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Musical Gentrification
Musical Gentrification
Popular Music, Distinction and Social Mobility
Edited by Petter Dyndahl, Sidsel Karlsen and Ruth Wright
Musical Gentrification
Popular Music, Distinction and Social
Mobility
Edited by
Petter Dyndahl, Sidsel Karlsen
and Ruth Wright
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Petter Dyndahl, Sidsel Karlsen and
Ruth Wright individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Petter Dyndahl, Sidsel Karlsen and Ruth Wright to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Index 178
Illustrations
Figures
8.1 The number of male- and female-authored theses in Western
classical music from 1928–2012 116
8.2 The number of male- and female-authored theses in popular
music from 1974–2012 117
8.3 The number of male- and female-authored theses in music and
media from 1967–2012 117
Table
8.1 Chi square tests of the relationships between gender and music
genre or gender and research topics 115
Contributors
Vincent C. Bates
Associate Professor of Teacher Education, Weber State University, USA
Petter Dyndahl
Professor of Musicology, Music Education and General Education, Inland
Norway University of Applied Sciences
Mariko Hara
Researcher, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Sidsel Karlsen
Professor of Music Education, Norwegian Academy of Music
Nick Prior
Professor of Cultural Sociology, The University of Edinburgh, UK
Odd Skårberg
Professor of Music, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Stian Vestby
Associate Professor of Music, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences
Ruth Wright
Professor of Music Education, Western University, Canada
Acknowledgements
As with Bourdieu’s (2011) concept of cultural capital, one could claim that
musical gentrification is, in one way, a metaphor. In the case of Bourdieu, the
source domain of the metaphor is the capital concept of the material economy,
while the target domain is the symbolic—or cultural—economy, of which he
develops an analytical concept. Regarding musical gentrification, the source is
urban life and its material and symbolic economies, and the target is the specific
field of music within the cultural-economic domain. Tuck and Yang (2012),
however, caution against viewing incidents of cultural appropriation in a meta-
phorical way, since this might potentially gloss over actions and aspects that are
materially harmful. Their timely warning is primarily related to decolonisation,
and to the troublesome habit of turning the harsh realities of colonialism into
metaphors for other, incommensurable problems in society. This can be observed
for example in “[t]he easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational
advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to
‘decolonize our schools,’ or use ‘decolonizing methods,’ or, ‘decolonize student
thinking’ ” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 1), thus indirectly making colonialism more
innocent than it is. Notwithstanding this important reminder, as scholars writing
within the humanities and the social sciences, it is almost impossible to avoid the
use of metaphors as such. The key is, we believe, on the one hand, to use meta-
phors that are not incommensurable—or completely out of tune—with their
source, which is neither the case with cultural capital nor with musical gentrifi-
cation. On the other hand, we are of the opinion that it is vital to acknowledge
the importance of the actual and intentional use of language and metaphor under
specific circumstances and with reference to specific phenomena. Metaphors are
always metaphors in a context.
The contextual or situated intention behind Bourdieu’s coining of “cultural
capital” is based on this concept being more than just a metaphor; to be con-
sidered the holder of such capital requires actual knowledge and understanding,
as well as the mastery of a variety of codes. A similar intention can be said to be
behind the development of the notion of musical gentrification. Our ambition has
Popular music expansion 5
been to turn the metaphor into a critical, analytical concept; this can perhaps also
be understood as the overarching objective of the entire book. According to Kant
(1819), in order to create a posteriori concepts, “one must thus be able to
compare, reflect and abstract, for these three logical operations of the under-
standing are essential and general conditions of generating any concept what-
ever” (Kant, 1819, §6). In the ongoing conceptualisation of musical gentrification
all three of these acts or operations have been, and still are, effective: the com-
parison of different mental images to one another is necessary to create the meta-
phor; the reflection on mental imagery and how different representations can be
comprehended requires knowledge, skill and awareness; and the abstraction of
everything else that deviates from it is essential to the articulation of the concept
itself. However, this book’s further interpretation of the concept of musical gen-
trification will, in addition, pursue the Bourdieusian critique of the Kantian
judgement of taste, thereby promoting a distinct critical orientation towards
“pure” perceptions of aesthetics, and of music in particular. The foremost evid-
ence that musical gentrification has developed from being a metaphor to becom-
ing a concept lies perhaps in the fact that it adds fresh content and new
dimensions precisely to Bourdieu’s concept of capital, within a recontextualisa-
tion of time and space.
