“Last Year’s Lineup Was Better”: Shifting Social Geographies and Collectivities at Chicago Music Festivals
International Association for the Study of Popular Music
IASPM, Gijón, Asturias, Spain, June 24, 2013.
Material from this paper was published in God Rock, Inc.
Abstract
Music festivals are sites of tension between mainstream and underground social collectivities. These collectivities—which may hold competing interests and values—emerge, intersect, and overlap ephemerally in the bounded space of the festival and its environs. From 1969’s iconic Woodstock to the contemporary Coachella, Glastonbury, and Roskilde festivals, these events balance the practical and financial requirements of their mass scale against a marketable, differentiable identity to attract attendees. Participants and observers witness festivals’ strategic mediations between the archetype and the avant-garde via artist lineups, non-performance activities, geographical locations and layouts, visual designs and marketing campaigns, merchandising, and concessions, among other factors. Drawing on many years of ethnographic research in Chicago, Illinois, this paper compares and contrasts several civic and commercial popular music festivals, such as Blues Fest, Cornerstone, Jazz Fest, Lollapalooza, and Pitchfork. I use mutable, multi-dimensional center-periphery theory to illustrate and explain the social flows within festival spaces, the differentiating strategies of festivals, and the compromises that emerge when organizers reconcile their needs with their audiences’ expectations. In examining the intersecting and overlapping representations of mainstreams and undergrounds at music festivals, my paper contributes to research on the political economies, social geographies, and taste communities of popular music events.
Part of the organized panel Contentious Collectivities: Media and Musical Action in Social Movements. Panelists:
Andrew Mall
Kaley Mason
Michael O’Toole
Shayna Silverstein
Panel abstract
Participants in social movements mediate collective action in a number of ways, drawing on a diverse repertory of media to build community, communicate dissent, and mobilize support. In this panel, we consider the role that popular music plays as a medium for generating collective actions in social movements and representing forms of collectivity that arise from these actions. Looking at case studies that include music festivals in Chicago, revolutionary film songs in South India, the Eurovision Song Contest, and global solidarity networks with Syrian protestors, we explore the significance of popular music in bridging divides within social movements, mobilizing transnational networks of solidarity through online media, and generating affective attachments to social movements. We also seek to connect our ethnographic observations of musical action with theoretical frameworks addressing the formation and political organization of collectivities in social movements. In particular, we reflect critically on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s influential concept of the “multitude,” which proposes a way of understanding collectivities as a heterogeneous network of actors producing a common goal. We argue that situating popular music more centrally within social movement theory can provide an important contribution towards understanding the role of affect and sensory experience in collective mobilization.