Within human geography, the meeting between art matters and cultural politics has been a predominantly visual affair. However, this article argues that sound is as important as sight for the project of geography, and that music has as secure a place as the visual arts in the study of social life. For example, while cultural studies of Renaissance Italy have focused on the way that landscape painting encapsulates the political economy of the period, I consider why the ‘truths’ of the time were nurtured as much by filling space with sound as by depicting place on canvas. Similarly, although painters are able vividly to depict the impact of industrialization on the English landscape, by exploring the spaces of music – a more neglected route into the historical geography of modern Britain – I suggest there is more to the link between art and industrialism than first meets the eye. Finally, building on maps of race and racism drawn up from ethnography, narrative and visual representation, I tease out the contested terrain of music, and identify it as a medium through which those whose condition society tries its best not to see can begin to make themselves heard.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Ackerman, D.1996: A natural history of the senses. London: Pheonix (first published in 1990 by Chapman).
2.
Allinson, E.1992. ‘It's a black thing’: hearing how whites can't. Cultural Studies6, 438–456.
3.
Anderson, P.A.1995. Ellington: rap music and cultural difference. The Musical Quarterly79, 172–206.
4.
Anon1908: History of the Bacup Old Band. Bacup: L.J. Priestley.
5.
Arscott, C., Pollock, G. and Wolff, J.1988: The partial view. The visual representation of the early twentieth-century city. In Wolff, J. and Seed, editors, The culture of capital: art, power and the nineteenth-century middle class, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 191–233.
6.
Attali, J.1985: Noise. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
7.
Averill, G.1994. Anraje to Angaje: carnival, politics and music in Haiti. Ethnomusicology38, 217–247.
8.
Back, L.1996: New ethnicities and urban culture. Racisms and multiculture in young lives. London: UCL Press.
9.
Bailey, P.1994. Conspiracies of meaning: musichall and the knowingness of popular culture. Past and Present144, 138–170.
10.
Baker, H.A.1988: Afro-American poetics. Revisions of Harlem and the black aesthetic. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
11.
Baker, H.A.1993: Black studies: rap and the academy. Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press.
12.
Barrell, J.1980: The dark side of the landscape: the rural poor in English painting, 1730–1840. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Barthes, R.1986: The responsibility of forms. Oxford: Blackwell.
14.
Bell, D. and Valentine, J., editors, 1995: Mapping desire. London and New York: Routledge.
15.
Berger, J.1972: Ways of seeing. London: BBC and Penguin Books.
16.
Bhabha, H.K.1994: The location of culture. London and New York: Routledge.
17.
Blaukopf, K.1992: Musical life in a changing society. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press.
18.
Blesh, R. and Harriet, J.1958: They all played ragtime. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
19.
Bonnett, A.1992. Art, ideology and everyday space: subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space10, 69–86.
20.
Bourdieu, P.1993: The field of cultural production. Cambridge: Polity Press.
21.
Brackett, D.1994. The politics and practice of ‘cross-over’ in American popular music, 1963– 1965. Musical Quarterly78, 774–797.
22.
Brand, V.1979: Brass bands in the twentieth century. Letchworth: Egon Publishers.
23.
Brothers, T.1994. Solo and cycle in African-American Jazz. Music Quarterly78, 479–509.
24.
Burke, P.1987: The historical anthropology of early modern Italy: essays on perception and communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25.
Burke, P.1994: Venice and Amsterdam: a study of seventeenth century élites (2nd edn). Cambridge: Polity Press.
26.
Bythell, D.1991: The brass band in Australia. The transplantation of British popular culture, 1850–1950. In Herbert, T., editor, Bands. The brass band movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buckingham: Open University Press, 145–164.
27.
Carter, T.1992: Music in late Renaissance and early baroque Italy. London: Batsford.
28.
Chaplin, E.1994: Sociology and visual representation. London and New York: Routledge.
29.
Classen, C.1993: Worlds of sense: exploring the sense in history and across cultures. London: Routledge.
30.
Cosgrove, D.1984: Social formation and symbolic landscape. London and Sydney: Croom Helm.
31.
Cosgrove, D.1989: The Palladian landscape. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
32.
Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S., editors, 1988: The iconography of landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
Crump, J.1986: The identity of English music: the reception of Edward Elgar, 1898–1935. In Colls, R. and Dodd, P., editors, Englishness. Politics and culture, 1880–1929, London: Croom Helm, 164–190.
34.
Cummings, A.M.1992: The politicized muse. Music for Medici festivals, 1512–1537. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
35.
Daniels, S.1993: Fields of vision. Cambridge: Polity Press.
