Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept [1st ed.] 9783030358716, 9783030358723

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Introduction (Christina Ballico, Allan Watson)....Pages 1-18
Re-Rewind: Heritage, Representation and Music City Aspiration in Southampton (Toby Bennett)....Pages 19-42
Community Well-Being, Post-Industrial Music Cities and the Turn to Popular Music Heritage (Sarah Baker, Raphaël Nowak, Paul Long, Jez Collins, Zelmarie Cantillon)....Pages 43-61
Beyond Nostalgic Havana: Music and Identity in the Fábrica de Arte Cubano (Thiago Soares)....Pages 63-79
The Place of the Beatles within Liverpool as a UNESCO City of Music (Michael Jones)....Pages 81-101
Chennai: Culture at the Cusp of Change (Charulatha Mani)....Pages 103-125
A Bottom-up Strategy for Music Cities: The Case of San Juan, Puerto Rico (Javier J. Hernández-Acosta)....Pages 127-143
Regulating the San Francisco Sound: How a Music Venue Crackdown Inspired Pioneering Advancements in Entertainment Regulation and Support (Jocelyn Kane, Alicia Scholer, Ben Van Houten)....Pages 145-165
The UK Live Music Census: The Value of Researching Live Music in Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, and Beyond (Adam Behr, Matt Brennan, Martin Cloonan)....Pages 167-188
Correction to: Regulating the San Francisco Sound: How a Music Venue Crackdown Inspired Pioneering Advancements in Entertainment Regulation and Support (Jocelyn Kane, Alicia Scholer, Ben Van Houten)....Pages C1-C1
Back Matter ....Pages 189-194

Citation preview

NEW DIRECTIONS IN CULTURAL POLICY RESEARCH

Music Cities Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept Edited by  Christina Ballico Allan Watson

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research Series Editor Eleonora Belfiore Department of Social Sciences Loughborough University Loughborough, UK

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research encourages theoretical and empirical contributions which enrich and develop the field of cultural policy studies. Since its emergence in the 1990s in Australia and the United Kingdom and its eventual diffusion in Europe, the academic field of cultural policy studies has expanded globally as the arts and popular culture have been re-positioned by city, regional, and national governments, and international bodies, from the margins to the centre of social and economic development in both rhetoric and practice. The series invites contributions in all of the following: arts policies, the politics of culture, cultural industries policies (the ‘traditional’ arts such as performing and visual arts, crafts), creative industries policies (digital, social media, broadcasting and film, and advertising), urban regeneration and urban cultural policies, regional cultural policies, the politics of cultural and creative labour, the production and consumption of popular culture, arts education policies, cultural heritage and tourism policies, and the history and politics of media and communications policies. The series will reflect current and emerging concerns of the field such as, for example, cultural value, community cultural development, cultural diversity, cultural sustainability, lifestyle culture and eco-culture, planning for the intercultural city, cultural planning, and cultural citizenship. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14748

Christina Ballico  •  Allan Watson Editors

Music Cities Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept

Editors Christina Ballico JMC Academy Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Allan Watson School of Social Sciences and Humanities Loughborough University Loughborough, UK

New Directions in Cultural Policy Research ISBN 978-3-030-35871-6    ISBN 978-3-030-35872-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35872-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 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: Alvaro D’apollonio / EyeEm / gettyimages Cover design: eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 Introduction  1 Christina Ballico and Allan Watson 2 Re-Rewind: Heritage, Representation and Music City Aspiration in Southampton 19 Toby Bennett 3 Community Well-Being, Post-Industrial Music Cities and the Turn to Popular Music Heritage 43 Sarah Baker, Raphaël Nowak, Paul Long, Jez Collins, and Zelmarie Cantillon 4 Beyond Nostalgic Havana: Music and Identity in the Fábrica de Arte Cubano 63 Thiago Soares 5 The Place of the Beatles within Liverpool as a UNESCO City of Music 81 Michael Jones 6 Chennai: Culture at the Cusp of Change103 Charulatha Mani

v

vi 

Contents

7 A Bottom-up Strategy for Music Cities: The Case of San Juan, Puerto Rico127 Javier J. Hernández-Acosta 8 Regulating the San Francisco Sound: How a Music Venue Crackdown Inspired Pioneering Advancements in Entertainment Regulation and Support145 Jocelyn Kane, Alicia Scholer, and Ben Van Houten 9 The UK Live Music Census: The Value of Researching Live Music in Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, and Beyond167 Adam Behr, Matt Brennan, and Martin Cloonan Index189

Notes on Contributors

Sarah Baker  is Professor of Cultural Sociology at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Her books include Community Custodians of Popular Music’s Past: A DIY Approach to Heritage (Routledge, 2017), Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum (Bloomsbury, 2019), and the edited collections Preserving Popular Music Heritage: Do-it-Yourself, Do-It-Together (Routledge, 2015) and The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (Routledge, 2018). Christina  Ballico is the Head of Department (Master of Creative Industries) at JMC Academy in Brisbane, Australia, as well as an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Her research examines music industries and scenes, music cities and cultural policy. Adam  Behr  is a lecturer in Contemporary and Popular Music at the International Centre for Music Studies, Newcastle University. He is a founder and director of the Live Music Exchange research group. His interests include the intersection of music and politics and his research has included work on the cultural value of live music, digitization, copyright and musical practice, and the relationships between venues, musicians and policy-makers. Toby Bennett  is a research fellow at City, University of London, working on the CICERONE project (EU Horizon 2020), which seeks to capture creative economy flows and production networks across the European continent. He is also a visiting lecturer at University of Westminster, vii

viii 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

contributing to the MA Music Business Management. As a postdoctoral researcher at Solent University, he led a project exploring Southampton’s popular music history in relation to its recent cultural development. His research explores cultural production at different scales, in relation to issues of work, organisation, policy, knowledge, and the use of critical/social theory. Predominantly this has concerned the music sector. He has a background working in and with recorded music industries and is currently converting his doctoral research—on employee experiences of digital transition in UK major record labels—into published work. Matt Brennan  is a Reader in Popular Music at the University of Glasgow. His most recent book, When Genres Collide, was named as one of Pitchfork’s “Favourite Music Books of 2017” and received an Honourable Mention at the Association of American Publishers’ 2018 PROSE Awards. He was Chair of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. He is currently completing a book on the social history of the drum kit (forthcoming Oxford University Press, 2019). He is a founder and director of the Live Music Exchange research group. Zelmarie  Cantillon is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Australia. Her research focuses on the intersection between spatiality, heritage, tourism and popular culture. She is the author of Resort Spatiality: Reimagining Sites of Mass Tourism (Routledge, 2019) and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Popular Music History and Heritage (Routledge, 2018) and Remembering Popular Music’s Past: Memory–Heritage–History (Anthem Press, 2019). Martin Cloonan  is Director of the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Turku, Finland. His research interests span the political economy of the music industries, as well as freedom of musical expression and policy. Jez Collins  is the founder and director of the Birmingham Music Archive C.I.C. a cultural and creative arts organisation that captures, documents and celebrates the musical culture of Birmingham and develops associated projects such as exhibitions, tours, talks, youth and community focused projects and broadcast media (films and radio). Collins is also a co-Director of Un-Convention C.I.C., a global grassroots music network that helps build sustainable music infrastructures. He

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

ix

is a Trustee of the National Jazz Archive, a member of the Advisory Board for the Community Archives & Heritage Group and sits on the Heritage Committee panel for Birmingham Civic Society. Javier J. Hernández-Acosta  is Director of the Business Administration Department at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón. He holds a PhD in Entrepreneurial and Managerial Development from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico and an MBA in International Business from the University of Puerto Rico. He also holds a postgraduate degree in Cultural Management and Policies from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México. He is also a musician (percussionist) and Executive Director for five years at a singer-songwriter’s cooperative: Taller Cé. In 2008 he founded Inversión Cultural, a social enterprise that supports cultural and creative industries. He has lectured and presented research in twelve countries and is the author of Profile of the Creative Economy in Puerto Rico (2013) and the book Creative Entrepreneurship (LaContraEditorial, 2016). Michael  Jones is Senior Lecturer in Music Industry Studies at the University of Liverpool. He directs two programmes: MA in Music Industry Studies and MA Classical Music Industry. He is a member of the city’s Beatles Legacy Group. This body was formed in direct response to recommendations made in the Report on the Economic Value of Beatles Tourism to the economy of Liverpool which he co-authored. He wrote, directed and produced a concert on George Harrison’s immersion in Indian classical music and this is due to tour nationally in the Autumn of 2020. He is currently working on a second, book-­length study of the music industry, also due for 2020. Jocelyn  Kane served as Executive Director of San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission for 14 years. In this role, she was charged with ensuring the health and vitality of indoor and outdoor entertainment venues and outdoor events. Along with daily regulatory concerns, her policy work includes the first legislative protections for nightlife businesses from new residential and hotel construction in the U.S.  She facilitated ongoing improvements to SF Bay Area late night/early morning transit. In addition, she improved San Francisco’s sound ordinances over the past 10 years to make them easier to understand and implement citywide. Kane co-produced the San Francisco Nightlife Awards (The Niteys) from 2012 to 2016, an annual award

x 

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

show which celebrated creative excellence and positive patron experience in San Francisco’s nightlife. Kane is now working as a senior consultant for the Responsible Hospitality Institute, helping cities in North America improve their nightlife policies and practices. Paul Long  is Professor of Media and Cultural History in the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, Birmingham City University. He has recently co-edited Cultural Intermediaries Connecting Communities: Revisiting Approaches to Cultural Engagement (Policy Press, 2019) with Phil Jones (Birmingham) and Beth Perry (Sheffield). He has written widely on popular music heritage. In conjunction with Birmingham Music Archive, he co-researched and curated an exhibition in May 2016 entitled ‘Is There Anyone Out There?’, which documented Birmingham’s independent music scene from 1986 to 1990. He is organising a public symposium as part of the Home of Metal music heritage programme in Birmingham. Charulatha  Mani  is primarily a frontline performer of Karnatik music (Voice) of South India. She was recently awarded a PhD from Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University for her innovative research on Hybridising Karnatik Music and Early Opera. She wears multiple hats as a performer, research scholar, and educator, and is passionate about the global impact of music-making across cultures. Raphaël Nowak  is a cultural sociologist and postdoctoral research fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research. He is the author of Consuming Music in the Digital Age (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), co-­ editor of Networked Music Cultures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), and co-­ author of Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum (Bloomsbury, 2019). Alicia Scholer  is Vice President of the Responsible Hospitality Institute. She is dedicated to helping communities plan and manage safe, vibrant and sustainable nighttime economies. Since late 2005, she has been responsible for communications, project management, event coordination, content writing and marketing collateral. Scholer has written SWOT analyses and action plan reports for more than twenty city assessments and seminars in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Resources she has developed include best practice guides for city planners, police, business district managers and hospitality industry professionals. Currently, she is focused on raising awareness of how cities

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

xi

can improve the nighttime social experience for women of different ages and life stages by analyzing safety, design and choice in a city’s life at night. Thiago Soares  is a professor at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Federal University of Pernambuco) (UFPE), in Recife, Brazil, and a researcher in the Postgraduate Program in Communication where he investigates the relations between pop music, performance and politics. From 2015 to 2017, he developed the project “Pop Music in Cuba: Facing Politics and Media” (supported by Brazilian Research Institute CNPq), which examines the fan culture of international pop artists in the Cuban context. He is a member of the Brazilian Society of Communication Sciences (Intercom) and the International Association for the Study of Popular Music—Latin America (IASPM). He is the author of books Música Pop en Cuba: Globalización, Territorios y Solidariedad Digital (Editorial UOC—Barcelona) and A Estética do Videoclipe (Editora UFPB—Brazil). Ben  Van Houten  became San Francisco’s first Business Development Manager for the Nightlife & Entertainment Sector in 2013, a position created after an economic impact study identified the $6 billion generated annually by San Francisco’s nightlife and entertainment industry. Houten is involved in a wide range of business assistance and policy efforts to support the industry and its 62,000 employees, with accomplishments including: managing a groundbreaking regional initiative to improve all-night transportation; developing legislation to create San Francisco’s first new full liquor licenses in over 70 years; working to foster compatibility between entertainment venues and residential developments; and leading capacity-building efforts to support the local music industry. Allan Watson  is a senior lecturer in Human Geography and a researcher in the Centre for Research in Communication and Culture at Loughborough University. Watson has published widely on the geographies of music in leading academic journals, and is author of Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio (Routledge, 2014) and co-editor of Rethinking Creative Cities Policy: Invisible Agents and Hidden Protagonists (Routledge, 2015) and Global City Makers (Edward Elgar, 2018).

