manifests as tangible in a setting of physical experience. Similar to the mail-order company, the label represents a rather more outward-looking aspect of being part of a trans-local scene other than

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building local community. As a kind of iconic label (Kennedy and McNutt 1999) in the German underground scene, Glitterhouse has been inscribed in the history of the German independent network. Operating for more than 35  years and surviving several existential economic crises (Intro 2011), the label has provided an anchor of continuity as scene members have aged (Bennett 2013; Musikwoche 2017). For these fans, Glitterhouse has been an important part of processes of scene-building and music related memory that, according to Bennett and Rogers (2016: 56) ‘represent a pivotal glue that bonds and preserves the notion of scene while at the same time supplying individuals with a critical sense of purpose and belonging’. Hence, as label and mail-order business, Glitterhouse has gained a lot of symbolic value and intangible memory, which is strongly associated with its geographical location in the countryside. The materialization of this can be observed at Orange Blossom Special, where label, mail-order business and festival merge to provide an overall collective experience around the ‘sacred halls’ of the Glitterhouse villa (Fig. 11.3). Regarding Glitterhouse’s capability for scene-building and the production of memory, Orange Blossom Special certainly is the part of the Glitterhouse infrastructure that most obviously shapes community between locals and members of the trans-local indie scene. Moreover, it also highlights the potentials of tangible and intangible memory produced

Fig. 11.3  Collective experience at Orange  Blossom  Special festival in the Glitterhouse garden

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by the Glitterhouse operators. Therefore, being a rural scene actor seems to play an essential part in the success of the festival. Referring to a visitor survey at Orange Blossom Special 2017: Participants who have visited the Orange  Blossom  Special at least once (n = 769) stated that they value the atmosphere of the festival (90.9%), the credibility of the organisers (74.4%), the music programme (67.8%) and the organisation (68.5%) very highly. … [From] the perspective of the visitors, created values are Community, Fun, High-Standard Musical Entertainment and Extraordinary Atmosphere. (Flath 2017b: 5)

Regarding their self-representation as rural actors, the credibility of the organizers in tied in with their philosophy as well as their sense of social responsibility is highly valued by both visitors and locals. Referring to Bennett and Janssen (2016: 4), the festival and its organizers are perceived as authentic, which means an important precondition of producing a unique atmosphere as well as popular music heritage. Second, the community aspect and the feeling of a positive atmosphere are marked by an emotional connection to the festival space: I think the Orange Blossom Special has something so close to home and because it’s so small, it’s also somehow familiar. You recognize the people. You might not know them, but you’ve seen them all before. I find that very impressive. (Constanze, interview 2021)

The familiarity also derives from the proximity between artists and audience, which is a continuous feature of Orange Blossom Special. This sense of familiarity brings together different groups of people. First, it is a place where different generations meet: ‘The now existing mixture of the different age groups of the audience leads to a very interesting togetherness. A lot of understanding is developed, mutual respect is shown’ (Stiewe, quoted in Breitsprecher 2019). A very interesting aspect of this is the music-related socialization of whole families, to the degree that some former children of visitors now play the festival with their own bands, such as Giant Rooks4: ‘My cousin and I went there [Orange Blossom Special] as children. Our parents took us there every year. Now we play at the festival of our youth’ (Rabe, interview 2017). Moreover, the audience of Orange Blossom Special does not just consist of different age groups and families, but also represents a mixture of

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visitors belonging to the trans-local context of indie-music scenes and people from the local area of Beverungen. During Orange Blossom Special, the local inhabitants appreciate ‘a different mood’ and a cultural enrichment of the area. Together, they form a community creating an intense collective experience (Flath 2017b: 6). In this sense, the festival succeeds in connecting the trans-local music scene with the local rural neighbourhood to produce scene-related as well as local cultural memory. This is physically represented and symbolically highlighted by the garden and the villa. At Orange Blossom Special, indie music, shared values and the familiarity of the countryside produce ‘an emotional feeling of community and connectedness’ (Fonarow 1997) that is clearly visible among most of the participants of the festival. Hence, Orange Blossom Special does not just produce memory corresponding to broader research of festival effects (Del Barrio et al. 2012; Perry et al. 2020; Zanger 2013), but also builds a strong community that both strengthens scene structures and produces meaning for the inhabitants of the Weser Hills.

Conclusion This chapter has revealed the building of scene and cultural memory in a rural area of Germany, the Weser Hills. Therefore, Glitterhouse and the Orange Blossom Special festival have been described as rural scene actors. Processes of scene and community as well as cultural memory have been examined through ethnographic field research. As the results clearly show, the fact of being a rural scene actor affects the way Glitterhouse succeeds in building community and memory. As a mediator between trans-local scene structures and their rural location, the Orange Blossom Special festival in particular combines the specifics of indie practices with the conditions of rural life (familiarity, neighbourhood, less social distinction). Within this constellation, the festival produces a lived space of shared narratives, values and community that provides potential for scene-related and local identity. Hence, according to Green (2016), the Orange Blossom Special festival can be understood as a kind of peak experience, which transfers the symbolic and intangible associations with Glitterhouse Records to physical heritage and tangible memory. Nevertheless, the case analysed in this chapter represents an ideal case of rural-based production of memory and scene. Therefore, the long history of Glitterhouse rooted in the locality of Beverungen as well as in the German indie scene for more than 35 years may be an important reason

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for its success. Having time to historicize and building different parts of scene infrastructure, the people behind Glitterhouse could grow different kinds of scene-related value, which coalesces at the yearly Orange Blossom Special festival. The label or the festival alone could not develop such a sociocultural strength, so the crucial aspect of building scene and memory in the Weser Hills is a quite unique combination of scene infrastructure, scene-related memory and the mediation between alternative cultural practice and the local in a rural environment.

Notes 1. A problem of researching ‘the rural’ in a German context is the absence of a German translation. In contrast to, for example, Britain, the rural in Germany is rather understood as a ‘secondary concept’, ‘subordinate to other spatialized terms such as “region”, “peasant” or “periphery”’ (Halfacree 2006; Wilson 2001: 90). In this analysis, the use of the spatial categories of rural and countryside refer to the geographic location outside metropolitan regions synonymous with the notion of the province. 2. The interview data originates from a BA thesis on festivals and social sustainability conducted by Laura Baß and supervised by the author. Within these interviews, visitors to the Orange Blossom Special festival were asked about their experience during the 2019 festival. 3. Lutz Mastmeyer was an early employee of Glitterhouse Records who has now worked at the label for more than 25 years and is part of the management team. 4. Giant Rooks is a well-known German indie rock band. One of the band’s first festival appearances was at Orange Blossom Special in 2017. See https://www.giant-­rooks.com. Accessed 20 May 2021.

References Babbie, E. 2004. The practice of social research. Belmont: Wadsworth. Bäckler, M. 2016. Es war einmal ein Grillfest. Welt.de, 31 January. Bennett, A. 2003. The use of ‘insider’ knowledge in ethonographic research on contemporary youth music scenes. In Researching youth, ed. A.  Bennett, M. Cieslik, and S. Miles, 186–200. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2013. Music, style, and aging: Growing old disgracefully? Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Bennett, A., and S. Janssen. 2016. Popular music, cultural memory, and heritage. Popular Music and Society 39 (1): 1–7.

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Bennett, A., and I.  Rogers. 2016. Popular music scenes and cultural memory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Westfalen Blatt 2019. Bunte Auszeit von der Welt, 15 May. Brandellero, A., and S. Janssen. 2013. Popular music as cultural heritage: Scoping out the field of practice. International Journal of Heritage Studies 20 (3): 223–240. Breitsprecher, A. 2019. Vom Älterwerden verstehen wir eine ganze Menge. Nordkurier, 7 March. Chaney, D. 2004. Fragmented culture and subcultures. In After subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth cultures, ed. A.  Bennett and K.  Kahn-­ Harris, 36–50. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clarkson, J. 2004. Interview with Lutz Mastmeyer. http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article/3389/Profiles/Glitterhouse%2D%2DInterv iew. Accessed 11 Nov 2020. Cloke, P. 2006. Conceptualizing rurality. In Handbook of rural studies, ed. P. Cloke, T. Marsen, and P. Monney, 18–28. London: Sage. Constanze. 2021. Interview, 27 January. Del Barrio, M.J., M. Devesa, and L.C. Herrero. 2012. Evaluating intangible cultural heritage: The case of cultural festivals. City, Culture and Society 3: 235–244. Dembowski, D. 2020. Kultur hält uns zusammen, Herr Dembowski! https:// www.dembowski-­e rmittelt.de/did/kultur-­h aelt-­u ns-­z usammen-­h err-­ dembowski. Accessed 11 Nov 2020. Flath, B. 2017a. ‘Wert-e-schöpfung-en’ des Orange Blossom Special Festivals (OBS): Abschlussbericht. Paderborn: Universität Paderborn. ———. 2017b. Festivals in rural regions: An empirical study on value creation processes by the example of the Orange Blossom Special Festival (OBS). Presentation, 8th Vienna Music Business Research Days, 13 September. Fonarow, W. 1997. The spatial organisation of the Indie music gig. In The subcultures reader, ed. K. Gelder and S. Thornton, 360–369. London: Routledge. Frith, S. 1988. Music for pleasure. New York: Routledge. Gebhart, W., R.  Hitzler, and M.  Pfadenhauer, eds. 2000. Events: Soziologie des Außergewöhnlichen. Wiesbaden: VS. Girtler, R. 2001. Methoden der Feldforschung. Wien: Böhlau. Glitterhouse Records. 2020. About. https://label.glitterhouse.com/about. php?lng=de. Accessed 11 Nov 2020. Green, B. 2016. ‘I always remember that moment’: Peak music experiences at epiphanies. Sociology 50 (2): 333–348. Grimm, Alexander. 2005. Innovation und Clusterevolution in der Popmusikwirtschaft am Beispiel Hamburgs. Jena: Selbstverlag Friedrich Schiller Universität. Halfacree, K. 2006. Rural space: Constructing a three-fold architecture. In Handbook of rural studies, ed. P.  Cloke, T.  Marsen, and P.  Monney, 44–62. London: Sage.

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———. 2007. Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: Introducing alternative localities, representations and lives. Journal of Rural Studies 23: 125–141. Hodkinson, P. 2005. Insider research in the study of youth cultures. Journal of Youth Studies 8 (2): 131–149. Intro. 2011. Wie der Grunge nach Beverungen kam Glitterhouse, intro #197. Kennedy, R., and R. McNutt. 1999. Little labels – Big sounds: Small record companies and the rise of American music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kirchner, B. 2011. Eventgemeinschaften: Das Fusion Festival und seine Besucher. Wiesbaden: VS/Springer. Klose, P. 2019. Die Erfindung des Rockkonzerts in der Provinz. Ein praxeologischer Blick auf das Soester »Karussell der Jugend« 1959–1971. In (Dis-) Orienting Sounds – Machtkritische Perspektiven auf populäre Musik, ed. R. von Appen and M. Dunkel, 233–260. Bielefeld: Transcript. Krims, A. 2014. What is a musically creative city? In Music city  – Musikalische Annäherungen an die kreative Stadt, ed. A. Barber-Kersovan, V. Kirchberg, and R. Kuchar, 33–44. Bielefeld: Transcript. Kuchar, R. 2020. Music venues in transition: States of autonomy, dependence and subcultural institutionalization: Todas as Artes/All the arts. Luso-Brazilian Journal of Art and Culture 3 (2): 25–41. Lefèbvre, H. 1991. The production of space. Malden: Blackwell. McGuigan, J. 2009. Cool capitalism. New York: Pluto Press. McKay, G., ed. 2015. The pop festival: History, music, media, culture. New York: Bloomsbury. Medjedovic, I. 2014. Qualitative Sekundäranalyse. Zum Potenzial einer neuen Forschungsstrategie in der empirischen Sozialforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer/VS. Musikwoche. 2017. Indigo kauft Glitterhouse ein. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. 2001. Der Westen beginnt in Beverungen, 4 January. https://www.nzz.ch/article72K4W-­1.450373. Accessed 12 Nov 2020. Ox fanzine. 2016. Glitterhouse  – vom Fanzine zum Kultlabel. Ox #127, 08/09 2016. Paleo, I.O., and N.  Wijnberg. 2006. Classification of popular music festivals: A typology of festivals and an inquiry into their role in the construction of music genres. International Journal of Arts Management 8 (2): 50–61. Perry, B., L. Ager, and R. Sitas. 2020. Cultural heritage entanglements: Festivals as integrative sites for sustainable urban development. International Journal of Heritage Studies 26 (6): 603–618. Reckwitz, A. 2012. Die Erfindung der Kreativität. Zum Prozess gesellschaftlicher Ästhetisierung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Schwetter, H. 2016. Veränderung und neue Beständigkeit. Progressive Landdiskotheken in Norddeutschland, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 64 (1): 57–72.

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Silver, D., T.  Nichols Clark, Y.  Navarro Yanez, and J.  Clemente. 2010. Scenes: Social contexts in an age of contingency. Social Forces 88 (5): 2293–2324. Spencer, A. 2008. DIY: The rise of lo-fi culture. New York: Marion Boyars. Staats, I. 2004. Samtkappe und Cowboyhut. taz, 3 June. ———. 2006. Glitter-Fest im Schlamm. taz, 29 May. Stahl, Geoff (Ed.). 2014. Poor, but sexy: Reflections on Berlin scenes. Bern: Peter Lang. Stiewe, R. 2018. Geschmack, missionarischer Eifer und Entdeckergeist. Fashion Today, May. https://www.fashiontoday.de/2018/05/orange-­blossom-­special. Accessed 12 Nov. Verlan, S., and H. Loh. 2006. 25 Jahre HipHop in Deutschland. Innsbruck: Hannibal. Wegener, T. 2016. Zum 20. Mal Orange Blossom Special, Neue Westfälische Zeitung, 7 May. Whelan, A. 2020. ‘Do you have a moment to talk about vaporwave?’ Technology, memory, and critique in the writing on an online music scene. In Popular music, technology, and the changing media ecosystem, ed. T. Tofalvy and E. Barne, 185–200. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Wilson, G. 2001. From productivism to post-productivism … and back again? Exploring the (un)changed natural and mental landscapes of European agriculture. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26: 313–332. Zanger, C., ed. 2013. Events im Zeitalter von Social Media. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.

PART IV

Industry and Policy

CHAPTER 12

Participatory Belonging: How Tourist Music Workshops Establish Trans-Local Music Scenes Leonieke Bolderman

It is time to go on vacation. It is time to pack up your bags, grab your musical instrument and say goodbye to friends and family as you travel to your destination. Once there, you breathe in the fresh air, meet the friends you see only once or twice a year and meet new people. You also greet your guide: the professional musician who is going to teach you how to play better over the course of a few days that all look the same. Playing in the morning, then some time off for lunch, then more playing and tuition in the afternoon and a concert at night. You might encounter some problems, as the playing is enjoyable but also challenging. Being together for several days with the same people in this intense learning environment also takes its toll. At the same time, you experience moments of flow, in which playing together creates a mental buzz you do not experience when practising alone at home, and it takes your mind off of your busy job and the

L. Bolderman (*) University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_12

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pile of work waiting for you when you return, making regular practice impossible to begin with. This experience is not your idea of a vacation? For music workshop participants, it is exactly what they came for. Music workshops are short-­ term vacations in which participants learn about a particular music genre under the guidance of professional musicians, through individual or group instruction or a combination of both (Bolderman 2020). Music workshops are different from ‘performing tourists’ (Gibson and Connell 2005), which is the more serendipitous playing-with-locals tourism offering that cultural tourists can take part in as activity during a bigger trip – for example, taking part for an afternoon in a djembé workshop during a vacation to Gambia. Music workshops as analyzed in this chapter are multi-day vacations dedicated to music making, and a form of participatory music tourism. (Amateur) music making is the central activity and purpose of the vacation (Bolderman 2020). In the scarce literature on music workshops, these vacations are described as creating special social spaces that contribute to and stimulate experiences of flow and communitas (Bolderman 2020; Ellis 2011; Feintuch 2004; Granger 2015; Sarbanes 2006), forming what Morley (2001: 440) calls ‘spaces of belonging’: places where people feel at home through shared social codes and rhetorics. However, it remains unclear whether and, if so, how music workshops offer a durable sense of belonging, and whether it is because of the practice of musicking that these workshops have such an intense impact, beyond the ways in which holidays are deemed ‘healing’ or ‘relaxing’ in general (cf. Urry and Larsen 2011). This chapter draws on the concept of music scenes to explore these questions further. Building on the music scenes literature, I argue that music workshops are a specific kind of trans-local music scene, comparable to the way festivals have been conceptualized as special trans-local music scenes (Bennett et al. 2020; Fisker et al. 2019). Moreover, music workshops derive their power from their position at the periphery of music worlds, offering a ‘safe space’ for participants to learn and to enter the broader music world of which they wish to become a part. Thus, music workshops are ideally suited to studying the dynamics of flows and connections, power and hierarchy that are important in establishing trans-local music scenes and belonging. Reconceptualizing music workshops as peripheral trans-local music scenes in this way contributes to deepening and nuancing the concept of the music scene. Music scenes are part of a collection of different ways to

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theorize and analyze the social spaces music creates, together with the notions of ‘worlds’, ‘fields’ and ‘networks’ (Prior 2015). Analyzing music workshops as trans-local music scenes opens up the scenes perspective to include a discussion of ‘the deeper cultural significance of such scenes as (trans)local nodes of sociality and collective socio-cultural identity’ (Bennett et al. 2020: 375), positioning music’s social spaces not as single and separate but as ‘local nodes of cultural life that are connected with each other through trans-local, virtual, and affective forms of interaction’ (Bennett et al. 2020: 375), and as ‘complex imbroglios in which are bundled a range of materials, practices and relations’ (Prior 2015). Moreover, seeing music workshops as trans-local events that contribute to the constitution of music scenes nuances the role of tourism in the scenes perspective. The role of tourists in music scenes has been framed as somewhat intrusive – as tourists experiencing a mythological music scene that has little to do with the scene as experienced and formed by local musicians and audiences. For example, Grazian (2004) describes how Chicago blues tourists search for experiences of authenticity in venues and musicians based on stereotyped ideas of blues, while both Bennett (Peterson and Bennett 2004) and Prior (2015) have commented on how local promoters exploit the characteristics of their local music scenes for tourism promotion. In this chapter, I approach music tourism as a multifaceted, complex phenomenon that can contribute to scene building. I show how amateur players become part of and connect with their genre through music workshops, creating a dedicated group of amateur members of the music scene. In this way, music workshops are spatiotemporal events that allow for distinct place-making practices and learning processes that establish long-lasting scene connections, which last long after participants return home. The research used as the basis for this argument is ethnographic research into contemporary music workshops in Europe, conducted in the summer of 2016.1 For this project, three music workshops were participated in: an Irish traditional workshop in Milton Malbay, Ireland, lasting for a week and catering to over 1500 participants; a jazz workshop on the outskirts of Prague, Czech Republic, lasting for 10 days, providing tuition to over 80 participants; and a classical music workshop taking place over a long weekend on Corfu, Greece, in which eight participants took part. Ethnographic observing participation in these workshops and semi-­ structured interviews with nineteen participants resulted in the analysis of how these workshops offer a practice-based, embodied learning

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experience that creates these music workshops as place-making events, offering an introduction to and deeper connection with the broader music world as trans-local music scenes.

