MOVEMENT JOURNEY OF THE BEAT Written by Stephen Mallinder This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Media Communication and Culture Murdoch University, Western Australia 2011 1
I declare that this thesis is my own account of my research and contains as its main content work which has not previously been submitted for a degree at any tertiary education institution. Stephen Mallinder 2
ABSTRACT Movement: Journey of the Beat addresses the trajectory and transition of popular culture through the modality of rhythm. It configures fresh narratives and new histories necessary to understand why auditory cultures have become increasingly significant in the digital age. Atomised and mobile technologies, which utilise sonic media through streaming, on-line radio and podcasts, have become ubiquitous in a post-work environment. These sonic media provide not merely the mechanisms of connection but also the contexts for understanding changing formations of both identity and community. This research addresses, through rhythm, how popular music culture, central to changing perceptions of self and others through patterns of production and consumption, must also be viewed as instrumental in shaping new platforms of communication that have resonance not only through the emergence of new social networks and cultural economies but also in the development of media literacies and pedagogic strategies. The shift to online technologies for cultural production and global consumption, although immersed in leisure practices, more significantly alludes to changing dynamics of power and knowledge. An online ecology represents a significant shift in the role of place and time in creative production and its subsequent access. Popular music invariably provides an entry point and subsequent platform for such shifts and this thesis looks to the rhythms within this popular culture in as much as they encode these transformations. This doctoral research builds on the candidate s established career as music producer, broadcaster, journalist and teacher to construct an appropriate theoretical framework to indicate how the construction, transmission and consumption of popular music rhythms give an understanding of changing social contexts. The thesis maps the movement of commonly recognised popular rhythms from their places of construction to the spaces of reception within 3
broader political, socio-economic and cultural frameworks. The thesis probes the contribution of place and time in transforming global cultures, via social geography and memory, positioning such changes within readings of mobility, stasis, modernity and technology. By consciously addressing multiple disciplines, from populist to academic, Movement provides evidence of how wider structural changes have become reified within the beat and how in turn rhythm provides an appropriate modality through which change can be negotiated and understood. 4
MOVEMENT: THE JOURNEY OF THE BEAT CONTENTS PAGE Acknowledgements 5 Publications 9 INTRODUCTION 10 Rationale and Methodoloy 14 A Life in Syncopation 38 Rhythm as Modality 42 Metaphors of Movement 46 CHAPTER ONE Digital Rasta Post-Colonial Swing 51 Freezing Up Orange Street 54 Borderless Jamaica An Imagined Home 58 Ideology and Iconography 66 The Commodification of Jamaica 70 Technology and the Jamaican Soundscape 72 Digital Rasta 76 CHAPTER TWO Sheffield Isn t Sexy How to Retune a City 81 Metal Machine Music 83 The People s Republic 90 5
The Cultural Quarter Shall be Built 97 From Panacea to Pariah The National Centre for Popular Music 100 The Future Sound of Sheffield 109 CHAPTER THREE From Chevrolets to Laptops Part One Letterman Doesn t Do a Top Eleven 111 The Sound of Young America 118 Moving on a Twisted Wheel 129 Say It Loud 134 Part Two Speramus Meliora; Resuget Cineribus 138 Nothing Comes From Nothing. Everything Comes From Something 140 The Secret Life of Machines 148 It s More Fun to Compute 155 What Language Is It You speak? 162 Long Live the Underground 167 CHAPTER FOUR Europe Endless Kraftwerk, Movement and Modernity 175 Ohm Sweet Ohm 181 Imagining the Modern 188 Looking for the Perfect Beat 195 6
CHAPTER FIVE Paid in Full: The Commodified and Social Rhythms of Hip- Hop 201 Adventures on the Wheels of Steel 205 Moving Through Analogue Space 211 It s the Money Money Money 217 Shout it Out: Hip-Hop s Social Rhythms 224 CHAPTER SIX House Music All Night Long. Say What? House Music All Night Long From Warehouse to Our House 233 Work Your Body - Finding Meaning in House 239 Let There Be House 244 Move Your Body: From Illinois to Elysian Fields 249 At the Discotheque: Constructing Music Cultures 253 24 Hour Party People: Towards the Dancefloor Diaspora 261 CHAPTER SEVEN You Can t Have Everything Moving Through Digital Space 271 Lost in Cyberia 278 I Don t Want to be Your Friend on Facebook 285 The Return of the 8-Track Cartridge Family - Consuming Rhythms 290 CONCLUSION 303 BIBLIOGRAPHY 314 7
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Murdoch University, Western Australia for their support during the writing of this thesis and also to the University of Brighton where the completion of the thesis was undertaken. Particular thanks go to Professor Tara Brabazon for her supervision, advice, inspiration and unwavering support throughout the entire duration of this work. I would also like to thank my colleagues at the Art Design Media-Higher Education Academy (ADM-HEA) Subject Centre at the University of Brighton for their encouragement in the last two years. 8
PUBLICATIONS A number of journal articles in relation to the topic, authored, and co-authored, by the candidate have been published during the writing of the thesis: S. Mallinder, Sheffield is Not Sexy, (Nebul4.3, September 2007, pp. 292-327) T. Brabazon & S. Mallinder, Off World Sounds: Building a Collaborative Soundscape, (Journal of Media and Culture, 9 (2) 2006 pp. N/A ISSN 1441-2616) T. Brabazon & S. Mallinder Popping the Museum: The Cases of Sheffield and Preston (Museum and Society, July 2006. 4(2) pp.96-112, ISSN 1479-8360) T. Brabazon & S. Mallinder, Into the Night-Time Economy: Work, Leisure, Urbanity and the Creative Industries, (Nebula4.3, September 2007, pp.161-178) T. Brabazon & S. Mallinder, Lots of Planets Have a North: Remodeling Second-Tier Cities and their Music, (Nebula5.1/5.2, June 2008, pp.51-73) T. Brabazon & S. Mallinder, Branding Bohemia: Community Literacy and Developing Difference, (City and Time publication date tbc http://www.cecibr.org/novo/revista/index.php) 9