Conceptualizing a local music scene in the contemporary cultural landscape is plausible, but it seems to romanticize days when local communities were actual physical communities. I don’t mean to say that the Internet is crushing all our hopes for face-to-face community interaction, but it is impossible to ignore the effect that digital interaction is having on popular music. It’s easy to get caught up in romanticizing places like Seattle, or CBGB’s, or Greenwich Village. These places were crucial in fostering particular attitudes specific to artists living within a particular space. Confining them to geographical locations often allowed these communities to develop on their own terms, without the influence of external factors.
With an expanded digital reach, it’s easier to find communities more tightly wound on message boards than in coffee houses. Not that this affects the quality of the musical output from individuals, but it leans toward negating the possibility for local communities to develop artistic conventions unique to a particular space. Traditionally, the Western world has valued these local developments through our frequent consumption of diasporic media. As we access music through a wide digital stream of distribution, community boundaries dissolve into one, all-encompassing digital sphere. This sort of reach accelerates the globalization process and grants us greater access to expand our individual musical palettes. Yet, in the process, we lose sight of the unique characteristics embedded in local music communities.
The redistribution of local sounds is already taking place with bands like Vampire Weekend or Dirty Projectors through the references to African sensibilities in their work. In a backwards way, the same is taking place with the musical project The Very Best, a band who infuses their sounds of frontman Esau Mwamwaya’s home country of Malawi with the electronic sensibilities of the Western popular music. Such work overcomes the restrictive nature of local scenes and locates the exotic output of foreign cultures through an extended digital reach. No doubt these developments are exciting, but in the process, foreign cultures appear as exotic sonic diversions thriving on their difference from Western culture. They function through cultural reference rather than cultural experience.
It is not that these developments are making local cultures extinct, it is that musically they no longer thrive on the unique characteristics associated with their self-containment. Globalization seems to facilitate the breaking down of these socio-political boundaries in favour of a culturally amalgamated expression. Sure, notions of community still exist in a virtual sense, but these concepts are more imagined and less tied to physical space. Any possibility for indigenous music yields to a larger virtual community comprised of distanced users rather than intimate and local collaboration. While this obviously extends the borders of musical possibility, it sacrifices face-to-face expression unique to a tightly defined time and space.
That is not to say that globalization destroys the notion of a musical community, rather, it often facilitates a musical connection between geographically separate communities. However, using the Internet as a primary vehicle for such global collaboration is dangerous as it removes the aspect of physical contact and therefore, any notion of local collaboration. One of the reasons Paul Simon's Graceland was such a powerful record was because it encapsulated the artist's visit to South Africa and the subsequent collaborations that took place there (half of the record is co-written by local artists, and the entirety is recorded in South Africa). Graceland thrives because it locates and unites two smaller, more local cultures and reconciles their seemingly disparate musical sensibilities (the choice of 'Graceland' is also compelling as it reflects the overwhelming American-ness of Elvis). Such possibilities often lose their way in the globalized digital world, as the reach to foreign cultures requires far less labour. Locality succumbs to cultural appropriation as it enters the global sphere of ideas.
While the artistic possibilities of this expanded reach are no doubt exciting, they seem to reduce the possibility for music to express something unique about a particular place in time. One of the reasons Sufjan Stevens’ "Fifty States" project was so endearing was that it attempted to re-colonize American spaces through music. Sufjan chose to examine the often overlooked local cultural boundaries in an attempt to foster a new conception of Americana. However, when Sufjan denounced the project entirely in 2009 he claimed the whole project was ‘a joke,’ stating:
“I think maybe I took it too seriously. I started to feel like I was becoming a cliché of myself” (Paste Magazine. Nov. 2, 2009).
Perhaps this was because at some point, Sufjan viewed his project as an attempt to examine a cultural space that no longer exists. The differences between Illinois or Michigan are worth examining, but no longer seem to clarify any notable cultural separation. The characteristics that normally distinguish local cultures from one another now seem to offer nothing exclusive as they become more and more susceptible to outside influence. Perhaps for Sufjan, creating large musical compositions about these spaces was leading him to conceptualize boundaries that had become culturally superfluous.