References
Bjørnsen, E. (2012). Inkluderende kulturskole. Utredning av kulturskoletilbudet i
storbyene [The inclusive school of music and performing arts: An investigation of the
availability of culture schools in the cities]. Kristiansand: Agderforskning.
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theory: An anthology (pp. 81–93). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
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IL: Chicago University Press.
Dyndahl, P. (2013). Musical gentrification, socio-cultural diversities, and the account-
ability of academics. In P. Dyndahl (Ed.), Intersection and interplay. Contributions to
the cultural study of music in performance, education, and society (Perspectives in
music and music education, no. 9) (pp. 173–188). Lund: Malmö Academy of Music,
Lund University.
Dyndahl, P., Karlsen, S., Skårberg, O., & Nielsen, S. G. (2014). Cultural omnivorousness
and musical gentrification: An outline of a sociological framework and its applications
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Glass, R. (1963). Introduction to London: Aspects of change. London, UK: Centre for
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Gustavsen, K., & Hjelmbrekke, S. (2009). Kulturskole for alle? Pilotundersøkelse om
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Halnon, K. B., & Cohen, B. (2006). Muscles, motorcycles and tattoos: Gentrification in a
new frontier. Journal of Consumer Culture, 6, 33–56.
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meets cultural meetings: The attendance of culture schools among immigrants]. Bø:
Telemarksforskning.
Popular music expansion 11
The Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved December 7, 2019, from www.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gentry
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webster.com/thesaurus/gentry
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Norway University of Applied Sciences, Hamar.
2 Musical gentrification
Strategy for social positioning in late
modern culture
Petter Dyndahl
Introduction
This chapter rests on the premise that there exists a symbolic economy next to
the material one. Within the symbolic, or cultural, economy, Bourdieu (1984,
p. 18ff.) asserted, based upon his comprehensive empirical research on the state
of French culture and society in the 1960s, that music represents one of the most
important negotiations of the social world. This argument has been reinforced by
similar studies conducted four decades later in Denmark (Faber, Prieur, Rosen-
lund & Skjøtt-Larsen, 2012) and in the United Kingdom, indicating that “music
is the most clearly separated of all our cultural fields…. It is the most divided,
contentious, cultural field of any that we examine and is central to our concern
with probing contemporary cultural dynamics and tensions” (Bennett et al.,
2009, p. 75). However, among musicians, fans, music educators and even
researchers, there is a prevalent, self-sufficient conception that music and music
education are invariably of benefit to both self-realisation and social inclusion.1
Critical of this view, Hesmondhalgh (2008) argued that such an assumption must
rest on an overly optimistic—though paradoxical—understanding. This implies
that music, on the one hand, is considered crucial for beneficial social and indi-
vidual development, while on the other hand, it is seen as totally unaffected by
disadvantageous factors:
The dominant conception rightly emphasises the social nature of music and
of self-identity, but if music is as imbricated with social processes as
the dominant conception suggests, then it is hard to see how people’s
Strategy for social positioning 13
engagement with music can be so consistently positive in their effects, when
we live in societies that are marked by inequality, exploitation and
suffering.
(Hesmondhalgh, 2008, p. 334)
If music and music education are so essential for the individual and the com-
munity as indicated by their cultural significance, they cannot only have positive
outcomes but must necessarily also be connected to undesirable social and
historical processes, which is the perception pursued in this chapter.
However, the ways in which music’s social functions are reflected culturally
are likely to change over time. Nowadays, rather than consuming only high
culture, members of the privileged and dominant classes tend to consume much
of what would have previously been dismissed as low culture. This seems to be
a global phenomenon, although it is led by the Western world. Still, it has been
most clearly expressed in the Nordic countries, at least regarding the variety of
fields within which it unfolds. For example, there has been a strong tendency in
Scandinavia from the 1970s onwards to expand the repertoires and resources of
music as an educational subject or an academic field as well as an area for
support and funding from cultural authorities, organisations and institutions.
Herein, many popular music genres have gained considerable educational,
curricular and institutional status. In this context, the objective of this current
piece of writing is to discuss these phenomena in light of the concept of musical
gentrification. First, however, there is a need to locate the term in relation to
comparable concepts. Accordingly, since popular culture now seems to be attrac-
tive for most social groups and classes worldwide, it makes sense to start with a
musical sociological contribution that is particularly concerned with the global
prevalence popular music has gained in today’s society.
What I want to suggest, in other words, is not that social groups agree on
values which are then expressed in their cultural activities … but that they
only get to know themselves as groups … through cultural activity, through
aesthetic judgement. Making music isn’t a way of expressing ideas, it is a
way of living them.