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Our musical roots mural, Highgate. (Artist: Title; Photograph: Jez Collins) Fig. 7.1 Elements of a music city model. (Source: Developed by author)

52 134

xiii

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Christina Ballico and Allan Watson

Introduction In recent years, musical activity has come to be viewed as a potentially powerful driver for urban economic development and city-specific tourism. The term ‘Music City’ is now increasingly used across a range of cultural settings and in cities around the world (IFPI and Music Canada 2015, p. 10). In what can be viewed as an evolution to creative and cultural cities policy frameworks, cities around the world are now proactively looking to cultivate and support music activity in a bid to activate new forms of cultural and creative identity. Homan (2014, p. 149) argues that music is a “vital aspect in the construction of distinctive urban cultural identities and can produce vivid local narratives for regeneration and tourism”. To this end, music is now being purposefully positioned through urban policy as making a vital contribution to the cultural and economic fabric of a city, while also being viewed as a critical way through which

C. Ballico (*) JMC Academy, Brisbane, QLD, Australia A. Watson School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Ballico, A. Watson (eds.), Music Cities, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35872-3_1

1

2 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

both locals and tourists can gauge, and engage with, a city’s cultural and creative identities. Building on the rich legacy of cities ‘superstar’ cities such as Austin, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans and Seattle in the United States and Manchester and Liverpool in England, cities around the world are now looking to leverage their own musical identities—however big or small— as part of what has evolved into a global music cities movement. This movement encompasses a range of formalised branding and identification practices—such as UNESCO’s Cities of Music—and commercialised educational events such as the Music Cities Convention, alongside a range of ‘how-to’ manuals and city-specific studies which act as a first step in the development and implementation of Music City policies. These events and manuals examine and reflect on how music cities can be developed and sustained through a range of policy, heritage and tourism initiatives, while also considering music’s contribution to the city’s broader economy and tourism sectors and to community health and wellbeing. Where the so-called superstar music cities of the West emerged as a consequence of their rich and globally impactful music scenes, the global music cities movement has emerged in a much more purposeful fashion. Despite differences in their underlying approach, it is important to note the cross over, whereby many of the superstar music cities have actively leveraged their musical legacies for a range of economic, creative, cultural and tourism functions. One simply cannot, for example, escape the heritage of the Beatles when visiting Liverpool (Cohen 2017; Jones 2020), nor the country music heritage of Nashville, which is leveraged as part of its ‘Visit Music City’ tourism campaign and branding (www.visitmusiccity. com). Other cities, such as Austin, have dedicated ‘music offices’ which support and promote local music activity and engagement, while also being home to large scale music industry conferences and festivals (such as in Austin’s case, the annual South by Southwest event) which contribute strongly to both their musical reputation and their local economy (Loftsgaarden 2018). The overall aim of this volume is to provide a critical academic evaluation of the ‘Music City’ as a form of cultural policy that has been keenly adopted in policy circles across the globe, but which as yet has only been subject to limited empirical and conceptual interrogation. Recognising the multifaceted approach that is taken at a local and national levels, which considers a combination of the structure, function and scale of the music scenes in question, as well as the ways in which the movement is ­circulating

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

globally, this book brings together contributions that engage critically and constructively with the music cities paradigm, with a particular focus on case studies where the adoption has been, or could be, undertaken in a purposeful and proactive manner. The contributions in this volume consider the ways in which music cities strategies have, and have not, been adopted, and the benefits of doing so, as well as the challenges associated with engaging with such a movement. Indicative of the global impact of the movement, this collection includes a cross-section of perspectives from a wide range of cities and their associated creative, cultural and political contexts. In circulating the call for chapters for this collection, we received submissions from scholars working across wide-ranging fields and examining the music cities concept from an equally broad set of perspectives and angles. Indicative of the emergent nature of our understanding of this leveraging of music for urban economic development and city-specific tourism at a global scale, we received many submissions in which the concept of a Music City was interpreted as any city-based or city-specific music scene. We would suggest that the point of difference between music scenes and a ‘Music City’ is that in the case of the latter the city’s music activity is supported, leveraged and activated beyond its music scene and industry functions. To this end, music is recognised by urban policy makers for its legacy and heritage, its ability to contribute to the cultural and creative identity of the city and as a driver for tourism and for economic growth. As a result, music is supported through a range of policy and funding initiatives, while also forming a vital component of city branding and place activation strategies.

Music Cities: Origins and Definitions For Homan (2014, p.  149), the ‘Music City’, in both locational and industrial sense shares the ‘key ingredients’ of the creative city, namely: “specialist workers in a range of interdependent relationships which exploit geographical proximity and agglomeration, supported by other key institutions and infrastructure”. Therefore, while above we draw a distinction between music scenes and the ‘Music City’, in understanding the concept of a Music City it is useful to understand the structure and functioning of place-specific and, more closely, city-based music scenes. This is because their heritage and legacy, as well as the health and success of a city’s music scene, directly influence the viability of, and the approach taken to,

4 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

a­dopting a Music City framework. In considering this, we refer to the work of Johansson and Bell (2009, pp. 220–225) who posit that the structure and functioning of a place-based music scene are influenced by three broad aspects: the city’s geography, its economy and its culture. Within this, the structure, functioning and size of the scene and associated industry can be influenced by numerous smaller factors. These include the physical environment, the city’s size and relative location within and beyond its boundaries, the socio-economic environment, urban development strategies, healthy and supportive music industry infrastructure (including venues and media), cultural atmosphere, networks of learners, innovators and flows of tourism. It is also important, however, to consider the external mythologising that occurs in the cases of particularly musically innovative cities. It is this mythologising which has influenced the establishment of the ‘superstar’ music cities, while also influencing the success of the new, purposefully established sites which constitute the current global music cities movement (Ballico 2016; Byrne 2017; Cohen 2017; Stahl 2010; Wylie 2016). Reflective of the nuanced nature of music scenes, the factors set out by Johansson and Bell (2009) are, while interdependent, also weighted differently depending on the scene in question. This nuance is similarly revealed in the ways in which music cities frameworks are advised and adopted around the world and the ways in which cities are encouraged to support and facilitate music activity even if they do not wish to formally brand themselves as a ‘Music City’. Cutting across this is the vital role a city’s informal creative economy and live music ecology play in the structure and functioning of a place-specific music scene, as well as its centrality to the enacting of a Music City framework. Despite the ‘boom’ in live music activity and the increasing importance of live music to the viability of musicians’ careers in the digital age (Holt 2010), challenges associated with the sustention of live music venues in light of ongoing gentrification and urban renewal (cf. Ballico and Carter 2018), reveal some of the contradictory tendencies inherent in the functionality of the music cities framework and also some of its limitations. Considering this and recognising the rich history of superstar music cities, the concept of a Music City as applied in this collection, are those cities which have actively engaged the adoption of a music cities framework, those identified as having the potential to benefit from adopting such a framework, and/or those have been designated a UNESCO City of Music. For these cities, music is recognised as making or having the

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

­otential to make considerable contributions beyond the local music p industry and associated scenes, contributing to both their broader creative and cultural identity and to wider, non-music economies. To this end, music activity is recognised by urban cultural policy makers in particular places for its role or potential in supporting and facilitating job creation, a healthy night-time economy, tourism, urban regeneration, community wellbeing and social inclusion which results in support and intervention from a combination of local and municipal governments, who provide a range of practical, financial, policy, heritage and based support in order to facilitate this (Sound Diplomacy 2019, pp.  2–3; IFPI/Music Canada 2015). However, as Holt and Wergin (2013) note, the analysis of popular music in contemporary cities can also not be separated from evolving post-­ industrial issues of regeneration, gentrification, city marketing and festivalisation. This important recognition has exposed the Music City paradigm to the same critiques regarding negative social impacts that have levelled at creative cities policies more broadly. We return to this issue in the following sections.

Music Cities Policy Goes Global In recent years, what is perhaps most notable about the ‘Music Cities paradigm’ (Baker 2016) is the way in which it has become increasingly globalised, with urban cultural policy interventions at the local level being pursued in cities right across the world. While the reasons for doing so often involve a complex set of internal and external motivating factors, there have been three significant catalysts driving this movement. The first is the UNESCO City of Music accreditation, which began in 2006. This accreditation, which forms a component of the organisation’s broader Creative Cities Network, requires a city to demonstrate six characteristics in order to be granted accreditation. These characteristics include music heritage, as well as a history of music-making, music education, community involvement and regular local and international music events (Baker 2019). The list of cities that have been awarded the accreditation is both inclusive and geographically diverse, with only a few cities that would be instantly recognisable outside their respective territories as having an important musical heritage. The list includes cities as diverse as Auckland (New Zealand), Adelaide (Australia), Liverpool (UK), Kansas City (USA) and Kingston (Jamaica) through to Tongyeong (South Korea), Kinshasa (Republic of Congo), Varanasi (India) and Harbin (China). Only