36.
de Gorag, L.1989: From Sibelius to Sallinen. Finnish nationalism and the music of Finland. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
37.
Dixon, G.1996. Behold our afflication: celebration and supplication in the Gonzaga household. Early Music24, 251–261.
38.
Driver, F.1995. Visualizing landscape. Journal of Urban History21, 764–771.
39.
Dyer, R.1993: The matter of images: essays on representations. London: Routledge.
40.
Eagleton, T.1990: The ideology of the aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell.
41.
Edelman, M.1995: From art to politics. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
42.
Eyerman, R. and Janusen, A.1995. Social movements and cultural transformation: popular music in the 1960s. Media, Culture and Society17, 449–468.
43.
Fenton, I.1984: Music and the myth of Venice. In Bartlett, C., editor, Programme books for ‘A festival of Venetian music 1600–1700’, London: Peter-house Press, 7–9.
44.
Forsyth, M.1985: Buildings for music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45.
Fraser, D.1988: ‘Fields of radiance’: the scientific and industrial scenes of Joseph Wright. In Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S., editors, The iconography of landscape, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 119–141.
46.
Frith, S.1996: Performing rites: on the value of popular music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
47.
Fyfe, G. and Law, J., editors, 1988: Picturing power. Visual depiction and social relations. London and New York: Routledge.
48.
Gilroy, P.1993: The black Atlantic. Modernity and double consciousness. London: Verso.
49.
Golledge, R.1993. Geography and the disabled: a survey with special reference to vision-impaired and blind populations. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers NS18, 63–85.
50.
Green, N.1990: The spectacle of nature. Landscape and bourgeois culture in nineteenth century France. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Guralnick, P.1986: Sweet soul music. Rhythm and blues and the southern dream of freedom. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
53.
Hale, J.1993: The civilization of Europe in the Renaissance. London: Harper Collins.
54.
Hall, S.1989: New ethnicities. In Ashcroft, B., Griffith, G. and Tiffin, H., editors, 1995: The postcolonial studies reader, London and New York: Routledge, 223–227.
55.
Herbert, T.1991a: Nineteenth century bands: the making of a movement. In Herbert, T., editor, Bands. The brass band movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buckingham: Open University Press, 7–56.
56.
Herbert, T.1991b: Postscript. In Herbert, T., editor, Bands. The brass band movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buckingham: Open University Press, 165–168.
57.
Herbert, T.1992. Victorian brass bands: the establishment of a ‘working class’ musical tradition. Historic Brass Society Journal4, 1–11.
58.
Herbert, T.1997: Brass bands and other vernacular brass traditions. In Herbert, T. and Wallace, J., editors, The Cambridge companion to brass instruments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 177–305.
59.
Herbert, T. in press: Victorian brass bands. In Leyshon, A., Matless, D. and Revill, G., editors, The place of music, New York: Guilford Press.
60.
Herbert, T. and Sarkissian, M.1997. Victorian bands and their dissemination in the colonies. Popular Music16, 167–181.
61.
Hobsbawm, E.1989: The jazz scene. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
62.
Hollinshead, K.1994: The major and his band. The story of Abram/Bickershaw colliery band. Bradford: Kirklees Music.
63.
hooks, b.1991: Yearning. Race, gender and cultural politics. London: Turnaround.
64.
hooks, b.1994: Outlaw culture. Resisting representations. New York and London: Routledge.
65.
hooks, b.1995: Art on my mind. New York: The New Press.
66.
Howes, D., editor, 1991: The varieties of sensory experience. A sourcebook in the anthropology of the senses. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
67.
Howkins, A.1989: Greensleeves and the idea of national music. In Samuel, R., editor, Patriotism: the making and unmaking of British national identity, London and New York: Routledge, 89–98.
68.
Jackson, P.1992: Constructions of culture, representations of race: Edward Curtis's ‘way of seeing’. In Anderson, K. and Gale, F., editors, Inventing places, Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 89–106.
69.
Jackson, P. 1995: New ethnicities, new spaces? Paper presented to the Anglo-Israeli Academic Study Group in Geography, December (available from the author, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK).
70.
Jackson, P. and Taylor, J.1996. Geography and the cultural politics of advertising. Progress in Human Geography20, 356–372.
Jay, M.1992: Scopic regimes of modernity. In Lash, S. and Friedman, J., editors, Modernity and identity, Oxford: Blackwell, 178–195.
73.
Jencks, C., editor, 1995: Visual culture. London and New York: Routledge.
74.
Jones, I.1995: Brass bands in York, 1833–1914. Borthwick Paper 85. York: University of York.
75.
Jordan, G. and Weedon, C.1995: Cultural politics. Class, gender, race and the postmodern world. Oxford: Blackwell.