(Frith, 1996, p. 111, emphasis in original)
The social construction and positioning within the field of popular culture is pre-
cisely what Thornton (1995) aimed to capture by introducing the notion of sub-
cultural capital. She claimed that limited attention has been paid to these in-field
distinctive processes and asserted that:
Based on her study of social and cultural distinctions within the British dance
music club scene, Thornton argued that it is possible to observe subspecies of
capital operating in the terrain of youth culture and in other groups on the edge
of the traditional high/low dichotomy. She also stated that “hipness” is a high-
status form of subcultural capital that can be converted into a variety of popular
culture roles and occupations.
Strategy for social positioning 17
At the individual level, people seem to have a remarkable ability to under-
stand and accept their place in the social structure, both regarding the social
space and cultural (sub)field. From Bourdieu’s point of view, this is not about
rational insights but rather embodied social structures—as they are regulated by
social class, gender, ethnicity, age and so on—which are continuously repro-
duced through habits, preferences and tastes developed during a formative period
in life, such as growing up in a specific environment.3 The idea of habitus
expresses this composition of individual lifestyles, values, dispositions and
expectations, which are strongly associated with and conditioned by particular
social groups. For Bourdieu (1990), habitus is seen as an incorporated system of
distinctive perception and evaluation of socially situated properties and
practices:
For a habitus structured according to the very structures of the social world
in which it functions, each property (a pattern of speech, a way of dressing,
a bodily hexis, an educational title, a dwelling-place, etc.) is perceived in its
relations to other properties, therefore in its positional, distinctive value, and
it is through this distinctive distance, this difference, this distinction, which
is observed only by the seasoned observer, that the homologous position of
the bearer of this property in the space of social positions shows itself. All
of this is exactly encapsulated in the expression “that looks” (“ça fait …”:
“that looks petty-bourgeois”, “that looks yuppie”, “that looks intellectual”,
etc.) which serves to locate a position in social space through a stance taken
in symbolic space.
(p. 113)
Obviously, this can be applied to music as well: “that looks” may well be
replaced with “that sounds” (“that sounds posh”, “that sounds redneck”, “that
sounds middle-of-the-road”, “that sounds hipster”, “that sounds geek”, etc.), still
serving to locate positions in social space through stances taken in symbolic—in
this case, sonic—space.
Dominant status groups have regularly defined popular culture in ways that
fit their own interests and have worked to render harmless subordinate
status-group cultures…. One recurrent strategy is to define popular culture
as brutish and something to be suppressed or avoided … another is to gen-
trify elements of popular culture and incorporate them into the dominant
status-group culture…. Our data suggest a major shift from the former
strategy to the latter strategy of status group politics.
(Peterson & Kern, 1996, p. 906)
Musical gentrification
As quoted in the previous section, Peterson and Kern (1996) used the verb gen-
trify to illustrate how elements of popular culture have been incorporated into
the dominant status-group culture. Also, Halnon and Cohen (2006) applied gen-
trification as a metaphor for how low culture has been included in the dominant
culture, demonstrating how gentrification processes are applicable to symbolic
neighbourhoods in popular culture. They delineated how three symbolic neigh-
bourhoods of lower-class masculinity—i.e., muscles, motorcycles and tattoos—
have been transformed from lower to middle-class distinction. In addition, they
showed how cultural objects and expressions are not only incorporated but also
changed and adapted to new purposes and contexts. Thus, properties and prac-
tices are made more exclusive, a process that tends to make them impracticable
for the original possessors of the culture being gentrified.
However, to start from the beginning, Glass (1963) was the very first to
employ the term gentrification for academic purposes when she examined how
middle-class residents began to settle in low-income and working-class areas in
London, thereby raising both the standard and the status of the properties and
the neighbourhood. Simultaneously, many of the original residents were forced
to move out: “Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district it goes on
rapidly until all or most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced
and the whole social character of the district is changed” (Glass, 1963, p. xviii).
The term gentrification originates from the word gentry, which in late medieval
English denoted the wellborn and well-bred social class of the landed aristo-
cracy or the minor aristocracy, whose income emanated from extensive
Strategy for social positioning 21
l andholdings. However, when used in colloquial language and political dis-
course today, gentrification seems to mean urban renewal, which may involve
mainly positive associations, such as the stabilisation of declining areas,
increased property values, reduced vacancy rates, a better social mix, improved
prospects for further development and rehabilitation of property using both
private and public funding (Atkinson & Bridge, 2005, p. 5). In this sense, gen-
trification tends to be identical with the revitalisation of a neighbourhood.
