The Place of Music: [Introduction]

Author(s): Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, George Revill

Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1995),
pp. 423-433
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the
Institute of British Geographers)
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 423

The place of music

Andrew Leyshon*, David Matless* and
George Revill**
In this paper we provide an introduction to the theme of 'The place of music'. We
discuss previous work on music by geographers before tracing themes of universality
and particularitythrough classical and popular musics. We consider issues of
economy, society, polity and culture in the 'universal' and 'national' musics of the
classical tradition, the modem global popular music industry and 'altemative' popular
musics. The intention is to show a range of possible themes and styles for
geographical work on music.

key words geography place space music

*Departmentof Geography,Universityof Bristol,UniversityRoad,BristolBS8 ISS

"Departmentof Geography,Universityof Nottingham,UniversityPark,NottinghamNG7 2RD
**GeographyUnit, School of SocialSciences,Oxford BrookesUniversity,Headington,
Oxford OX3OBP

manuscriptreceived21 July 1995

Clearlya worldcultureof international

youth is arising
... It appears that from the younger generation
everyone will speak English ... The world culture
probablywill be technologicallyWestern European,
heavily electronicwith free electricity.It is less clear
but likely that Africanmusicand danceformswill be
the dominant worldwide forms ... people the world
aroundare voting with theirfeet, so to speak,for this
danceand music.(WilliamBunge 1973, 289)
We are to move in a world of youth in which
languagesother than Englishhave virtuallyceased to
exist ... and sprawlaroundon the floor listeningto
'African'music(i.e. hardrock)amplifiedand distorted
by a universalelectronicagency. Nor shallwe escape
the electronicblarebeyond our homes,where outside
in the streets people will be dancing to the same
cacophony. Bunge complains rightly of the noise
pollutionof our modem society,but shows no aware-
ness that perhapsas much as one-thirdof our high
school and juniorhigh school populationhas already
sufferedserious auditory damage from listening to
suchoveramplifiedelectronicmusic,whichmanyof us
would already regard as one of the major noise
pollutantsof modem life. (DonaldFryer1974, 482)
The word 'scenery'is derivedfromthe Greekskene,a
... stage ... 'the natural scene' may be properly
TransInstBr GeogrNS 20 423-433 1995
ISSN 0020-2754 ? Royal GeographicalSociety (with the Instituteof BritishGeographers)1995
regardedas the stage on whichNatureplaysthe drama
of the senses.Thus... the song of birds,the soundsof
running water ... are scenic amenities.Discordant
noises are an offence against one of the amenities.
(Vaughan Corish 1934, 195)
Introduction
This collection of papers arises from a conference on
'The place of music' held at University College,
London, in September 1993 and seeks to amplify
Susan Smith's (1994, 238) recent call that sound in
general and music in particularbe 'integral to the
geographical imagination' (see also Leyshon et al.
forthcoming'). We organized the conference with
some trepidation. The critical analysis of music
seemed to be a field relatively unexplored by
geographers and one temptation was to let the topic
alone. The appeal of music was in part as a
significant element in our lives that was not subject
to academic reflection. Would making a geography
out of it ruin things? It should be stressed, then, that
our intention is not to colonize music for geography
through analysis - not least because a recognition
of the pleasures of music must be central to any
424
understanding of its power (see also Grossberg
1992). Smith's (1994) essay on 'Soundscape' offers
an excellent review of the varied work by geogra-
phers and others on issues of music, space and place
in recent years and we will not repeat her discussion
here (see also Gill 1993; Kong 1995; Stokes 1994).
The quotations at the head of this introduction
show, however, that geographers have addressed
sound before and we begin by writing through
these earlier voices who, in their polemic, touch on
some key issues of music and place.
Discussing environmental noise, Vaughan
Corish (1934) makes the everyday soundscape
expressive of cultural values. Seeking aesthetic
principles for town and country planning in the
1930s, Cornish developed an aural as well as visual
aesthetic, with sound an element in a normative
geography whereby certain noises registered as
out of place. A radio sound might fit in the city
street but intrude in the country lane. The planner
Patrick Abercrombie expanded on Cornish's (1928)
call for 'harmonies of scenery':
Thereis a specialnote or tone in differentcountrysides theorist Theodor Adomo (1976, 225):
... the honk of the motor-car, the sound of the
gramophonein the open, the whir of the speed-boat
on the lake,do not enter into the chord:theirdisson-
ance is seriously felt and of singularpervasiveness.
(Abercrombie 1933, 243-4; Matless 1993)
Debates over the appropriate geographies of land-
scape noise continue today (Clarket al. 1994), with
sound, like other senses, forming a part of the moral
geography of the environment (Matless 1994).