As the digital world allows our reach to extend, locality becomes an illusion rooted in artificial political boundaries. Though it’s fun to attempt to recontextualize the music of a local community, if there exists a specific lack of characteristics that distinguish it from other local music spaces, then the project runs a terrible risk of imploding in favour of novelty music destined for cliché consumption. If the project were to continue, the album’s most compelling component would likely have shifted from the ambitious subject matter to the artist’s own personal development. In that case, why should Sufjan focus on subject matter that would force his artistic development into the confines of a seemingly inconsequential concept?
Its no wonder that Sufjan’s latest project focuses on something more definitive and concrete: the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The appeal of such a space inevitably lies in one’s fleeting experience with it. The sentiment of The BQE lies in its inhabitability and its function as a transporter of separate alienated travelers. For Sufjan, it presents the antithesis of his former work; it presents a place devoid of the seeds of community and history. Said Sufjan in a 2009 interview:
“I intended to create a non-personal, non-narrative piece. I tried to reduce my own personal investment as much as possible, and I refused to incorporate one of my strengths, which is the song” (The Herald, Scotland. Oct 2009).
The BQE seems like a logical step forward for Sufjan, as it liberates him from community-driven music to a more confined personal expression. Though The BQE is itself a physical space, Sufjan finds solace in the traveling experience it creates. While The BQE is a particularly famous stretch of highway, its appeal is not predicated on a particularly unique American experience. Everyone understands highway traveling and in those moments when you may find yourself on the road - excited, desperate or just plain bored - the highway is a constantly emotionless path. Though rooted in history, The BQE presents nothing to the community of arts. It executes its essential purpose and strives for nothing more.
In denouncing the fifty states project, Sufjan proves that community-oriented music cannot be documented and reconceptualized by those viewing from the outside in. Sufjan’s first state project, Michigan, was remarkably effective because its subject matter was reflective of Sufjan’s bleak and sometimes hopeless experiences actually living within a struggling Michigan state. Illinoise, on the other hand, tends to overemphasize its subject and reads more like an observation of an unfamiliar place. Illinoise creates an exotic and exciting experience, however, it is one that reflects Sufjan’s inability to fully conceptualize a local space that goes beyond scenery and the history books.
For these reasons, The BQE and Michigan demonstrate remarkable similarities in the execution of their concepts. Both are not so much about the physical space themselves but the universal experiences one may find unique to a place. It is the same reason that a record like Post-Nothing by Japandroids is so fucking good. In short, it’s an album about love, despair, and partying in Vancouver. Post-Nothing is not specifically about Vancouver, but its identification of a specific geographical space allows the album to justify its emotional traits by locating them in local experiences. Though the music is definitively invested in the community’s culture, its appeal transcends its local roots by highlighting the universal emotions that have taken place within a given local space.
By not defining itself as specific place, Post-Nothing succeeds where Sufjan struggles. Post-Nothing does not strive to create a comprehensive description of its geographical space in question, yet its aesthetics carry enough emotional resonance for me to safely conceptualize their version Vancouver on my own. Illinoise, though exciting and ambitious, can become less engaging, as its effectiveness is predicated on a pre-decided narrative that forces us to judge the album based on how effectively it achieves its goals.
As a result, Post-Nothing emphasizes the significance of local cultures in one’s own personal experiences. Much like Michigan or even Graceland, Post-Nothing recognizes that music with a specific locality is effective not because of how well it translates a particular space, but how well it communicates emotion and experience as defined by that locality. Though digital technology facilitates expansive global interaction, it is never fully able to negate the local community experience. Albums like Michigan, Graceland and Post-Nothing boast their local characteristics as a means of translating their universal human experiences. While the internet’s lack of boundaries may seem to equate all music under one all-encompassing digital space, music will always originate from someplace tangible and therefore will always reflect the experience of people making music within a physical space.
