Page 64 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

Processes of elective belonging 55

cant interaction. It is related to the overall narrative and helps to move that
narrative along, but itself only makes sense in the context of the overall
narrative. A scene is both temporal and spatial and thus enables the bring-
ing together of ideas of narrative, media, interaction and performance in
audienced processes lived out through modes of belonging.

Beyond music
I have already suggested that scene does not have to refer only to musical
production and consumption in place. Thus, Straw argues that:

The term ‘scene’ has represented one attempt to characterize the informal
sorts of social organization that have taken shape around particular cul-
tural practices. Writers typically have recourse to ‘scene’ when the activ-
ities being described encompass cultural roles that extend beyond (or
blur the lines between) those of either performer or audience, and when
the relationships between individuals involved in cultural practices offer
some combination of the formal and informal.
(Straw 2003: 349)
This application of this sort of argument specifically to popular music is
justified by Straw on the following grounds:

If the term ‘scene’ has seemed particularly pertinent to the analysis of
popular music, this has been, in part, because – compared, for example,
to the fields of film and television creation – a wide range of musical
activities can be found between the purely professional level of the
international music industry and the sorts of amateur and quasi amateur
practices that are to be found in any locale.
(Straw 2003: 349)
This is an argument also made by Cohen in her discussion of scene.
She argues that:
The concept of scene is in some ways particularly pertinent to popular
music. Popular music scenes develop because local amateur music mak-
ing is cheaper and more accessible and extensive than many other types
of local cultural production, such as film and television, and they are also
particularly geographically mobile. Musicians and audiences travel and
tour on a regular basis, music products are widely distributed in the form
of CDs, tapes, fanzines, and so on, and music sounds and discussions are
broadcast on radio and television and via the internet.
(Cohen 1999: 248)
These arguments have a degree of plausibility, as on the face of it the
comparison of music production to that of film and television does suggest
differences of scale. However, technological change and change in cultural and
social relations have narrowed this gap in important ways. First, as discussed in
the literature on fans, people are involved in cultural production on the
ground with the texts of film and television that insert new practices into areas
outside that of the international film and television area. Consumers have to