Moves to regulate or ban events such as raves work
through a particular sense of what counts as a
pleasant rural environment (Sibley 1994). Con-
versely, the promotion of open-air music through a
festival culture since the late 1960s often works
through a set of environmental values whereby
culture and nature harmonize through music.
While Corish might have run a mile from a pop
festival, Bunge (1973) has a rather different view of
modem noise. He celebrates youth and its rhythm
as an element in 'The geography of human survival'.
His hopes for the 'Geography of the future' (ibid.,
289) provoked an angry reply from Donald Fryer
(1974). Two geographers diverge on what counts as
music and, by implication, what qualifies as culture.
Bunge's soundworld is Fryer's nightmare:
if ouryoungergenerationprefers'beat'to Bach... this
reflectsnot so much an autonomousdecision of our
AndrewLeyshonet al.
youth as the superiorpressureexerted on them by
recordmanufacturers, disc jockeys,and radioand TV
stationsfor highly commercialpurposes.(Fryer1974,
482)
Fryer and Bunge offer different soundtracks for
future geographies. Fryer (ibid.,482) laments cuts in
musical education:
Nobody pushes Bach ... Such material is ... the first
to be cut in times of real or imagined financial
stringency,as indeed the Legislatureof the State of
Hawaiiis doing to the Schools SymphonyConcerts
programas I write.
For Fryer, the environment of pop is an anti-culture
with universally commercialized African rhythm
undermining the universal cultural standards of the
classical wester canon. For Bunge, the new and
global is to be celebrated because it is popular and
young; Fryer (ibid,482) chastises a 'resurrectionby a
professed radical of the discredited economic doc-
trine of consumer sovereignty'. Curiously, it is Fryer
rather than the radical Bunge who echoes critical
A criticalsociology of musicwill have to find out in
detail why today - unlike a hundredyears ago -
popular music is bad, bound to be bad, without
exception.
Bunge, Fryer and Cornish hit on key issues of
geography and music: the nature of soundscapes,
definitions of music and cultural value, the geogra-
phies of differentmusical genres, the place of music
in local, national and global cultures. Critical reflec-
tion on such issues has been largely absent from the
work of geographers, who have tended to map the
diffusion of musical styles or analyse geographical
imagery in lyrics. Such studies convey a rather
narrow sense of geography, offering the geogra-
pher's angle on well-trodden ground rather than
asking how a geographical approach might refigure
that ground. We proceed by contrast from a sense
that to inject geography into music might produce
an effect analogous to that which David Harvey
(1984, 8) claims in relation to social theory:
the insertion of concepts of space into any social
theoryhas a numbingeffectupon that theory'scentral
propositions.
Space and place are here presented not simply as
sites where or about which music happens to be
The place of music
made, or over which music has diffused, but rather
different spatialities are suggested as being forma-
tive of the sounding and resounding of music. Such
a richer sense of geography highlights the spatiality
of music and the mutually generative relations of
music and place. Space produces as space is pro-
duced. To consider the place of music is not to
reduce music to its location, to ground it down into
some geographical baseline, but to allow a purchase
on the rich aesthetic, cultural,economic and political
geographies of musical language.
The papers which follow here begin to take up
such themes. We return to them at the end of this
introduction but first we outline the kinds of
research issues which might emerge around the
place of music. We work through specific examples
and general argument to show how geographical
issues of economy, polity, society and culture are
present in the production, performance, transmis-
sion and consumption of music. The examples
should give a sense of the possible textures of
music's geography. We consider the 'universal'
musics of the classical tradition and the moder
music industry as well as the more particularsounds
of 'national' composers and 'alternative' popular
musics. We do not aim to cover all kinds of music
here and focus mainly on popular and classical
forms. At the outset it is worth commenting on such
issues of genre.
While the papers in this collection focus mainly
on popular music, questions of geography pertain to
all genres. Indeed, the processes through which
different genres have been marked out may them-
selves be highly geographical. Distinctions of genre
have been crucial in the self-definition of music and
analysis should respect differences while question-
ing their reproduction and highlighting their culture
effect. To label music as 'classical' as opposed to
'popular' places music in a value system based on
a geographical categorization. In conventional
accounts classical music contributes to the develop-
ment of a progressive, abstractwestern high culture;
universal, self-justifying, ostensibly placeless. Popu-
lar music, in its appeal to everyday emotions and
immediate circumstances, is by contrast bound to
particularity;a 'merely local' form making no con-
tribution to an autonomous realm of musical lan-
guage. Classical-pure/popular-worldly distinctions
express a spatiality which helps define relationships
of music, economy and society. We begin here by
considering the history of the universal language of
classical music.