6 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

the UK, Germany, Columbia and the Republic of Congo have more than one award. The second catalyst has been the hugely influential report produced by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) together with Music Canada in 2015, entitled The Mastering of a Music City: Key Elements, Effective Strategies and Why it’s Worth Pursuing. It is telling with regard to the globalisation of the Music Cities paradigm that the opening paragraph of the report states that it is “intended as a universal ‘roadmap’ to create and develop Music Cities anywhere in the world” (2015, p. 10), and further, that the report claims that this ‘roadmap’ can be “applied equally to well-established Music Cities seeking to further enhance their music economies and to nascent, aspiring Music Cities” (ibid.). Given that the report promises a ‘hit parade of benefits’ from developing as a Music City, it is understandable why this paradigm has been seen to be so appealing for urban cultural policy makers. While social, cultural and artistic benefits are noted, it is unsurprisingly the economic benefits that are writ large in this report. Music is noted to be a “significant driver of economic activity, employment, exports and tax revenue”(2015, p. 22) from direct spend, while music tourism is seen to be a key factor in both generating economic benefits from live music, as well as generating additional spending beyond music. There are now numerous examples of cities in which live music policies seek to promote vibrant local music scenes (including festivals), or which draw on their music heritage in an attempt to draw musical tourists. We are beginning to see more robust quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence of the level of success of such policies: see, for example, the Wish You Were Here report on music tourism’s contribution to the UK economy (Visit Britain/UK Music 2013), and more recently the Valuing Live Music report based on the 2017 UK Live Music Census (Webster et al. 2018). Third, as Bennett (2020) argues, this new policy paradigm has been made mobile through global networks of business and state expertise by “consultants and intermediary actors operating through the global assemblage of cultural economy knowledge and expertise, a plethora of advocacy reports and action plans commissioned by a variety of city planners, ‘task forces’, and specialist agencies” (2020, pp. 19–42). One of the most significant factors in the mobility of Music Cities policy, and sitting across the above two catalysts, has been the emergence of the Music Cities Convention, an internationally engaged annual event staged by Sound Diplomacy, an organisation which advises cities and governments across a

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

range of place activation, tourism, and urban planning initiatives in order to support and leverage city-specific music activity. Similar to the IFPI/Music Canada report, Sound Diplomacy’s The Music City Manual (2019) provides advice and practical solutions for cities wishing to support music activity in various ways and at various levels, including beyond the desire to brand as a ‘Music City’, putting forth the need to have integrated, cross-sectional approach to supporting music activity. This includes engaging a range of government departments and stakeholders from both within and beyond the music industry, while also allowing for ad hoc policy amendments as needed (Sound Diplomacy 2019, pp. 12–13). Taken collectively, the establishment of UNESCO’s Cities of Music accreditation, the development and implementation of the IFPI-Music Canada report strategies and the emergence and continued growth of the Music Cities Convention, are indicative of the significance of global nature of both the music cities movement and the similarities to approach in supporting and leveraging music activity within place-specific contexts.

Discontents Yet, the adoption of Music City policies is not without its contentions and issues. Perhaps most problematic are the indirect economic benefits— beyond music itself—that are promised by those promoting this agenda. Within the Mastering of a Music City report especially, the deep penetration of Richard Florida’s Creative Class thesis is clearly displayed. The introduction of the report, for example, suggests that: A vibrant music economy drives value for cities in several important ways: job creation, economic growth, tourism development, city brand building and artistic growth. A strong music community has also been proven to attract other industrial investment, along with talented young workers who put a high value on quality of life, no matter their profession. (IFPI and Music Canada 2015)

Indeed, Florida himself is quoted within the report as noting that music can be a big part of the ‘recruitment success’ of cities competing for global talent. While it is beyond the scope of this volume to develop a detailed critique of the Creative Class thesis—it has been heavily critiqued elsewhere for both its weak empirical foundations and potentially gentrifying outcomes (cf Borén and Young 2013; Pratt 2008; Van Holm 2015)—it is

8 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

noteworthy here that the global policy mobility of the Music Cities paradigm is strongly intertwined with the global mobility of cultural policy more widely (Homan et  al. 2013). Indeed, for Homan et  al. (2013, p. 110) “the cultural or creative city cannot be imagined without music”. Ironically enough, however, as Grodach (2013) outlines in the case of Austin, Texas—the self-proclaimed “live music capital of the world”—the pre-eminence of music has been challenged by policy discourses centred on the creative city thesis as adopted by competing development and cultural policy interests. Elsewhere it has been argued that while policies may be enacted to encourage centre development and place activation, such strategies are not always able to fully circumscribe the effects of urban development, or policies which have an indirect impact upon the functioning of music scenes (Ballico 2016; Ballico and Carter 2018). As Holt (2013) argues in his account of rock clubs in Berlin, Copenhagen and New York, the social changes associated with gentrification have implication for music cultures and across genre scenes and neighbourhoods. This is perhaps most evident in the case of small clubs that are priced out of inner-city areas by real estate prices or by noise control and liquor regulations that respond to the increasingly residential nature of the inner city (Homan 2014, 2019). In other cases, restrictive and reactive liquor regulation, which impacts upon the ways in which live music venues are able to operate, coupled with urban regeneration strategies undertaken to address housing affordability and access issues, cannot be fully neutralised through positive place activation strategies (Ballico 2016; Ballico and Carter 2018). This presents a challenge for local policy makers in the sense that, given the way music is embedded within other kinds of leisure activities and industries, “the most relevant policies for live music may not appear to be particularly concerned with music at all” (Sutherland 2015, p. 97). In the long term, then, there exists the potential for Music City policies to have unintended yet detrimental impacts on local music scenes where music is viewed only as ‘an essential amenity’ in support of wider creative city strategies focused on high-tech economic development and urban regeneration (Grodach 2013). Further, as Holt and Wergin (2013, p. 13) point out, in Austin’s case the connection between live music and economic development “often serves to erase or ignore the city’s racial, ethnic, cultural, and musical diversity”. This is indicative of a broader issue in that policy makers may imagine the musical ‘sound’ of a place in very instrumental ways that effectively act to erase heterogeneity with urban musical scenes.

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

Critically Evaluating a Global Policy Concept Given the current momentum of the Music City movement and its global cultural policy mobility, and in light of some of the discontents as described above, a critical evaluation is both necessary and timely. There are many aspects to consider in such an evaluation, in particular: the origins and development of the concept; its implementation in city-specific contexts; the pressure points which exist within implementing and supporting such a dynamic framework; and how to increase awareness amongst policy makers of the types of negative impacts that may need to be mitigated. Yet, critical academic interrogation of the Music Cities paradigm and its associated policy vehicles remains relatively sparse. Perhaps the most comprehensive attempt to date to engage with the music cites paradigm is Andrea Baker’s recently published The Great Music City: Exploring Music, Space and Identity (Baker 2019), which applies a number of algorithms to a ‘purposive case study’ of Melbourne, Austin and Berlin. While one may be critical of the use of algorithms to evaluate something as complex as urban cultural policy (especially when one algorithm is based around Florida’s problematic linking of talent, tolerance and technological development), the emphasis placed on urban sociability as an important alternative dimension to the dominant urbanist discourses framed around the political economy is to be commended. Further, and very importantly, Baker argues that music is an important part of the urban cultural economies of cities right across the world, with local and regional music styles a ubiquitous part of everyday life in public, private and virtual spaces. She notes how “these nonwestern cities also influence the social, aesthetic and symbolic practice production of global music, but to date, have been largely neglected in music cities debates” (2019, p.  310). Echoing Baker, we argue that moving forward it is crucial that interrogation of the music cities paradigm goes beyond the ‘superstar’ or ‘global’ music cities of the West. Our own volume consists of eight substantive chapters that have been assembled for their shared concern with providing in-depth examinations of the Music City paradigm in the context of particular cities. Each chapter contributes not only to our aim of exploring how local geographical, social and economic contexts and particularities shape the nature of Music City policies (or lack thereof) in particular cities, but also to our call to broaden academic interrogation of music cities beyond the ‘usual’ suspects. While such cities feature in this volume—specifically San Francisco

10 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

and Liverpool—the contributions to this volume consider cities as diverse as Chennai, Havana and San Juan, as well as cities in the west—Birmingham and Southampton—where musical heritage and cultural identity do not necessarily play easily to the music cites paradigm. Our contributors include both academic and professional practitioners, and taken together, the collection represents one of the most diverse attempts yet to critically engage with music cities as a global cultural policy concept. In Chap. 2, Toby Bennett (2020) begins our volume by posing the crucial question “What kind of a city is a Music City?” His answer is that there is no single, final answer, blueprint or original, and that as many ‘music cities’ exist as there are possibilities of encountering, interpreting, nurturing and remaking music itself. Set against a backdrop of the proliferation of Music City discourse, Bennett outlines two distinct economic imaginaries, where UNESCO’s ‘Cities of Music’ development frame is increasingly paralleled and challenged by a more recent incarnation, ‘Music Cities’, aligned more closely with the normative aims of mainstream national and international music industries. He explores the relevance and the negotiation of these two imaginaries in the specific case of the city of Southampton, UK, where recent cultural development strategy has evolved to include an aim to become a recognised ‘Music City’. Outlining the potential and the challenge of recognising the cultural embeddedness of local music economies, particularly through the common City of Music/Music City frame of ‘heritage’, Bennett considers the difficult and diverse work of recognising and remembering local music histories in unfolding a present-day cultural economy. Contemporary cultural practitioners, he argues, can struggle to connect to, or distinguish themselves from, officially sanctioned history, while marginal counter-­ histories can struggle for legitimacy to participate in reshaping a city’s cultural identity. Thus, he argues that Music City frameworks would do well to explore how new archival infrastructures might recover and proliferate local histories and memories, opening them up to be remade as living cultural economies. In Chap. 3, Sarah Baker, Raphaël Nowak, Paul Long, Jez Collins and Zelmarie Cantillon (2020) interrogate how a turn to popular music heritage can represent an important strategy for reinstating a sense of well-­ being for disenfranchised communities in post-industrial cities. Focusing on a case study of the city of Birmingham, UK, Baker et al. consider the potential of popular music heritage initiatives to enhance community members’ participation within the socio-cultural (online and offline)

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

spaces of the city. Through their case study, they highlight how heritage initiatives can have a positive impact on individuals within a community impacted by industrial decline. The turn to popular music heritage, they argue, can enhance civic pride through the creation of spaces that foster a greater sense of well-being and attachment to place among the community of interest involved in such heritage activity. Perhaps most significantly, they demonstrate how a bottom-up approach to the making of a ‘Music City’ can be adopted that is concerned with the connection between the community and culture and what that delivers beyond the rhetoric of local councils in pursuit of economic advantage. The concept of ‘Music City’, they argue, can be enriched by incorporating the actual effects of a turn to music in the rebranding of a city to its local community, contributing to a local sense of belonging, trust, reciprocity and identity. Thus, they argue that Music City policies need to “recognise that the role of culture in economic regeneration is situated within the context of meaning-making in the everyday” (Perry and Symons 2019, p. 73). In Chap. 4, Thiago Soares (2020) examines the role of specific and purpose-built spaces for being the catalyst for a music cities movement. Exploring the case of Havana, Cuba, he points towards the creation of the Fábrica de Arte Cubano in 2008—a community project space in Havana that gathers contemporary music, art and performance artists—is an indicator of the Cuban capital’s transformation into a Music City. Soares describes how Cuba’s musical development has been strongly anchored in the presence of the State and policies that preserve Afro-Cubanness and music genres such as son, rumba and salsa, but that the more recent reorganisation of the economy towards tourism and partnerships with private enterprise positions Fábrica de Arte Cubano as a space to question the nostalgic ideals of Havana and to negotiate with global and cosmopolitan worldviews. In this sense, Fábrica de Arte Cubano represents an important environment for the construction of the ideals of modernity on the socialist Caribbean island, situated within an increased offering of cultural and musical attractions in Havana. Through providing a space for expressions of contemporary music, Soares argues, the Fábrica de Arte Cubano reinforces the role of Havana as a Music City by ‘youthening up’ the music experiences in the metropolis and inserting the Cuban capital in a more globalised and cosmopolitan tourism itinerary. More broadly, the chapter considers the challenges surrounding the development of Music Cities in Latin America, including existing political and economic vulnerabilities in Latin American metropolises.

