[csaa-forum] UQ tomorrow: Andy Bennett on Virtual Music Scenes

[Melissa Gregg]

THE CENTRE FOR CRITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES PRESENTS

Dr Andy Bennett
University of Surrey - UK

Virtual Music Scenes

Date:	Tuesday 15th March 2005
Place:   	Social Sciences and Humanities Library Conference Room
		Duhig Building, Building No. 2
               University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus
Time:     2.00pm-3.30pm

Members of the university community and the general public are invited 
to
attend this free seminar with refreshments to follow.


Please scroll down for further information or visit the website at
http://www.cccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=28496&pid=16094


ABSTRACT
In this paper Andy will examine how developments in internet technology 
have
given rise to a new form of music scene referred to as a virtual scene
(Peterson and Bennett, 2004). Unlike local music scenes, which are 
situated
in a specific urban location and facilitated through face-to-face 
contact of
scene members, virtual scenes are made up of individuals dispersed 
across
the globe. In the absence of opportunities for face to face contact, 
members
of virtual scenes must find other ways to build and maintain the scene. 
In
examining this process of virtual scene building, Andy will focus on the
example of the ‘Canterbury Sound'. The term Canterbury Sound was 
originally
coined by music journalists during the late 1960s to describe the music 
of
Canterbury jazz-rock group the Wilde Flowers, groups subsequently 
formed by
individual members of the Wilde Flowers - the most well known examples 
being
Caravan, Hatfield and the North and Soft Machine - and a number of other
groups with alleged Canterbury connections. Since the mid 1990s, 
however,
the term Canterbury Sound has acquired a very different currency as a 
new
generation of fans have constructed a discourse of Canterbury music that
attempts to define the latter as a distinctive ‘local' sound with
characteristics shaped by musicians' direct experience of life in the 
city
of Canterbury. A particularly significant aspect of this re-working of 
the
Canterbury Sound is the spatial relationship of fans both to the city 
and to
each other.  Thus, the revived interest in the Canterbury Sound 
comprises
debates, discussions and definitions of the Canterbury Sound based 
fanzines,
internet newsletters and websites via which a globally diffuse fanbase
communicates.  In relation to this virtual scene, Canterbury itself 
performs
an important anchoring role as myths surrounding the city are 
constructed
online and worked into discussions concerning the defining 
characteristics
of the ‘Canterbury Sound'.


ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Andy Bennett is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of 
Surrey. He
joined the Surrey Sociology Department in September 1999 having 
previously
held short-term Lectureships in Sociology at the Universities of Durham,
Glasgow and Kent. Andy gained his PhD, an ethnographic-based study of 
youth
cultures in Northeast England and central Germany, from Durham 
University in
1997.

Andy's main areas of interest are youth culture, popular music lifestyle
theory and local and global issues in everyday life. Within these areas 
he
has a particular interest in the role of popular music in the 
construction
of late modern identities and the way in which this process is in turn
informed by particular forms of local knowledge. Further interests 
include
'virtual' music scenes, the relationship between music and ethnic 
identity
and the socio-economic significance of community/grass-roots 
music-making
projects and activities.

Andy is Chair of the UK and Ireland Branch of the International 
Association
for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) and co-convenor of the British
Sociological Association Youth Study Group (formed in January 1999). He 
is
also an Editorial Board member of the journals Sociology and Leisure 
Studies.
Andy has recently been appointed as Faculty associate, Center for 
Cultural
Sociology at Yale University.

For further information, please contact:
Ms Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
Ph. (07) 3346 9764   Fax (07) 3365 7184
Email: admin.cccs at uq.edu.au


Melissa Gregg
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
4th Floor, Forgan Smith Tower
University of Queensland 4072
CRICOS provider number: 00025B

ph     61 7 3346 9762
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