425
Universal music I
A classical language
Since the mid-eighteenth century classical genres
have been defined by practitioners and musicolo-
gists as a transcendent language of individual self-
expression, above concerns of economy, polity and
society (Leppert and McClary 1987; Said 1992).
Such a definition has its own historical geography,
linked to the rise of the nation-state and bourgeois
society. The idea that sounds speak directly to us in
an unmediated fashion found its philosophical
grounding in German idealism (Middleton 1991),
with music
at once the most humanly-revealing form of art and
the form most resistantto descriptionor analysisin
conceptualterms.(Norris1989, 307)
Such 'naturalization' of music can be traced
through the spaces of performance. The arrange-
ments of listening in the concert room, along with
the separation of music from medieval ritual, the
development of specialist musicianship, commercial
publishing and the invention of synoptic scores,
enshrined the individual performer/performanceas
an unmediated 'natural'and 'neutral'channel for the
work of the composer (Durant 1984; Chanan 1994).
The reversal of the medieval situation of musicians
waiting on an audience produced 'a gradual objec-
tification of performance' (Durant 1984, 31), while
auditoriumdesign eliminated variability in listening,
giving the illusion of unmediated contact with the
music through the performer.
These spatial relationships coincided with the
dominance of sonata form in the late eighteenth
century, combining the tension between a binary
harmonic structure and an overlaid ternary thematic
structure. Dramatic structures of emotional tension,
expectation and resolution derived from the formal
properties of the music rather than extramusical
literary or narrative sources. Rosen (1988) relates
this directly to the new requirements of the bour-
geois concert room, where the symmetry and clarity
of sonata form could hold a large audience without
ornamental enhancement or instrumental or vocal
virtuosity. As the site of performanceis regularized,
so performance itself is set under the full control of
the composer. Individuality of performance is dis-
placed into an interpretationof the heroic individual
composer. In this context Beethoven emerges as the
epitome of the composer-genius, celebrating the
universal values of the French Revolution with a
426 AndrewLeyshonet al.
mercurial individual masculinity speaking through Designed to fit particularceremonial spaces, music
the abstract logic of pure form (Revill 1995). at once defines and reinforces the disposition of
The separation of music from ritual and its power within those spaces and the authority repre-
emergence as a commodity associated with the sented by that space. The ability of music to carry
bourgeois concert hall is linked to the commodi- ideologically explicit meaning yet remain open to
fication of musical knowledge (Attali 1989; Chanan various interpretations as a universal particularhas
1994). During the nineteenth century, the develop- made it a potent political force in the figuration of
ment of music colleges, professional qualifications national geographies.
and theoretical treatises on form, harmony and The apparent naturalism of music was import-
history gave music and musicians cultural distinc- ant for nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
tion. John Shepherd (1991, 53) argues forcefully that European nationalist composers such as Dvorak,
universal musical standards were defined through Brahms, Vaughan Williams, Janacek, Bartok and
minority cultural practice: Kodaly (Dahlhaus 1980; Longyear 1973). Such
music combined a belief in the sovereign authority
beliefin the other-worldlynatureof musicalinspiration
of the composer and the universality of musical
and the abilityof only a minorityto exploit it in turn
leads to the conceptof an objectiveaesthetic. forms with a faith in the power of music to refer
directly to everyday experience. The imitation of
For Shepherd, the assumed fixed criteria against natural sounds, the quotation of folk songs and
which all music can be judged are rooted in the dances, and references to localities and regions
musical languages of ruling groups privileging the could rhetorically tie music to the rhythmical struc-
'classical' over the 'popular' and the 'masculine' tures of land, landscape and language (Dahlhaus
against the 'feminine'. Such cultural distinctions 1985). Thus, in Smetena's depiction of the Czech
were brought to bear both within and beyond the lands Ma Vlast ('My Country'), the story of the
west. Leppert and McClary (1987, xviii) show how River Moldau flowing from its source through
such formulations have legitimized western sophis- forest and plain offers national integration and
tication and complexity against the 'primitive' and reconciliation. Vaughan Williams (1934), a keen
collector of English folk songs and dances, linked
suggest that ethnomusicological questioning of
music and society has been acceptable only when folk tunes to specific landscapes. Folk songs, as 'the
natural development of excited speech' (Vaughan
applied to other cultures:
Williams, quoted in Kennedy 1964, 31), were
recognizingthatothermusicsareboundup with social founded on the rhythm and timbre of native
valuesdoes not necessarilylead to the conclusionthat
language and expressed a national essence (see
our music likewise might be: more often it simply also Revill 1991; Stradling and Hughes 1993).