12 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

In Chap. 5, Michael Jones (2020) examines the legacy of the Beatles in the development of Liverpool as a Music City. Liverpool represents one of the earliest examples of a city drawing on its music heritage for economic gain and is one of the most researched and written about examples of a Music City. However, as a member of the city’s Beatles Legacy Group and co-author of the report Beatles Heritage in Liverpool and its Economic and Cultural Sector Impact, Jones is able to offer his own unique perspective on this example. Giving critical consideration to the place of the Beatles within Liverpool as a UNESCO City of Music, he argues that in formulating, sustaining and developing a cultural strategy around music and regeneration, the relationship between Liverpool and the Beatles (and the Beatles and Liverpool) represents a constant challenge. While Liverpool became saddled with a Beatles-led image of vitality and optimism, he points to the fact that from the 1960s onwards its reality became one of shrinking population, contracting resources and mounting social deprivation and conflict. Jones argues that while the more recent reinvention and reassertion of the city have not been Beatles-led or even Beatles-focused, Liverpool’s challenge has been to publicly re-embrace the group while resisting an adjunct status in relation to them. Thus, Jones explores how the city has found a new sense of itself and a place for the Beatles within that new sense. He argues that the city’s future prosperity and UNESCO City of Music status depend on developing a creative voice to match the creativity of the Beatles, but also that formulating a creative voice will in part derive from how effectively the legacy of the Beatles is understood, managed and developed. The chapter thus provides an important and critical account of the sorts of complexities inherent in utilising musical heritage as a driver for contemporary regeneration. In Chap. 6, Charulatha Mani (2020) offers a critical appraisal of the current musical context in the South Asian city of Chennai, India. Drawing on her experience not only as an academic but also as a musical performer for over two decades within the Chennai music scene, Mani examines the organisational structures that underpin the city’s designation as a UNESCO City of Music, juxtaposing these structures against the dominant discourse around Music Cities emerging from the West. As she demonstrates, despite the city’s City of Music designation, challenges remain in the city’s capacity to reach its full potential under this designation. Drawing on empirical material from interviews with Chennai-based artists, art critics and art-sector entrepreneurs, as well as upon personal experience and reflections and covering a range of themes from funding and

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

tourism to music education and heritage, she gives us a rich sense of Chennai as a Music City. Chennai’s Music City ‘avatar’, she argues, is concentrated in certain venues, most clearly visible at certain times of the year, supported primarily by certain kinds of private business, lacks substantive governmental support and caters primarily to an upper class and middle-­ to-­older age group audience. Thus, she argues that diversification of spaces and audiences, coupled with multi-level government support, are two potential strategies to ensure that the city’s musical potential becomes sustainable and translates into an all-year-long inclusive industry translating into employment, economic growth and socio-cultural impact. Perhaps most importantly, Mani’s account demonstrates the importance of taking into account unique local social and creative geographies when developing Music City policies; Chennai’s unique heritage and home-­ grown musical cultures, she argues, is the crucial underpinning of any policy development. In Chap. 7, Javier J.  Hernández-Acosta (2020) notes how for the Caribbean region, music represents one of the primary assets by which cities can amplify their cultural capital. Focusing specifically on Puerto Rico and its capital city, San Juan, Hernández-Acosta argues that despite being recognised internationally as a mecca of Latin music and being at the centre of new urban music movements in the region, there is no formal strategy to promote Puerto Rico as a music destination. Yet, he also points to the development of live music scenes that could help to articulate such a strategy. Live music venues for popular and traditional music, festivals, tourist routes based on music history and music education opportunities, he argues, represent an interesting case study for the development of music cities through entrepreneurship. Accordingly, Hernández-Acosta points to Puerto Rico as a case study of a bottom-up design that facilitates the role of government and related entities in ‘connecting the dots’. Further, the chapter presents Puerto Rico as an interesting case study because, despite being considered a mecca of Latin music, direct economic impact is not necessarily realised within the city because many renowned artists reside outside of Puerto Rico. Acosta argues, however, that if an emphasis is placed on a long-term strategy for a Music City, which coordinates the local scene and positions it internationally, that impact can be achieved locally through cultural tourism. While recognising the importance and role of music heritage within the local community as one of the key elements for the development of a Music City, Acosta also argues that the presence of musical heritage must be anchored in two more

14 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

c­ ontemporary components: festivals as events that serve as an anchor for local and international visibility; and a system of cultural venues for live music that guarantees the circulation of talent and provokes a better balance between supply and demand. Both are necessary he argues if impact is to be achieved through cultural tourism and subsequently sustained as part of a longer-­term strategy. In Chap. 8, Jocelyn Kane, Alicia Scholer and Ben Van Houten (2020) highlight that while the City and County of San Francisco has not formally designated itself as a Music City, or adopted an overarching citywide music-focused strategy; the city has long possessed the thriving music scene, artists and audiences that make a music community vibrant. The San Francisco story, they argue, reveals how grassroots advocacy can catalyse the organic development of several elements and policies that, with the benefit of hindsight, have now become recognised as key Music City strategies. They provide a detailed account of how, over the last twenty-five years, San Francisco has transformed how it engages the music and nightlife industry, resulting in an internationally acclaimed model for regulating entertainment and providing business development support to assist this vital sector. Significantly, they highlight the value of industry collaboration and of cooperation across the sector in improving regulatory and business environments and achieving political support. Further, they highlight how, even without an official Music City designation, the City has cemented its commitment to supporting music in its Charter and across its municipal codes through significant policy improvements to support music and nightlife, including having adopted the first ‘agent of change’-style legislation of any municipality in the United States in order to preserve access to a variety of quality live music spaces and places. Wrapping up the collection, in Chap. 9, Adam Behr, Matt Brennan and Martin Cloonan (2020) explore whether or not it is possible to meaningfully apply the concept of a Music City across multiple sites and local policy contexts in the UK. As they argue, the rise of live music censuses as a tool for illustrating the value of music to policymakers has also coincided with a challenging period for live music venues in urban areas, particularly small venues and clubs. In the UK, for instance, there have been numerous media reports of British music venues closing as a result of property development and gentrification of once lively musical neighbourhoods. This is due not only to developers buying and converting former venues into flats, but also due to development around venues and the increasingly rigid noise regulations enforced by local authorities. A live music census is

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

not, however, just an academic exercise. It has potential for impact on how policymakers—local, national and international—understand, value and ultimately encourage live music to flourish in cities. Considering the centrality of policy and live music activity to the music cities frameworks, Behr et al. question the ways in which findings from these censuses can align with policy making and in turn, the music cities movement.

Looking Forward Indicative of the ways in which the music cities movement—taken in its broadest sense—continues to gain momentum during the period in which we were putting this collection together, more cities around the world have begun to proactively brand themselves as ‘music cities’, while of the 66 cities designated as UNESCO Creative Cities on 30 October 2019, 15 were cities of music. To this end, it is important to recognise that this volume acts as a ‘snapshot’ of what is a dynamic movement at a particular moment in time. Further, while this volume gives the most diverse account yet of the music cities paradigm as it is applied to cities across the world, we are aware that it is by no means comprehensive. Music cities policy has expanded to all areas of the world, and in many different guises; as such, it was, and could never be possible to cover the diversity of national and local contexts in this one volume, let alone provide a definitive account of what constitutes a ‘Music City’. Recognising these limitations, Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Cultural Policy Concept is intended to be a launching pad for an ongoing dialogue around, and a much more extensive interrogation of, the ways in which music continues to be leveraged for urban economic development and tourism across the world, and its associated outcomes.

References Baker, A. (2016). Music Scenes and Self Branding (Nashville and Austin). Journal of Popular Music Studies, 28(3), 334–355. Baker, A. (2019). The Great Music City: Exploring Music, Space and Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Baker, S., Nowak, R., Long, P., Collins, J., & Cantillon, Z. (2020). Community Well-Being, Post-industrial Music Cities and the Turn to Popular Music Heritage. In C. Ballico & A. Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 43–61). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

16 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

Ballico, C. (2016). Live Music, Liquor and the City: An Examination of the Influence of Liquor Regulation on Place-Specific Live Music Activity. CIDADES, Comunidades e Territórios, 32, 103–117. Ballico, C., & Carter, D. (2018). A State of Constant Prodding: Live Music, Precarity and Regulation. Cultural Trends, 27(3), 203–217. Behr, A., Brennan, M., & Cloonan, M. (2020). The UK Live Music Census: Making Live Music Count in Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford, and Beyond. In C. Ballico & A. Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 167–189). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, T. (2020). Re-rewind: Heritage, Representation and Music City Aspiration in Southampton. In C.  Ballico & A.  Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 19–42). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Borén, T., & Young, C. (2013). Getting Creative with the ‘Creative City’? Towards New Perspectives on Creativity in Urban Policy. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(5), 1799–1815. Byrne, D. (2017). How Music Works. Three Rivers Press. Cohen, S. (2017). Decline, Renewal and the City in Popular Music Culture: Beyond the Beatles. Routledge. Grodach, C. (2013). City Image and the Politics of Music Policy in the “Live Music Capital of the World”. In C. Grodach & D. Silver (Eds.), The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy. London: Routledge. Hernández-Acosta, J. J. (2020). A Bottom-Up Strategy for Music Cities: The Case of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In C.  Ballico & A.  Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 127–143). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Holt, F. (2010). The Economy of Live Music in the Digital Age. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 13(2), 243–261. Holt, F. (2013). The Advent of Rock Clubs for the Gentry: Berlin, Copenhagen and New York. In F. Holt & C. Wergin (Eds.), Musical Performance and the Changing City: Post-industrial Contexts in Europe and the United States (pp. 153–177). London: Routledge. Holt, F., & Wergin, C. (2013). Introduction: Musical Performance and the Changing City. In F. Holt & C. Wergin (Eds.), Musical Performance and the Changing City: Post-industrial Contexts in Europe and the United States (pp. 1–26). London: Routledge. Homan, S. (2014). Liveability and Creativity: The Case for Melbourne Music Precincts. City, Culture and Society, 5, 149–155. Homan, S. (2019). ‘Lockout’ Laws or ‘Rock Out’ Laws? Governing Sydney’s Night-Time Economy and Implications for the ‘Music City’. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 25(4), 500–514. Homan, S., Cloonan, M., & Cattermole, J. (2013). Popular Music Industries and the State: Policy Notes. London: Routledge.