76.
Kamin, J.1974. Parallels in the social reactions to jazz and rock. The Black Perspective in Music3, 278–298.
77.
Katz, I.1997: Death wish. Guardian Review, 20 September, 2–3.
78.
Kenney, W.H.1991. James Scott and the culture of classic ragtime. American Music9, 149–182.
79.
Kift, D.1995: The Victorian music hall. Culture, class and conflict (trans. R. Kift). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
80.
Kirby, K.M.1996: Indifferent boundaries. New York and London: Guilford Press.
81.
Kinsman, P.1995. Landscape, race and national identity: the photography of Ingrid Pollard. Area27, 300–331.
82.
Kloosterman, R.C. and Quispel, C.1990. Not just the same old show on the radio. An analysis of the role of radio in the diffusion of black music among whites in the south of the United States of America, 1920–1960. Popular Music9, 151–164.
83.
Koenigsberger, H.G.1986: Politicians and virtuosi. Essays in early modern history. London: Hambledon Press.
84.
Kong, L.1995. Popular music in geographical analyses. Progress in Human Geography19, 183–198.
85.
Kruse, H.1993. Subcultural identity in alternative music. Popular Music12, 33–41.
86.
Leppert, R.1993: The sight of sound: music, representation and the history of the body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
87.
Leppert, R. and McClary, S., editors, 1987: Music and society: the politics of performance and reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
88.
Levi, E.1991. Atonality, 12 tone music and the Third Reich. Tempo178, 17–21.
89.
Leyshon, A., Matless, D. and Revil, G., editors, 1995: The place of music. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 20 (4).
90.
Leyshon, A., Matless, D. and Revil, G., editors, in press: The place of music. New York: Guilford Press.
91.
Livings, H.1975: The medals and the baton be put on view. The story of a village band, 1875–1975. London: David & Charles.
92.
Lomas, M.J.1992. Secular civilian amateur wind bands in southern England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Galpin Society Journal65, 79–98.
93.
Lowe, D.M.1982: The history of bourgeois perception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
94.
Lyotard, J.F.1984: Driftworks. New York: Columbia University Press.
95.
Lusane, C.1993. Rap, race and politics. Race and Class35, 41–56.
96.
Matless, D.1996. New material? Work in cultural and social geography 1995. Progress in Human Geography20, 373–385.
97.
Matthews, D.1992: Landscape into sound. St Albans: The Claridge Press.
98.
McClary, S.1991: Feminine endings. Music, gender and sexuality. Minneapolis, MN, and Oxford: University of Minnesota Press.
99.
McCreesh, P./Gabrieli Consort and Players1990: A Venetian coronation 1595. London: Virgin Classics (VC 7 91110 2).
100.
McCreesh, P./Gabrieli Consort and Players1993: Venetian vespers. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon (CD 437833-2).
101.
McCreesh, P./Gabrieli Consort and Players1994: Lutheran mass for Christmas morning. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon (CD 439250-2).
102.
McCreesh, P./Gabrieli Consort and Players1996: Feast of San Rocco. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon (CD 449180-2).
103.
McCreesh, P./Gabrieli Consort and Players1997: Venetian Easter mass. Hamburg: Deutsche Grammophon (CD 453 427-2).
104.
McGowan, K. 1994: On the need for high standards among wind players haut and bas in the court theatre of ‘difference’ and its musical consequences. Paper presented to the Galpin Society and Historic Brass Society conference, Edinburgh, June (available from the author, Royal Academy of Music, Marylebone Road, London NW1 5HT, UK).
105.
McIntosh, T.1995. Reflections on jazz and the politics of race. Boundary2, 25–35.
106.
Merod, J.1995. Jazz as a cultural archive. Boundary22, 1–18.
107.
Middleton, R.1990: Studying popular music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
108.
Monsoon, I.1994. Doubleness and jazz improvisation: irony, parody and ethnomusicology. Critical Inquiry20, 283–313.
109.
Morrison, T.1993: Jazz. London: Picador.
110.
Muir, E.1981: Civic ritual in Renaissance Venice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
111.
Nash, C.1996. Reclaiming vision: looking at landscape and the body. Gender, Place and Culture3, 149–169.
112.
Nettel, R.1944: Music in the five towns, 1840–1914. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
113.
Pile, S. and Thrift, N., editors, 1995: Mapping the subject. London and New York: Routledge.
114.
Pocock, D.1988: The music of geography. In Pocock, D., editor, Humanistic approaches in geography. Department of Geography Occasional Publications (New Series) 22, Durham: Durham University, 62–71.
115.
Pocock, D.1989. Sound and the geographer. Geography74, 193–200.
116.