resultsin the chauvinistic,ideologicalreaffirmation
of
the superiorityof Westernart, which is still widely Composition became a form of national service:
held to be autonomous. We mustcultivatea sense of musicalcitizenship.Why
shouldnot the musicianbe the servantof the stateand
build national monuments ... ? (Vaughan Williams
National musics 1934, 10)
Music has always been implicated in the social and
The categorization of composers as 'universal'or
political world. Its power to affect, disturb, rouse
and subdue has been used to great effect by 'particularist'has, however, its own history. Indi-
viduals may have been placed in both groups at
monarchies, armies and governments throughout different or even the same times. While the early
history. In the twentieth century alone, art music
has served imperialism,nationalism and totalitarian-twentieth-century atonal avant-garde valued J S
Bach as a rational, mathematically precise composer
ism through the state's appropriation of such com-
of pure universal music, European nationalist
posers as Wagner in Germany, Shostakovich in the
Soviet Union and Elgar in Britain.As Edward Said composers promoted Bach as a provincial musician
serving the needs of his home community, a
(1992, 58) suggests,
counter-symbol to a supposedly dehumanizing
the closer one looks at the geography of Western moderism (McClary 1987; Revill 1991). Mach
cultureandmusic'splacein it, the morecompromised, (1994) similarly traces the redefinition of Chopin
the more sociallyinvolved and active musicseems. from a late nineteenth-century symbol of an
The place of music 427

independent Poland's contribution to universal cent of sales in Japan (15 per cent), 90 per cent of
Europeanculture into a socialist hero adhering to hissales in Germany (9 per cent), 73 per cent of sales
roots and refusing to 'conform to the bourgeois in the UK (7 per cent) and 87 per cent of sales
aesthetics of romanticism' (Stokes 1994, 14). in France (7 per cent) (Monopolies and Mergers
The issues of musical universality and nationalityCommission 1994).
raised here and in the preceding section have been If one looks beyond these indications of market
most famously addressed by Theodor Adomo power, then it is possible to discern a process of
(1976). For Adomo, art could show the liberating corporate restructuringwhich provides a fascinating
power of human creativity, as in works of case study of an industry being remade in line
Beethoven where the ethos of liberal humanism with corporate strategies informed by a discourse
found expression in every detail of the work's of globalization which seek to reap the benefits of
dynamic tonality and structural form. Modem merger and acquisition activity on a global scale
'culture industries' had destroyed such potential, (cf. Jones 1995; Roberts forthcoming). The bound-
channelling Utopian possibilities into passive con- aries of the music industry have become increas-
sumption (see also Chanan 1994; Norris 1989). At ingly blurred as powerful corporate interests have
the heart of Adoro's social criticism is a universal-acquired controlling stakes in record companies to
ist ideal of western classical music, whereby good exploit both horizontal and vertical integration
music directs its developing autonomy towards processes (The Economist1991; Negus 1992; Shuker
social critique, questioning accepted aural structures
1994). Economies of scope are exploited via hori-
and rejecting the ideologies and market mechanisms zontal integration through 'media synergy' (Negus
connecting music to bourgeois society. In this 1992, 5), linking musical output to other media such
context, Adomo privileges the atonal avant-garde, as movies or publishing to maximize corporate
dismissing as 'regressive' or 'false' a counter- revenue. Thus, the Warer record company is
tradition following Berlioz, Rossini, Verdi, Elgar, owned by US media conglomerate Time Warer,
Stravinsky..., in part because of its social speci- while German publishing company BertlesmannAG
ficity (Middleton 1991). For a sociology of music has its own record division, Bertlesmann Music
whose ultimate aim is social involvement, the result Group. Vertical integration has proceeded through
is a rejection of a certain form of musical socio- the purchase of large record companies by manufac-
spatiality. Adomo dismisses national musics, and turers of audio reproduction equipment. Philips
all popular musics, because of their particular Electronics controls Polygram International Group,
connections to place. while Thorn EMI owns the EMI-Virgin record
company.2 The fifth major, Sony, has pursued both
horizontal and vertical strategies, buying into the
Universal music II
record industry through its purchase of CBS records
The contemporary music industry
and moving into related forms of cultural pro-
The making of music is not only a cultural and duction through the purchase of Hollywood film
sociological process but an economic one. However, studios Colombia and Tristar.