1 INTRODUCTION 

17

IFPI and Music Canada. (2015). The Mastering of a Music City: Key Elements, Effective Strategies and Why it’s Worth Pursuing. Toronto: IFPI and Music Canada. Johansson, O., & Bell, T. L. (2009). Where Are the New US Music Scenes? In Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music (pp. 219–244). Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Jones, M. (2020). The Place of the Beatles Within Liverpool as a UNESCO City of Music. In C. Ballico & A. Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 81–101). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kane, J., Scholer, A., & Van Houten, B. (2020). Regulating the San Francisco Sound: How a Music Venue Crackdown Inspired Pioneering Advancements in Entertainment Regulation and Support. In C.  Ballico & A.  Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp.  145–166). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Loftsgaarden, B. (2018). SXSW 2018: Analysis of the Economic Benefit to the City of Austin. Grey Hill Advisors: Austin. Mani, C. (2020). Chennai: Culture at the Cusp of Change. In C.  Ballico & A.  Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 103–125). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Perry, B., & Symons, J. (2019). Towards Cultural Ecologies: Why Urban Cultural Policy Must Embrace Multiple Cultural Agendas. In Cultural Intermediaries Connecting Communities: Revisiting Approaches to Cultural Engagement (p. 63). Bristol: The Policy Press. Pratt, A.  C. (2008). Creative Cities: The Cultural Industries and the Creative Class. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 90(2), 107–117. Soares, T. (2020). Beyond Nostalgic Havana: Music and Identity in the Fábrica de Arte Cubano. In C.  Ballico & A.  Watson (Eds.), Music Cities: Evaluating a Global Policy Concept (pp. 63–79). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Sound Diplomacy. (2019). The Music Cities Manual. Retrieved from https:// www.sounddiplomacy.com/our-insights/music-cities-manual. Stahl, G. (2010). Musikmaking and the City: Making Sense of the Montreal Scene. Universitätsbibliothek. Sutherland, R. (2015). Why Get Involved? Finding Reasons for Municipal Interventions in the Canadian Music Industry. In S. Homan, M. Cloonan, & J. Cattermole (Eds.), Popular Music and Cultural Policy. London: Routledge. Van Holm, E. J. (2015). The Creative Classes’ Greatest Failure. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 7(2), 204–207. Visit Britain/UK Music. (2013, October). Wish You Were Here: Music Tourism’s Contribution to the UK Economy. Retrieved from https://www.ukmusic.org/ assets/general/LOWRESFORHOMEPRINTING.pdf.

18 

C. BALLICO AND A. WATSON

Webster, E., et al. (2018). UK Live Music Census 2017. Retrieved from http:// uklivemusiccensus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/UK-Live-MusicCensus-2017-full-report.pdf. Wylie, I. (2016). From Berlin’s Warehouses to London’s Estates: How Cities Shape Music Scenes. Retrieved February 12, 2016, from http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/03/music-scenes-berlin-london-seattlenewyork?CMP=share_btn_tw.

CHAPTER 2

Re-Rewind: Heritage, Representation and Music City Aspiration in Southampton Toby Bennett

Introduction What kind of a city is a Music City? This chapter holds on to the common-­ sense notion that there is no single, final answer to this question; no blueprint and no original. Despite energetic attempts to do so, no templates, indices or prescriptive formulae can capture all eventualities: as many ‘music cities’ exist as there are possibilities of encountering, interpreting, nurturing and remaking music itself. Nor is this necessarily a novel formulation. Popular music has long been “a vital aspect of the construction of distinctive urban cultural identities”, to the extent that “the cultural or creative city cannot be imagined without music” (Homan et  al. 2015, p. 87). This chapter uses the term to talk about a set of mechanisms relating urban planning to music sector governance where, as with the ‘Creative City’, what is described is a “field of policy, rather than a policy per se” (Pratt 2010, p. 16). Nevertheless, if the field is not (yet) fixed, the argument made here takes place against a backdrop not only of the ­proliferation of Music City discourse, but also of its increasingly precise definition

T. Bennett (*) Department of Sociology, Centre for Culture and the Creative Industries, City, University of London, London, UK © The Author(s) 2020 C. Ballico, A. Watson (eds.), Music Cities, New Directions in Cultural Policy Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35872-3_2

19

20 

T. BENNETT

(Baker 2019). ‘Music City’ rhetoric has long been marshalled in focused destination-marketing projects, as in Chicago or Austin, as well as various attempts to reimagine and regenerate urban space; it also runs through the ‘Creative Cities Network’ of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), with places such as Bogotá, Glasgow, Kinshasa or Seville designated ‘Cities of Music’. Focusing on the UK, this chapter begins by outlining two distinct economic imaginaries, where UNESCO’s development agenda is increasingly paralleled and challenged by a more recent incarnation, ‘Music Cities’, aligned more closely with the normative aims of mainstream national and international music industries. It then moves to explore the relevance and the negotiation of these two imaginaries in the specific case of Southampton, a medium-sized port city on the south coast of the UK. Often negatively compared with Liverpool, in the northwest of the country, Southampton’s local cultural identity, if mentioned at all, is often characterised as frustratingly neglected. Southampton presents an atypical example—yet an aspirational one, where the city’s cultural development strategy evolved to include an aim to become a recognised ‘Music City’. It is thus an intriguing case to explore how such a project might be constructed from scratch. Hence, I detail, first, the local authority’s somewhat belated turn to culture to combat an underperforming economy deemed to lack ‘stickiness’ and second, the city’s rather longer history of popular music activity since the mid-twentieth century. Finally, I turn to the potential and the challenge of recognising the cultural embeddedness of local music economies, particularly through the common City of Music/Music City frame of ‘heritage’. The aim here is not to assess whether these designations are legitimate in this case but to consider the difficult and diverse work of recognising and remembering local music histories, beyond calls to ‘celebrate’ and ‘promote’ them, in unfolding a present-day cultural economy.

A Tale of Two Music Cities In relating music to urban policy, notwithstanding the plural and shifting semiotics already mentioned, two dominant conceptions are in play, aligned with distinct temporal and strategic orientations. In UNESCO’s designation, ‘Cities of Music’ are given a basic impetus to celebrate local projects and heritage to stimulate tourism, civic pride, inward migration and investment. In the UK, Glasgow was recognised as such in 2008 and Liverpool in 2015—both following experiences as European Capital of

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

21

Culture (ECoC), in 1990 and 2008 respectively. In line with UNESCO’s development objectives ‘culture’ is viewed here as regenerative resource, rather than a sustainable economic sector in itself, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that its cultural policy should be viewed through the lens of the subsidised arts (Campbell 2011). Increasingly, a contrasting vision is being constructed, of Music Cities, led by advocates and representatives of commercial music industries. Undoubtedly, representatives of urban live music have been at the forefront of this shift, proliferating reports on music venue closures and online ticketing issues, while working to influence urban regulatory and planning regimes (Baird and Scott 2018; Behr et al. 2019; Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee 2019). In both cases, effecting governance change relies on forging what Sum and Jessop (2013) call  “economic imaginaries”, that is, endowing mechanisms of strategic coordination with the semiotic power to enrol a range of actors tasked with realising and maintaining that economic project—as happened, for example, when municipal socialist visions of ‘cultural industries’ became increasingly reimagined through the ‘creative economy’ lens of globalised information and innovation flows (O’Connor 2013). Seen in this light, strategic frameworks, written evidence, place-branding guidelines, marketing images, spokespeople, or the sounds and opinions of musicians themselves come to act as “technologies of economic governance” giving material weight to Music City imaginaries: collating ideas, models, rhetoric and statistics that “seek to (re)define specific subsets of economic activities as subjects, sites and stakes of competition and/or as objects of regulation and to articulate strategies, projects and visions oriented to them” (Sum and Jessop 2013, pp. 166–167). For Cities of Music, economic imaginaries are structured and propelled by the competitive bidding process. Hence, it is typically aligned, in Cloonan’s (2014, p.  133) assessment, with the established ‘cultural milieu’ of the ‘bureaucrats and quangocrats’ for whom such paperwork is home territory—in Glasgow’s case, this oriented the semiotic focus towards the past achievements of “those forms of musical activity which have to a greater or lesser extent been reliant on the public purse for their continued existence”, minimising the influence of grassroots popular music scenes. Indeed, for such programmes “local creative production and local creative industries are in fact a marginal agenda” (Campbell 2011, p. 516). This agenda has been taken up under the rhetoric of the Music City which, with no formal application required, is declared from within rather than conferred from on high (Behr et al. 2019, p. 16). This

22 

T. BENNETT

urges a combined commitment on the part of local authorities and business actors to invest—time, energy, publicity, or cash—in the city’s musical identity. Strong allegiances between state and market forces must be forged in order to achieve a more calculated mode of coordination. Hence, dedicated Music Offices and Night Tsar roles have been instituted to monitor and mediate the presence or disappearance of those venues (sometimes also rehearsal spaces and recording studios) considered to be part of a city’s night-time economy. Making a case for action through such institutional means, the Music City imaginary typically emphasises, first, the economic possibilities of music as industrial engine (for employment opportunities, say, or foreign direct investment), especially of those venues on a national touring circuit said to constitute links in a ‘mainstream’ industry value-chain, or ‘talent pipeline’. This is then justified by, second, the civic or social value music appears to offer (improving wellbeing and contributing to social cohesion) alongside, third, music’s display value, as part of the city’s ‘cultural offer’ (e.g. using heritage for tourism and branding). The aim is that such definitions and articulations can be given more stable, material weight (in financial interventions, tax incentives, planning and licensing regulations) through the performative work of a number of intermediaries (local strategists, community representatives, consultants and policy entrepreneurs). Whether internally motivated or externally consecrated, interventions at the local level are being pursued at similarly international scales. In Cities of Music, the coordination role of UNESCO or the European Commission is clear. By contrast, the Music City economic imaginary is refracted through the worldviews of national or international representative and lobbying bodies: catalysed for example by the influential document Mastering a Music City (IFPI and Music Canada 2015)—a report produced in collaboration between the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) and Music Canada, the national trade body. But it is most voraciously pursued through commercial consultancies. Sound Diplomacy, a prominent example, in addition to offering government and business advice and producing regular publications on the topic (e.g. Sound Diplomacy 2019), also convene an international Music Cities Network and touring events series that rivals UNESCO’s. Conveyed by consultants and intermediary actors operating through the global assemblage of cultural economy knowledge and expertise (Prince 2013), a plethora of advocacy reports and action plans, commissioned by a variety

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

23

of city planners, ‘task forces’ and specialist agencies, thus  move these ­policy paradigms through global networks of business and government. The emphatic endorsement of a governance approach to local live music by the representative lobbying body for worldwide recording industries (the IFPI) seems counterintuitive. Nonetheless, it reflects the convergence, over the previous two decades, of state and music business actors. In the British context in particular and in line with the general thrust of Creative Industries policy discourse, UK government and music industry representatives developed a much closer working relationship: the former moving from a benign, hands-off stance towards a more promotional and interventionist regulatory approach (Cloonan 2007); the latter consolidating its lobbying capacities, through formal bodies such as the BPI or PRS and ultimately via the formation of the umbrella organisation, UK Music. While local development aims are still present, they are typically folded into a future-facing industrial strategy, highlighting the infrastructural work needed for economic growth and cultural sustainability—­ typically viewed, however, from the perspective of those who act on behalf of the most powerful national and international commercial music industry actors. In all this, as the economic imaginary concept reminds us, there remains a need to be attentive to how such economic projects are embedded in webs of meaning that are historically situated in particular localities and social attachments. Commonly this is achieved through an emphasis on ‘heritage’: museums and archives have emerged as central to understanding and narrating urban or national identities (Baker et  al. 2019). Sites with celebrated music mythologies are increasingly excavated to strategic ends: in image-based urban regeneration programmes responding to deindustrialisation (Bottà 2015), often tied to tourism imperatives (Lashua 2018). In Liverpool, for instance, The Beatles’ heritage value played a direct role in achieving European Capital of Culture (ECoC), and subsequently UNESCO, status (Baker 2019, pp. 19–20). Where there is little or no such legacy—in those unexceptional places that are commonly framed by normative cultural policy metrics as “cold spots, crap towns and cultural deserts” (Gilmore 2013)—a different strategy may be required. Yet, though it speaks the language of local and regional planning, the more recent version of a Music City tends to align with normative visions and spatial scales of international lobbyists, such that heritage appears only gesturally: where  historic contributions to industry circuits anchored in