Music Workshops: Peripheral Nodes in Translocal Music Scenes The concept of trans-local music scenes has been proposed by Bennett and Peterson (2004) as a nuance to the notion of music scenes, identifying local, trans-local and virtual music scenes. Music scenes have been defined as ‘cultural space(s) in which a range of musical practices co-exist’ (Straw 1991), including an infrastructure of clubs, venues and record stores, and a community of musicians and audiences to inhabit the scene (Bennett and Peterson 2004; Bennett et  al. 2020; Prior 2015). Recognizing the connectedness of these local hubs of musical practice to other places and spaces – geographical, online and imaginary – the music scenes concept has been expanded accordingly (e.g. see review in Bennett et al. 2020). Straw already conceptualized scenes as capable of transcending physical communities, connecting different communities through shared practices of production, performance and consumption (Straw 1991). Music scenes are more complex and diffuse than being the combination of music venues, musicians and audiences (Bennett et al. 2020, 372); they can be seen as layered and multidimensional, local nodes connected regionally and globally in various ways (Bennett et  al. 2020). This means that music scenes are understood to depend on both material infrastructures such as the built environment and a soft infrastructure of social networks and associative structures (Stahl 2004), with scenes establishing ‘concrete and abstract connections’ (Hodkinson 2004: 103) and connecting trans-­ locally through communication and commerce networks, but also through traveling musicians and audiences (Dowd et al. 2004; Hodkinson 2004; Prior 2015). In the literature on music scenes, festivals hold a special position. Music festivals are described as a special sort of trans-local scene: instead of connecting several local scenes through communication or particular kinds of networks, festivals draw dispersed individuals together in specific times and places, becoming even more likely to form a scene if they take place

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outside the bounds of everyday life, in both a geographical and social way. According to Peterson and Bennett (2004: 9–10), events are most likely to become scenes if they take place over a number of days, ‘in a risk-free environment, such as a rural area, so that participants have a chance to enact the ways of life idealized within the scene’. These environments offer a space that is free from the constraints and social control of everyday (urban) living and sociality – a type of event such as a multi-day festival. Where Peterson and Bennett emphasize the dispersed audiences and out of the ordinary status of festivals, Dowd et al. (2004) point out several other elements that contribute to making festivals a special kind of trans-­ local music scene. Festivals are like local scenes in the sense that they offer a collective experience of music and scene culture in a specific, demarcated space (2004: 149). However, festivals occur rarely and, most importantly, offer an intensity of experience that, according to Dowd, Liddle and Nelson, creates an impact that can be long-lasting and transformative for the attendees. To explain the difference, they draw a religious analogy, ‘comparing the events of a local music scene to a weekly church service, then the festival  – with the challenges involved in participation  – more closely resembles a pilgrimage destination’ (2004: 149). Through the effort involved and the experience of immersion, the culture of the festival profoundly transforms the attendees. According to Dowd et al. (2004), festivals offer a type of intensity, boundary work and impact that set them apart as trans-local events, showing how festivals can constitute scenes and be embedded in existing scenes. In this chapter, I show how music workshops can be seen as a special kind of trans-local music scene as well. Moreover, I argue that music workshops derive their power as entry points into a music genre through their position at the edge of music scenes, in terms of both geography (outside tourism centres and/or on the outskirts of local music scenes) and sociability. Where festivals derive their sociability by being outside—‘the agents of social control’ (Bennett and Peterson 2004)—with music workshops it is the learning of social codes and the social dynamics of the workshops that contribute to their impact as music scene-making events. In the next two sections, based on an ethnography of three music workshops, I show and discuss, first, the social dynamics of practice-based, embodied learning and, second, the role of and connection to the multi-layered, trans-local music scene offered by the workshops.

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Becoming Part of the Music Scene: Learning How to Play Becoming part of a music scene has been described as a learning process (Drew 2004; Prior 2015). This process involves embodied learning (Driver and Bennett 2015) – for example, by learning how to behave in the audience during a rock concert, learning what to wear to conform to unspoken social rules or, in the case of this chapter, learning how to become a better player during a music workshop. The music workshops visited for this study were focused entirely on this learning process through their structure, the specific activities offered and their location. First, the learning process was organized in a structured way: for all music workshops, there was a set schedule of lessons, leisure time and performances that was the same every day for the duration of the workshop. In all cases, the morning was reserved for small-group instrument tuition under the guidance of a professional musician. After this, there was time for lunch, and the classical music workshop offered the entire afternoon off while the jazz and Irish traditional music workshop offered various courses such as jazz harmonics and combo practice (the jazz workshop), or conversational Gaelic and set-dancing (Irish trad workshop). In the evenings, there were either concerts (Irish trad), jam sessions (jazz workshop) or more tuition (classical music). This specific structure, together with the location of the workshops, positioned the workshops both temporally and physically outside the bounds of everyday life. Broadening the argument put forward by Peterson and Bennett (2004) about the role of remote location in the special experience of festivals, in this case the workshops thrived on their rather secluded location, and participants got into the flow of the workshop exactly because they were separated from their normal networks and everyday life. As Sue remarked: There are two things: being away from home, being away from all the distractions, and problems, and whatever is going on at home, means that you can focus on the music … and being in a different place means you’re more alert anyway, you’re sort of … you’re receiving information, you’re receptive I suppose … to new things. (Sue, 56, classical music)

All three music workshops were, in a sense, outside of everyday life, on the periphery. For example, the jazz workshop took place in a school building

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on the outskirts of Prague, while the Irish music lessons took place in defunct pubs, houses up for sale and local schools. Participants slept at local families’ homes during the Irish workshop, as the village of Milton Malbay could not accommodate such a large number of people in the local hotels and B&Bs. The classical music workshop took place in a holiday villa outside of the regular tourist area, ensuring a certain amount of seclusion and separation from the tourist bubble. In this way, the workshops functioned as separate spaces from everyday life: the everyday life of the participant, the everyday life of the local community and the everyday life of ‘the tourist’. This separateness and location on the periphery contributed to the intensity of the experience for the participants, and created what participant Line (56, jazz) called ‘a safe space’, where the participants could make mistakes and establish and learn the social codes before entering the ‘real world’ of the music scenes – for example, when playing in seisúns or jam sessions at night, outside the protected space of the workshops. In addition, seeing the workshops as special trans-local music scenes can explain the specific learning dynamic talked about by the participants. As Dowd et  al. (2004) describe, trans-local festivals derive their special status from the intensity, impact and boundary work that give them special salience. These elements also returned in the learning process experienced during the workshops, contributing to their power as music scene-making events. Jackie described the learning process as follows: It is the actual process of that sort of empathy that goes on between players, and you know, it is not just ‘one, two three, four’, it’s learning to listen, and learning to fit in, and make sure your tuning is right and, you know, all that sort of interplay I find quite brilliant when it goes on. And you can’t do that by yourself ha! You’re always in tune with yourself! (Jackie, 62, classical music)

Learning through playing also had moments of disruption, as Alison described: The group that we had … there were some that would play … as a team player I suppose, and others were just playing their individual parts and not really listening … so the more people that you have that are prepared to … play in the group, not just the person … the better that is really I think. (Alison, 56, classical music)

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Across the interviews, participants talked about their peers, and how they continuously tried to become better players according to the social codes and formal rules of the genre. With Irish traditional music, for example, this meant how many tunes and at what speed participants could play. For classical music, it was technical mastery of the instrument and musicality. For jazz, improvisation was the central skill to acquire. The participants continuously ranked each other mentally, and knew exactly what the playing level of others was. This mechanism of hierarchy contributes to becoming part of a music scene, as Drew (2004: 73) describes in a similar manner for karaoke scenes: out of a complex of insider knowledge and practices arises a hierarchy, constituting the specific scene. In the case of the workshops, it even drove one participant from the jazz workshop to attend the workshop in Prague, to learn and prepare before being comfortable to join in jam sessions in her native Istanbul: In Istanbul I was a little afraid of the people’s judgement or something, because I didn’t sing for two years, so it was like a new start, and I didn’t want to … see those people, in that position, so that’s why I would like to go somewhere else. I think I was running away from the judgement a little bit, and also I think in Europe, they were much more relaxed than in Istanbul, because in Istanbul to make jazz you know, a little bit the people are a little you know … understand the style of the jazz … you must be perfect or something you know, and this is my point of view of course, maybe it is not true but I felt like this so that is why I decided to go somewhere else. (Dilek, 38, jazz)

Elsewhere (Bolderman 2020), I have described how the competitive nature of the workshops creates a ritual space where group values are being negotiated and confirmed. In this chapter, the argument is taken a step further, as it is not just general social values that are at stake, but the hierarchy that constitutes a specific music scene. The learning process through which this happened was both embodied and tacit, exemplified by the workshop leaders, who drew boundaries for the social knowledge that the participants required, and modelled and taught the rules of the genre and social codes. With the jazz workshop, there was even a separate part of the program dedicated to ‘how to become a professional jazz musician’, while with the other two workshops, this teaching was more implicit. As Pier recounted:

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It’s a very different way to engage with music and you are part of a long continuum of musical performance and practice. And that really interested me, it’s a completely new way of looking at things. I really appreciated that kind of focus on community and on passing something down. When someone talks about a tune, they’ll talk about who they got that tune from and who that person got that tune from. And it’s always passed down, it’s not something that’s kind of static and you just listen, recordings or just … you know, listening to the radio or something. It’s about living tradition. (Pier, 63, Irish music)

Through this embodied learning process, the workshops were practice-­ based social spaces for musicking, where participants were either initiated into or re-entered the wider imagined community of the music scene. In this sense, the workshops can be seen as practice-based music scene-­ making events. As already becomes clear from Dilek’s quote, these events did not stand on their own, but were trans-locally connected to other music scenes in specific ways.

Translocality in a Music Workshop Setting In the theoretical section, I have analysed several aspects that make festivals special trans-local music scenes: they bring together dispersed people in a specific time and place, with the intensity of the experience resulting in a long-lasting impact (Dowd et al. 2004; Peterson and Bennett 2004). What contributed to the translocality of the music workshops was partly the intense learning process through which participants felt they became part of the music, as analysed above. Moreover, what made the workshops particularly trans-local was their relation to travel. The workshops brought together people from all over the world – both participants and teachers – creating a particular community. As Patrick described: And you meet kind of the same people, and a lot of people bounce around to different workshops and the same instructors will kind of appear at different workshops so you end up knowing a lot of the people. So it’s not like you’re going into an event unknown, you’ll go there and you’ll know almost everyone who’s there and that’s … it’s kind of a gathering of people you already know and a continuation of a learning process. (Patrick, 48, Irish music)

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Patrick described the community of workshop participants, travelling to different workshops across the world, meeting and meeting again, or returning to the same workshop every year. This created a trans-local community of participants. Patrick’s experience was not the same for all interviewees, as other interviewees actually appreciated getting to know new people through the workshops – new people with whom they at least had one thing in common: wanting to play music together. However, taking part in a workshop generally created the desire to take part in future workshops as well, forming the beginning of an enduring membership of the trans-local community of workshop participants. The teachers were also seen as central to the music workshop experience. Even though the workshops were not necessarily in the locations where the music genre was considered ‘to be from’, to the participants the musicians leading the workshop were important in connecting to that imagined community. As Pekka (40, jazz) said: ‘Yes, about the whole course… I have to admit that it convinced me that there were these American teachers, too.’ In a similar way, Mark paid special attention to the teachers: Also … the tutors themselves, very often they are of international pedigree, or you might even know some of them. I was at a workshop in Ireland, in Sligo, a yearly workshop there as well, and I specifically went up there because of the bass tutor. He is a fantastic electric bass player named Janek Gwizdala. I don’t know where he comes from originally but he’s made a name for himself in the States. (Mark, 44, jazz)

Fisker et al. (2019) discuss how trans-local festivals can be place-bound or place-based – whether they necessarily need to be in a specific location or could be held elsewhere. As described in more detail in Bolderman (2020), these workshops were described by the participants as being place-based; if the musicians were experienced and well-known, and had preferably trained in well-known locations for the music genre, participants experienced them as especially interesting to learn from. In this sense, the participants created their own ‘symbolic economy of authenticity’, comparable to the way Grazian (2004) describes tourism in the Chicago blues scene, where tourists particularly cared about the type of musician representing their idea of the music genre. As in the case of Chicago blues, the symbolic economy of authenticity formed a mechanism for social distinction. In the music workshop

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interviews, this mechanism was particularly present in the ways the interviewees described themselves mostly as ‘anti-tourists’, not being interested in the workshop location as a tourism destination, but rather interested in becoming musicians, learning about their genre and improving their skills under the guidance of professional musicians who could ‘authenticate’ their experience. For the interviewees, music genres have become dislocated from their places of origin and have taken root in other places through travelling musicians (cf. the fixity and fluidity of music as discussed by Connell and Gibson 2003). This meant that, for the interviewees, the musicians who carried with them the tacit knowledge of the music genre were just as important as the idea of ‘being there’, experiencing the ‘original’ locations of musicking. Musicians therefore played a pivotal role in ‘authenticating’ the experience of the music workshops, being gatekeepers to the trans-local, imagined and affective music scene.

Conclusion This chapter set out to show how music workshops can fruitfully be analysed by drawing on the music scenes literature. Through an analysis of three music workshops, I have shown how amateur players can become part of and connect with their genre during music workshops, creating a dedicated group of amateur members of the music scene. Central to their experience is a complex, hierarchical learning process, in which the daily rhythm of the workshop, the location and the teachers all played a pivotal role. Based on the processes described, music workshops can be seen as spatio-temporal events that derive their intensity and impact from being practice-based trans-local nodes at the periphery of affective music scenes. Especially salient in the translocality of the workshops was the notion of travel: travelling participants and musicians convening in certain moments and places across the world to create ‘safe spaces’ through which to enter or reconnect with the imagined community that the global scene forms in the mind of the participant. I set out on this analysis with a dual goal: to nuance the role of tourism in music scenes, and to broaden the notion of music scenes as a conceptual frame. By approaching music tourism as a multifaceted, complex phenomenon that can contribute to scene-building, tourism is shown to be more than commercialized consumption; rather, tourism experiences are able to offer intense experiences of scene building, providing access points to wider music communities. The position of this type of niche tourism at the

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periphery of both music worlds and tourism centres shows the importance of not just looking at (urban) centres when considering music scenes. In this chapter, I have approached music scenes from a centre–periphery perspective precisely because of the focus elsewhere on the urban, and because of the issues associated with the urban–rural dichotomy (Bennett et  al. 2020): what are the bounds of urban and rural definitions and, as pointed out by Greiner and Sakdapolrak (2013), what role does the interconnectedness of places play in using such dichotomies for analysis? Whether termed rural, regional or urban, music scenes are entered and exited, and it is precisely at the edges of these scenes that interesting research remains to be done, including attention not just to an industry and development perspective, but to the people who keep the scenes afloat: its dedicated fans and audiences.



Note

1. The data collection on which this chapter is based was part of a larger research project into music tourism, funded by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research, grant number PR-11-77, resulting in the monograph Contemporary Music Tourism. A Theory of Musical Topophilia (London: Routledge, 2020).

References Bennett, A., and R.A.  Peterson, eds. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A., B.  Green, D.  Cashman, and N.  Lewandowski. 2020. Researching regional and rural music scenes: Toward a critical understanding of an under-­ theorized issue. Popular Music and Society 43 (4): 367–377. Bolderman, L. 2020. Contemporary music tourism: A theory of musical topophilia. New York: Routledge. Connell, J., and C. Gibson. 2003. Sound tracks: Popular music, identity, and place. New York: Routledge. Dowd, T., K.  Liddle, and J.  Nelson. 2004. Music festivals as scenes: Examples from serious music, womyn’s music and skatepunk. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson, 149–167. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Drew, Rob. 2004. ‘Scenes’ dimensions of Karaoke in the United States. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson, 64–79. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.