economic geography - perhaps because of a linger- Horizontal and vertical strategies are linked in the
ing productivist bias - has yet to undertake a key role played by copyright legislation. Ownership
serious appraisal of the dynamics of the music of copyright confers the exclusive right to the
industry (see Sadler 1995). Trends of globalization, income derived from the exploitation of cultural
internal corporate restructuring and global-local products (Frith 1987), enabling the synergetic
relations are, however, as evident here as in other exploitation of cultural products across a range of
sectors. In 1992, the music industry generated media and playing a crucial role in the creation of
worldwide sales of US$29 000 million, dominated new formats for the reproduction of recorded music.
by just five major global corporations: Warners, By purchasing record companies and their copy-
Bertlesmann Music Group, Polygram International rights, manufacturers of audio equipment seek to
Group, EMI-Virgin and Sony. Seventy per cent of safeguard their investments in reproductive tech-
world record sales were generated in just five nologies. Consumers will buy new formats such as
national markets, each dominated by the 'majors' Digital Audio Tape and Digital Compact Cassette
which between them captured 73 per cent of sales in only if musical output can be played upon them.
the USA (31 per cent of the global market), 60 per By owning copyrights, manufacturing companies
428 Andrew Leyshon et al.
ensure the availability of musical 'software' for their web of mutuallydependentwork groupingsradiating
musical 'hardware'(Sadler 1995). out from multiple centres. (Negus 1992, 18; on
The restructuring of the music industry is not agglomerationand sub-contracting in the manufactur-
only a tale of globalization. The majors are reliant ing side of the industry,see Monopoliesand Mergers
on the global-local interplay of economic and cul- Commission1994)
tural processes. Music is realized as a commodity
through complex production filieres which lock Homogenized popular music?
production into particularlocations. The discovery,
nurture and recording of artistic talent is a trans-Whatever the global-local complexities of this
actional, information-rich and highly discursive organization, the emergence of a global capitalist
music industry might be seen as confirming
process. As a consequence, local social networks are
Adoro's worst predictions of commodified and
critical to global success. Negus (1992, 47) describes
the key role of A&R (Artist and Repertoire) staff incommercialized culture, with differences flattened
into global uniformity as a bad new wester pop
fostering
universal supercedes Adoro's good classical
a contact network covering a range of production version. For Negus (1992, 14), the
companies,minor recordlabels,publishers,managers
and lawyers... so that what is happeningacrossthe global productionand consumptionof popularmusic
countrycan be communicatedto and assessedby the in the 1990s is definedby the North AtlanticAnglo-
corporation. Americanculturalmovementsof sounds and images,
andEuropean,USA andJapanesedominanceof finance
Such contacts seek a benefit in tum: capitaland hardware.

They might enthusiastically'talk-up'certainartists... Audiences and markets are constituted for cultural
They will probe the large company for information production on a global scale. A 'global music' has
aboutthe type of acts andmaterialbeing sought.(ibid., emerged which sells across national and inter-
47) national cultural boundaries. Artists such as
Madonna, Michael Jackson, U2 and the Rolling
These organizational characteristicsplace a premium Stones
may be products of Anglo-American culture
on proximity and the creative part of the music but are, in another sense, almost
placeless, their
industry tends to be characterized by spatial product endlessly circulating the globe via world
agglomeration, concentrated in a handful of key tours or electronic media. Is Michael Jackson,
centres, notably Los Angeles and London (cf. Amin Adoro's nightmare made flesh?
and Thrift 1992). The five majors anchor the music Such a view of homogenized and commodified
business in these nodes, surrounded by a dense culture has been contested.
Arguing for 'oppo-
institutional matrix of smaller record companies and sitional
popular possibilities', Shuker (1994, 22)
related businesses, some independent but others
suggests that to consider the popular music
increasingly 'affiliated' to the larger companies audience as 'a mass of passive recipients is totally at
through a sometimes short-term equity, financial or variance with contemporary audience studies'.
contractual relationship (Monopolies and Mergers
Popular music is regarded as a potential site of
Commission 1994). Smaller record companies tend resistance. Local live music, while not necessarily
to act almost as centres of research and develop-
producing an alternative sound, may enable people
ment within the industry, spotting and cultivating to
experience music in distinctive localized ways
new trends and musical styles. Through such con- (Smith 1994; Street 1993). The audience for popular
tractual relationships, the majors are locked into music is not uniform but characterizedby
fragmen-
particularmusical economies. The globalized music tation, division and fracture. Some argue that far
industry is hence characterizedby from being a homogeneous cultural space, the
terrain of popular music is pitted with alternative
complexand confusing,continuallyshiftingcorporate of musical production and culturalresistance.
constellationswhich are difficultto plot, as deals spaces
We address such issues below through the examples
expire, new relationshipsare negotiated,new acqui-
sitionsmadeandjointventuresembarkedupon ... the of hip hop, rap and punk. First, though, we consider
distinctions between an inside and outside, and Will Straw's (1991) discussion of the 'alterative'
between centre and margins,has given way to a rock scenes found in most North American cities.