24 

T. BENNETT

the commercial hubs of global cities should be ‘celebrated’ and displayed on plaques and in guidebooks (Sound Diplomacy 2019, pp.  19–21). The authorisation of official sites of popular ‘heritage’ is not without controversy however: disputes over the legitimacy of commemorative plaques indicate a potential disconnect between celebratory heritage discourse and the more ambivalent sense of ‘personal and cultural memory’ that entwines localised popular music histories (Roberts and Cohen 2013). While the vitality of popular music as cultural form is constituted through interactions between local and imported practices (and participants), orthodox heritage framings such as these can crystallise into accepted authenticity narratives that obstruct  the possibility of cultural reinvention (Knifton 2018). The remainder of the chapter explores the valency of such imaginaries in Southampton. This draws from a project which aimed to explore relationships between local music histories and current cultural development objectives through participants’ memories, and their attempts to preserve them in amateur collections.1 Following McRobbie’s (2016) reflections on the implications of increasingly reflexive creative economies for research methods, this project combined practitioner interviews, with an ‘event research’ strategy (mobilising the project-oriented missions of both researchers and practitioners to participate in the sharing of knowledge and contacts) and immersion in large quantities of secondary source material that now exist (including archived local news reporting and online communities of music heritage interest), especially the volumes of media interviews prompted by the dynamics of building personal and professional reputations. The role of citizen or activist archiving has grown, especially via online blogging and video platforms (Collins 2018) and the following narrative is indebted to a number of websites, social media channels and informal conversations with participants in Southampton’s music history—remaining, of course, incomplete and subject to my own interpretive errors.

1  The project is indebted to a prehistory of other work carried out by or with colleagues, whose knowledge and efforts have also been crucial. In 2017, with Paul Rutter and Sian Campbell, I conducted an initial “participation in music” survey (2016–2017), while Chris Anderton led the Southampton strand of the UK Live Music Census (see Behr et al. 2019). In 2018–2019, Martin James co-founded the local “So: Music City” festival.  Anderton, James and myself liaised regularly with James Gough, then of  Southampton Cultural Development Trust, throughout this period.

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

25

Re-rewind Southampton Culture is regarded with suspicion within the M27, the motorway which encloses it and connects it to Portsmouth. Southampton is a thousand-year-old nowheresville. Yet this, after all, might be what distinguishes it. I used to be annoyed by the way that whenever my home town was mentioned in a work of art—from Lennon’s ‘Ballad of John and Yoko’ to Wyndham Lewis’s travelogue Snooty Baronet—they never said anything about the town itself. It was only a place to pass through. Off the boat, onto the train and into Waterloo in one hour fifteen. Southampton was Heathrow before Heathrow, and has never quite known what to do with itself since the ship was succeeded by the jet. I was missing the point though: Southampton is the city as terminus. (Hatherley 2010, p. 2)

Economic Problems; Cultural Solutions Clustered around a well-established port on the Solent estuary on the UK’s south coast and caught somewhere between large town (population around 250,000) and fragmented, semi-rural city-region, Southampton boasts neither a reputation for a particular scene or sound, nor any notable record of investment in the music economy’s innovation infrastructure. The port and universities, alongside public, retail and services sectors, have established Southampton as a regional hub that has been economically cushioned from the worst effects of deindustrialisation, in a narrative that moves ‘from shipping to shopping’, providing stable productivity and employment prospects (Pinch 2002). This is not the decline-and-renewal story of somewhere like Liverpool, with which it has an indirectly shared lineage as two of the most important British ports— each, for instance, a nineteenth-century ‘Gateway to Empire’ (Cohen 2007, p. 35; Taylor 2007). Southampton’s proximity to London won the business of lines such as White Star and Cunard away from Liverpool in the early twentieth century, assuring its place as the nation’s primary passenger port. More recently, that same geography is frequently blamed for enticing homegrown creative talent and the spending power of mobile and culturally engaged residents, away from Southampton—compounding a sense that the city fails to hold on to high-value workers, students and tourists (SCC 2017). Despite recent recognition as a cluster for hitech firms (Nesta 2016) and sustainable growth (PWC and Demos 2018), high-ranking appearances in less respectable national indices, such as those listing the UK’s ‘crappest’ and ‘most dangerous’ towns (Franklin 2013; Hatherley 2010, p. 7), reinforce this lack of stickiness. Such issues

26 

T. BENNETT

cement a ­lamentable local reputation for ‘culture’, whether high, low, rarefied or everyday. As the Sotonian architecture critic Owen Hatherley remarks, amongst others, representations invariably highlight the ease of passing through—“standing on the dock at Southampton, trying to get to Holland or France” (Lennon and McCartney)—while neglecting the character of the place itself. In many respects, this neglect reflects reality well. By the early years of the new millennium, according to Pinch (2002, p. 71), the city was lacking “the glamour and glitz and violence and vice that seems necessary before a city can aspire to paradigmatic status”, such that, “although many residents—including contemporary pop idol Craig David—champion the merits of their city, it cannot be denied that in many peoples’ eyes Southampton lacks a certain something—urban character, style, dynamism or whatever.” A 2015 study to scope the viability of a Business Improvement District (BID) noted strong dissonances, between: a generally good quality of life in the city, valuable arts and heritage ‘assets’, and a ‘significant licensed night-time economy’; and a sluggish economy and bland image associated with a lack of local awareness, wider marketing and maintenance of these aspects (The Means 2015, p. 19; p. 39). Attempts to combat such assessments have commonly sought to harness the cultural sector. If Liverpool’s rather more dramatic rebirth is well storied (Cohen 2007), then, that of Southampton is decidedly not. Amongst those living, working and creating in the city, it is not uncommon to raise an eyebrow at these ambitions and local commentators have often looked to their northern cousins for inspiration. So, when a local ‘cultural consortium’ delivered Southampton’s ‘first cultural strategy’ in 2003, ‘World within the city’, it consciously echoed Liverpool’s successful ECoC bid that same year, under the cosmopolitan slogan “The World in One City”. A strategy motivated by envy, perhaps—but only one that echoes the national popular imagination. Riffing on the title of the song by John Lennon, UK Music (the sector’s umbrella agency) asked readers of a 2014 report to ‘Imagine’ what it would be like if places across the whole country were as productive as the ‘music city’ of Liverpool in capitalising on their musical heritage and tourism—ultimately advocating a set of scene-based planning and visitor strategies to “animate the historic public realm and [current] buzz” (UK Music 2014, pp.  2–3; p.  21). From 2015 to 2019, Southampton’s local authority endorsed a city-wide

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

27

‘cultural development’ plan (widening participation, improving liveability, delivering milestone events and supporting businesses), spearheaded by the arms-length Southampton Cultural Development Trust (SCDT).2 2018 saw the long-delayed opening of the Studio 144 complex, containing the Nuffield theatre, University of Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery and City Eye film charity, in a newly renovated Guildhall Square (part of the officially designated Cultural Quarter)—a cluster of state-­ funded National Portfolio Organisations and historic built environment (Civic Hall, city art gallery, archives, SeaCity museum, O2 Guildhall venue), amid further university buildings and restaurants like, notoriously, Nandos (Wainwright 2018). A proposed music industries strategy was  then inserted into SCDT’s portfolio, with aspirations to reverse a trend of venue closures and help creatives and enterprises in the city to ‘professionalise’ (Southern Daily Echo 2019), as well as consult on the kind of issues felt to characterise the city’s contemporary music infrastructure and support mechanisms that might ameliorate them. SCDT commissioned a ‘Music City Review’, citing and working explicitly in the IFPI/Music Canada mould, that sought to “audit a series of key areas within the city’s existing music infrastructure”—including venues, events, employment, local audiences and broader recognition—“in order that informed decisions can be made on the needed support for the sector, and to ensure advocacy and lobbying for the industry is supported by a solid data set” (SCDT 2018), with a view to eventually establishing Southampton as an acknowledged Music City. In recent years, the region can claim artists like Band of Skulls, Delays, Aqualung, Creeper, Foxes and Birdy, a strong network of venues and recording studios, and a celebrated festival and event promotion calendar, while Southampton’s universities are celebrated for their music provision. Yet a proposed working group of stakeholders (from local commercial recorded and live music sectors, night-time economy businesses, universities and BID) has proven difficult to formalise. Moreover, the imperative to ‘imagine’ a reinvigorated, professionalised and locally distinctive music economy into existence is arguably unconvincing without much in the way of a musically ‘historic public realm’ to legitimately ‘activate’. It is this to which I now turn. 2  After securing local authority commitment to bid for the UK City of Culture award in 2025, SCDT was closed, to be replaced by a more focused delivery mechanism.

28 

T. BENNETT

Shifting Styles, Scenes and Clusters Post-war Southampton can stake a claim as something of a crucible for early British pop. Its dynamic coalescence of jazz, folk and American rhythm and blues styles, rising in tandem with national media industries, was conditioned by an urban geography positioned between the country and the sea. Clubs like the Concorde for jazz, established in 1957, or the Foc’s’le Folk Club, tracing its origins to 1963, are regarded as among the longest-running and most important of their kind (Hooper n.d.; Stafford 2009). Foc’s’le—a product of the folk revival, named after the songs sung for pleasure in a ship’s forecastle (as opposed to the more functional shanty form, which accompanied work)—harks back to a Hampshire singing tradition that, while rich and diverse in repertoire, is steeped in seafaring culture (Staelens and Bearman 2010). Beyond the city itself, the festivals held between 1956 and 1961  in the stately home at Beaulieu, in the nearby New Forest, fostered an association wherein activist and beatnik counterculture benefited from (and was in turn fascinated by) the benevolence of an aristocratic establishment, before being cut short when ‘trad’ and ‘modern’ jazz fans clashed and rioted on the site (McKay 2015). At the other end of the decade (1968–1970), the folk-rock festivals held on the Isle of Wight (just off the Southampton coastline) were equally, if not more, iconic—both for their performances and for the organisers’ failure to contain the audience at the final event, leading (in a pre-echo of future concerns) to government tightening licensing law (Hinton 1995). Events like these became something of a blueprint for later festival culture. Southampton’s port has long provided a natural stopping point for musicians from the United States (the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ tour in the 1870s, Louis Armstrong sailing from New Orleans in 1932). Likewise, as in Liverpool (Cohen 2007, pp.  78–84), it played an important role in importing exotic sounds from the United States via merchant seamen, as reported by former players in Southampton’s skiffle and beat scene. And as with the spread of British rock’n’roll nationally (Frith et  al. 2013, pp.  29–30) these young men, unimpressed by the wholesome musical offerings endorsed by state media, were inspired by films like Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Rock Around the Clock (1956). These were shown in The Gaumont, a regional cinema-cum-ballroom (now The Mayflower theatre), which also hosted fondly remembered performances from international artists fresh off the boats, like Bill Haley (1957) and later Jimi Hendrix (1967). Local impresario Len Canham started his career on the

