Popular music, psychogeography, place identity and tourism: The case of Sheffield

Tourism and cultural agencies in some English provincial cities are promoting their popular music ‘heritage’ and, in some cases, contemporary musicians through the packaging of trails, sites, ‘iconic’ venues and festivals. This article focuses on Sheffield, a ‘post-industrial’ northern English city which is drawing on its associations with musicians past and present in seeking to attract tourists. This article is based on interviews with, among others, recording artists, promoters, producers and venue managers, along with reflective observational and documentary data. Theoretical remarks are made on the representations of popular musicians through cultural tourism strategies, programmes and products and also on the ways in which musicians convey a ‘psychogeographical’ sense of place in the ‘soundscape’ of the city

Theoretical Approaches to Quotation in Hip-Hop Recordings

Intertextuality is pervasive in multiple forms of popular music, but is arguably most overtly presented in hip-hop music and culture. While much academic work has focused on linking practices of quotation, reference, allusion and Signifyin(g) in hip-hop to earlier forms of African-American music, the main purpose of this article is to outline and illustrate the variety of ways that one can borrow from a source text or trope and ways that audiences identify and respond to them. Distinctions between allosonic and autosonic quotations (Lacasse), ‘intention’ versus sociohistorically situated interpretations (Nattiez), as well as ‘textually signalled’ and ‘textually unsignalled’ intertextuality (Dyer), help create a more detailed taxonomy within the genre. These and other distinctions, which transcend narrow discourses that only focus on ‘sampling’ (digital sampling), provide a toolkit that sets a context for more nuanced discussions of borrowing practices and offers broader implications for intertextuality within and outside of hip-hop culture. By drawing from a range of examples (e.g. The Pharcyde, Dr Dre, Xzibit), this article demonstrates that a thorough investigation of musical borrowing in hip-hop requires attention to the texts (hip-hop recordings), their reception and wider cultural contexts. Theoretical Approaches to Quotation in Hip-Hop Recordings - ResearchGate. Available from: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/267929949_Theoretical_Approaches_to_Quotation_in_Hip-Hop_Recordings [accessed Mar 26, 2015]

The Clustering of Creative Networks: Between Myth and Reality

and even deepening that which it claims to transcend—namely, socio-spatial inequalities (Oakley, 2006). On the other hand, clustering really does take place and it can be argued that networks of aesthetic production have an inherent tendency to converge together into spatial agglomerations (Scott, 2000). In this paper, I discuss the structuring function of urban location by analysing the tensions between networks of aesthetic pro-duction and the various ‘creative clusters ’ that emerge from these networks. My argument in a nutshell is that the clustering of networked aesthetic production is structured by the con-temporary accumulation regime and mod