Popular Music , Media and the Narrativization of Place

Abstract

One of the centrally defining features of popular music in the late modern era has been its association with notions of space and place. This chapter considers previously uncharted discourses of music and place, and their significance for our understanding of popular music's cultural significance in late modern society. Music has always been strongly associated with place. Another media technology that has opened up new possibilities for addressing the relationship between music, space and place is the internet. The chapter examines a number of ways in which late twentieth-century developments in media technology have contributed new layers of meaning to the relationship between popular music and place, both discursively and visually. It demonstrates how current understandings of the relationship between music, space and place need to be broadened in ways that appreciate the full range of creative, aesthetic and commercial interests that play a part in informing this relationship.