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

29

Red Funnel Isle of Wight steam-ferries before building a reputation managing the Royal Pier ballroom, subsequently establishing the long-­running Avenue Artistes agency in 1964. He and the similarly entrepreneurial Reg Calvert established artist stables, cultivating local acts who could emulate American counterparts (Elvis became ‘Eddie Sex’; ‘Buddy Britten’ for Buddy Holly), and booking them for ballrooms, cruises and nationwide tours. Calvert later moved away, while Canham remained in Southampton.3 Yet many of their acts would find their greatest success outside the UK.  Exemplary here is Ricky Brown & the Hi-Lites—uncommonly for the time a multi-racial group—who moved, as did many bands of the time, to Hamburg. Releasing several singles that were enormously popular in Germany, their 1964 album was tellingly titled The Liverpool Beat! A memorable teen encounter at the 1961 Beaulieu Jazz Festival reportedly provided the inspiration for Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’ (1971), in which he adapts the themes of a traditional foc’s’le, much performed on the 1950s folk and skiffle circuit (including by The Beatles as ‘Maggie Mae’), telling the tale of a visiting seaman’s encounter with a Liverpool prostitute  (Myers 2015). This  origin myth is a neat microcosm of how maritime regions provided felicitous conditions for young people to express an emergent postwar experience through the adoption, reinvention and hybridisation of musical styles and social configurations— imported and homegrown, urban and rural, traditional and shockingly new—in ways that are strikingly similar from port to port. The specific relationship between popular music and port cities, as in Liverpool, Hamburg, Glasgow or New Orleans, is understudied. Nonetheless, it is clear that the internal economies they support, both official and illicit, as well as flows of people, sounds, images and ideas they facilitate, are equally crucial to the contemporary Music City imaginary (Watson 2008)—a relationship that complicates any postindustrial search for local authenticity. Port cities were always ‘globalised’ and they remain sites of material production. They have not, therefore, deindustrialised in a simple way; rather, working ports have become increasingly disembedded from their host cities. Musicians no longer rely on passenger ports to get around and there is no longer a strong musical culture associated with the kind of 3  Famously, Calvert masterminded the 1963 promotional campaign that saw singer Screaming Lord Sutch contest a parliamentary by-election, thereby launching a career in political satire—and the pair went on to play a crucial role in professionalising offshore pirate radio stations in the Thames Estuary (Johns 2011, pp. 145–158).

30 

T. BENNETT

professions that port cities attract. While cruise ships continue to provide employment opportunities for locally trained musicians and tourist footfall for such cities (cf. Cashman 2014), including Southampton (Avenue Artistes being a case in point), this association has become less clear over time. Nevertheless, this history has shaped the city’s present-day demographics and spatial arrangement, just as it has the broader music industries. Michael Denning (2015) argues convincingly that the formation of a global recording industry in the years leading to the Great Depression of 1929 is predicated on the recording expeditions and trade routes facilitated through “an archipelago of colonial ports”, unintended echoes of which set the conditions for one of popular music’s important cultural effects through the twentieth century: the “decolonisation of the [Western] ear”. Before air-travel, ports were informal trading zones and places of intensified (not always happy) cultural exchange. Denning describes “the peculiar social and cultural formation of the colonial port”: a volatile mix of millions of new migrants living in waterfront neighborhoods imbricated with the racial and ethnic logics of settler regimes and imperial conquests; a population dense enough to provide the critical mass to support the emerging institutions of commercial musicking, the urban industry of theaters, brothels and dance halls; a physical and cultural distance from the cultural capitals and centers of artistic prestige and power; and finally, a peculiar encounter and alliance between the ‘ear’ musicians among the rural migrants … and the ‘reading’ musicians among the port’s subordinated but educated elite. (Denning 2015, p. 39)

These words resonate with any history of Southampton—into which the present chapter gives only brief and partial insight. In particular, the St Mary’s district—the site of the original Anglo-Saxon Hamwic market settlement in the east of the city—became established, relatively organically, as what would now be recognised as a thriving cultural cluster. Henry’s Records opened on St Mary’s street in 1956—the start of an institution lasting over thirty years—its owner, Henry Sansom, enthusiastically catering to mushrooming local demand, and rising teenage affluence, through requests and imports. Along with instrument stores and clothing outlets, the Joiners Arms pub was prompted to re-establish itself as a music venue in 1969, becoming host to regular folk, jazz and blues clubs (Gray 2006). In some senses, this built on an existing ‘night-time economy’, the area then being (in a familiar port city story) well-known as a red-light district.

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

31

It was also the most ethnically mixed part of Southampton, much of which related to waves of post-war immigration from former Caribbean and Asian colonies. Shaped by these diasporic connections and the unseemly predilections of sailors and dockers, St Mary’s became in equal parts a residential area for mixed communities alongside a vibrant hub for creative activity and an illicit visitor economy. Blues parties, shebeens and soundsystems set up in houses and community centres were common at this time, introducing reggae, ska and soul music (often imported via Henry’s) to Southampton, particularly to those black and white audiences who could not afford a trip to London. Disparagingly known as ‘the jungle’, tensions ran high in the area, where social problems—high unemployment, housing problems and police searches—disproportionately affected black youth. Community support officers were employed to address such issues (in the wake of Race Relations Acts of 1968 and 1976), although with a remit loose enough for one such individual, Don John, to find himself managing the reggae and soul group Ebony Rockers. These had met and rehearsed using the resources of a St Mary’s youth centre, touring extensively and releasing two singles under the EMI label (1980) under John’s guidance. After fading from the public eye, they continued to perform and produce music as an evolving local collective. Through this period, as well as The Joiners’ Arms, the West Indian Club (also in St Mary’s) emerged as a crucial space of alternative culture and political resistance. Prominent Jamaican or Trinidadian artists (for example) might perform there while visiting friends and family in Southampton. In turn, local and visiting punk bands could find refuge in the Club. The two subcultures shared a common enemy in far-right skinheads associated with an emboldened National Front, often leading to abuse and violent attacks (Babey 2013; O’Brien 1999, p. 193). This shared agenda would continue into the next decade, as a more sustained post-punk and new wave scene endured, later turning to anarcho-punk and hardcore. Crucial to note here is how this particular production cluster was embedded in a dense web of close social relations. Christine Chivallon (2001) writes  of Southampton’s Caribbean churches  that they created spaces in which complex transnational versions of community and domesticity could be enacted. Likewise, homes and community hubs were crucial spaces, forging distinctively local cultural lives that were nonetheless open to the difference and movement of postcolonial conviviality (cf. Gilroy 2004). Arguably it was such hybridising spaces, rather than any narrow place-based mythology, that led to the city’s most successful period

32 

T. BENNETT

as a thriving music economy in the 1990s. This becomes clear when considering the emergence of local dance music cultures. Southampton’s UK Garage scene (A syncopated and bass-heavy Black British take on New York house, rooted in Caribbean reggae and dancehall) rivalled that of London’s, with the singer Craig David as its most infamous consequence. Parental mentoring and community projects amid an established social patterning were central here: George David, Craig’s father, had been a member of Ebony Rockers and managed the West Indian Club, where his son would attend and gain performing experience. He attended community singing workshops along with his school friend, Aaron Anyia (later known as Aaron Soul), also a singer of some brief national success. These were led by the latter’s mother, Pauline Catlin, who had previously sung with a popular Lovers’ Rock trio called Brown Sugar in 1970s London, after which she moved to Southampton, joining the church choir (BBC 2007). It was on a community project for Southampton Football Club that David first met the producer Mark Hill, recording a song for the 1995 national Let’s Kick Racism Out of Football campaign, set up in the face of heightened moral concern over discrimination and far-right ‘hooliganism’. Hill had arrived in Southampton as a music student and opened a recording studio with another musician, Neil Kerr, who introduced him to the DJ Pete Devereux (Point Blank 2013). The pair established the Artful Dodger DJ and engineering outfit, which became the production vehicle for a number of local performers who went on to achieve chart success, either solo or collaboratively. After his breakthrough hit with the pair, Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta), Craig David swiftly gained international celebrity. Kerr continued to work with charting acts through local studios (Reddin 2006). Less widely celebrated, the regional rave subculture was also an influential force. This was clustered around record shops like Movement and Tripp2, both serving and employing DJs playing club nights in Southampton and other cities along the south coast, like Portsmouth and Bournemouth. Although not household names, producers like Stu-J, Jon Doe, MC Marley, Ramos, Supreme and Sunset Regime, drove forward dance music at both local and national levels, especially pioneering the intense and upbeat, piano-led ‘happy hardcore’ sound. This they achieved through a network of enterprises, including record labels, pirate radio stations, event promotions and club ownership. In particular, the Movement shop employed and nurtured a younger generation, including the virtuoso progressive house DJ James Zabiela (Frankland 2016) and producer/promoter Gavin Foord. With hardcore producer Jon

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

33

Doe, the latter formed the FooR collective who, alongside other locals like grime producer Royal T, had established themselves at the forefront of a nationwide Garage revival sound by the tail end of the 2010s (Considine 2018). Another veteran of the south coast happy hardcore scene, Chris Grayston, was a producer, promoter, label and record shop owner. Later he ran the Open Mic UK talent search competition, which the internationally successful New Forest-based singer Birdy credits with kickstarting her own career. Heritage and the Politics of Urban Representation There is, then, a rich history of popular music to celebrate in Southampton as judged in normative industry terms. Yet a music industry strategy sits uncomfortably within a cultural development portfolio, since these suggest distinct economic imaginaries. The ‘heritage’ frame suggests one way of bridging these. For example, The Joiners Arms offers an exemplary case where cultural memories attached to the so-called ‘Toilet Circuit’ of small venues—those “dingy pubs and sweat-soaked clubs that used to be the lifeblood of the music industry”—are repurposed as ‘heritage’, thereby raising awareness that “[s]eedy environments are the bedrock of cultural production” (Miller and Schofield 2016, p. 160). Under the guidance of the late promoter Mint Burston, The Joiners became the place to catch “a cool, newly-signed buzz band from out of town” in the early 1990s (Gray 2006, p. 13), famously playing an important role in nurturing Britpop with early performances from Oasis, Radiohead, The Verve, The Manic Street Preachers and The Charlatans. The venue continues to support early-stage bands, as it always has. Yet it is largely the value of its Britpop past—inscribed both in the building’s graffitied walls and an official published history (Gray 2006)—that has been leveraged in news coverage several times in soliciting support from artists and the public when the venue has come into financial difficulties (Reddin 2013; Southern Daily Echo 2017). It remains precarious, not least thanks to a reputation as “the place where bands play twice: once on the way up and once on the way down”, rather than an important venue in its own right; “in the eyes of those who run the [national] industry”, it is thought, the Joiners offers “a convenient stepping stone, to be discarded when no longer needed” (Gray 2006, p.  13; p.  223). Tellingly, perhaps, when the West Indian Club—by then renamed the African-Caribbean Centre—pursued a similar ­crowdfunding strategy in 2013, its version of local music heritage received little support and it closed soon after (Stilliard 2014).