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Driver, C., and A.  Bennett. 2015. Music scenes, space and the body. Cultural Sociology 9 (1): 99–115. Ellis, S.R. 2011. Music camp: Experiential consumption in a guitar workshop setting. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 5 (4): 376–382. Feintuch, B. 2004. The conditions for Cape Breton fiddle music: The social and economic setting of a regional soundscape. Ethnomusicology 48 (1): 73–104. Fisker, J.K., G. Kwiatkowski, and A.M. Hjalager. 2019. The translocal fluidity of rural grassroots festivals in the network society. Social & Cultural Geography 22 (2): 250–272. Gibson, C., and J. Connell. 2005. Music and tourism: On the road again. Clevedon: Channel View. Granger, C. 2015. Dwelling in movement: Panorama, tourism and performance. Contemporary Music Review 34 (1): 54–66. Grazian, D. 2004. The symbolic economy of authenticity in the Chicago Blues scene. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.A. Peterson, 31–47. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Greiner, C., and P. Sakdapolrak. 2013. Translocality: Concepts, applications and emerging research perspectives. Geography Compass 7 (5): 373–384. Hodkinson, P. 2004. Translocal connections in the Goth scene. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.A.  Peterson, 131–148. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Morley, D. 2001. Belongings: Place, space and identity in a mediated world. European Journal of Cultural Studies 4 (4): 425–448. Peterson, R.A., and A. Bennett. 2004. Introducing music scenes. In Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A.  Bennett and R.A.  Peterson, 1–16. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Prior, N. 2015. ‘It’s a social thing, not a nature thing’: Popular music practices in Reykjavík, Iceland. Cultural Sociology 9 (1): 81–98. Sarbanes, J. 2006. Musicking and communitas: The aesthetic mode of sociality in Rebetika subculture. Popular Music and Society 29 (1): 17–35. Stahl, G. 2004. ‘It’s like Canada reduced’: Setting the scene in Montreal. In After subculture: Critical studies in contemporary youth culture, ed. Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, 51–64. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Straw, W. 1991. Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies 5 (3): 368–388. Urry, J., and J. Larsen. 2011. The tourist gaze 3.0. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage.

CHAPTER 13

Outsiders in Outsider Cities? Expatriates in the DIY Music Scenes of Nagoya and Fukuoka Benjamin Duester

Coverage of independent music from Japan commonly focuses on the major metropolitan areas of the Kantō region, evolving around the sprawl of Tōkyō and Yokohama in the east, and the Kansai expanse formed around the cities of Ō saka, Kyōto, Kōbe and Nara in the west of Japan’s main island of Honshū. In one sense, this focus is not surprising, as numerous influential independent music projects such as Fushitsusha, Hijokaidan, Mainliner, Hadaka no Rarı ̄zu (Les Rallizes Dénudés), Boris and Merzbow emerged from the culturally and economically opposing forces of the Kansai and Kantō regions throughout the twentieth century (Novak 2013: 111ff.). Nonetheless, smaller and geographically separated cities such as Nagoya and Fukuoka host established DIY music scenes that draw on these cities’ particular local traits and culture to shape their own identity of music-making. Artists from Tōkyō and Ō saka tour through Nagoya

B. Duester (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_13

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and Fukuoka and DIY labels release CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes of local as well as national and international artists (see Discogs 2021; Galaxy Train 2021; Martin 2016c). Although acting outside the major urban centres, these music scenes participate in the overall production and distribution of independent music in Japan and on an international scale. This chapter is based on a four-month period of fieldwork conducted in Japan between October 2018 and January 2019. In addition to extensive participant observations at concerts and record stores, the investigation comprised thirty-two interviews with independent music shop and music label operators, as well as artists and bloggers. These interviews were conducted primarily in Japanese and English, and subsequently translated and transcribed. Besides covering the metropolitan regions of Tōkyō and Ō saka, focus was also put on the social, economic and cultural dynamics in DIY music scenes around Nagoya and Fukuoka. Chiefly, in portraying the often-overlooked but nonetheless diverse examples of self-organized and grassroots-based music produced by these cities, I am tracing the ways in which amateur artists, bands, labels, record shops and concert venues in Nagoya and Fukuoka participate in the overall production and distribution of independent music in Japan. For this purpose, the chapter highlights the role of expatriates to illustrate how different cultural and material dynamics are contributing to the participation of these smaller, yet by no means minor, music scenes in the overall production and circulation of music in Japan. I will initially examine how expatriates actively contribute to Nagoya and Fukuoka’s music scenes by operating DIY projects such as labels and blogs that put these often-overlooked second-tier locations on the map by using their international connections to attract artists from overseas for tours and releases on local music labels. I argue that the cultural diversity of the proactive Western DIY ethos displayed by several of the expatriate scene participants and the introspective and at times low-key artistry of their Japanese peers form a unique synergy that ultimately aids in creating recognition for smaller independent music communities and their local artists in and outside Japan, who otherwise might remain under-represented. In the following section, I will trace how independent music in Japan has so far been researched in the Anglophone sphere before investigating specific projects in Nagoya and Fukuoka.

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Independent Music in Japan: Stories About Kantō and Kansai Scholars and journalists focusing on independent music in Japan have typically concentrated on covering activities in Japan’s major metropolitan regions. Novak’s (2013) thorough analysis of the national and international production, distribution and consumption circuits of Japanese Noise reflects this disposition. Locality and the dense urban structures of the Tōkyō sprawl are discussed by Novak, who pays attention to the often-­ obscure locality of speciality Noise record stores such as the renowned NEDS, located in an unassuming Shinjuku office building, or concert venues and bars that offer performance spaces for outsider and more abrasive genres of music. Novak then goes on to consider the cultural conditions in the Kansai area that gave birth to some of the first projects in the Noise genre in the late 1970s, such as Hijokaidan. Here, he retraces the development that successfully transformed Ō saka from the status of an outsider city to an internationally acclaimed centre for Japanese Noise (Novak 2013: 21ff.), a development he attributes to the transnational circulation of Noise recordings of artists stemming from the Ō saka scene: In Japan, Osaka has always been out of the mainstream, but in the 1990s it became the emblematic city of the Japanese underground for a worldwide audience. Alchemy and other local labels forged a distribution network that bypassed Japan to circulate Kansai Noise overseas, where North American listeners renamed it ‘Japanoise’. (Novak 2013: 94)

This notion of Japanese Noise as a simultaneously local and global phenomenon that helped Ō saka to be recognized by music and art enthusiasts around the world is supported by Overell’s (2014a, b) analysis of ‘brutal belonging’ and its cultural connections between Ō saka’s and Melbourne’s Grindcore scenes. Her investigation heavily draws on the renowned Ō saka raibuhausu (live-house) concert venues, and it demonstrates how scenic identity and the sense of the members’ belonging is shaped through particular social practices such as moshing and language. Namely, the concept of ‘brutal’ as a positive indicator for an artist’s acceptance and perceived authenticity within the scene is a central theme in her investigation. In contrast to Tōkyō which, due to its vastness, is regularly seen as an intrinsically segregated melting pot of national culture (Martin 2016c), Ō saka, in accordance with Novak’s (2013) account, is depicted here as a consistently

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down-to-earth and outspoken city that over the decades has manifested its image of displaying a distinctively developed DIY ethos while constituting a hotbed for abrasive forms of music. Contrasting this focus on Ō saka is Matsue (2009), who investigated Tōkyō’s hardcore and punk scenes in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Following the complex identities displayed by Tōkyō’s scene members, Matsue demonstrates that grassroots-based music distribution and performance strategies cannot be fully reduced to merely opposing conventional popular culture. She does, however, argue that members of the scene are better understood as actually seeking release from mainstream expectations through performance of the underground Tokyo hardcore scene, while never endangering their positions in society. Performance in the scene allows participants a space to negotiate distinct individual and collective identities that can at times be further characterized by a sense of resistance, but this resistance is often temporary, even playful, calling for a more nuanced read[ing] of such scenes and their purpose. (Matsue 2009: 4)

In addition, Matsue (2009: 13) provides several useful insights on her position as a foreign woman in the context of her fieldwork. Her reflection does, however, miss out on providing a contrasting background on scenes outside the metropolitan hubs of the Kantō and Kansai regions. Her analysis of the socioeconomic and cultural dynamics within the grassroots-­ based music sphere in Japan thus remains on the level of a micro investigation of Tōkyō that subsequently leads to generalizing assumptions regarding the dynamics in other scenes around Japan (Matsue 2009: 11). It becomes evident here that the aforementioned academic accounts primarily invest their resources in delineating how the specific cultural, economic and political traits of the Tōkyō vs Ō saka rivalry are represented within the identity and practices of independent music scenes in Japan’s major cities. Consequently, the question of how less well-profiled provincial cities are shaping their own cultures of local music practice remains largely unanswered within the existing scholarship. The academic literature can be contrasted with journalistic endeavours from expatriates in Japan. A striking example of the dedication invested into exploring the regional structures of Japanese independent music scenes is the blog ‘Burn Your Hometown: Travels in Underground Music’ by the British journalist Ian F.  Martin. Martin, a Tōkyō local since the mid-2000s, initiated the idea of breaking out of the cultural microcosm of

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his Kōenji neighbourhood to explore what regional music scenes in Japan had to offer. Over the course of several years, Martin recurringly travelled across Japan and documented interviews with participants in local scenes as well as his experience of concerts and visits to record shops through detailed photographs and links to artists’ performances and recordings on YouTube and Bandcamp. A discussion with Arakawa, one of Martin’s informants in the prefecture of Fukushima, insightfully demonstrates the complex structure of regional music scenes outside of Tōkyō and Ō saka: Rather than having one central city that acts as a core for the whole prefecture’s music scene, Fukushima really has three centres: Fukushima City itself, Koriyama and Iwaki … According to Arakawa, this situation is similar to Yamagata, where in addition to Yamagata City, there are distinct local scenes in Sakata, Yonezawa and Shinjo. Fukushima and Yamagata are really both places where my truncated stay must necessitate a return at a later date. (Martin 2015)

Martin’s remark on a necessary return to the area underscores the underlying cultural complexity of the interrelated independent music networks in areas such as Fukushima or Yamagata that easily fall under the radar when only assessed from afar. Martin’s curiosity and rigour in investigating these often-overlooked, but nevertheless elaborate, music scenes are valuable, as the resulting accounts give non-Japanese speakers a rare opportunity to get in contact with local music projects outside of the Kansai and Kantō regions. A contrasting example of Martin’s focus on regional and rural independent music scenes is Kato David Hopkins’ (2015) book Dokkiri!, which provides a historic overview of Japanese independent music between 1976 and 1989. Similar to Martin’s blogs ‘Burn Your Hometown’ (2016a) and ‘Clear and Refreshing’ (2013) and his book Quit Your Band! (2016c), Hopkins’ publication is one of few written records that devotes itself to mapping out the Japanese music underground in a way that is accessible for Anglophone readers outside of Japan. Hopkins, also a long-time resident of Japan who recurringly worked in the country as an interpreter for touring international bands such as Fugazi (Hopkins 2015: 2), provides a thorough representation of a range of different musical styles, such as political folk, punk, psychedelia, noise and avant garde music that, during their years of activity, were widely obscured from audiences outside Japan. Despite constituting a detailed resource, however, Hopkins’ work still reiterates the common focus on

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cultural circuits in Tōkyō and the Kansai region. Hopkins acknowledges that: There were, of course, musicians doing interesting things in other places, but they had a tough time getting the word out and making connections to a slowly growing scene. Very few became known nationally. (Hopkins 2015: 12)

This condition calls for further historical investigations that decidedly focus on music cultures outside the Tōkyō and Kansai areas. Furthermore, Hopkins’ acknowledgement that underground scenes in the past faced more difficulties creating platforms and generating attention for themselves calls for a thorough exploration of how these challenges were addressed by musicians, venue and record store operators, and fans. Notably, all the aforementioned academic and journalistic accounts are stemming from the perspective of Western outsiders to the scenes and not from Japanese scene members themselves. This constitutes a culturally significant aspect that is not only important in the context of temporarily visiting researchers, but more so for the roles that expatriates who permanently live and work in Japan play in local music scenes. In the next section, I will trace how the DIY projects of several expatriates in Nagoya and Fukuoka aid their music scenes by connecting local artists and generating international exposure.

Putting Nagoya on the Map: Indie Rock, Shoegaze and DIY Journalism Nagoya, by population Japan’s fourth largest city, is by no means a small or remote place. For hundreds of years, the city has been established as an economic powerhouse holding a long tradition of being a conveniently located hub for trading between the rivalling Kansai and Kantō regions. Due to its dominantly economic status, however, Nagoya is rarely framed as a destination for music, art and culture in the broader context of Japan. Nagoya’s music scenes are largely connected to the city’s university students, who regularly frequent concert venues, cafés and independent music shops. An example of the latter is Takehiko Yamada’s store File Under Records, which has been operating since 2002. Connected to the intimate shop tucked away in one of the numerous side streets of central Nagoya is

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Yamada’s label Knew Noise Recordings. Its roster features, among Japanese and international artists, Bo Ningen and Comanechi, two bands with Japanese members who are currently living in London. As a store and label, File Under Records and Knew Noise not only constitute a local hub for music enthusiasts and bands to discover artists and projects that are active in Nagoya’s scene, but also offer a point of connection for international artists to receive exposure in places other than Tōkyō or Ō saka. File Under Records’ selection nevertheless reflects dominant genres in the musical landscape of Nagoya: indie rock, shoegaze, punk and singer-­ songwriter music (Martin 2016c). The last of these is represented primarily through the label Galaxy Train, which is a staple in the city’s record stores. Actively releasing music primarily on cassette tapes and 7-inch records since 1998, Galaxy Train excels not only as one of Nagoya’s longest running DIY music labels but among Japanese DIY labels in general. The label expresses its punk-rooted DIY ethos through working in close proximity with Nagoya’s infrastructure of music venues and record stores. During my fieldwork in Nagoya, I witnessed one of the label’s operators personally handing the latest batch of cassette releases to Yamada in his File Under Records shop. For more than twenty years, the label has not only worked on an eye-level basis with local record stores, but also organized numerous concerts around Japan. These locally held events created exposure for small independent artists in regional cities such as Fukuoka and Sendai and included expatriate artists in Japan. The most recent example of this is a concert organized at the Andy Record Shop in Nagoya in 2019 by Galaxy Train for the local instrumental guitar project Kotolis and the bedroom rock project Sushi Backpack run by the American Ben Austin, who is based in Tōkyō (Galaxy Train 2021). Before looking at how expatriates are contributing to local music scenes throughout Japan, it is necessary to delineate their position within Japanese society. Admittedly, this is a complex subject matter that strongly varies on a case-to-case basis, however, common language used to refer to foreigners in Japan present provides a first insight into how foreignness is conceptualized in everyday life. The words frequently used to depict foreigners are gaijin (外人 lit. outside person) or, more politely and formally, gaikokujin (外国人 lit. outside country person). The notion that is conveyed through these terms can be interpreted as closer in meaning to the English word ‘outsider’ rather than ‘foreigner’. As an island nation, Japan has historically displayed distinct rules and concepts regarding who and what is considered geographically and culturally inside and outside the country.

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Creating a social sense of belonging as well as navigating the intricacies of sanctioned intimacy and distance when in Japan is not only arduous for Japanese natives, but even more so for the non-Japanese people who reside in the country. Along with this notion of otherness and not-belonging faced by expatriates, however, also comes the privilege of being exempt from certain cultural expectations. Foreigners in Japan thus enjoy the freedom of being assumed unaware of local customs and codes governing social interactions. In the case of the ‘Burn Your Hometown’ blog, Martin’s interest in exploring different regional music scenes can be linked to his outsider position in Japan. The blog thus constructively deals with Martin’s social status as he actively uses his position for the purpose of investigating independent music. Another striking example of this is ‘Muso Japan: A Japanese Indie Music Blog’ (Bedford 2012), which started in 2012 after Matthew Bedford relocated to Japan from the United States. The website features English reviews of music releases with a focus on shoegaze and dream pop from Japan and the Asian region. In 2014, Bedford expanded his project by hosting a series entitled ‘Muso Asia’ on the US-based DKFM Shoegaze Radio. Regarding the purpose of the blog, Bedford elaborates: The Muso Project was created with the goal of finding hidden gems of Japanese music and showcasing them for likeminded individuals. For people outside of Japan the most accessible genres of Japanese music tend to be J-Pop and J-Rock, many artists of which are discovered through anime programs or various conventions. Muso identifies that there are indeed those who seek bands outside of these genres, but are often unable to due to the lack of non-Japanese resources. The purpose of this project is to hopefully build a bridge connecting the world of local and independent Japanese artists to the audience that seeks it. (Bedford 2012)

Over the nine years of its existence, the blog has amassed a reputable number of approximately 200 reviews covering releases, concerts, record shops and venues, as well as interviews with members of Japanese bands. Without a doubt, Bedford’s efforts have created a platform for recognition of smaller music communities across Japan, and in particular the music scene in Nagoya and the Aichi prefecture. Although artists and labels from Tōkyō and Ō saka are regularly featured on Muso Japan, Bedford values the intimacy and creative intersection of projects that the scene in Nagoya has created:

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Nagoya’s indie scene is pretty cool, in that a lot of it runs through local record shops in the city. The scene isn’t nearly as large as that of Tokyo, but there is a lot of different stuff going on. I feel like there’s also a bit more crossover between bands of different genres, whereas in other cities, the impression I get is that genres are very much separated. As a result, you get some pretty cool community vibes in Nagoya. (Bedford 2012)

This aspect of a focused creative exchange in Nagoya can be contrasted with Martin, who credits Tōkyō’s expanse as a contributing element in the segregation of its music scenes into different genres and localities: Nothing is holding the scene together, it’s falling apart. I mean, but it’s been like that forever, it’s been like fragmented and all over the place forever. Tōkyō is too big. (laughs) (Martin 2015)

This factor is also represented in the musical styles that congregate in different localities around Japan. In his blog, Martin (2018) mentions a conversation he had in Nagoya with Nobu, the operator of Bar Ripple, one of Nagoya’s venues for underground music and concerts. While listening to a few recent releases by Tōkyō bands, Nobu remarks on the ‘propensity so many bands in the capital have for complex, clinically delivered rhythms’. Martin derives from this the assumption that this display of an imposed complexity might stem from ‘an unconscious fear of not doing enough and appearing unsophisticated in the eyes of your peers’. He finds that a reversed dynamic in regard to musical style and performance occurs in regional Japanese music scenes, where the threat consists of ‘over-­egging the music and losing the raw energy that enables you to co-exist smoothly with bands of different genres and their fans’ (Martin 2018). The factor of creative coexistence appears to be a central aspect not only in Nagoya’s music scene, but Japanese regional music scenes in general. Whereas scenes in cities such as Tōkyō and Ō saka have the space and resources to segregate and culturally ‘claim’ certain venues and record stores, smaller music communities must resourcefully share their assets with each other, and more frequently face the challenge of maintaining a stable sense of harmony throughout their locally organized and performed creative practices: In smaller Japanese cities than Tokyo, fewer venues means that bands and audiences are more used to rubbing up against music from different genres.

