Local Music Scene Research Articles

‘Zero dollars and zero cents’: resourcefulness and DIY music scenes in rural and regional South Australia

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of ‘resourcefulness’ in small rural and regional music scenes. Drawing on case study fieldwork and ethnographic research in Port Lincoln, South Australia, I demonstrate the practices and tactics employed by participants in Port Lincoln’s local music scene. This research highlights the capacity of these scenes to ‘make do’ and adapt to change and disruption, while also emphasizing their agency. While rural and regional communities are often praised for their resilience, this rhetoric also effectively relieves policymakers of any urgency in addressing a lack of infrastructure and declining populations. As a result, the music industries in rural and regional Australia must adapt to the limitations of their existing infrastructure, capitalizing instead on strong community bonds to sidestep traditional, capitalist music industry structures. Music scenes in these regions are therefore characterized by a strong, grassroots but often fragmented approach to music scene production.

The creative city’s swan song? The individualisation of the music scene in Bologna, UNESCO City of Music

This paper extends the debate on medium-sized cities as active designers of place-specific neoliberal identities by reporting relevant findings from Bologna, European Capital of Culture in 2000 and a UNESCO City of Music since 2006. The study identifies the formal relationships of collaboration among local musicians as a relevant proxy to discuss the individualisation of the pop-rock music scene and its variations between 1978 and 2019. For this purpose, formal Social Network Analysis is combined with semi-structured interview analysis and archival research. The findings reveal decreased levels of social cohesion among artists and establishes a link between growing individualisation in the local music scene and an increasing tourist-orientation in the city.

Keep it locked (down): how Melbourne’s community radio stations performed scene functions in the context of the coronavirus pandemic

ABSTRACT While community radio scholars have been astute in documenting the democratic and socio-political value of community radio, there has been a lack of analysis towards its specifically musicalized role and the influence that has on local music scenes. Comparably, popular music research has tended to focus on physical, ‘bounded’ spaces such as band rooms and clubs. But what happens when these spaces cannot be accessed? By positioning Melbourne’s six COVID-19 response lockdowns as an ‘unbounded’ context, this article sets out to uncover which, and to what extent, scenic functions are performed by the city’s community radio stations. Focusing on three of the FM community broadcasters – PBS, 3RRR, and 3MBS – it draws on both community radio studies and scene theory to identify conceptual overlaps as well as a gap in pre-existing scholarship between the two. Scene and community are discussed in conjunction with the ideas of ‘space’ and ‘empowerment’, which I argue pertain equally to community radio studies and the scene concept. Based around these frameworks, an ethnographic study was conducted in order to collect qualitative data and best determine the scenic responsibilities upheld by community radio across Melbourne’s 267 days in lockdown.

The Production of Independent Popular Music during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Guayaquil City

This work delves into the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Guayaquil's music scene, with a focus on the adaptation strategies of independent music producers. Drawing on the concepts of musical scenes proposed by Bennet and Peterson (2004), the study reveals how a traditional local music scene shifted towards a virtual one, impacting various cultural circuits. The pandemic necessitated the migration of music production and recording processes to digital platforms, revolutionizing the modes of listening and audio production. The study employs a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory research approach, encompassing field research, netnography, and ethnomusicology. It offers a holistic understanding of how independent producers coped with the challenges of the pandemic and continued their work.

The Role of Beach Bars in Wrocław’s Local Music Scene

Abstract The paper discusses Wrocław’s beach bars, i.e. open-air riverside facilities which (as the name suggests) mostly possess artificial sandy beaches. This importance of this type of venue, relatively new in Wrocław, for the local music life is constantly growing. The text characterises these urban spaces (which have been of only marginal interest to Polish scholars to date) and defines their place in the city’s popular music scene in relation to traditional forms of that repertoire’s presence. In his survey of local musical practice, the author refers to the city’s sonic identity (soundscape), which is co-created by urban artists. The paper covers the period of the author’s field research in 2019–2021 as well as his later observations which indicate potential directions of beach bars’ development and confirm their growing role in shaping Wrocław’s local music scene.

Langgam Makassar: the adaptation of keroncong to local music in Makassar

The musical landscape of Makassar features a unique variant of keroncong known as "Langgam Makassar." Faced with limited references to keroncong before Indonesia's independence, musicians in Makassar encountered a dilemma that prompted inventive solutions in the development of keroncong. This led to the emergence of Langgam Makassar as a distinct variant, undergoing a process of adaptation to the local music scene. The research aims to illustrate and explore key aspects of Langgam Makassar, encompassing musicological, historical, and societal dimensions. The methodology employed in this study is an ethnomusicological approach involving direct observation of Langgam Makassar practices and performances. The findings were validated through interviews with Langgam Makassar musicians, recordings, and document analysis. This method offers an understanding of music within its societal context, exploring the reasons why keroncong in Makassar diverges and evolves into Langgam Makassar. The results demonstrate that Langgam Makassar is a product of the creativity of Makassar musicians who, despite limitations, successfully developed keroncong by incorporating elements from local musical traditions such as kelong, parambang, and losquin. These efforts contribute to the distinctive features of Langgam Makassar, establishing it as a novel variant of keroncong.

