Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music PDF
Preview Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music
2RPP Sounds of the Underground 2RPP * Tracking PoP series editors: john covach, jocelyn neal, and albin zak In one form or another, the influence of popular music has permeated cultural activities and perception on a global scale. Interdisciplinary in nature, Tracking Pop is intended as a wide-ranging exploration of pop music and its cultural situation. In addition to providing resources for students and scholars working in the field of popular culture, the books in this series will appeal to general readers and music lovers, for whom pop has provided the soundtrack of their lives. Listening to Popular Music: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Led Zeppelin by Theodore Gracyk Sounding Out Pop: Analytical Essays in Popular Music edited by Mark Spicer and John Covach I Don’t Sound Like Nobody: Remaking Music in 1950s America by Albin J. Zak III Soul Music: Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop from Plato to Motown by Joel Rudinow Are We Not New Wave? Modern Pop at the Turn of the 1980s by Theo Cateforis Bytes and Backbeats: Repurposing Music in the Digital Age by Steve Savage Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella by Joshua S. Duchan Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical Borrowing in Hip-Hop by Justin A. Williams Sounds of the Underground: A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music by Stephen Graham 2RPP SoundS of the u n d ergro u n d A Cultural, Political and Aesthetic Mapping of Underground and Fringe Music Stephen Graham University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor 2RPP Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Graham All rights reserved This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid- free paper 2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978- 0- 472- 11975- 2 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978- 0- 472- 12164- 9 (e- book) 2RPP Contents Preface vii Part I— What Is the Underground? 1 Introduction to the Underground and Its Fringes 3 2 The Music and Musicians 17 3 Global and Local Underground/Fringe Scenes 28 Part II— The Political and Cultural Underground 4 Politics and Underground/Fringe Music 53 5 Cultural Policy and Underground/Fringe Music 64 6 Artists and Music, Improv and Noise 85 7 The Digital Economy and Labels 115 8 Festivals and Venues 144 Part III— Listening to the Underground 9 Noise as Concept, History, and Scene 169 10 The Politics of Underground Music and Noise 189 11 The Sounds of Noise 202 12 Extreme Metal 218 Conclusion 243 List of Interviewees 245 Notes 247 Bibliography 269 Index 291 2RPP 2RPP Preface The underground is an enticing concept. It suggests ideas of shadowy struggle and esoteric doings, whether we think of wartime resistance in France, of the nineteenth- century Underground Railroad in the United States, or of any num- ber of obscure cultural movements. “Underground” has long served as a potent metaphor, suggesting as it does concealment, dissidence, and subversion. Cul- tural and political movements around the world have noticed this; right- wing extremist groups such as National Socialist Underground and leftist organiza- tions like Weather Underground have eagerly seized upon “underground” as a readymade label implying stealth subversion and dissenting resistance. Music has been no exception, with “underground” being adopted by prac- titioners and accorded by critics across many different genres as a marker of cultural distinction. Use of the term typically follows a loose sort of logic. Un- derground hip- hop or dance musics, for example, are positioned as distinct from supposedly compromised commercial forms (“straight from the under- ground!”). This is a kind of relative use of “underground” that plays on the term’s suggestions of subversion and distinction. I have something different in mind in this book, even if I’m also calling up suggestions of obscurity and, to a point, subversion. I’m writing specifically about noncommercial forms of music making that exist in a kind of loosely integrated cultural space on the fringes and outside mainstream pop and classical genres. What I’ll call “underground” musical forms— noise, improv, and extreme metal but also fringe practices like post- noise experimental pop and even some kinds of sound art—s hare a world of practitioners burrowing away independent of mainstream culture. They may be trying to resist that culture politically, but they might also just be satisfying themselves by making music for small audiences and little to no profit. My argument here is that due to shared practical, musical, and in many 2RPP viii Preface cases political allegiances, these practices can be described collectively using the guiding metaphors of the “underground” and the “fringe.” The first describes ultra- marginal music and the second closely related music that fringes onto ei- ther high- art institutions or the commercial marketplace. I use critical analysis and interviews with practitioners in drawing up a map of this broad territory. Those interviews are dotted throughout the book but concentrated across Part II, which develops the contextual introduction of Part I ahead of the closer fo- cus on music in Part III. This expansive and seemingly definitive organizing framework is used even while acknowledging that my version of the underground and its fringes is per- sonal and partial. I’m offering a set of signposts rather than a hard proof, a start- ing point rather than a destination. There are other undergrounds, just as there other versions of this particular underground. I’m simply trying to provide some useful categories and details and in this way to open up conversation and spur further thought about a desperately neglected realm of musical activity. 2RPP PART I What Is the Underground?
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