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The capital’s scenes, on the other hand, tend to be fragmented into factionalized niches – sometimes even among seemingly similar sounding bands. (Martin 2016c, Location no. 1464)

When comparing Martin’s blogs ‘Burn Your Hometown’ and ‘Clear and Refreshing’ with Bedford’s ‘Muso Japan’, it becomes apparent that accessibility is a central point of value created by the coverage of independent music scenes in Japan for a foreign audience. In a conversation with a reader on his ‘Clear and Refreshing’ blog, Martin points out that most of the music he writes about is distributed by the artists on homemade CD-Rs at concerts and in local independent music shops. This clearly limits access for people outside of Japan wanting online streaming or downloads (Martin 2013). The aforementioned blogs thus create value in two directions: by generating access to music for people outside of Japan who otherwise might have no access to the Japanese underground, and by fostering recognition for local Japanese artists and labels through exposing them to an international audience. The next section will trace how these cultural dynamics manifest in Fukuoka.

Putting Fukuoka on the Map: From Mentai Rock to Deterra Since the late 1970s, Fukuoka has primarily been associated with rock in the spectrum of Japan’s popular music landscape. Bands such as Sheena & the Rokkets, The Roosters and SONHOUSE coined the genre ‘Mentai Rock’. Originating from the Hakata ward in the centre of Fukuoka, the area from which most Mentai Rock bands were stemming, the genre borrowed its name from Mentaiko, a local delicacy made from pollock roe. Living in and performing around Fukuoka remained the primary point of convergence for most of these bands, and the genres associated with Mentai Rock ranged from Blues Rock to New Wave (Martin 2016c). In the mid-1990s, things started to change in Fukuoka’s music scenes when the clear-cut sound of Mentai Rock was superseded by a new generation of younger, more experimental indie rock bands, loosely grouped into the term ‘Hakata No Wave’ (Martin 2016b, c). These emerging bands were spearheaded by Number Girl, a group that quickly evolved from being an insider tip in Fukuoka’s local music circuit to playing sold-out tours across Japan and releasing three albums with the major label Toshiba EMI.

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In contrast to Nagoya, which still lies in relatively close proximity to the Kantō and Kansai regions, Fukuoka is located on the far West of Japan on the island of Kyūshū. Hence, touring musicians decidedly have to travel to Fukuoka to play a show. Unlike Nagoya, which is conveniently en route when touring from Ō saka to Tōkyō and vice versa, Fukuoka appears more geographically separated from the general Kantō–Kansai tour circuits. How do local Japanese artists create exposure for themselves under these circumstances? As in Nagoya, it is illuminating to contextualize the perspective of local Japanese artists in Fukuoka with those of expatriates who participate in Japan’s DIY music scenes. In this context, an account by Andreas Holderbach, a German expatriate living in Ō saka who cooperates the DIY cassette label Muzan Editions, can serve as a general introductory reference. He mentioned the surprised reactions that he and his friend Joshua Stephane receive from local Japanese artists during inquiries for possible releases: Düster: How are the reactions when you approach Japanese artists? Holderbach: It’s always positive … like: ‘What?! Me?!’ And that is this attitude, this: ‘Me?! Hmm, I don’t know, maybe. Okay, I’ll send you something.’ It’s more positive, never negative. But the good thing is that Josh and I can speak Japanese. There’s more trust then. They know then it’s not some random foreigners who are here for a short period of time, but they stay here. So, being able to speak Japanese here is very important. (Andreas Holderbach, Ō saka, Muzan Editions, Interview)

Holderbach’s account illustrates that, even in the context of DIY music that traditionally has been coined by spontaneity and an aesthetic of imperfection, Japanese artists can display a sophisticated level of self-­ critical assessment and modesty that, from the position of the involved expatriate scene members, has to be tackled by actively creating a relationship of trust. The ability of expatriates to speak Japanese is necessary to engage with local Japanese musicians in dialogues at eye level in order to negotiate the release or performance of their music. As in the case of Martin’s and Bedford’s DIY journalism, the outsider perspective of expatriates allows here for an unassuming evaluation of their Japanese peers’ creative efforts that, paired with a proactive mentality commonly found in Western DIY projects, feeds back into the cultural production of local music scenes in Japan.

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In Fukuoka, the Australian artist Shayne Bowden has been active in such a role since about 2003, when he co-founded the art space and label Deterra. Bowden not only organized a respectable number of events ranging from local music and film festivals to national tours, but also began operating a label through which he releases local and international artists as well as his personal collaborations with artists across Japan. Through his project and its name, Bowden openly reflects on his role as an expatriate in Japan: It comes from Deleuze’s idea about deterritorialization. So, if you come here this becomes something else and deterritorialization and reterritorialization. It’s just a concept that I found very interesting when I first came across it and I sort of parallelized with it as far as like being a non-Japanese person living in Japan as well. (Shayne Bowden, Fukuoka, Deterra)

Bowden’s efforts decidedly aim at creating a network between local, Fukuoka-based and international artists. An example of this has been the annual Fukuoka Extreme Music Festival, which he operated from 2008 until 2018. The event connected international and Japanese artists and in its final year hosted acts such as Astro, the Hard-Ons, Langham Research Centre, DUENN and Sissy Spacek. Even though it aided in creating a platform of international music exchange in Fukuoka, Bowden stopped curating the event in 2018 due to the extensive preparation needed. On top of this, booking concerts in Fukuoka generally proves to be precarious in contrast to other cities, as venue operators commonly demand rental fees even for hosting well-known artists. In the past, Bowden booked entire Japan tours for Sydney’s long-standing punk band the Hard-Ons in a single day, while Fukuoka remained the only city where he was required to personally hire a concert space. This aligns with the perspective of Hajime Yoshida, member of the experimental rock group Panicsmile, who in an interview with Ian Martin noted that Fukuoka’s music scene, albeit being highly active and creative, appeared generally more conservative in contrast to scenes in Tōkyō (Martin 2016b). Despite the obvious financial and organizational challenges posed by concert organization in Fukuoka, Bowden’s Deterra project stands as a prime example of how expatriates are actively contributing to geographically isolated music scenes in Japan by creating a platform that brings together local artists with international

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ones. Not only this, but festivals such as Martin’s Splash! festival held in Kumamoto in 2016 demonstrate his ability to bring together artists from all over Kyūshū, who otherwise have to actively overcome the isolation that remote small music scenes are facing: I hoped to contribute even slightly to re-forging and strengthening the connections between musicians in different parts of Kyushu and beyond. In Fukuoka, an art-punk/alternative scene along these lines can survive … However, in towns like Kagoshima, Nagasaki and Saga (not to mention Oita and Miyazaki, where at the time of booking I knew no one), it can be easy for bands like this to feel isolated. Being able to physically link them in to a wider thing I hope might help keep them motivated, and by briefly condensing the signal in this way, might make the signal easier to recognize in its more regular dispersed form. (Martin 2016a)

Indeed, the social and creative connections between participants in Japan’s regional music scenes continue to face the challenges of geographic isolation. Within this context, Bowden and Martin’s grassroots projects that connect local and international musicians function as constructive attempts to tackle these problems. For the condition that Martin describes of isolated artists in cities scattered around Kyūshū, such as Kagoshima, Nagasaki and Saga, it appears that the ‘outsider’ perspective of expatriates is fruitful in creating connections between local Japanese artists that otherwise possibly would not have come into existence.

Conclusion Despite the challenges of language barriers and cultural differences in the interaction with their Japanese peers, the longstanding blogs, labels and events run by expatriates in Japan have grown into established platforms of creative exchange between local and international artists. Although this chapter has put emphasis on exploring the role of expatriates in Japan’s regional DIY music scenes, their projects only retain their significance in correspondence with the contributions by their Japanese peers, who are active in their local community and online. If anything, this chapter has demonstrated that regional music scenes outside the Kansai and Kantō regions display complex relationships and activities that, although widely overlooked by outside commentators, maintain their individual status in the overall landscape of contemporary music production throughout

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Japan. Indeed, as the journalistic endeavours by Martin and Bedford vividly illustrate, individuality and diversity are core characteristics of music practices once one leaves the familiar safe haven of the music sphere in Tōkyō or Ō saka. It is time for future research to embrace this regional diversity – there remains a lot to be learned.

References Bedford, M. 2012. What is the Muso Project Japan? http://musojapan. com/2012/01/19/what-­is-­the-­muso-­project-­japan. Accessed 21 May 2021. Discogs. 2021. Duenn. https://www.discogs.com/label/423593-­Duenn. Accessed 21 May 2021. Galaxy Train. 2021. http://galaxytrain.music.coocan.jp. Accessed 21 May 2021. Hopkins, K.D. 2015. Dokkiri! Japanese indies music, 1976–1989: A history and guide. Nara: Public Bath Press. Martin, I.F. 2013. Clear and Refreshing: About. https://clearandrefreshing. wordpress.com/about/#comment-­950. Accessed 21 May 2021. ———. 2015. Burn your hometown: Travels in Japanese underground music. Support Your Local. https://burnyourhometown.wordpress. com/2015/10/17/support-­your-­local. Accessed 21 May 2021. ———. 2016a. Burn your hometown: Travels in Japanese underground music. SPLASH! https://burnyourhometown.wordpress.com/2016/03/14/splash. Accessed 21 May 2021. ———. 2016b. Burn your hometown: Travels in Japanese underground music. The habitual voyeur. https://burnyourhometown.wordpress. com/2016/03/29/the-­habitual-­voyeur. Accessed 21 May 2021. ———. 2016c. Quit your band! Musical notes from the Japanese underground. New York: Awai Books. ———. 2018. Burn your hometown: Travels in Japanese underground music. Destruction, re-creation, process. https://burnyourhometown.wordpress. com/2018/05/14/destruction-­re-­creation-­process. Accessed 21 May 2021. Matsue, J.M. 2009. Making music in Japan’s underground: The Tokyo hardcore scene. New York: Routledge. Novak, D. 2013. Japanoise: Music at the edge of circulation. Durham: Duke University Press. Overell, R. 2014a. Affective intensities in extreme music scenes: Cases from Australia and Japan. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014b. Brutal belonging in other spaces: Grindcore touring in Melbourne and Osaka. In Youth cultures and subcultures: Australian perspectives, ed. S. Baker, B. Robards, and B. Buttigieg, 89–101. Burlington: Ashgate.

CHAPTER 14

Yogyakarta’s Jazz Activists: From Regional Scene to Local Stages Otto Stuparitz

This chapter is based on ethnographic and archival research of Indonesia’s interlocking jazz scenes and argues that Yogyakarta’s jazz community should be considered a ‘regional scene’. Conceiving of Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a regional scene illuminates the community’s coexisting translocal physical and virtual connections while maintaining its inward focus as a rooted ‘local scene’. Due to the presence of many colleges in Yogyakarta, the circulation of students participating in its jazz community has fostered a durable geographical and virtual network throughout Central Java that extends into many other urban and rural areas throughout Indonesia. In this chapter, ‘Yogyakarta’ is understood as  a city in Central Java, an autonomous political region (Daerah Istimewa), a province, and an extended network that has cultivated a distinctive regional jazz scene. Yogyakarta’s jazz community maintains a stylistically and O. Stuparitz (*) Department of Ethnomusicology, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, Los Angeles, CA, USA University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_14

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socially inclusive concept of jazz that attracts new urban and rural audiences. They consider jazz to be a part of Indonesian culture, a tolerant understanding that differs significantly from other enduring characterizations of jazz as an exclusive practice (common in Jakarta and other major Indonesian cities.) The dominant elite characterization of jazz in Indonesia draws upon its early association with high-profile colonial events and expensive imported technologies such as the phonograph. The elitist characterization of jazz continues today through the uneven accessibility to new technologies, the ability to travel and study abroad, and the expense of imported name-brand instruments. Yogyakarta’s regional jazz scene also involves non-musicians, including music professionals, fans, and producers of related arts such as photography, painting, and dance. Members of Yogyakarta’s regional jazz scene, in particular the journalists and event organizers from the Ngayogjazz community and the Warta Jazz (Jazz News) media network, represent themselves as ‘jazz activists’ (pegiat jazz, less commonly aktivis jazz) (e.g. Basuni 2005; Sawega 2009). These jazz activists promote jazz in Indonesia as a successfully acculturated part of Indonesian society for all Indonesians, which can then be utilized towards specific political, economic, and cultural concerns, including tourism and development projects. Since 2009, Yogyakarta’s jazz activists have generated a number of small and medium-sized jazz festivals outside of Central Java, linking interests in jazz and tourism development with political and economic initiatives in more remote locations. Examples include Maratua Jazz & Dive Fiesta, in Berau, East Kalimantan; Mahakam Jazz Fiesta in Samarinda, East Kalimantan; and Maumere Jazz Fiesta in Maumere, Flores. These new festivals supply high-quality temporary stages for local and prominent jazz artists. They create infrastructural opportunities to support larger crowds, such as expanded electrical grids and new roads to less developed areas; this follows a widespread trend of using festivals as an economically attractive way to package cultural performances and generate tourism (Picard and Robinson 2006). In this chapter, I trace the establishment of Yogyakarta’s jazz community and  some of the jazz activists who have spread the style beyond the city of Yogyakarta. I  focus on the 2018 Maumere Jazz Fiesta to explore how renderings of jazz from Yogyakarta have been adopted by communities at festivals outside of Central Java. Conceiving of Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a regional scene better articulates its translocal focus on the circulation of ideas, people, and music on more than one scale, as well as its ability to influence and serve as a guidepost for smaller and less well-­known communities.