The ties that conform: Legitimacy and innovation of live music venues and local music scenes

This study investigates innovation within live music scenes by analyzing the extent to which live music venues, with varying types and levels of legitimacy, conform to or diverge from their counterparts in terms of band and artist selection. Based on a self-collected dataset with information on 175 live music venues and some 5000 performing acts they featured in a year, this study reveals that economic and cultural legitimacy have distinct effects on the innovativeness of live music venues. Specifically, it is observed that venues with low economic legitimacy but high cultural legitimacy, particularly regarding music genre, tend to exhibit greater levels of innovation. Conversely, venues possessing moderate economic legitimacy and high cultural legitimacy, particularly related to media attention, tend to display lower levels of innovation. The findings underscore the role of artistic and low-status venues in enriching the innovativeness and diversity of local music scenes. By considering various types and levels of legitimacy, this study contributes to the sociology of music and culture as it deepens our understanding of the intricate interplay between legitimacy and innovation within the context of cultural production.

Radical Solidarities in Punk and Queer Refusals of Safety and Inclusion Narratives in Planning

Recent call-outs against Ottawa punk venues have fueled public debates about safe space and the inclusivity of local music scenes. The Ottawa Music Strategy released in 2018 translated these debates into cultural development policy that links creative placemaking and safe space discourse. This article examines the civic response to activist call-outs by analyzing how the Ottawa Music Strategy integrates diversity and inclusion strategies into cultural policy, and how cultural policy and safe space policies intersect with cultural revitalization and economic development priorities in the Ottawa Official Plan. Punk counter-narratives developed through grounded ethnographic research in the Ottawa punk scene unsettle normative public safety narratives that frame punk spaces as unsafe. Place-based histories of anti-oppression tactics, logics, and traditions of punk space and activism contextualize alternative responses by local punk venues and promoters. Drawing upon literature in queer planning and queer geography and literature on intersections between radical queer and punk politics, spatialities, and identities, this article discusses punking planning in solidarity with queering planning through alternative community-based responses to issues of safety, inclusion, and participation.

Nocoastjazz

Nocoastjazz

Reparative Public Musicology: Empowering and Centering Community Knowledge Production through Counter-Storytelling Practice

Reparative Public Musicology: Empowering and Centering Community Knowledge Production through Counter-Storytelling Practice

Music as an Adaptation Strategy: The Hruby Family’s Voyage from Cehnice to Cleveland

Abstract This article looks at the history of the Hruby family as an example of how immigrants to the US adapted and acquired social status through music. The family originated in the village of Cehnice in South Bohemia. Frank Hruby, the family patriarch, started his career there as a musician playing in various circuses across Europe. During his travels, he visited Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1883 settled there with his wife and oldest son. Hruby joined several musical ensembles and gradually became an important personality in the local music scene. His children studied music as well and followed their father’s musical path. They moved from playing in marching bands to founding their own orchestra, which toured across the United States as well as Europe. Using archival sources, I show how musical versatility and professionalism helped the Hruby family to integrate into American society and to reach a certain social status. Their history also illustrates how the family’s music activities balanced their Czech heritage with the requirements of the new-world audience.

Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling by Harvey Ovshinsky

Reviewed by: Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling by Harvey Ovshinsky John McMillian Harvey Ovshinsky. Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. Illustrations. Paperback: $27.99. I recently came across a line by the epigrammatically clever writer Henry Oliver, who devised what he calls "The Fitzgerald Rule" (after the British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald): "You spot talent by looking at what people persist at, not what persistently happens to them." By that measure, Harvey Ovshinsky—a Detroit-born-and-raised writer and creator who has thrived in a variety of mediums—is talented indeed. In his warm and inviting memoir, Scratching the Surface: Adventures in Storytelling, Ovshinsky takes us behind the scenes of his work as a journalist, publisher, radio broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, and teacher. Along the way, he offers guidance and lessons for readers who may share his enthusiasm for storytelling. Ovshinsky's childhood was not a happy one. His socialist father, Stanford R. Ovshinsky, was an inventor who, among many other [End Page 153] accomplishments, helped pioneer the development of electric cars. But Stan fought frequently with his wife, Norma, and he kept a mistress before the couple finally divorced. (Ovshinsky refers to his parents' "Seven-Year War.") During this time, Ovshinsky showed early flashes of creativity. When he was in eighth grade, for instance, he co-created The Transylvanian Newsletter, a mimeographed fanzine for kids who liked horror and monster movies. After graduating from Mumford High School in 1965, Ovshinsky was forced to briefly live with his mother in Los Angeles, where he got caught up in the Sunset Strip's burgeoning post-beat bohemian scene. He watched avant-garde films at L.A.'s famed Fifth Estate coffee house, and under the tutelage of the legendary publisher Art Kunkin, he briefly worked at the nation's first underground newspaper, the Los Angeles Free Press. All the while, however, he pined for his previous life in Michigan. Upon returning to Detroit in 1966, Ovshinsky befriended radical artists John and Leni Sinclair and became the publisher of The Fifth Estate. This was another pioneering and provocative underground rag, which catalyzed political tumult and contributed mightily to the growth of Detroit's countercultural community. From my vantage as a historian of the Vietnam Era, the book's most impactful passages describe the Motor City in the late 1960s, when it was a hive of rebellious left-wing activity. Bands like the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges commanded the local music scene. The Detroit Artists Workshop organized concerts, plays, poetry readings, and gallery shows. The Fifth Estate operated out of a wooden building on Plum Street, the popular district for radical and countercultural youths. During the summer of 1967, Ovshinsky helped cover the Detroit riot, which was the bloodiest and most destructive upheaval to occur in the United States since the Civil War. All the while, Detroit's notorious Red Squad surveilled Ovshinsky and others for supposedly subversive political activities. But this was just the beginning of "Hippie Harvey's" career in a variety of creative mediums. At twenty-one, he became news director at WABX, a beloved community-minded, free-form progressive rock station. Later, he hosted popular talk shows at a different station. He produced award-winning documentary films, and he describes numerous setbacks, achievements, and electric moments with his interview subjects. He helped manage a Detroit public television station, and in 1986, after receiving a generous inheritance from his mother, he created HKO Media, a successful film and video production company. [End Page 154] A back cover blurb calls Scratching the Surface a "biotext," and that is a good descriptor. Across the book, a clear theme emerges: An artist should take risks. Ovshinsky was rarely afraid to plunge himself into unfamiliar creative projects. He learned by doing, adapting, and by frequently being way over his head. Ovshinsky reminds us that creative work can, at times, seem impossibly difficult. But one does not need deep reservoirs of talent to tell stories successfully, Ovshinsky says. "You just have to feel strongly about something, or have something important to say or get off your chest. And then you have to find the courage...

Evaluating the Authenticity of Naxi Music in Three Stages from the Perspective of Naxi Musicians: An Application of Lacan’s Mirror Stage Theory

How do people evaluate the transformation of a local music scene under tourism? Using Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage theory, Manuel Castells’ identity theory and Erik Cohen’s authentication theory, we build a framework to judge the authenticity of Naxi music in Lijiang, China, based on interviews, literature analysis and performance analysis. The conclusions are as follows. First, there are significant differences in authenticity among the three stages of Naxi music, as defined by Lacan’s theory. Second, we modify Erik Cohen’s authentication concept from the perspective of Lacan and read the spirit of persistence and innovation as “hot” authentication in the postmirror stage. Naxi musicians have clear project identity, as defined by Manuel Castells. Project identity means that they do not follow the mirror image of tourists blindly and pay attention to music and their own development. This research contributes to the sustainable development of intangible cultural heritage in tourism.

Kamerna muzika Silarda Mezeija i diferencirane podudarnosti fakturnih slojeva u njenom tonskom slogu (I)

The composer and violist Szilárd Mezei has made a significant, decades-long contribution to contemporary music in the national and international contexts. Although his artistic approach can be linked to the musical universe of György Szabados, an author who became one of the most influential creative figures in the Central European cultural space during the 1970s and 1980s, Mezei is a special phenomenon on the local music scene. With his ensemble mostly comprising prominent Novi Sad musicians, Mezei has a large number of discographic achievements to his credit in the space between composition and improvisation. Mezei divided his compositional opus into genre corpora of chamber and orchestral music, of which the review of chamber music is the subject of research in this paper.

From scene films to scene videos: Communities documenting communities

The activity of local music scenes has at times been documented by members of those communities in films that differ from commercial audio-visual products in their mode of production, their aesthetics and the way they represent the reality of musical activities. The collaborative character of local scenes and the DIY ethos of many of them help shape these works, where artistic intentions and experimentation coexist with their use for self-learning or the construction of personal memories. This article identifies the features of these scene films, both in documentary and fiction, and explores how technological changes and the digital age have influenced them.

