Music Scenes

by Bennett, Andy; Peterson, Richard A.

• ISBN13: 9780826514509
• ISBN10: 0826514502
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-01
• Publisher: Vanderbilt Univ Pr

Summary

These fourteen original essays examine the fascinating world ofmusic scenes,those largely inconspicuous sites where clusters of musicians, producers, and fans explore their common musical tastes and distinctive lifestyle choices. Although most music scenes come and go with hardly a trace, they nevertheless give immense satisfaction to their participants, and a few--New York bop jazz, Merseybeat, Memphis rockabilly, London punk, Bronx hip-hop--achieve fame and spur musical innovations. To date, serious study of the scenes phenomenon has focused mainly on specific music scenes while paying less attention to recurrent dynamics of scene life, such as how individuals construct and negotiate scenes to the various activities. This volume remedies that neglect.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Notes on Contributors	xiii
Introducing Music Scenes	1	(16)
Richard A. Peterson and Andy Bennett
Jazz Places	17	(14)
Howard Becker
Becker shows that the social space in which music is performed shapes the music that is produced by focusing on two innovative periods in the development of jazz-the first, the earliest days of bebop in the 1930's gang-controlled underworld of Kansas City, and the second, the university tours and concerts that helped shape cool jazz in the 1950's.
Part 1 Local Scenes
1 The Symbolic Economy of Authenticity in the Chicago Blues Scene	31	(17)
David Grazian
Drawing on years of ethnographic research, Grazian shows how the signifiers of authenticity in the Chicago blues scene of the past are manipulated by contemporary artists, bartenders, and club owners to satisfy the expectations of today's fans and tourists, who differ sharply in their expectations of what "real" Chicago blues is.
2 Behind the Rave: Structure and Agency in a Rave Scene	48	(16)
Ken Spring
Spring uses participant observation and interviews to trace the rise and fall of an intense rave scene in a small industrial city. He focuses on the interests behind the rave scene-bar owners, promoters, DJs, drug dealers, police, and city officials-who, for a brief period, made it possible to put on raves in a risk-free environment.
3 "Scenes" Dimensions of Karaoke in the United States	64	(16)
Rob Drew
Much like early punk, karaoke encourages the liberating sensibility that "anyone can do it" While for many in the United States karaoke is an excuse for drunken self-expression, Drew shows that for a goodly number it is a regular social activity that gives great personal satisfaction and knits participants together in a number of overlapping scenes, each appropriate for its locale.
4 "Tween" Scene: Resistance within the Mainstream	80	(16)
Melanie Lowe
Using focus groups, Lowe explores the realm of youthful fandom that surrounds Britney Spears, which exists worldwide and in fans' own rooms. Girls gush over their favorite and simultaneously challenge her overly sexualized media image, revealing a reception strategy that allows them to take pleasure in music often at odds with their budding feminist consciousness.
5 "Doin' It Right": Contested Authenticity in London's Salsa Scene	96	(19)
Norman Urquia
Urquia shows that questions of authenticity operate at several levels in the London salsa scene. Non-Latin dancers offer a variety of claims on salsa as their own, while salsa dance teachers continually strive for more exhibitionist personal styles to attract students. Over time, ironically, the original Latin form has lost its identity as authentic salsa.
Part II Translocal Scenes
6 "Riot Grrrl Is ...": Contestation over Meaning in a Music Scene	115	(16)
Kristin Schilt
Schift describes how widely dispersed scenes devoted to feminism and punk music came together to create the Riot Grrrl movement, in which every girl could be a riot grrrl. She shows how this fusion rapidly made the translocal scene visible and led to its fissuring, as musical and political differences came to the fore.
7 Translocal Connections in the Goth Scene	131	(18)
Paul Hodkinson
With the collapse of the worldwide mass media-promoted genre of goth music in the early 1990's, numerous groups of goths linked up to form a translocally connected movement. Hodkinson shows how goth fans mutually reinforced each other through their symbols of goth identity, frequent travel to distant goth events, compilation of goth records, fanzines, Internet communication, and mall-order specialty stores.
8 Music Festivals as Scenes: Examples from Serious Music, Womyn's Music, and SkatePunk	149	(19)
Timothy J. Dowd, Kathleen Liddle, and Jenna Nelson
Dowd, Liddle, and Nelson explore the Yaddo Festival, devoted to serious (art) music, the Michigan Womyn's Festival, and the Vans Warped Tour to illustrate the ways in which festivals-large organized events in which scenes periodically reproduce themselves in a cloistered area protected from the gaze of outsiders-can be scenes.
9 "Not for Sale": The Underground Network of Anarcho-Punk	168
Tim Gosling
More than their local counterparts, translocal scenes depend on recordings and those who make then to get the music known and to build the sense of a scene. Gosling shows the role of band-owned record companies in the anarcho-punk scene of the 1980's and explains why the U.S.-owned companies were much more effective scene builders than were their English counterparts.
Part III Virtual Scenes
10 Internet-based Virtual Music Scenes: The Case of P2 in Alt.Country Music	187	(18)
Steve S. Lee and Richard A. Peterson
Using the example of a group based on a listserv devoted to alternative country music, Lee and Peterson show how the Internet can be the locus of a long-lasting music scene, using a case study of Postcard Two to compare virtual scenes to local scenes.
11 New Tales from Canterbury: The Making of a Virtual Scene	205	(16)
Andy Bennett
In the development of a scene devoted to the memory of the music of a group of 1960's bands associated with Canterbury, England, Bennett finds that promoters and fans have used the Internet effectively to construct a virtual scene that perpetuates the notion that there was once a local scene built around the Canterbury Sound.
12 The Fanzine Discourse over Post-rock	221	(17)
James A. Hodgkinson
In his critical analysis of post-rock, Hodgkinson explores the dynamics of a virtual scene based on music reviews in fanzines and in the commercial music press. In doing so, he demonstrates the power of journalistic discourse to provide the musical terms and other forms of categorization central to the formation of a scene.
13 Kate Bush: Teen Pop and Older Female Fans	238	(17)
Laura Vroomen
Kate Bush, who had several teen-oriented hits in the late 1970's, has recorded sporadically since. Interviewing and interacting with a number of Kate Bush fans, Vroomen shows how Internet communication helps fandom continually reinvent itself as fans and artist mature.
Index	255