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Establishing a Regional Scene Jazz in Indonesia first propagated in urban colonial settings among the elite. Through recordings, cruise ships, touring ensembles, dance halls, hotels, swimming pools, films, and print media, jazz circulated during the 1920s and 1930s in cosmopolitan port cities, such as Surabaya, Jakarta, Semarang, and Medan, and  in proximate colonial settlements, such as Buitenzorg (Bogor), Bandung, and Malang. Since Indonesia gained independence in 1945, jazz musicians and recording companies have remained concentrated in large cities, particularly on the northern side of Java. During the late 1970s, Indonesian musicians and industry leader began to expand jazz into university settings, national television broadcasts, and annual jazz festivals, which attracted a new audience from the emerging Indonesian middle class as well as from other parts of Indonesia such as Yogyakarta (Heryanto 1999; Mulyadi 1999; Nugroho 2003). Many of the groups in this period encouraged the performance of American ‘standards’ or standard jazz, meaning a style of jazz informed by the globally circulating traditions of American and academic practices, such as the Yogyakarta-based D’mood band. Some groups, such as Bhaskara and Krakatau, emerged in Jakarta and Bandung playing jazz fusion that bridged forms of jazz with rock, pop, and occasionally regional traditional musics. These groups inspired new Yogyakarta groups such as the Sweeteners. Indonesian jazz fusion groups began playing international  events like the North Sea Jazz Festival and touring Europe, East Asia, Australia, and the United States. International musicians and audiences celebrated the combinations of jazz with traditional musics, contrary to the tastes of urban audiences on Java, who were more interested in fusion combinations with pop and rock. The global ‘world music’ phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, through which major music industry companies marketed groups they considered ‘exotic’ (Taylor 1997), shaped how the Indonesian groups in this era matured. The Indonesian and Australian sociologists Oki Rahadianto Sutopo and Pam Nilan have analyzed Yoygakarta’s jazz community since the 1980s using Bourdieu’s theories of practice and fields of cultural production (2018). They focus on polarized notions of commercialization versus art, but remain ambiguous about how various practices considered artistic have continually blended with and supported commercial practices. They interpret the changes away from standar jazz in Yogyakarta as resulting from the influence of elder world music and fusion musicians ‘battl[ing]

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for influence over the younger generation’ (43) with a  more inclusive understanding of jazz. Sutopo and Nilan ignore the community benefits that derive from the successes of artistic and commercial jazz musicians. In practice, Yogyakarta’s artistic performers also participate in ongoing standar jazz performance opportunities at restaurants and hotels and within the increasingly lavish wedding industry. Sutopo and Nilan (2018) portray Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a ‘local scene’, using Bennett and Peterson’s (2004: 8) definition of a local scene as ‘a focused social activity that takes place in a delimited space and over a specific span of time in which clusters of producers, musicians, and fans realize their common musical taste’. But conceiving of the community as a regional scene better describes its ascendent translocal position, with an improved geographical and temporal focus on the circulation of ideas, people, and music affecting practices on multiple scales. Yogyakarta’s community continues to extend as a durable and influential network relative to other regions and cities. Yogyakarta’s understanding of jazz  – inflected with easy listening and pop, American jazz standards, and experiments with fusion combinations that include Indonesian traditional musics – has become one of the prevailing forms of jazz in Indonesia that circulates among the many visitors to this kota pelajar (student city). Thinking of Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a less combative scene foregrounds the benefits of collectivity, shared knowledge, and mutual organization of history and geography. In comparing Bourdieu’s fields with scenes, I follow anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner’s (2013: 91) assessment of scenes as ‘more spaces of collectiveness, of mutual pleasure and mutual recognition’. Scenes also participate in fields, and any scene could also be interpreted in the field of cultural production, ‘but the idea of a scene is the idea of a positively shared social and cultural world’ (2013: 92). Conceiving of Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a regional scene connotes the mutual community benefits from its distinctive interactions of artistic and commercial jazz musicians on multiple geographical and temporal scales. I encountered Djaduk Ferianto (1964–2019),  one of Yogyakarta’s elder musicians, in 2017 at the Indonesian Jazz Forum in Yogyakarta. At the time, the Indonesian Jazz Forum was a new conference of Indonesian jazz festival organizers, promoters, archivists, and musicians with representatives from major Indonesian festivals, such as the Jakarta-based Java Jazz, Surabaya-based Jazz Traffic, and Bali-based Ubud Village Jazz. Djaduk was already  well known for his bridging of Central Javanese

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theatre, dance, and music traditions with contemporary styles and has often advocated for interactions between the commercial and cultural industries (Miller 2014: 461). Djaduk’s musical mixtures follow observations by ethnomusicologist René Lysloff (2016: 491) who describes the interpretation of ‘world music’ by Yogyakarta’s musicians as ‘all music is world music’. At the forum, Djaduk presented himself as a jazz musician with traditional roots and discussed how he has fostered new stages for jazz styles without supportive venues in Indonesia. He talked about cultivating more industry interactions with new jazz projects based upon Yogyakarta’s more stylistically and socially inclusive understanding, such as the annual Ngayogjazz festival in Yogyakarta. Ngayogjazz has a new theme each year, which connects jazz to other parts of Indonesian society, often framing jazz as a way of life for Indonesians. The 2018 theme adopted the Javanese proverb ‘Desa Mawa Cara, Negara Mawa Tata’ (roughly ‘village practices, state structures’), which embraces the plurality of local rules, customs, and cultures within an area. The festival theme of ‘Negara Mawa Tata, Jazz Mawa Cara’ includes jazz as another of these practices. Jazz communities throughout Indonesia sometimes promote jazz as a way of life, but more often as part of a universalizing world-view. For example, universalizing ideologies such as democracy, individual expression, and freedom pervade Indonesia’s jazz communities. These ideologies are often applied asymmetrically, as Andy McGraw (2012) demonstrates in his analysis of freedom in Indonesia jazz communities. Ngayogjazz’s theme posits jazz as a way of life that all Indonesians can reinforce, reproduce, and reinterpret within existing political, economic, and cultural concerns.

Circulations in a Student City Students from around the archipelago circulate through Yogyakarta and take lessons back with them to rural communities and urban metropolises. They can participate in jazz jam sessions in Yogyakarta led by members of the world music and fusion community, as well as complementing events led by musicians connected with formal institutions, often more interested in the standar jazz tradition. In 2008, the Indonesian Arts Institute, Yogyakarta (Institut Seni Indonesia Yogyakarta) created a new field of study called pop-jazz. This programme, developed from its Technology of Music degree, focuses on the presentational and commercial aspects of

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music performance. The pop-jazz programme is one of the few college-­ level jazz programmes offered in Indonesia and, more importantly, one of the only  college-level  programmes outside the Jakarta area. Students learning jazz in this program follow a stricter standar jazz curriculum, but these students also participate in performance opportunities alongside the world music and fusion community. The circulation of students bolsters the relationships of Yogyakarta’s jazz community with jazz communities in larger urban areas, such as Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya; communities founded (often by programme graduates) in smaller cities, such as those in Central Java and East Java, including Surakarta, Madiun, Kediri, Ponogoro, Malang, Jombang, and Blitar; and communities  outside of Java, including Lampung (Sumatra), Samarinda (Kalimantan), Pontianak (Kalimantan), Mataram (Lombok), and Makasar (Sulawesi). During my fieldwork from 2016 to 2019, Agung Prasetyo and the group Jazz Etawa led Wednesday night jam sessions at Pyramid Restaurant near ISI Yogyakarta, which were attended mainly by affiliates of the pop-­ jazz programme. The more stylistically open jam session, Jazz Mben Senen, occurred on Monday nights in the parking lot of the Bentara Budaya Yogyakarta, closer to Gadjah Mada University, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, and Sanata Dharma University. While each jam sessions could be analysed as combative and characteristically local, they maintained overlapping musicians and the communities came together inside of and beyond Yogyakarta’s geography for large events, annual festivals, and workshops with visiting musicians. Once students left Yogyakarta, they remained connected through virtual domains, most prominently WhatsApp and Instagram, and less often Facebook and email. Internet usage among Indonesian college students was nearly universal, predominantly via internet-enabled cellphones that could serviceably operate in cities and into remote areas. This allowed for sustained virtual connections among Yogyakarta jazz scene members, as musicians began new jam sessions in their home towns or new cities of employment. These new jam sessions followed a similar organizational and stylistic format to the jam sessions the regional scene members first experienced during their time studying in Yogyakarta. Through online forums like WhatsApp groups and Instagram image stories, scene members still living in Yogyakarta would comment online in real time on the jazz-related activities of those living outside the city and vice versa. The online activities of these relationships, more of an extension of social

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connections made through face-to-face interactions, are one of the many jazz-related activities of Yogyakarta’s regional scene. The social formation of these digital relationships can become, as time goes on with fewer in-person interactions, what Andy Bennett and Ian Rogers (2016) call an ‘affective scene’, which acknowledges how individuals may associate with scenes even if they rarely, if ever, engage physically with such scenes. But this was not always the case for Yogyakarta’s regional scene, as members from smaller communities often returned to Yogyakarta for major events and performance opportunities. Due to the regional nature of this scene, with geography as a limiting but not unsurmountable factor for face-to-face interaction, scene members could reasonably expect to physically meet at least a few times a year. For example, members from various communities of the regional scene returned to Yogyakarta the night before the one-day Ngayogjazz festival to participate in a secluded jam session and discussion called the Indonesian Jazz Communities (Komunitas Jazz Indonesia) (Fig. 14.1). These physical gatherings of the various connected communities are infrequent in practice, but achievable and serve as an expression of the regional scene (Fig. 14.2).

Jazz Professionals to Jazz Activists A central contribution from Yogyakarta’s regional jazz scene has been its jazz professionals: writers, photographers, and event organizers. One of the most prominent projects, Warta Jazz, started as a news bulletin for Yogyakarta’s jazz community in 1996 by Ajie Wartono and Ceto Mundiarso. Today, Warta Jazz maintains a nationally and internationally recognized media network of websites, printed publications, festivals, and events management. It also manages a booking agency, recording compilations, merchandise, archives, and travel tours. The initial monthly publication sought to advance discussion among members of the short-lived Yogyakarta Jazz Society. The writers discussed American jazz musicians, such as Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington, and musicians associated with jazz fusion, such as Casiopea, Chick Corea, and Jaco Pastorius. The  writers drew inspiration from Indonesian lifestyle, entertainment, and art magazines, including Hai and NewsMusik, and  international jazz magazine DownBeat (Wartono interview, 21 November 2018). Through the Yogyakarta Jazz Society, Wartono, and Mundiarso met Agus Setiawan Basuni, who soon joined Warta Jazz. Basuni, studying computer programming in Yogyakarta, aimed to create

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Fig. 14.1  Komunitas Jazz Indonesia jam session with saxophonist Samuel Robert Samual and pianist Nadine Adrianna at Omah Potorono in Bantul, 17 November 2018

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Fig. 14.2  Komunitas Jazz Indonesia, 17 November 2018. (Photo by Rachmad Utojo Salim)

an online edition of Warta Jazz despite the internet’s general inaccessibility to the majority of Indonesians at the time. While the internet remained cost prohibitive for home use for most middle-class Indonesians, the members of Warta Jazz could access it via Yogyakarta’s comparatively plentiful internet cafes (warnet), university libraries, and professional offices. Warta Jazz members started to participate in a new Yahoo! group, an online discussion board focused on jazz in Indonesia. The discussions, primarily in the Indonesian language, debated various opinions of jazz, provided information about different eras and styles, discussed the history of jazz in Indonesia, and deliberated what might constitute Indonesian jazz. This virtual space allowed for interactions with other Indonesians in the country and abroad, concerning jazz on international, national, regional, and local scales. Influenced by these online discussions, members of Warta Jazz planned to build a website to honour the multiple histories and traditions that contribute to jazz in Indonesia. WartaJazz.com began in earnest in 2000 after Setiawan returned from a short-term information technology position in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States. While still a fledgling blog, their status as a serious

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jazz resource solidified through the reception of over 150 CDs for review from international jazz labels (see Patterson 2010 for a detailed account). After these reviews went online, Warta Jazz began receiving a steady stream of the latest international recordings for review, complementing the members’ personal collections of international and Indonesian recordings. The Warta Jazz collection grew to over 15,000 jazz recordings and remains one of the largest libraries of jazz recordings in Indonesia (Kushindarto, interview, 7 August 2019). This realization of Warta Jazz’s international connections also represents an extremely expensive cache of physical materials, unavailable to most members of Indonesia’s jazz community. These connections for media review allowed members of Warta Jazz to remain knowledgeable about the international cutting edge of jazz and drove them to develop their expertise on various jazz performance styles throughout Indonesia. Even though Warta Jazz members contribute as some of the best-­ informed Indonesian jazz commentators, they advance a broad, rather than dogmatic and patronizing, definition of jazz when introducing it to the wider Indonesian community. Basuni relates that when organizing Warta Jazz events, ‘We don’t try to divide the local, regional, national, and international artists, as long as they’re playing jazz, or anything connected to jazz’ (interview, 23 August 2017). Shifting from working solely as jazz professionals into jazz activists, Warta Jazz presents jazz as a successfully acculturated cultural form, something that Indonesians do and have been doing. They promote the logic of fusion as a legitimate part of Indonesia’s jazz community. This stance, also a Bourdieusian position,  follows the localization discourse of many other Indonesian popular music founding tales, such as kroncong, bangsawan, dangdut, campursari, and komdie stamboel (Keppy 2019: 4–17; Sumarsam 2014), whereby a foreign tradition blends with an older and more durable local culture. This understanding of jazz differs from the framing of jazz in Jakarta’s jazz community as an elite and universalizing artform, akin to Western art music, which lies beyond, outside or on top of Indonesian society—what ethnomusicologist Jeremy Wallach (2002) describes as the top of the ‘xenocentric hierarchy’  from his research in Jakarta’s record stores. Instead, Warta Jazz understands jazz as an increasingly accessible and localizable form. Basuni, born in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, matured as a student in Yogyakarta and went on to establish a new Warta Jazz office in the southern Jakarta suburb of Depok, while Wartono and Mundiarso remained in Yogyakarta. Warta Jazz grew as members joined both offices, such as the

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photographer/videographer Kushindarto in Jakarta. Djaduk Ferianto and the Ngayogjazz community became close collaborators with the Yogyakarta office. Kushindarto notes that, ‘We got together because we liked the same music’ (interview, 7 August 2019). The ‘same music’ of this community of taste did not match other jazz professionals in Jakarta, who were far more enveloped in Indonesia’s major label commercial industry. Warta Jazz continued to spread its understanding of jazz through a printed bulletin and an online media ecosystem with reviews of international, national, and local jazz recordings as well as through producing new festivals throughout Indonesia. Plenty of Indonesian jazz musicians remain unconvinced of this regional jazz variation, particularly those more disposed to standar jazz. But many urban and rural musicians, along with their audiences, have steadily come to accept the many styles that Basuni describes as falling ‘under the banner of jazz’ (fieldnotes, 28 October 2018). Basuni recounted a story about how to socialize jazz for Indonesian audiences: They can begin to like jazz even if they don’t know what it is. And when asked what people liked in jazz, they respond with something like ‘I don’t know but if it’s jazz, I like it.’ They can say, ‘Oh, what is this? Is this sate ayam (chicken sate)? If it’s sate ayam, I like it.’ However jazz is prepared, it will get chewed up.

With this understanding, the stylistic boundaries of jazz matter less than how jazz is used. While social class remains important, instead of keeping jazz an exclusive form, this flexible framing of jazz can be used to advance existing political, economic, and cultural concerns. Basuni often describes the ways in which Warta Jazz events can teach ‘people in the area to learn to have coffee in the mountain’, connoting a process Basuni utilizes to sell local products by conceiving of attractive business narratives to expand economic opportunities. Warta Jazz members produce jazz events that teach not only how to connect jazz festivals with political and economic initiatives, but also how Indonesians in various locations can relate and connect as a mutually beneficial community through the regional scene’s understanding of jazz.

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Extending the Regional Scene to the Maumere Jazz Fiesta Warta Jazz is involved with over 25 annual jazz festivals throughout Indonesia. It has become the sole organizer of more than ten festivals and seems to increase that number every year. In each festival, Warta Jazz connects politicians and business leaders with younger social media influencers and local community leaders to put together a jazz event featuring local and prominent jazz artists. Warta Jazz often coordinates communal meals (called slametan in Java) to establish accessible and public relationships among the various parties involved. These meals embrace the elders and village heads (kepala desa), who provide access to their land for specific festival sites and the central regents (bupati) and mayors (wali kota), who provide economic and political support. While cultural, political, and economic values of the Yogyakarta regional jazz scene dominate organizational practices, local concerns also shape event production. For example, the 2018 Maumere Jazz Fiesta required small ceremonial offerings of pigs and chickens as a peacemaking mechanism for the spirits of the land in accordance with older belief systems held by the area’s syncretic Christians. The third annual Maumere Jazz Fiesta occurred in 2018 and drew about 10,000 people to this free, one-day event. The festival was located at the Grass Track Wairita, Kecamatan Waigete, outside the city of Maumere (population around 80,000) on the island of Flores in Eastern Indonesia. Three parties collaborated to found the festival two years earlier: Melchias Mekeng (a high-profile local businessman and elected representative), Yayasan Baba Bangsa (a Maumere Christian foundation that promotes religious and social values through health, education, and artistic initiatives), and Warta Jazz (in charge of the logistics, musical lineup, and promotion). The majority of the 2018 funding came from corporate sponsorships: the adventure motorbike company Suryanation, national banks, the state-owned electric company Perusahaan Listrik Negara, and the state-owned oil and mining company Pertamina. In previous iterations, Warta Jazz programmed musicians living in Javanese urban centers to play this rural event, such as Djaduk Ferianto, Barry Likumahuwa, and members of Krakatau. These nationally recognized musicians were programmed alongside musicians from the area, such as Tawa Tana and Ivan Nestorman. After a tsunami devastated the area in 1992, Maumere’s tourism industry has struggled to reinvigorate and rebrand itself. The festival’s connection to economic development and tourism advertising campaigns

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reinforces the elite status of jazz, but contrary to these strategies meant to attract international and national tourists and new business to Maumere, the bulk of the 2018 audience came from nearby towns on Flores. There are no permanent popular music venues in Maumere. The hard infrastructure of lights, sound systems, and utilities needed for a full-time venue do not converge in one location, but rather remain scattered throughout many spaces or do not exist at all. Hotels and resorts maintain the most consistent performances stages, primarily for weddings or business meetings. In preparation for the anticipated crowds, the Warta Jazz organizers shipped in a large sound system and a quality drum set. They also confirmed repairs for Maumere’s main road, had the electrical grid and telephone service extended to reach the festival grounds, and built a short road to a new parking lot for festival attendees. The 2018 lineup featured a number of nationally recognized headliners, such as Andien Hariadi, and Reza Artamevia. A number of performers  hailed  from Eastern Indonesia, all of whom now live in Jakarta  and some are nationally known, including the Papua Original Band (Papua), Glenn Fredly (Ambon), and Ivan Nestorman (Flores). Maumere-based groups  also performed, including  the emerging local pop star Dian Sorowea and groups from the Sanggar Bentara Zaman (Benza), a local traditional arts association. Some of these groups played pre-festival media events, such as the musik kampoeng group Wangak, which warmed up the audience for the headliners, and other local groups collaborated with headliners at the festival itself (Fig. 14.3). The Maumere musik kampoeng performance  style  features lead and harmonized group vocals, the teren bass (a type of contrabass usually with one string, played on its back, and struck with a wooden stick), juk (a fretless four-stringed ukulele, similar to the chak and chuk of kroncong), banjol (a four-stringed fretless instrument), and may include violin, various small hand percussion, and a djembe. Ivan Nestorman was the most prominent local musician billed to perform. From Ruteng, another city on Flores, Nestorman incorporates jazz solos and improvisation in his guitar-driven reggae, ska, and rocksteady forms. At the 2018 Fiesta, he played with the Komodo Project, featuring well-known national  jazz fusion musicians: drummer Gilang Rahamdan (Krakatau), keyboardist Krisna Prameswara (Discus), and bassist Adi Darmawan (Ligro). Nestorman, who is also a rising local politician, sang in Indonesian, English, and various local languages from Flores, most commonly from his hometown Tombo Manggarai (bahasa Manggarai).