The place of music 429
Straw describes how infrastructuresof perform- such as Melle Mell, KRSI and Chuck D of Public
ance, production, transmission and distribution Enemy were heralded as Gramscian 'organic intel-
developed as local punk scenes stabilized in the lectuals', using their music to reflect upon and
early 1980s, fostering a variety of musical styles challenge social and economic decay, police oppres-
self-consciously local and historical. Such alternative sion and life in a drug-dominated social milieu
musical scenes were characterized by low turnover (Berman forthcoming). Rap gained a still more
and differed from their equivalents in the UK heightened currency of the real with the emergence
(considered below) in not necessarily judging suc- in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s of Gangster Rap,
cess on their music's 'capacity to register collective wilfully nihilistic, often misogynistic, and articulat-
change within the larger cultural space in which it ing the gang-conflict of south-central LA (de
circulates' (ibid., 377). The national musical space Genova 1995).
was sidestepped: There is, however, a problem with the standard
historical geography of rap, one common to many
In their relianceon small-scaleinfrastructuresof pro- place-based accounts of music. The assumption
duction and dissemination,these spaces are rooted that to place rap is to explain it risks denying the
deeply withinlocal circumstances,a featurecommonly
mobility, mutability and global mediation of musical
invokedin claimsas to theirpoliticalsignificance.(ibid., forms. Paul Gilroy (1993) argues for rap as a hybrid
378). cultural form, reflecting the increasingly mobile
flows of musical influence and tradition (Clifford
Straw (ibid.,380-1) argues that a stress on locality is
1992) and presents a different historical geography
accompanied by a complex historicity: more sensitive to movement across space. Gilroy
a varietyof differenttemporalities... come to coexist emphasizes the role of Jamaicanmigration to New
York in the 1970s, bringing to the South Bronx not
within a bounded culturalspace. There is often a
distinctivedensity of historicaltime within the per- only labour power but also the reggae sound
formancestyles of alternativegroups:most noticeably, system. The emphasis that this Jamaican cultural
an inflectionof older,residualstyles with a contempor- form placed upon the DJ or MC working over
ary irony which itself evokes a bohemianheritage... previously recorded music became a central com-
temporalmovementis transformedinto cartographic ponent in rap, which then took off through inno-
density. vations of scratching, mixing and sampling. Gilroy
(1992, 33-4) questions the geographical and ethnic
Straw interprets such scenes as sites of cultural bounding of rap:
resistance whereby relatively small, insular and
mainly white audiences assert their distinction from we have to askhow a formwhichflauntsandgloriesin
a hegemonic mainstream musical culture. A parallel its own malleabilityas well as its transnational
charac-
ter becomes interpretedas an expression of some
yet contrasting alternative space of music has
authenticAfrican-American essence?How can rap be
emerged through the predominantly black musical discussedas if it sprangintactfromthe entrailsof the
form of rap and hip hop, presented by practitioners,
blues?.
critics and intellectuals as a counter-hegemonic
music with a distinct and significant history and
geography. The 'standard'narrative, written in the Geographical interventions
main by African-American intellectuals in cultural
studies, places rap in a long line of black musical Rap and hip hop show not only the complex
forms, transported from Africa to America during geography of musical formations but also the
slavery and based upon antiphony (call and explicit engagement of popular music with issues of
response), and developing through a series of gen- place identity. We now expand on pop's geographi-
res thereafter (George 1992). This narrative locates cal interventions through two main themes: the
the time-space origins of rap in the South Bronx of generation of broad spatial and environmental musi-
New York in the late 1970s, defining rap as a very cal cultures, and the production and subversion of
local form of cultural expression (Allinson 1994), national identities.
with artists concerned to 'keep the music real' and Take the road song. The freedom and escape of
lyrics revolving around the concerns of African- the road song as commercial popular genre is
Americans living in inner-city New York. Rappers historically particular, driven by American youth,
430
generally white and male, speeding in postwar
affluence out of suburban confinement, modelling
their movement in part on a hobo culture moving
out of the necessities of poverty (Cresswell 1993;
Gold forthcoming; Jarvis 1985). The road song
shows clearly how an analysis of the power of
music cannot remain with words. Greil Marcus
(1989) provides a classic study of word and rhythm
in discussing Jonathan Richman's Road runner:the
song following and breaking a beat, describinga
drive in the way that, say, a crayon describes a line,
producing as it moves. The road song also has a
geography in the sense of its ability or inability to
travel across culturalboundaries. Can Route 66 find
a British equivalent? Billy Bragg has satirized the
movement of American mobility into English cul-
ture by translating 'Get your kicks/ on route 66'
into 'Go motoring/ on the A13'. The glamour of a
transcontinental highway doesn't quite work in
south Essex.
