Small Venues: Precarity, Vibrancy and Live Music

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Description

Throughout the history of popular music, the careers of many culturally significant artists and groups began on the small stages of local bars clubs, pubs, and discotheques. When the stories of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the New York punk hardcore and post punk scenes are told, iconic venues such as The Cavern, The Marquee and CBGBs serve as the settings of their early chapters Small live music venues such as these are pivotal in the narratives and history of popular music. However, very few of them survive. This book focusses on the role of small live music venues as incubators for emerging talent and social hubs for music scene participants. Such venues are grassroots spaces of cultural labor and production that often struggle with issues of financial precarity yet are fundamental to the live music ecology of a city, acting both as platforms for emergent performers and spaces of sociality for local music scenes.

Reviews

Whiting's book is a long overdue and critical addition to research on the spaces and places of live music performance and consumption. Small venues are often referred to in passing but rarely a sustained focus in academic scholarship; and yet, as this book masterfully illustrates, they are the lifeblood of local and trans-local music scenes. Crucial reading for anyone who is interested in gaining a deeper knowledge of the social, economic and emotional value of small venues, the challenges they face and the unequivocal part they have played in keeping music live for successive generations of music fans around the world. * Andy Bennett, Professor Cultural Sociology, Griffith University, Australia *
Small venues are the lifeblood of any music scene: a heady mix of sights, smells and sounds; spaces full of creativity and pleasure, ambition and rivalry; sites where the artistic expression, profit motives and government regulations come in to conflict. Without small venues there is no place for experimentation and failure. Without small venues nothing can develop to fill the larger venues. Sam Whitings exploration of these key sites of cultural production and consumption is a must read for any scholars interested in the historic importance of these vital spaces, their relation to sense of place, taste, desires and belonging, and governmental aspects that frustrate artistic endeavours. But most importantly, Small Venues illuminates how precarity and vibrancy, that is, social aspects of the way these spaces feel, are central to the success or closure of venues and therefore whether a creative scene thrives or dies. Bringing together cultural sociology and cultural studies analysis with his own industry experiences and a sharp antenna for bullshit, Whitings Small Venues is an important and evocative intervention into the scholarship of music ecosystems and scenes. * Steven Threadgold, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Newcastle, Australia *
This is a welcome and timely study of live music ecologies, made more so by the impact of the pandemic on music-making around the world. Whiting has offered us a cogent study of small venues, for contributions to not only music scenes but also the larger creative cultures within which they exist. * Geoff Stahl, Senior Lecturer, Te Herenga Waka / Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa / New Zealand, and editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music, Space and Place (2022) *

Author Bio

Sam Whiting is a Lecturer in Creative Industries at the University of South Australia. His research is primarily focused on issues of capital, labour, and value as they relate to music scenes, the creative industries, and the cultural economy more broadly. Dr. Whitings published work explores issues of access, identity, gender, heritage, live music, cultural policy, and music scenes through the interdisciplinary lens of cultural studies, sociology, and popular music studies.