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Fig. 14.3  Orkes Kampoeng Wangak playing the Meet and Greet event, 27 October 2018

His performance incorporated traditional styles and dances from around Flores, including a medley of rhythms from the hegong dance with a local gong waning Maumere children’s group from the Sanggar Benza. For the Warta Jazz festival organizers, the Komodo Project was the most important band of the night, which warranted placing their performance at the expected time of maximum audience attendance. Basuni described the Komodo Project’s placement in the lineup as being carefully selected so ‘people wouldn’t fill up on other things’. In contrast, Glenn Fredly was the ‘dessert’, but the Komodo Project ‘the main course for people to eat and savor’. At first glance, the musicians came from throughout Indonesia, but they shared an understanding of the ‘same music’ from Yogyakarta’s regional jazz scene. For example, Ivan Nestorman has collaborated with Warta Jazz for major events in Yogyakarta and Jakarta. The members of Wangak study in Yogyakarta and describe themselves as ‘Orkes Kampoeng, Maumere di Jogja’ (Maumere Music Kampoeng Orchestra in Yogyakarta). Musicians from Jakarta, such as Andien, performed their sets with added

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Fig. 14.4  New powerlines being installed near the festival stage

traditional instruments and a more ‘world music’ influence than their typical arrangements.  Yogyakarta’s regional jazz scene members continued to appear as the production heads, administrative liaisons, and sound engineers, with Ajie Wartono, the head of the Warta Jazz Yogyakarta office, as overseer. Scene members from Yogyakarta took administrative command of the festival by managing the hiring of local drivers, construction workers, and security guards to help, among many tasks, transport people to the festival, build the stage, extend the electrical grid, and provide protection (Fig. 14.4). Local food venders applied to sell their meals at the festival through online advertisements mediated by the Yogyakarta organizers. In other booths, local environmental groups focused on plastic recycling and mangrove restoration. The organization followed the cultural logics of Yogyakarta’s community, such as the idea of Negara Mawa Tata, Jazz Mawa Cara. What the Maumere musicians were doing – from pop to jazz fusion and traditional musics – could be understood as falling ‘under the banner of jazz’. Jazz as part of the rules, customs, and cultures of the area could be used to foster existing political, economic, and cultural concerns.

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Conclusion More than other regions and dominant urban locales, Yogyakarta’s jazz community continues to underpin a durable and influential extended network. Conceiving of Yogyakarta’s jazz community as a regional scene better articulates its translocal focus on the circulation of ideas, people, and music on more than one scale and its ability to influence and offer a model for other  communities. While remote and emerging jazz communities could adopt other renderings of jazz, Yogyakarta’s framing of jazz is uniquely inclusive of different musical  styles and social demographics, which is why it continues to attract audiences beyond Yogyakarta city and outside of Central Java. Yogyakarta’s jazz activists spread their interpretation of jazz throughout Indonesia at gatherings on a national scale, such as the Indonesian Jazz Forum, as well as on local stages, such as the Maumere Jazz Fiesta. This regional understanding does not replace other styles of Indonesian jazz, but rather legitimizes itself through a particular history that this essay has helped to document, a history sustained by Yogyakarta’s enduring network in local, translocal, and virtual realms.

References Basuni, A.S. 2005. Pertunjukan musik ‘Jendela Jazz’ digelar dikota Kembang. Warta Jazz. https://wartajazz.com/news/2005/09/20/pertunjukan-­musik-­ jendela-­jazz-­digelar-­dikota-­kembang. Accessed 6 Dec 2020. Bennett, A., and R.A.  Peterson, eds. 2004. Music scenes: Local, translocal, and virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bennett, A., and I.  Rogers. 2016. Popular music scenes and cultural memory. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Heryanto, A. 1999. Kelas menengah yang majemuk. In Kelas menengah bukan ratu adil, ed. Hadijaya, 3–16. Yogyakarta: Pt. Tiara Wacana Yogya. Keppy, P. 2019. Tales of Southeast Asia’s Jazz Age: Filipinos, Indonesian and popular culture, 1920–1936. Singapore: NUS Press. Lysloff, R.T.A. 2016. Worlding music in Jogjakarta: Tales of the global postmodern. Ethnomusicology 60 (3): 484–507. McGraw, A.C. 2012. The ambivalent freedoms of Indonesian jazz. Jazz Perspectives 6 (3): 273–310. Miller, C.J. 2014. Cosmopolitan, nativist, eclectic: Cultural dynamics in Indonesian musik kontemporer. PhD dissertation, Wesleyan University. Mulyadi, R.M. 1999. Industri musik nasional (Pop, rock dan jazz). MA thesis, Universitas Indonesia.

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Nugroho, H. 2003. Menumbuhkan ide-ide kritis. Yogyakarta: Pustaka Pelajar. Ortner, S.B. 2013. Not Hollywood: Independent film at the twilight of the American dream. Durham: Duke University Press. Patterson, I. 2010. WartaJazz.com: An Indonesian jazz mission. All About Jazz. https://www.allaboutjazz.com/wartajazzcom-­an-­indonesian-­jazz-­mission-­ by-­ian-­patterson.php. Accessed 4 Sept 2020. Picard, D., and M.  Robinson, eds. 2006. Festivals, tourism and social change: Remaking worlds. Bristol: Channel View. Sawega, A. 2009. Virus Jazz di mana-mana. Kompas. https://biz.kompas.com/ read/2009/12/06/06505041/virus.jazz.di.mana-­mana. Accessed 17 Sept 2020. Sumarsam. 2014. Past and present issues of Javanese-European musical hybridity: Gendhing mares and other hybrid genres. In Recollecting resonances: Indonesian–Dutch musical encounters, ed. B.  Barendregt and E.  Bogaerts, 87–108. Leiden: Brill. Sutopo, O.R., and P. Nilan. 2018. The constrained position of young musicians in the Yogyakarta jazz community. Asian Music 49 (1): 34–57. Taylor, T. 1997. Global pop: World music, world markets. London: Routledge. Wallach, J. 2002. Exploring class, nation and xenocentrism in Indonesian cassette outlets. Indonesia 74: 79–102.

CHAPTER 15

Fragmented, Positive and Negative: Live Music Venues in Regional Queensland Andy Bennett, David Cashman, Ben Green, and Natalie Lewandowski

In late 2015, co-author David Cashman was relaxing in a pub with the surprising name of the Bird Cage Hotel in Longreach. Longreach, for reference, is 700 kilometres due west of Rockhampton (population 76,985) and 400 kilometres west of the nearest large town of Emerald (population 13,500). As with a lot of conversations on this research trip, the topic turned to music. He loved live music, the owner said. He’d have it four nights a week if he could – it increased the bar takings that much. But, as much as it may shock the urban live music industry, he simply couldn’t find the musicians. It cost massive amounts to bring in musicians from Emerald or Rockhampton as he had to pay for travel and

A. Bennett (*) School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science, Griffith University, Southport, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] D. Cashman School of Arts and Social Sciences, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_15

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accommodation. They’d had a guitarist who was their local paramedic, but when the government relocated him to Townsville, they had had no one regular. In opposition to urban areas, there were too many gigs and not enough musicians in this small Western Queensland town. Music scenes exist wherever there are people who generate and consume music. Different difficulties exist, however, in regional music scenes versus urban ones. In regional areas, fewer venues mean it is harder to earn a living as a musician. Educational opportunities and industry infrastructure are scarcer. Large geographical distances between major towns in regional areas can be an inherent handicap to a thriving regional music scene. The cost of fuel, wear and tear on vehicles or additional travel costs drive down profit margins for musicians operating in these areas. Extended journeys from coastal to inland regions result in further economic factors such as accommodation and equipment transport costs, not to mention the possibility of your gear not arriving in time for your gig if you were to fly. In regional towns where the population is numbered in the thousands, venues are small and, with all the will in the world, venue owners still may not be able to hire musicians. As well as reducing profit margins, the small populations of regional areas also mean that competition between venues can be fierce. Despite this volatility and the issues facing regional scenes, support for live music in regional areas is reasonably high – with live music regarded as a popular entertainment option for a broad population group. A healthy live music scene is regarded as a positive part of community engagement. Local governments consider live music as a way of creating ‘buzz’ and bringing in tourists. Venues utilize live music to attract clients and add entertainment options beyond gambling and drinking to their venue, and to broaden their client base. For musicians, it is their livelihood. This chapter focuses on how these constraints are experienced and negotiated in a specific regional location in Australia.

B. Green Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia N. Lewandowski Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University, South Brisbane, QLD, Australia

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Regional Music Activity in Queensland Place plays a considerable part in the creation of popular music. Even with the rise of supposedly ‘global’ digital music platforms, the commercial market for popular music is still inherently shaped by musical and personal networks and geographical proximity (Watson 2008). People write songs about regions and countries and mostly play them to local audiences, as performing for other audiences involves the inconvenience of touring and travel. With the rise in the economic significance of live music instead of recorded music, place has become increasingly important. This has profound implications for rural musicians. Queensland is huge, and consequently many parts of it are very remote. It is Australia’s second-largest state, extending from the coast to the Northern Territory border and from the Gold Coast to Cape York. Most of its population, however, is concentrated in the south-east corner. West of Emerald, the populations of towns are counted in the hundreds rather than the thousands. The largest town in this area is Mackay, with a population of 125,000. Other larger towns include Gladstone (33,418), Rockhampton (80,665), Mackay (125,000), Emerald (14,356), Airlie Beach (1208), Longreach (3137) and Winton (875). On the coast, it is a region of industry, coal mining and canefields. The cane and coal disappear as one travels inland, replaced by huge and dusty cattle stations in places like Longreach and Winton and Barcaldine. Compared with music scenes in urban areas, few studies deal with regional music scenes. Dubinsky and Garrett-Petts (2002: 332) argue that this lack of attention is partly due to the perception that ‘big cities are equated commonly with “big culture”; small cities with something less’. Bell and Jayne (2010) highlight the neglect of rural areas in the United Kingdom regarding cultural or creative industries policy, emphasizing the particular characteristics, challenges and opportunities associated with rural creative economies. Wittel (2001) talks of how ‘network sociality’ is an integral part of creating opportunities in music scenes to progress and secure musical work (Brennan-Horley 2007). Because these networks are smaller and spread across greater distances in regional areas, the acquisition of work is undertaken differently. Existing studies of music scenes have tended to concentrate on cities of over 100,000 people or, more commonly, Western cities of over a million people. Because of higher populations enclosed within a smaller geographical size, urban areas have more vibrant music scenes. By contrast, the lower populations and larger

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geographical size of regional areas result in a lack of working musicians and consumers of musical products. Bands often struggle to replace a band member who may have left. Urban scenes have industry infrastructure, education, venues, agents, recording studios and the like; regional scenes suffer from a lack of these things. This does not mean regional scenes are stagnant or unworthy of research, merely that they are more challenging to study due to their geographical remoteness. Musicians in regional areas share a few characteristics. They tend to work as solo artists or small bands, though this is perhaps paralleled in the urban industry. Lower performance fees mean a lower cut of the profits in a large band. Regional musicians acknowledge that they do not understand the industry due to a perceived lack of education and training opportunities in regional areas. It is more common to work as a covers band rather than as an originals band to earn a living. Venues simply perceive covers bands as more commercially sustainable because audiences know what they’re getting. Genres tend to be less niche. To make a living, bands have to travel greater distances. Audiences are smaller. While they do record, they are less likely to record in a recording studio. However, they share characteristics with their urban counterparts, too. Their gear is of equal quality. They are as committed to earning a living in the industry. They are committed to songwriting and try to include their songs in their gigs. Despite their size, audiences are equally, if not more, committed as those in urban areas.

Live Music Venue Sustainability The sustainability of live music venues is considered primarily in the framework of contested and regulated urban space. In metropolitan settings, inner-city gentrification has increased competition and rent for suitable buildings (Gibson and Homan 2004), while also bringing live music into conflict with encroaching residential interests by virtue of the noise it generates (in Australia, see Burke and Schmidt 2013; Homan 2011). Metropolitan venues are typically associated with nightlife economies and dedicated precincts, which can become victims of their own success as high levels of patronage and consumption attract onerous regulation directed at public order and safety (Homan 2011, 2019), while their hyper-commercialized, competitive dynamics force out some types of live music and scene activity (Carah et al. 2021). These problems of over-­density are the opposite of the challenges faced by regional live music venues.

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Research on regional live music venues in Australia has found significant non-regulatory challenges associated with geographical distance and low populations (Bennett et  al. 2019; Bennett 2010, 2020). The two most distinct difficulties are organizing performers and attracting audiences, with regional live music facing problems of supply and demand. These intersect with more complex and localized issues such as seasonal and boom-and-bust industries, and trends of youth outmigration and ageing populations. In navigating these factors, venues are highly dependent on the knowledge and networks of key personnel. In regional Queensland, the local demand for live music is related to flows of people. In tourist destinations, these flows are seasonal, as a pub manager in Winton in Central-West Queensland described: Just basically April to October, that’s the tourist season out here. And literally, it seems that Easter [is] when the traffic starts to flow and the weather cools down enough for visitors to start their pilgrimage … Just down the road there’s two caravan parks that are fifty plus sites, so they don’t eat at the same venue every night. So you can get them here and you hold them here, it’s all about getting a few extra drinks out of them or a meal out of them.

In this context, live music is a strategy for attracting and retaining customers, with promotion targeted to tourist accommodation and information centres. The need to appeal to a broad audience, and typically an older audience in the case of caravan tourists, shapes the selection of music. A pub operator in Longreach, Central-West Queensland, explained: We play the old stuff. The young ones, I know they like their [youth radio station] Triple J and all that sort of stuff, but they relate to the older stuff as well … That’s what works. If you’re playing the heavy metal here, you have a group of people that leave, whereas if you’re playing something that everyone likes and can relate to, they all stay.

Outside of tourism, custom depends on longer-term trends in  local employment. In some locations, schools and hospitals are the major employers, attracting staff from elsewhere (often major cities), who are targeted by venue operators in the promotion of live music events through posters, hand-delivered flyers and even door-knocking, as well as through the deliberate regularity of events. A ‘mining boom’ of around a decade starting in the mid-2000s is widely remembered as a peak time for both direct and consequential employment in regional Queensland, affecting

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local hospitality and entertainment industries. However, the after-effects of the boom and decline are complex and localized, with one musician from Mackay on the Central-North Coast explaining that rent has become more affordable for artists, while competition between venues has increased the booking of live music. In regional and especially remote Queensland, securing musicians to perform is also a challenge. Small local talent pools necessitate careful planning, as a Gladstone venue operator said: I’ve got about a group of sort of six or seven different artists we use and we try and rotate them … If they’re only playing once a month, they’ll bring their friends, or people will come in. So we try and, yeah, we try and spread it around.

There is a tendency for touring musicians to overlook regional places, as noted by Rogers and Whiting (2020), due to prohibitive travel costs except where they are supported by specific government grants or booked for regional festivals. Regional venues respond by incorporating accommodation, meals and sometimes travel expenses into the remuneration for performers. This increases the risks of booking live music and often leads to performers’ expectation of longer and multiple ‘sets’. A Longreach venue manager explained: Usually, if I get someone from Rocky [Rockhampton] or Mount Isa, I try to get them to play Friday and Saturday … The performing side of it is sometimes not as, you know, it’s probably the … I wouldn’t say the cheap part of it, but the added costs is, you know, your accommodation, which as you know, you can be paying $110 to a hundred-and-bloody-forty-or-fifty dollars per night for them. So that’s onto the cost and the travel, their meals, their drinks. So there’s a lot of little added costs, there’s just not, you know, which puts another 500 on coming out here.

Musicians verified the importance of these aspects. A Mackay-based solo performer described his favourite venue in Airlie Beach as follows: They pay well, and they put you up in the penthouse and stuff like that, so yeah, you stay in beautiful Airlie Beach and yeah, you feel like a rock star pretty much. Can’t complain about that. It’s rock star treatment, that’s all I can say pretty much. And same as the Hamilton Island, I really love playing over there.

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These costs also shape the types of acts that are booked. Solo performers and smaller ensembles are consciously preferred by venue bookers, as they are cheaper to transport, feed and accommodate. Another practical consequence is that performers are booked well in advance. The various factors discussed here mean that venues depend significantly on the knowledge and networks of key personnel, often managers who handle live music bookings and promotion, among numerous other tasks. These individuals must be familiar with both long-term and shortterm demographic trends, annual and weekly rhythms, the tastes and habits of customers, targeted and often personalized promotion, the drawing capacity and entertainment value of performers, and industry rates and practices. This makes regional venues especially vulnerable to changes in personnel, as one Mackay musician described: Venues should [keep] their damned managers for more than three weeks because they just come and change the rosters … like you have to just always ring up and make sure [of a performance that was] booked four months in advance. But you don’t know how many times these managers change their undies and they finish and the next one, they’ve got another big plan, you know, new manager, big ideas … ‘No, I haven’t got it here. My name’s [so-­ and-­so], Jeremy, no, he left two months ago.’