Music here becomes one dimension of a general
spatial culture of mobility. Popular music can also
consciously assert or subvert specific geographical
identities: global, national, local. Just as classical
composers have sought to produce a national music,
so pop has played out versions of the nation. We
can demonstrate this theme through the anti-
national music of punk.
From 1976 the music and style of London punk,
focused upon the Sex Pistols and their mentor
Malcolm MacLaren and inspired in part by the
spatial politics of situationism (Bonnett 1989;
Marcus 1989), sought to subvert through spectacle
and excessive sound. Punk gained momentum in
1977, playing on and disrupting the ground of
national identity in Queen Elizabeth II's Silver
Jubilee Year (Hebdige 1979; Savage 1991). The
summer of 1977 brought an orgy of patriotic
bunting and a little cultural disrespect went a long
way. At the end of May, the Sex Pistols released
God save the Queen,an anti-national anthem which,
had it not been for some none-too-subtle chart
doctoring, would have been the nation's number
one in Jubileeweek. The Jubilee celebrations marked
the coming of age of a growing movement through-
out the 1970s to 'save' a particularelite version of
English/British heritage (Wright 1985). The mon-
archy remained at that time the ultimate 'enchanted
glass' (Nairn 1988) for reflection upon British/
Englishness. 1977 (officialversion) confirmed that a
particular image of the nation was still alive and
street-partying in a time of economic crisis; 1977
AndrewLeyshonet al.
(punk version) noted that 'There's no future in
England's dreaming' (God save the Queen). In this
Jubilee soundtrack, current dreams were a head-in-
the-sand fantasy, doing nothing to forestall the
coming of a bleak future ('Your future dream is a
shopping scheme' (Anarchy in the UK)). The Sex
Pistols' songs, like Derek Jarman's film Jubilee,
inhabited, amplified and parodied a Jubilee of 'col-
lective forelock-tugging' (Savage 1991, 359) in part
by setting up an alternative national heritage of
anarchic protest, more commonly by refusing any
national symbolic coherence:
The very English phlegm which had served as a
powerfulphysiologicalmetaphorfor denialand need-
less stoicismwas now, literally,expelled in torrents.
(ibid.,373)
As if to (not) top the charts with a different kind of
anthem was not enough, on 7 June 1977 the Sex
Pistols gave an alternative pageant, taking a boat,
the 'Queen Elizabeth', along the Thames from
Charing Cross Pier. A streamer proclaimed to
London that 'Queen Elizabeth Welcomes Sex
Pistols'; the evening trip acted as 'a mocking pre-
cursor to the Queen's own river progress through
London on the 9th' (ibid.,358). An artery harnessed
by the monarchy to confirm its own national place
was given a rude transfusion. Arrests at the quay-
side completed the spatial theatre, the floating of an
anti-nation in the capital's heart.
While such sounds subverted the nation, in
another sense punk involved the reassertion of
placed identities. Where much white music of the
mid-1970s had aimed to locate itself in mid-Atlantic,
or in a mythic fantasy land, punk gave a different
phrasing to pop, not simply, as Greil Marcus (1989,
8) puts it, 'the sound of the city collapsing' but a
registering of music into other regions. Local scenes
were fostered by new cultural and economic struc-
tures;the national infrastructureof the socialist Rock
Against Racism (Savage 1991) and, crucially, the
development of independent record labels. A par-
ticular form of economic organization became part
of a cultural ethos of local control, producing and
selling music beyond the rules of the international
industry. In production and distribution, the site
of music was evident. Cities other than London,
notably Manchester, emerged as alternative centres
of production, although the tendency remained for
major commercial success to involve gravitation to
London. As noted earlier, many such labels have
The place of music
been gathered up in the majors' search for new
spaces of alternative music.
The place of such music was also often evident in
subject matter and accent. A preoccupation with
place connected elements of punk to earlier British
pop, though with a less homely geography. The
punk equivalent for the urban pastorals of Ray
Davies and The Kinks (much revisited today) was a
counter-pastoral city of violence, alienation, con-
crete, boredom, etc. In Britain, pop has often dealt
with and appealed through a definite geography -
urban, regional, rural,suburban- seeking to express
place in the fabric of musical language.3 In Scotland
and Wales, music following on from punk has often
sung from a strong and militant particular. In
Scotland, bands singing in Gaelic, Scots or an
accented English and on specifically Scottish themes,
have connected music into nationalist and/or
regionalist campaigns (Kane 1992; Sweeney Turner
forthcoming). One must be wary though of assum-
ing that because place may be of importance it will
necessarily be evident in the music's aesthetic. To
draw attention to place does not imply a revival
of Vaughan Williams-style folk theories whereby
music expresses a geographical essence (Boyes
1993). Indeed, such notions have themselves been
satirized in pop. Glasgow-based Postcard Records'
ironic touting in 1980 of the band Orange Juice
as the 'Sound of Young Scotland' played with
such assumptions; none of the classic codes for
Scottishness was musically in evidence.