Polk, K.1987. Instrumental music in the urban centres of Renaissance Germany. Early Music History7, 159–186.
117.
Polk, K.1992: German instrumental music in the late middle ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
118.
Porteous, J.D.1985. Smellscape. Progress in Human Geography9, 356–378.
119.
Porteous, J.D. and Mastin, J.F.1985. Soundscape. Journal of Architectural Planning Research2, 169–186.
120.
Regan, S., editor, 1992: The politics of pleasure. Buckingham and Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
121.
Revill, G.1995. Hiawatha and pan-Africanism: Samuel Coleridge Taylor (1875–1912): a black composer in suburban London. Ecumene2, 247–266.
122.
Rose, G.1993: Feminism and geography. Cambridge: Polity Press.
123.
Rose, G.1995: Making space for the female subject of feminism. In Pile, S. and Thrift, N., editors, Mapping the subject, London and New York: Routledge, 332–354.
124.
Rose, T.1994. Black noise. Rap music and black culture in contemporary America. Hanover, NH, and London: University of New England Press.
125.
Roth, E.1969: The business of music. London: Cassell.
126.
Russell, D.1987: Popular music in England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
127.
Russell, D.1991: ‘What's wrong with brass bands?’ Cultural change and the band movement, 1918–c. 1964. In Herbert, T., editors, Bands. The brass band movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Buckingham: Open University Press, 57–101.
128.
Russell, J. and Elliot, J.H.1936: The brass band movement. London: Dent.
129.
Ryan, J. 1994: Photography, geography and empire. Unpublished PhD thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London.
Said, E.W.1993a: Culture and imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.
132.
Said, E.W.1993b: After the last sky, Palestinian lives. London: Vintage.
133.
Schumacher, T.G.1995. ‘This is a sampling sport’: digital sampling rap music and the law in cultural production. Media, Culture and Society17, 253–273.
134.
Scott, J.L. 1970: The evolution of the brass band and its repertoire in northern England. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
135.
Shusterman, R.1995. Rap remix: pragmatism, postmodernism and other issues in the house. Critical Inquiry22, 150–158.
136.
Silverman, K.1996: The threshold of the visible world. London and New York: Routledge.
137.
Skelton, T.1995: ‘Boom, bye, bye’: Jamaican ragga and gay resistance. In Bell, D. and Valentine, G., editors, Mapping desire, London and New York: Routledge, 264–283.
138.
Smith, B.1996. Two meanings of art. Thesis 1144, 47–56.
139.
Smith, S.J.1993. Bounding the borders: claiming space and making place in rural Scotland. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers NS18, 291–308.
140.
Smith, S.J.1994. Soundscape. Area26, 232–240.
141.
Stokes, M., editor, 1994: Ethnicity, identity and music. Oxford and Providence, RI: Berg.
142.
Strohm, R.1993: The rise of European music, 1380–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
143.
Strong, R.1973: Art and power. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
144.
Summerfield, P.1986: Patriotism and empire. Music-hall entertainment, 1870–1914. In Mackenzier, J., editor, Imperialism and popular culture, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 17–48.
145.
Terry, W.E.1977. The negro music journal: an appraisal. The Black Perspective in Music5, 146–160.
146.
Tichi, C., editor, 1995: Readin' country music. The South Atlantic Quarterly 94 (1).
147.
Tirris, F.1993: Jazz. A History. New York and London: W.W. Norton.
148.
Tomlinson, G.1993: Music in Renaissance magic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
149.
Toop, D.1991. Rap attack 2. African rap to global hip hop. London: Serpent's Tail.
150.
Trexler, R.C.1980: Public life in Renaissance Florence. New York: Academic Press.
151.
Van der Merwe, P.1989. Origins of the popular style. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
152.
Walker, D.P.1985: Music, spirit and language in the Renaissance. London: Variorum Reprints.
153.
Wall, M. 1997: Yo! Bum rush the show: a historiography of rap literature. Unpublished paper, Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK.
154.
Wallace Collection1996: The origin of the species. Virtuoso Victorian brass music. Cwmbran: Nimbus (NI 5470).
155.
Walser, R.1995. Rhythm, rhyme and rhetoric in the music of Public Enemy. Ethnomusicology39, 193–217.
156.
Waters, M.C.1994. Ethnic and racial identities of second-generation black immigrants in New York City. International Migration Review28, 795–820.
157.
Willis, A.C.1991. Rap music and the black musical tradition: a critical assessment. Radical America23, 29–38.
158.
Wolffe, P.1988: Symbol of the Second Empire: cultural politics and the Paris opera house. In Cosgrove, D. and Daniels, S., editors, The iconography of landscape, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 214–235.