Trickle-Down, Government Priorities, the Arts and the Regions In Queensland, policies and funding relating to live music and touring for the arts sit within the Arts portfolio. On 11 December 2020, the current government announced a new cabinet, led by the Premier of Queensland and Minister for Trade Annastacia Palaszczuk. The Arts portfolio was committed to the current Minister for the Arts, the Honourable Leanne Enoch. As part of this commitment, the Minister was allocated specific government election commitments, which form the basis for arts, and hence music, policy within Queensland. These election commitments form a trickle-down effect at a state government level in terms of influencing music policy and funding for programs across Queensland. Beginning with a whole-of-government priority to ‘growing our regions’ (Palaszczuk 2020), these commitments are structured to take this larger priority and break it down into specific areas of responsibility in relation to regional development through the establishment of operational projects. More

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specifically, concerning the arts, the delivery priority listed is focused on the development of a ten-year roadmap for the arts in Queensland, which is to emphasize the following goals: • Elevate First Nations arts. • Activate Queensland’s local places and global digital spaces. • Drive social change across the state. • Strengthen Queensland communities. • Share our stories and celebrate our storytellers. • Lead the development and management of Queensland’s major arts and cultural assets, including Brisbane’s Cultural Precinct, through the strategic planning, procurement and delivery of infrastructure projects, capital works programs and maintenance services. • Continue supporting arts and cultural activities that provide public value for Queensland communities, build local cultural capacity, cultural innovation and community pride in partnership with local councils and industry. • Assist the arts and cultural sector to recover from COVID-19 through investing in an Arts and Cultural Recovery Package providing new employment opportunities and support the return of major performing arts companies to Queensland. (Palaszczuk 2020) Released in 2020, the Creative Together roadmap is yet to be tested. However, a significant emphasis is placed on strengthening communities, recognizing how the arts have the ‘power to stimulate local economies and attract visitors’ (Queensland Government 2020). The key agency to deliver this ten-year roadmap is also the key administrative and funding agency for the state – Arts Queensland – in cooperation with the several arts statutory bodies and government-owned arts companies within the same portfolio.1 Each statutory body operates under its own legislation and associated policies, with an independent board and administrative funding from the Queensland Government. At present, all statutory bodies are based in Brisbane; however, their policies reflect funding to provide services statewide. While none of the statutory bodies is solely devoted to music – they each engage with the industry through their programming, as illustrated by the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art GOMA Up Late program, a live music and art initiative and contemporary and classical music programming at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) which is administered by the Queensland Performing

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Arts Trust. However, of more relevance to this chapter are the arts companies whose programs involve taking the arts across Queensland, including music programming. These include: • the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts Pty Ltd. • the Queensland Music Festival Pty Ltd. • Major Brisbane Festivals Pty Ltd. The Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts Pty Ltd. has a focus on education and training, while the Queensland Music Festival Pty Ltd. and Major Brisbane Festivals Pty Ltd. both focus on delivering live arts programming, including music. The key focus of Major Brisbane Festivals Pty Ltd., as indicated by the name, is the Brisbane Festival, while the Queensland Music Festival covers beyond just the South-East Corner of Queensland. The Queensland Music Festival Established in 1999, the Queensland Music Festival (QMF) is a biennial music festival programmed across 105 locations throughout Queensland (QMF 2021). Although the festival is held every two years, the QMF has ongoing engagement through music education, artist development and community programs. This includes its support of the Regional Arts Services Network (2021), which connects regional arts service providers through a central state office administered by the QMF. It is evident how the two form a symbiotic relationship with delivering arts programming across regional Queensland, a commitment of the biennial festival. Recognizing that regional touring brings not only arts events to broader communities but also economic benefits, the QMF-led ‘Queensland Music Trails’ initiative is being promoted as ‘the ultimate combo – music festival meets road trip’. Queensland Music Trails The Queensland Music Trails initiative encourages those seeking live music to travel beyond their local venue and other towns and regional centres. Covering 1376 kilometres (or a fifteen-hour drive from point to point) and including the five regional towns of Jimbour, Charleville, Quilpie, Windorah and Birdsville, the festival format is reimagined into

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multiple venues spanning the state. The inaugural music trail event, held from 26 June until 8 July 2021, sold out months before, with accommodation and transport options following. The sustainability and support services that live music events require are thrown into question with such an example, with many festival-goers needing to hire camper vans and arrange alternative accommodation as they are unable to stay where the events are being held. Both the Queensland Music Festival and the Queensland Music Trails demonstrate how festivals, and not necessarily venues themselves, attract funding for live music – especially in the way Queensland Music Trails uses unconventional venues for its live music experiences. This is illustrative of the manner in which whole-of-government priorities influence the success of live music in the regions, shaping a particular style of event and perhaps even favouring a non-conventional venue over your typical pub or club. It would be remiss not to consider the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on live music events within Queensland and beyond. The Queensland Music Trails, selling out months before the event itself, is demonstrative of an audience desire to travel at a time when, in Australia at least, international travel was not legally permitted. On 16 June 2020, the Queensland Government announced a $22.5 million Australian dollar Arts and Cultural Recovery Package. As with other aspects of arts policy and funding from the government, this funding spans multiple areas of the arts, including but not exclusive to music. Noting the impact of the pandemic on venues and shutdowns of venues where live music happens typically (pubs, clubs and theatres), the Venue Pilot Program allocates ‘nearly $200,000 to regional venues across the state to pilot venue re-openings and programming under COVID restrictions’ (Arts Queensland 2020). This funding does not consider the business initiatives offered to venues that fall under a hospitality model.

Regional Growth and New Opportunities (Post-COVID-19) As the preceding sections of the chapter have illustrated, the live music industry in regional Queensland faces several significant challenges, not least the COVID-19 pandemic, which has both served to compound pre-­ existing issues, such as cash flow, while also introducing new problems due to the social distancing measures put in place to curb the spread of the

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pandemic. While the pathway back from these unprecedented circumstances remains unclear, it is at the same time possible to foresee several developments for live music in regional Queensland, and indeed other regional locations in Australia in the future. If, as seems likely, international travel from Australia remains impacted for the immediate future, domestic tourism is expected to increase, thus creating new opportunities for music venues and festivals in regional Queensland over the coming years to re-present themselves. Indeed, taking opportunities now to grow the footprint of live music in regional Queensland may yield significant benefits in the future, including when international tourism returns to Australia. This could particularly be the case for music festivals whose ongoing development in line with currently increased levels of domestic tourism could help to bring a distinctive brand to regional locations in Queensland. Existing research on festivals in other parts of Australia and worldwide has already demonstrated the viability of festivals as potent branding devices for regional identity, coupled with creating revenue streams for local businesses (Bennett et al. 2014). Aligned with this is the likelihood of demographic growth and diversification in regional Queensland caused by outmigration from urban areas in Queensland and other Australian states. People are either forced to relocate to regional locations due to financial difficulties caused by the pandemic or make this decision based on lifestyle choice (specifically a preference to live in a less densely populated regional location). Several studies have already begun mapping such trends in urban outmigration in a pre-COVID context (e.g. Benson and Osbaldiston 2016). Such migration trends tend to be seen among individuals with a degree of affluence seeking a better quality of life. Quite aside from the new set of circumstances created by COVID-19, post-career middle-class individuals from professional backgrounds make up a significant group. Moreover, relocation of such individuals to regional settings has already seen such environments adapting through extending the range of options in lifestyle and leisure propelled by the tastes of such recent ex-urban arrivals. When the potential of post-COVID-19 urban outmigration trends is added to this picture, it is clear that a new chapter may well emerge for regional Queensland, whereby the cultural infrastructures of its larger towns grow to support an increasing diversification of tastes and preferences, including in the provision of live music entertainment. Other trends tied to pre-COVID-19 conditions have also seen a significant shift in the provision of live music in regional locations. Notably, the

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loss of revenues to artists through recorded music due to downloading and streaming saw a new emphasis on touring as a means of securing an income. This extends to various genres other than rock and pop, including classical music, with an increasing number of classical music festivals now being staged across regional Australia (Gibson and Connell 2011). The provision of grants to artists from various genres to tour regional Queensland adds to this picture, and may become commonplace in the future. Such trends challenge a popular stereotype, born out at some level by the data in the preceding sections of this chapter, that live music in regional Queensland broadly equates to cover artists performing popular hits that appeal to a cross-generational audience. While the demand for such acts is likely to persist to some degree, it is equally the case that the gradual ageing-out of such tastes will see new audiences whose tastes extend across other genres, including rap, metal and dance. Indeed, as is already evident from research (including research presented in this book), the notion that such genres, given their urban roots, remain ‘urban’ in design is quickly losing credence with the emergence of regional scenes connected to other scenes – urban, regional and rural – through translocal networks (Peterson and Bennett 2004). A further, and as yet little understood, impact on regional music-­ making and performance relates to the continuing development of digital technology. During the initial months of 2020, as lockdowns came into effect worldwide to prevent the spread of COVID-19, many musicians responded by utilizing online technology to network with each other, collaborate in music composition and stream live performances to audiences (Frenneaux and Bennett 2021). It is possible to conceive of such technologies being used to overcome the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and combatting the tyranny of distance. Thus, musicians living at a distance from each other, including those based in regional locations, may well be utilizing digital technology as a means of collaborating and performing, thus overcoming the urban–regional divide. Several universities in Queensland, including regional campuses, have already begun to acknowledge the advantages of digital technologies, including digital audio workstations, in allowing musicians living at a distance from each other to work together successfully.

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Conclusion While regional music scenes are a significant and under-researched area in popular music studies, they are also fragile. As regional areas are more exposed to change, the music scenes of the region, faced with additional challenges such as large geographic distances, lack of venues, under-­ developed industry infrastructure and limited educational opportunities, are also vulnerable. An unexpected situation, such as an economic downturn within a region, a change in governmental priorities or a global pandemic, can usher musicians to the more viable and supported urban music scenes, or even encourage them to leave the industry altogether. Such a situation can be devastating to regional areas, for which live music scenes are part of the social glue that holds the communities together. For this reason, it is important that focused studies, such as those contained in this chapter and this collection, are undertaken. That said, live music scenes are an integral part of human society. People want to engage with music at a local level, even in the face of adversity. At the end of 2020, co-author David Cashman performed some gigs in regional areas between the 2020 and 2021 Australian COVID-19 lockdowns, and was surprised and gratified at the fervent support such performances attracted. Other musicians reported the same. At a time when opportunities for local musicking had been suspended, consumers seemed to be more determined than ever to support music. While this bodes well for post-COVID-19 regional music scenes, such scenes need examination and support to maintain their viability.

Note 1. For a full list of statutory bodies and companies administered under the Arts portfolio, visit https://www.arts.qld.gov.au/about-­us/our-­portfolio. Accessed 20 September 2021.

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Queensland Government. 2020. Creative together. https://www.arts.qld.gov.au/ images/documents/artsqld/creativetogether/Roadmap_Final.pdf. Accessed 12 June 2021. Queensland Music Festival. 2021. Website. https://www.qmf.org.au. Accessed 12 June 2021. Regional Arts Services Network. 2021. Website. https://rasn.org.au. Accessed 12 June 2021. Rogers, I., and S.  Whiting. 2020. ‘If there isn’t skyscrapers, don’t play there!’: Rock music scenes, regional touring, and music policy in Australia. Popular Music and Society 43 (4): 450–460. Watson, A. 2008. Global music city: Knowledge and geographical proximity in London’s recorded music industry. Area 40 (1): 12–23. Wittel, A. 2001. Toward a network sociality. Theory, Culture & Society 18 (6): 51–76.

Index1

A Affective scene, 55 Alcaide, Ana, 136 Allen, Adriana, 53 Anderson, Brett, 38, 84 Angelfish, 6, 8 Ankst record label, 4 Appropriation, xxvi, 13, 79, 125 of genre, 165 Armstrong, Louis, 134, 137 Artamevia, Reza, 221 Art worlds, 84 Astro, 206 Austin, Ben, 201 Austin, Texas, 127 Australia, xxv–xxvii, xxx, 19–22, 25, 29, 30, 32, 36, 39–41, 44, 99, 100, 109, 211, 228, 230, 236–238

migrant youth in regional, xxv, 19 See also Migrant youth; Queensland; Regional Australia Australian Institute of Country Music (AICM), 104 Autoethnography, 37, 38, 46 Automatic Dlamini, 4 Aztec Flow Mama craze, 31 record deal, 31 See also Tical Records B Bachelard, Gaston, 5 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 80 carnivalesque, 80 Ballina, xxvii, 83, 85–87, 95, 96 Ballina Music Trail, xxvii, 96

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1

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INDEX

Bangsa, Yayasan Baba, 220 Basuni, Agus Setiawan, 210, 215, 218, 219, 222 Bathurst (NSW, Australia), 36, 37, 43, 46n1 B.B. & the Blues Shakes, 135 Becker, Howard S., 84 Bedford, Matthew, 202–205, 208 Muso Japan blog, 202, 204 Bell, David, 103, 229 Belonging duality, 24 hybrid, 24, 25 spaces of, 23–26, 182 See also Culture of belonging; Local identity; Sense of place Bennett, Andy, xxiii–xxv, xxx, 3, 19, 36, 38, 54, 56, 57, 60, 63, 103, 117, 118, 121, 122, 153, 160, 166, 171–173, 182–186, 189, 192, 212, 215, 230, 237, 238 Bikini State, 8 Birmingham, xxiii Blues authentic (UK), 123 Chicago, 183, 190 See also Eisenach; Kent Blume, Manfred, 133, 134 Blume, Maximilian, 135 Blume, Stanley, 135, 142 Boas, Günther, 137, 138, 140 Bolderman, Leonieke, xxix, xxx, 182, 188, 190 Boneshakers, The, 8 Borkowski, Steve, 121, 125, 126, 128 Böttger, Erich, 132 Böttger, Marco, 135 Bourdieu, Pierre, 61, 211, 212 Bowden, Shayne, 206, 207 Brandellero, Amanda, 166 Brisbane, 100–102, 109, 234, 235 See also Queensland

Broadband access, xxvii Brocken, Michael, 120, 123, 125, 126 Bromley, Paul, 108, 110 Bronx, the, xxiv Broonzy, Big Bill, 123, 124, 137 Brown, Dan, 108 Burnley, Ian, 99, 100 C Cairns, xxv, 20, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32 Camarthon, xxv Canterbury sound, 118 Cardiff, 4, 10 Cartledge, Frank, 159 Cashman, David, xxx, 227, 239 Chaila, Denise, 87 Chaney, Damien, 118, 165 Chicago blues tourism, 183 Chinapa, Nikhil, 76 Cobley, Paul, 154, 158 Collective memory, xxvii, 166, 171 Communitas, 182 Connell, John, 68, 102, 103, 182, 191, 238 Corfu, 183 COVID-19 pandemic, 55, 68, 80, 100, 111, 236 Cranberries The, 87 Creative industries, 102, 229 Creative networks, xxvii, 99, 100, 102–103, 111, 112 Cultural alienation, 24 Cultural consumerism, 165 Cultural economy of cities, xxiv Cultural industries, xxiv, 213 Cultural memory, 142, 163, 164, 167, 171, 174 Culture of belonging, see Belonging

 INDEX 

D Darmawan, Adi, 221 D’crae, 20, 24, 29, 31 Deep-immersion ethnography, 120 Digitalization of music See also Streaming platforms Digital technologies digital networks, 61, 62, 78–80 in India, 68 Dingle, xxvii, 83–86, 90, 95, 96 Dingle Music Trail, 95 Electric Picnic Festival, 95 pilgrimage to, 85, 95 Wild Atlantic Way tourist trail, 83, 86 See also Other Voices Distribution, xxvi, xxvii, 54, 73, 84, 87, 95, 171, 196, 197 DIY ethos, xxix, 153, 159, 160, 196, 198, 201 in Finland, 153 DJ Snake, 77 D’mood band, 211 Domingues, A., 53 Dowd, Timothy J., 184, 185, 187, 189 Down Beat Stompers, 133, 134 Down with the Enemy (DWTE), 8, 9 Dubinsky, Lon, 229 DUENN, 206 Dùran, F., 53 E Eckenfelder, Daniel, 134, 139, 140, 142 Eisenach AG Jazz, 133 Alte Mälzerei (Old Malthouse), 136, 137, 140 Bachhaus Eisenach museum, 132 during GDR era, 132 Eisenach Jazz Club, 134, 135, 137, 139

245

first jazz club, xxviii, 133 International Jazz Archive Eisenach, 137 Lippmann+ PLUS_SPI Foundation, 136, 140, 141 swing music during Nazi era, 132 Elbow, 84 Electronic dance music (EDM) Bolly-EDM, 73 festival scene, xxvi, 79 role of digital networks in India, 78 socio-economic characteristics of festival-goers, 74 trans-local sounds, 76 See also India Elephant Gerald, 8 Emotional Fish, An, 84 Enchanted Valley Carnival (EVC), xxvi, 68–71, 73–77, 79, 80 Enoch, Leanne, 233 Ethnography, xxvii, 74, 185 See also Autoethnography; Deep-­ immersion ethnography Euros Child, 6 F Facebook, xxvi, 12, 54, 55, 60–62, 77–79, 90, 109, 214 Ferianto, Djaduk, 212, 219, 220 Festivals collective experience, 166, 172, 174, 185 intensity of experience, 185 locations, xxiv, xxix, xxx, 69, 75, 79, 85, 86, 88, 167, 171, 172, 174, 186, 190, 219, 235–237 as pilgrimage, 85, 95, 185 sense of community, 164 as sites of rural scenes, 164 spatial aspects, xxv as trans-local scenes, 166