34 

T. BENNETT

This is not simply an ‘economic’ problem, then, but also a ‘cultural’ one; indeed, much of the disconnection manifests as a politics of representation—a matter of struggle over meaning, legitimacy and participation which maps strikingly onto a geographic divide. Local authority support for creative production has been largely absent, with perhaps its biggest contribution being accidental: in paying the salary of Don John, the race relations officer who inadvertently became an artist manager. More recently, Craig David’s global achievements earned local recognition in the form of a plaque from Black History Month and an honorary doctorate. Nonetheless, the most visible statement of Southampton’s celebratory cultural agenda remains Guildhall Square in the Cultural Quarter. This part of the city has few residents and receives little passing trade. Despite its central location, reportedly the BID works hard to attract locals at weekends. On the other hand, St Mary’s remains a densely concentrated mix with a contested identity. Derby Road, a central artery in the area, was chosen as the location for the Channel Four documentary Immigration Street—infamously decommissioned after one episode, amid visceral resistance from the communities concerned (Khaleeli 2015) including a protest gig at The Joiners (Babey 2014). The episode highlights the city’s continued cultural allegiances and divisions. Without recognising this complex representational politics, heritage initiatives that are driven by place-branding initiatives risk superficiality. A common way of describing Southampton, as with many port cities, is as “a multi-cultural cosmopolitan city”, as Craig David put it in 2003 (BBC 2008). Beyond the ‘World Within the City’ document, the city tourist board has sought to highlight cosmopolitanism—but in terms of a “world of cuisine including Italian, Thai, Cajun and Indian [restaurants]”, such as those around Guildhall Square, a representation which ‘sits uneasily’, writes Kushner (2007, pp. 185–186), with “the past reality of migrancy and transmigrancy”. Part of a recognisably turn-of-the-century New Labour lexicon, the word tends to obscure, if not actively legitimate, the continuing challenges and tensions of postcolonial urbanity (Gilroy 2004). Instead, it offers the decorative cosmopolitanism of the cruise ship, which imagines music’s role as a means to construct an air of the exotic within more domestic comforts (Cashman 2014). In distinct contrast with the Cultural Quarter’s rather hygienic vision, however, St Mary’s far messier brand of cosmopolitanism is equally open to sentimental misrepresentation: as ‘vibrant’ and ‘diverse’, with a hint of ‘edgy’ iniquity. Such romanticism, continues Denning

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

35

(2015, p. 45), “misses the historical contingency of this cosmopolitanism” and “the violence that constituted these [port] cities”. In this light, it is worth reflecting on the long shadow cast by Southampton’s biggest musical export. It is unfortunate, but revealing, for both the singer and the city, that Craig David’s  phenomenal global celebrity was met by an outpouring of ridicule in the national popular media. In interviews, David was unfailingly polite and focused, even to the point of blandness, gaining something of a reputation for being not simply sanguine about, but positively embracing, self-marketing: speaking freely of key demographics and referring to himself in the third person as ‘Craig David the Brand’. Such language, for Hatherley (2010, p. 20), reflected the kind of aspirational social mobility (as opposed to class consciousness) that Tony Blair’s New Labour sought to capture and indicated the ongoing shift away from a ‘stridently red’ pre-war Southampton. The cover to Melody Maker’s 11th October 2000 issue lampooned the artwork to his debut album, Born To Do It. Headlined “UK Garage my arse! The alternative nation fights back!”, it depicted a Craig David lookalike clutching headphones to his ears while seated, trousers around ankles, on a toilet. For former Melody Maker writer Simon Reynolds, this was a joyless response to “the bursting of Britpop’s bubble” (Reynolds 2007, p. 277) as the national spirit began moving on from the ‘alternative’ Cool Britannia moment, both of which were conspicuously white (Huq 2010). Market research, cited at the time, linked black cover stars with poor magazine sales and the purpose of the image was to corral a rich semiotics of ‘discontents and repugnances’ attached to wider UK Garage culture—feminine-­ coded sonic aesthetics, classed performances of conspicuous wealth, underpinned by racist undertones (“more on the level of ignorant, stereotyped ideas about black music cultures than hatred”)—marking out the contours against which Britpop defined itself (Reynolds 2007, pp. 277–278). Shortly after, David became widely ridiculed as the unremitting punch line to the surreal barbs of British comic Leigh Francis’ television series, Bo’ Selecta! (referencing David’s early hit), contributing in large part to his own slide from public view (Trendell 2016). The episode goes some way to explain how a case of enormous commercial success has morphed into an unlikely heritage burden for the city, obscuring a host of diverse, and implicitly more ‘authentic’, acts (as in: “for every Craig David there’s a Band of Skulls, Delays, Men They Couldn’t Hang” (Babey 2014)). At the same time, it reveals how the singer’s image might be conditioned by a difficult and febrile national politics of cultural

36 

T. BENNETT

representation that resonates throughout the city’s history, to the present day. Southampton’s social issues had frequently found their way into the music itself, which articulated frustration, neglect and constraint: for punk band Strate Jacket, Southampton was simply ‘Boredom City’ (Babey 2013). Ebony Rockers, meanwhile, would sing plaintively about the need to “try so very hard to get out of this human jungle”. This political aesthetics was captured, aided and abetted in the DIY sounds, images and writing of fanzines and tape labels like Stick It In Your Ear! and later Suspect Device. By contrast, City Walls, a more formal Sotonian New Wave compilation organised by Richard Williams (later to become leader of the city council) drew on the city’s mediaeval history to present the city in a more positive light. Similarly, much more recently, FooR has showcased original Southampton garage vocalists Aaron Soul and MC Alastair on new productions. They even seemed to confront the challenge of placemarketing the city: the homegrown video for their first single, ‘I’m Sorry’ (remaking a Garage hit from 1999), consciously “shot Southampton in a positive light” (McKeown 2014).4 Yet tensions remain. In 2016, local activists, preparing for a promised march of far-right groups on an antiimmigration protest, pasted the city with stickers featuring Craig David. Above yet another détourned version of the Born To do It cover art—the star this time sporting a photoshopped Anti-Fascism t-shirt—reads the slogan, “Smashing Racism 7 Days A Week”, in reference to his hit single, ‘Seven Days’ (Southampton AntiFA 2016). The apparent need for antifascist protest in the same year the city voted to leave the European Union evidences other kinds of heritage: its profound reshaping by the movements of Empire and the Luftwaffe; and that of heated conflict over race and immigration. Given this, the creative appropriation of local music heritage using a young musician of proud Caribbean and Jewish heritage as its international avatar seems not just appropriate but also more inventive and sensitive to local concerns than any comparable place-marketing initiatives on the part of the authorities. Rather than merely subcultural nostalgia, this is the contemporary city drawing on its urban music culture to evolve and remake ideas around its identity. If heritage plays a part here, it does so in partnership with a sustained material infrastructure, and a network of individuals and collectives, embedded within the city region. 4  Craig David also fondly referenced his Southampton childhood on 2016’s garageinflected ‘One More Time’ (albeit in a video shot in his adopted Miami), returning to the city the following year for his first visit to the Mayflower theatre (formerly the Gaumont).

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

37

Concluding Comments Southampton is, at the time of writing, caught between two economic imaginaries: a vision of cultural development tied to inhabitants’ wellbeing, regeneration aims and a national City of Culture bidding process; and Music City imperatives based on local touring infrastructures, creative talent and product, successfully feeding into and supporting national economies, to be exported through global networks. Without wishing to speculate on future outcomes here, the city might make productive use of these frames to navigate complex issues concerning: the multiple spaces and geographies across which the subjects and objects of music economies and policies flow; and tensions of a more temporal nature, between normative popular music heritage and localised cultural memory. It is undoubtedly important to be attentive to supporting music economies and infrastructures but these must also be embedded within the specificity of place, as well as histories that do not neatly conform to standard deindustrialisation narratives. Not doing so risks conflating perceived benefits of different scales, from regional to national economies, and insensitivity to cultural politics, including histories of shifting identities and uneven distribution of resources. There is clear potential to reinforce such problems through urban music heritage frames, especially where Music Cities’ apparent capacity to generate inward migration and investment and support the visitor economy, incentivises the consecration of places bearing auratic traces of great acts that have passed through. The veneration of star acts and iconic venues is an obvious way to make use of heritage—yet it may also obscure the conditions from which such people and spaces emerge, as well as the failures. Such initiatives would likely reinforce a reputation as a place of transience and neglect in Southampton, whereas its most visible success stories bear the traces of intricate connectivities between local cultural spaces and changing residential communities, forged over long periods of time. These urban histories have often catalysed creative expression—alongside a politics of representation that resists easy memorialisation. Contemporary cultural practitioners can struggle to connect to, or distinguish themselves from, officially sanctioned history; meanwhile, marginal counter-histories can struggle for legitimacy to participate in reshaping the city’s cultural identity. Cities with ‘crap’, ‘cold spot’ reputations need their own imaginaries in order to chart a course between the economic imaginaries of place-marketing and global creative industries. Music City frameworks would do well to explore how new archival infrastructures might recover and proliferate local histories and memories, opening them up to be remade as living cultural economies.

38 

T. BENNETT

References Babey, G. (2013, April 30). Boredom City: Southampton Punk 1977 to 82— Album Review. Louder Than War. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https:// louder thanwar.com/boredom-city-southampton-punk-1977-to-82album-review. Babey, G. (2014, December 15). St Marys Calling: Protest Gig Against Channel 4’s Immigration Street. Louder Than War. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from https://louderthanwar.com/st-marys-calling-protest-gig-against-channel4s-immigration-street/. Baird, P., & Scott, M. (2018). Towards an Ideal Typical Live Music City. City, Culture and Society. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccs.2018.03.003 Baker, A. (2019). The Great Music City: Exploring Music, Space and Identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Baker, S., Istvandity, L., & Nowak, R. (2019). Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum. London: Bloomsbury. BBC. (2007, March 15). Introducing Aaron Soul. BBC Hampshire. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/content/articles/2007/03/15/aaron_soul_feature.shtml. BBC. (2008, October 31). Craig David’s Southampton. BBC Hampshire & Isle of Wight. Retrieved April 23, 2019, from http://www.bbc.co.uk/hampshire/ content/articles/2008/10/31/craig_david_feature.shtml. Behr, A., Webster, E., Brennan, M., Cloonan, M., & Ansell, J. (2019). Making Live Music Count: The UK Live Music Census. Popular Music and Society. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2019.1627658 Bottà, G. (2015). Dead Industrial Atmosphere: Popular Music, Cultural Heritage and Industrial Cities. Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2, 107–119. Campbell, P. (2011). Creative Industries in a European Capital of Culture. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 17, 510–522. Cashman, D. (2014). Corporately Imposed Music Cultures: An Ethnography of Cruise Ship Showbands. Ethnomusicology Review, 19. Retrieved from https:// www.ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/19/piece/797. Chivallon, C. (2001). Religion as Space for the Expression of Caribbean Identity in the United Kingdom. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 19, 461–483. Cloonan, M. (2007). Popular Music and the State in the UK: Culture, Trade or Industry? Aldershot: Ashgate. Cloonan, M. (2014). Making Glasgow a City of Music: Some Ruminations on an UNESCO Award. In A. Barber-Kersovan, V. Kirchberg, & R. Kuchar (Eds.),

2  RE-REWIND: HERITAGE, REPRESENTATION AND MUSIC CITY ASPIRATION… 

39

Music City: Musikalische Annäherungen an die >>kreative Stadt>Creative City