There's Music to Play, Places to Go, People to See! An Exploration of Innovative Relational Spaces in the Formation of Music Scenes: The Case of The Hague in the 1960s

It was not so much Amsterdam, the cultural capital, but The Hague which had the most vibrant Beat music scene in the Netherlands in the 1960s. Part of the explanation for this lies in the presence of a sizeable group of youngsters who were born in the former colony the Dutch East Indies and who were already well acquainted with contemporary American popular music. This laid the foundation for the city's musical effervescence that contributed to placing it firmly on the map of the country's popular music history. We analyse the social and networked dimensions of this local music scene by departing from Howard Becker's concept of art worlds and relating this to concrete places where key actors could meet. We show how abstract agglomeration economies touched down in The Hague and, to be more precise, in a selected set of venues and clubs. We thus present a micro geography of innovative relational spaces where musicians, managers, gatekeepers and a motley crew of hangers-on met, exchanged knowledge, inspired and pushed each other to become (in cases even internationally) successful artists.

Melampaui Subkultur/Post-Subkultur: Musisi sebagai Jalan Hidup Kaum Muda

This study explores the struggle and its subjectivity among young people in Yogyakarta who choose being-musician as a way of life. Faced with limited job opportunity, they manage and keep alive their aspirations as mucisian in the local music scene. Their decisions to become musician embody a certain element of resistance against dominant view of work that encompasses the idea of a clear career projection. Even so, they do not always rely on the entrepreneurialism practice and do not neccesarily express class sentiment. Their diverse form of articulation is often constituted by construction of their subjectivity and lives trajectory. In this article, we use Hodkinson’s thought on ‘whole lives trajectories, Connel’s take on life in Global South and Beck’s theory on the redistribution of global risk to explore the subjectivity and plural voices of young musician in Yogyakarta. Based on the empirical data, we argue that throughout their lives trajectories, young musician intertwine with three social units that are unique to Global South context namely family, community, and wider social network either with subculture or post-subculture roots. In their lives trajectories—aside of those three social units—young musician are also faced with the redistribution of local and global risk.

Not our ‘Dunedin sound’: Responses to the historicisation of Dunedin popular music

AbstractThe music that was produced in Dunedin, New Zealand, during the 1980's occupies a unique place in the global indie music canon. In writing about this supposed ‘Dunedin sound,' critics and scholars alike have fixated on the city's remoteness: it is believed to be distant from metropolitan centres of music industry power and influence, and consequently supported a subversive and democratised local music scene. This article explores the implications of the ongoing historicisation of Dunedin's popular music scene along these lines, and highlights the ways in which the valorisation of the city’s musical heritage obstructs problematic power dynamics that impact the way young musicians in the city express place and musical identity. Our research applies an embedded participatory ethnography to unpack the ideological positions occupied by contemporary local musicians, and to critique factions within the contemporary musical scene in the city.

Archaeology, Heritage and Performance in the Perth Popular Music Scene

The city of Perth, Western Australia, has a long-running local popular music scene. Music is performed live in pubs and clubs, but it is often only a secondary reason for the running of these venues – consequently, the physical heritage of this music scene is often forgotten, with little memorialisation of the places and people involved in it. Archaeological investigation of one of these longer-running venues – the Fly By Night Club, a music venue from 1986 to 2015 – recovered a range of material culture that largely provides evidence of social encounters within the audience rather than of the many performers who have played at the Fly. The material evidence challenges the notion of modern music as capitalist commodity, including the idea of audiences as passive entities that exist in a subordinate position to performers, who occupy a privileged position within the paradigm of live music. Instead, the audience is shown to have considerable agency in the way it enhances its own enjoyment of live music, and to be an active participant in the social process of live musical performance.

In the Shadow of Los Angeles: A Review of Local and Regional Press Coverage of the Inland Empire’s Contemporary Music Scenes, B.C. (Before Coachella)

ABSTRACT While Southern California’s Inland Empire region receives copious press coverage for the annual Coachella Music and Arts and Stagecoach Festivals, this landscape, with its expansive deserts and suburban neighborhoods, has not always garnered such entertainment media attention. Prior to Coachella’s establishment in 1999, the local music scene rarely received substantial media recognition. This article reviews local press of the region’s music scenes from 1989 to 1999, offering historical perspectives via print media reports, interviews, and reviews. Several themes are presented, including scene identity, optimism, aggression, lack of venues, and comparisons to the Los Angeles music scene.