246 

INDEX

Finland conservative attitudes, 152, 156 cultural infrastructure of scenes, 157 first wave of punk culture, 152–153 late modernization, 153 low population density, 150 mail order record services, 158 music magazines, 157 Sex Pistols scandal, 154 Suomipunk, 153 youth culture, xxviii, 150, 152, 153, 157 See also Punk Finnish Youth Research Network, 151 Fish, Jerry, 84 Fisker, Jens Kaae, 182, 190 Fitzgerald, Ella, 137, 139 Flew, Terry, 102, 110 Flow, 85, 103, 181, 182, 186, 231, 236 The Frames, 84 Frank Muschalle Trio, 135 Fredly, Glenn, 221, 222 Friend’n’Fellow, 135 Frith, Simon, xxiv, 124, 125, 171 Fugazi, 199 Fukuoka, xxix, 195–208 DIY music scene, 195–208 Fukuoka Extreme Music Festival, 206 G Galaxy Train, 196, 201 Garrett-Petts, W.F., 229 Geography, xxx, 3, 5, 14, 20, 102, 103, 119, 171, 185, 212, 214, 215 importance of, 3 See also Locality Germany, 86, 97, 131–133, 135, 138, 141, 163, 164, 174, 175n1

See also Eisenach; Glitterhouse Records; Orange Blossom Special festival Gibson, Chris, xxiv, 54, 68, 100, 102, 103, 182, 191, 230, 238 Gillen, Aidan, 85 Gladstone, 229, 232 music planning issues, 232 Glen Hansard, 84 Glitterhouse Records mail order business, 171, 172 as rural scene actor, 167–170, 173, 174 See also Orange Blossom Special festival Global periphery, xxiv Global Sound Group (UK), 31 Goa, see Vagator Beach Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci (GZM), xxv, 4–9, 13, 15 Gottwald, Christoph, 135 Grant, John, 84 Grape, 4 Grazian, David, 183, 190 Grindcore, 197 Gympie (Queensland, Australia), 99–102, 104, 111, 112 GZM, see Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci H Hakata No Wave, 204 Halfacree, Keith, 165, 175 Hall, Philip, 4 Hamburg School, 164 Hardcore, 198 Hard-Ons, The, 206 Hariadi, Andien, 221 Harvey, P.J., 5 Hauge, Åshild, 44 Heaps Decent, 27, 28 Heavy metal, xxiii, 6, 59, 231

 INDEX 

Hip hop career pathways, 30 global reach, xxvi linguistic freedom, 25 in regional Australia, xxv, xxvi, 30, 32 as space of belonging, 23, 26 See also Migrant youth; Wagga Wagga (NSW, Australia) Hip Hop for Harmony, 27 Hogg, Jeremy, 4 Holderbach, Andreas, 205 Muzan Editions, 205 Holstein, Reinhard, 167 Hopkins, Kato David, 199, 200 Hozier, 84, 89 Huston, Jenny, 85 I India Bollywood music, 70, 74 broadcasting media transition, 68 cricket, 70, 71 cultural negotiation, 73, 79 Digital India initiative, 68, 77 digital technologies, 68 electronic dance music festivals, 67–80 Hindu culture, 70 Holi festival, 77 importance of regional festival sites, 79 LPG movement, 75 regional–urban migration, 75 socio-economic characteristics of festival-goers, 79 Individualization, 11, 165 Indonesia jazz festivals, xxix, 210–212, 217, 220 musik kampoeng, 222 standar jazz, 211–214, 219 Indonesian Jazz Forum, 212, 224

247

Industry, xxiv, xxvii, xxix, 3, 4, 6, 12, 29, 31, 40, 41, 44, 45, 54, 72, 86, 89, 91, 95, 96, 99–102, 111, 112, 117, 118, 121, 132, 153, 192, 211–213, 219, 220, 228–231, 233, 234, 236, 238, 239 Insider–outsider perspective, 36–39 Internet, xxvii, 3, 11–15, 55, 77, 103, 104, 109–111, 118, 119, 165, 214, 217 See also Broadband access; Social media Ireland, xxvii, 83, 86, 87, 95, 97, 111, 183, 190 government COVID-19 recovery scheme, 96 See also Dingle; Other Voices Ireland’s Edge, 88, 89 Irish music, xxvii, 83, 84, 86, 187, 189 Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO), 85 J Janssen, Susanne, 166, 173 Japan DIY ethos, xxix geographic isolation, 207 independent music scenes, xxix, 198, 199, 204 Japanese Noise, 197 NEDS record store, 197 position of music scenes, 202 role of expatriates in regional music, 201 Java Jazz, 212 Jayne, Mark, 229 Jazz in Indonesia, xxix, 210–212, 217, 218, 220 standar jazz, 211–214, 219 See also Eisenach; Yogyakarta

248 

INDEX

Jazz Etawa, 214 Jazz Traffic, 212 Jones, Ben, 24, 30, 31 Jyväskylä, 156 K Katajala, K., 156 Kelly, John, 85 Kent blues scene, xxvii, 119, 122, 127 Bottleneck Blues Club, 122 Bourne Music Club, 121 Bourne to the Blues, 121, 126 Gillingham’s Blues at the Woodlands, 121 Kent Blues Collective, 125 Kent Bluesrockfest, 121 Sevoaks’ Blues with Bottle Club, 121, 125 Spooner’s Blues, 121 Wrotham Arms Blues & Roots Club, 121 See also Blues; Tastemaking process Kesnand village (India), 69 Kilju, 151 Kling, Stefan, 135 Komodo Project, 221, 222 Krakatau, 211, 220, 221 Krosswerdz, 27 L Langham Research Centre, 206 Lawrence, John, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15 Lee, Steve S., 103 Lefèbvre, Henri, 165, 166 Liddle, Kathleen, 185 Likumahuwa, Barry, 220 Limerick, 87 Lindenberg, Udo, 139 Live music venues

regional Queensland, 227–239 sustainability, 230–233 See also Longreach (Queensland); Regional music scenes Liverpool, 120, 123 Lloyd, Richard, 6, 8, 11, 15 Loah, 85 Local venues, 55 Local identity, xxviii, 174 See also Culture of belonging; Sense of place Locality, xxv, 76, 103, 118, 128, 150, 151, 155–159, 161, 164, 165, 174, 197, 203 Local music scenes, xxv, xxvii, xxix, 30, 43, 55, 100, 103, 111, 118, 157, 185, 200, 201, 205 Local networks, 108 Longreach (Queensland) Bird Cage Hotel, 227 covers bands, 230 dearth of musicians, 232 economic factors related to music, 228 government support for music, 232 networks, 229 public support for music, 228 venue sustainability, 231, 232 Lorenz, Reinhard, 134, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142 Löw, Martina, 12 Lysloff, René, 213 M Mackay (Queensland), 229, 231–233 Maffay, Peter, 139 Maffesoli, Michel, 62 Magnetic Fields festival, 67 Manggarai, Tombo, 221 Marschall, Fritz, 137, 138

 INDEX 

Marshmallow, 77 Martin, Ian F., 196–199, 201–208 Burn Your Hometown blog, 198, 202, 204 Clear and Refreshing blog, 204 Mastmeyer, Lutz, 170, 175 Matsue, Jennifer Milioto, 198 Matthews, Mark, 121, 126, 128 Maumere Jazz Fiesta, 210, 220–224 MayKay, 85 MC God Knows, 87 Mehldau, Brad, 136 Mekeng, Melchias, 220 Melville, Neil, 6 Mentai Rock, 204–207 Merseybeat, 118 Method Man, 30 Migrant youth feelings of isolation, 22 and hip hop, xxvi, 19–32 otherness, 22 racism in regional Australia, 20 social exclusion, 23 Milton Malbay, 183, 187 Miracle Inn, 6 Moreira, Tânia, xxvi, 56, 57 Morley, David, 182 MuRli, 87 Murphy, Peter, 99, 100 Music scene collectiveness, 212 concept, xxiii, xxv, 54, 182, 184 definition, xxiii material infrastructure, 184 mutual pleasure and recognition, 212 non-urban context, xxiv peri-urban context, xxiv, 54 soft infrastructure, 184 urban roots, xxiii See also Local networks; Regional music scenes; Trans-local music scenes; Virtual scenes

249

Music workshops, xxix, 27, 182–191, 214 community of participants, 190 competitive nature, 188 embodied learning, 183, 185 location on periphery, 187 peripheral nodes in trans-local music scene, 184–185 remote locations, 186 role of teachers, 190 safe space to learn, 182 social codes, 182, 185, 188 spaces of belonging, 182 structure, xxix, 186 symbolic economy of authenticity, 190 tourism and, xxix, 191 MyNameisJohn, 87 N Nagoya, xxix DIY music scene, 195–208 National, The, 84 Negara, Perusahaan Listrik, 220 Nelson, Jenna, 185 Nestorman, Ivan, 220–222 Networks, xxv, xxvii, 4–10, 27, 28, 32, 43, 54, 55, 58, 61, 62, 69, 76, 78–80, 84, 87–96, 99–113, 119, 122, 157, 160, 172, 183, 184, 186, 197, 199, 206, 209, 210, 212, 215, 224, 228, 229, 231, 233, 238 Network sociality, 229 New Orleans Trio, 135 Ngayogjazz Festival, 213, 215 Nilan, Pam, 211, 212 Nobu, 203 Novak, David, 195, 197 Nucleya, 76, 77 Number Girl, 204

250 

INDEX

O O’Flynn, John, 85 Orange Blossom Special festival as rural scene actor, 167–170, 173, 174 proximity of artists and fans, 173 See also Glitterhouse Records Orange (NSW, Australia), 35–37, 42, 43, 46n1 Oranssi, 151 Ortner, Sherry B., 212 Otherness, 22, 85, 202 Other Voices beginnings, 84 core/periphery structure, xxvii, 88, 91, 96 events, 89, 91 nationalization and internationalization, 86 network, 87–89, 92, 94 performers, xxvii, 84, 87, 91, 92 positioning on the edge, 87 venues, 86 See also Dingle Overell, Rosemary, 197 P Palaszczuk, Annastacia, 233, 234 Paltridge, Mark, 108, 109 Panicsmile, 206 Papua Original Band, 221 Parker, Rob, 8–12, 14, 15 Participant observation, 74, 79, 196 Pato, Thom, 27 Pembrokeshire in-between music scene, 12 embedded and parallel scenes, 4–10 Pembrokeshire promise, 13 Pure West radio station, 11 sound, 6 venues, 6, 8, 9

Penny Thousand, 14 Perry, Linda, 164, 174 Persona B, 14 Peterson, Richard, xxiii–xxv, 3, 54, 183–186, 189, 212, 238 Pfleiderer, Dr Martin, 141, 142 Pihtipudas, 149–161 Pine, Geoff, 121, 122, 126, 128 Pirated cassettes/CDs, 63, 138, 196, 218 Policy, xxix, xxx, 72, 229, 233, 234, 236 Portugal, xxvi, 53–64 provincial rock, 54 See also Tâmega Prague, 183, 187, 188 Prameswara, Krisna, 221 Prasetyo, Agung, 214 Punk fashion, 154–156, 158, 159 peripheral, 151, 153–156 Suomipunk (Finnish punk), xxviii, 149–153, 156, 160 zines, 153 See also DIY ethos; Finland Q Queensland Arts and Cultural Recovery Package, 234, 236 Arts Queensland, 234, 236 Brisbane Festival, 235 Creative Together roadmap, 234 government support for arts, 234 See also Longreach (Queensland); Queensland Music Festival; Queensland Music Trails; Sunshine Coast (Queensland, Australia) Queensland Music Festival, 235, 236 Queensland Music Trails, xxx, 235–236

 INDEX 

R Radford, David, 21 Radical rural locality, 165 Ramones, 152, 155 Ratsia, 149, 150, 160 Rau, Fritz, 139 Rave, 122 Rawlings, Joe, 8 Raw Rear, 28 Recording studios, 99–113, 229, 230 client base, 104, 108–111 cottage industries, 99 creative networks, xxvii, 99, 100, 102–103, 111, 112 democratization, 102, 112 DIY modes of production, 99, 102 income base, 100, 104, 109–112 practices, 99, 102–103, 109–112 producers, 112 protean nature, 102–103 Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, xxvii, 99–113 role of fast broadband, xxvii, 100, 109, 111, 112 technologies, xxvii, 102, 103, 110, 112 Record labels, xxiv, xxviii, xxix, 4, 28, 123, 140, 163 Regional Australia, xxv, xxvi, 30, 32, 36, 41, 238 issues facing, xxv, xxvi, 29 See also Regional music scenes Regional music scenes career trajectories, 14, 41 diversification, 32, 41–42, 237 performer–educator nexus, 39–42 pro-am artists, 40–42 professionalism, 111 Queensland, Australia, xxvii, xxx, 99, 228–231, 235–238 resources, 39–40 skill levels, 40

251

spatial aspects, xxv touring artists, 39 Yogyakarta, xxix, xxx, 209–224 See also Regional Australia; Sense of place Remoteness, 4, 10, 13–15, 43, 96, 229 Richards, Trevor, 135, 138 New Orleans Jazz Collection, 138 Ritviz, 76 Robinson, Daniel, 100, 102, 103 Robmokot, 22, 23 Rock, xxv, xxvi, 4, 7–9, 11, 15, 28, 53–64, 87, 118, 124, 138, 139, 153, 156, 157, 160, 175, 186, 200–207, 211, 232, 237 Rogers, Ian, 36, 171, 172, 215, 232 Roosters, The, 204 Rottier, Alex, 110 Rumpus, 8 Rusangano Family, 87 Russell, James, 108, 110 S Sanggar Bentara Zaman, 221, 222 Schwartz, Roberta, 120, 123–125, 127 Sense of place, 15, 36, 39, 44–45 Sex Pistols, 152, 154, 155 Shank, Barry, xxiii, 127 Sheena & the Rokkets, 204 Sissy Spacek, 206 Snapchat, 77, 78 Snow Patrol, 84 Snowball sampling, 55 SOAK, 89 Social media, xxvi, xxvii, 14, 55, 56, 59–61, 63, 77–79, 118, 119, 122, 127, 128, 165, 220 events promotion, xxvii, 55, 79 Söderholm, S., 156 SONHOUSE, 204 Sorowea, Dian, 221

252 

INDEX

Soundcloud, 30, 31, 63 Spivey, Victoria, 137 Splash! Festival, 207 Spotify, 30, 31, 54, 55, 63 Spring, Ken, 121, 122 Stalin (punk band), 160 Starkey, Kevin, 104, 111 Stephane, Joshua, 205 Stephens, Huw, 85 Stiewe, Rembert, 167, 169, 170, 173 Stivín, Jiří, 136 Straw, Will, xxiii, 3, 13, 117, 120, 184 Streaming platforms, 30, 31, 32n2 monetization, 31 (see also Social media) Studios, xxiv, xxvii Subculture research, 151 Nordic tradition, 151 Submerge festival, 67 Sunburn festival Sunburn @Home, 68, 80 Sunburn Arena, 68 Sunburn Campus, 68 Sunburn Digital, 68, 80 Sunburn Home Festival, 68, 80 Sunburn Select, 68 Sunshine Coast (Queensland, Australia), xxvii, 100, 101, 111 See also Recording studios Sushi Backpack, 201 Sutopo, Oki Rahadianto, 211, 212 Sweeteners, 211 Swing kids, 132 Sysmä, 154 T Tâmega DJs, 62 garage bands, 60 importance of live music, 58 network of scene in, 54, 55, 60, 62

‘night out’ culture, 57 peripheralized status, 54 rock scene, xxvi, 53–64 venues, 54–59, 62 youthfulness, 56 Tana, Tawa, 220 Tastemaking process, 120, 123–125, 129 regional taste accents, 128 Technologies of music, xxvii, 213 Tegg, Neil, 127 Thirsty Merc, 110 Tical Records, 30 Tik-Tok, 77 Tourism music scenes and, xxx, 183, 185, 191, 192 niche, xxix, 191 See also Longreach (Queensland); Music workshops Trans-local music scenes, xxix, 174, 181–192 Translocal scene, 77 Trialectic of space, 165 Twitter, 77, 78, 90 U Ubud Village Jazz, 212 V Vagator Beach, Goa, 69 Verlag, Erich Röth, 133 VH1 Supersonic festival, 67 Virtual scenes, 54, 55, 103, 122, 165 W Wagga Wagga (NSW, Australia) Multicultural Council of Wagga Wagga, 27

 INDEX 

253

Riverina Community College, 27, 28 Riverina Conservatorium, 28 Wagner, Antje, 132, 141 Wainwright, Rufus, 84 Wallach, Jeremy, 218 Wangak, Orkes Kampoeng, 221, 222 Warta Jazz, 210, 215, 217–222 international connections, 218 Weinert, Susan, 135 Welsh-language popular music scene, 4 Clwb Ifor Bach (Little Ivor’s Club), 4 What’sApp, 77, 78, 214 White, Josh, 123 Whiting, Samuel, 36, 232 Winehouse, Amy, 84, 85 documentary, 85 Winton, 229, 231 Woodhead, Angus, 108, 109 Word-of-mouth networks, xxvii Workshops, see Music workshops

Y Yamada, Takehiko, 201 File Under Records store, 200, 201 Knew Noise Recordings, 201 Yogyakarta Indonesian Arts Institute, 213 jazz community as regional scene, xxix, xxx, 209–212, 214, 215, 224 Ngayogjazz festival, 213, 215 social media, 220 standar jazz, 211–214, 219 student city, 212–217 venues, xxx, 213, 221 Warta Jazz, 210, 215, 217–222 See also Indonesian Jazz Forum Yoshida, Hajime, 206 Youth culture, xxviii, 57, 70, 72, 75, 76, 150–153, 156–158 Finland, xxviii, 150, 153, 157 See also Punk YouTube, 12, 30, 31, 60, 61, 63, 76, 78, 199

X Xx, The, 84

Z Zines, 153, 159