In Wales in recent years, a network of music sung
in Welsh has simultaneously asserted and ques-
tioned senses of Welshness. At 'The place of music'
conference, Rhys Mwyn of Anhrefn showed a
video of the band's situationist-inspiredtakeover of
the summit of Snowdon. Anhrefn are based in
Caernarfon,sing in Welsh and perform their punk-
derived music around Europe. In June 1990, they
chartered the tourist train which runs up Snowdon
and played in the restaurant on the summit:
For once Snowdon was overflowing with LOCAL
people. The summitwas DOMINATEDby the noise
of a Welsh band. The predominantspoken language
was Welsh- for once the TOURISThad lost control.
(Mwyn 1993, originalemphasis)
The train had 'in effect been hijacked':
The numberof localpeoplewho took advantageof the
event to gain cheap access to the summit(i.e. those
who do not wish to/cannotwalk)was significant.(ibid.)
431
The video, excerpts of which were shown on S4C
News that evening, showed bemused mountaineers
wondering at the noise: 'Their tranquillity shattered
by the sound of angry pop songs'. Anhrefn
shattered the mountain's accepted soundtrack with
a sound which they asserted as being more of
the place than the National-Parked quiet valued
by the visitor.4
Conclusion
The papers in this collection pick up on many of the
above themes. Sara Cohen offers a study of music,
ethnicity and community through the memories of
one Liverpool man, Lily Kong addresses ideologies
of national music in contemporary Singapore, Ray
Hudson focuses on the possibilities for music in
alternative strategies of economic regeneration,
while Gill Valentine discusses the role of music in
producing transgressive spaces of sexuality. Issues
are also raised here which we have barely touched
on in this introduction. Valentine explores the
complex interplay of music and the body, while
both Hudson and Cohen bring out the detail of local
musical cultures, the way in which music, produced
through and producing space, may act as social
glue. In this introduction, we have tended to focus
on music which self-consciously plays above the
sounds of daily and nightly life, whether marking
itself out as superior or seeking to disrupt the
taken-for-granted and everyday. Cohen's paper in
particularbegins to take us into a more comfortable
soundworld, with music part of a complex local
aural ecology. Cohen cites Ruth Finnegan's (1989)
study of amateur music-making in Milton Keynes,
in whose 'variegated landscape' Colin Ward (1992,
120) has discerned anarchistprinciples of mutual aid
and a 'remarkablesocial fact: that music-making is,
more than anything else you can think of quickly,
the cement of society' (see also Russell 1987).
Whether or not one goes this far, there is a world of
music valued precisely for its qualities of comfort, of
familiarity,of consolation. This is not to say though
that comfortable music may be any less complex.
As Gill Valentine points out here in her study of
kd lang, pleasant sounds can give a different kind
of comfort to different listeners.
We would hope that this collection of papers,
combined with recent and forthcoming pieces on
the place of music, will open up a different set of
themes for geographical research and encourage
others to begin work.
432
Notes
1. Some of the other papers from the conference,
together with newly commissioned contributions,
will appear in a book on Theplace of music (Leyshon
et al. forthcoming). Our thanks to all the contribu-
tors to both conference and book for their help with
this project and to the Economic Geography Study
Group, the Landscape Research Group and the
Social and Cultural Geography Study Group for
supporting the conference, and Jacquie Burgess for
help in conference organization. Some people may
recall an evening meeting at the IBG conference a
few years ago at which some of these ideas were
first floated. Thanks to Stuart Corbridge and Gerry
Keams for some of the early initiative.
2. At the time of writing (July 1995), the board of
Thorn EMI had just announced its agreement in
principle to demerge the group's music and house-
hold rental business (FinancialTimes 22 July 1995).
3. Studies of emerging conservation in late 1960s
Britain could do worse than start with The Kinks'
1968 album The Kinks are the village green preser-
vation society.
4. The reaction at the conference to Mwyn's presen-
tation is discussed by Shurmer-Smithand Hannam
(1994), who recall a mixture of curiosity, condescen-
sion, opposition and marginalization on the part of
academics.
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