However, one should bear in mind that gentrification is also a process by which
higher-income households tend to displace lower-income ones, thereby chang-
ing the specific nature of the local community. For this reason, Marcuse (1985)
underscored that it is crucial not to omit or forget that displacement is at the
core of gentrification. Actually, a number of different types of displacement,
abandonment or marginalisation can be identified, such as physical displace-
ment when one is forced to leave home by the new owners, economic displace-
ment when buying or renting property becomes unaffordable, exclusionary
displacement or abandonment when the total number of homes is reduced
because smaller flats are merged into larger ones and lastly, cultural marginali-
sation or displacement when one feels alienated from an altered neighbourhood
that once was familiar. Hence, just as the above-discussed notion of cultural
omnivorousness can be interpreted as consisting of both inclusionary and exclu-
sionary elements, it seems obvious that the concept of gentrification also com-
prises attractive as well as repelling forces.
Much like urban gentrification, musical gentrification is predisposed to
involve processes of both inclusion and exclusion. The idea implies a symbolic
relocation from the field of urban studies to that of the cultural and sociological
study of music. Thus, the metaphor may serve to illustrate and examine
analogous tendencies to the above in various socio-cultural fields of music,
where musics that originally held lower social, cultural and aesthetic status
become objects of socio-aesthetic interest and symbolic investment from cultural
agents who possess higher status, partly as a result of the ubiquitous processes of
aesthetic cosmopolitanism and cultural omnivorousness described above.
Musical gentrification occurs in different domains. Obvious examples are when
vernacular and popular musics are invaded by artists, educators and researchers,
with aestheticisation, institutionalisation and academisation as results. As part of
these processes, what characterises the original musical traditions and cultures—
now being gentrified—may be disturbed, and some of the social and cultural ties
to the musical cultures in question can be weakened or even broken for some of
the earlier cultural practitioners. With this basis, musical gentrification has been
defined as:
[i]t became increasingly obvious that the quality of art did not inhere in the
work itself, but in the evaluations made by the art world … and that expres-
sions of all sorts from around the world are open to aesthetic appropriation
(Becker, 1982). This is the aesthetic basis of the shift from the elitist exclu-
sive snob to the elitist inclusive omnivore.
(Peterson & Kern, 1996, p. 905)
Additionally, when describing the structural changes that led to the omnivorous
expansion of cultural consumption, Peterson and Kern (1996, p. 905) mostly
focused on rising standards of living, social class mobility, geographical migra-
tion, broader education and the more accessible presentation of the arts via
media. These are all plausible explanations, but they lack some of Bourdieu’s
conflicting views on society, according to which contradictions and opposites are
seen as meaning-making, indicating—as mentioned above—that the social
significance of art and culture is constituted of differences.5 Bourdieu and Wac-
quant (1992) argued for the implementation of a radical doubt, claiming that
constructing a qualified understanding should, first and foremost, involve break-
ing with prevailing perceptions. Thus, according to the Bourdieusian approach,
powerful symbolic hierarchies are established, and societal symbolic power is
able to exercise its effect by means of differences. By way of example, the forms
of capital—both economic and cultural—are defined as scarce resources that
individuals, groups and classes fight for, which constitutes the very dynamics of
society. Moreover, these dynamics are relationally organised in the sense that
Strategy for social positioning 23
high or low positions in society are always defined in relation to each other; for
someone to have high status, someone else must have low. In order for a life-
style to be interpreted as distinguished or highbrow, another must be regarded as
ordinary or lowbrow. The basis for such distinctive valuations is that different
social classes possess their respective “systems of classification” (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992, p. 7), which are embodied in habitus. Habitus is thus strongly
regulated by structural conditions. That being said, habitus also holds an
enabling, agentic capacity, which opens the way for a practical concept of
strategy, and this practical sense might be regarded as Bourdieu’s (1977) expres-
sion of agency.6 Through a practical sense of how the power relations within an
interaction are symbolically configured, agents can adapt their contributions
strategically in order to position themselves—or their ideas, arguments, aesthetic
preferences, etc.—favourably within the discourse. In this context, it is relevant
to point out that Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) attributed a certain relative auto-
nomy to social fields such as art and education.
Furthermore, it should be noted that when applying the two dimensions of
capital volume (high/low) and capital composition (economic/cultural) in order
to make the connections between social positions and lifestyles visible within
the spatial framework of the diagrams of Distinction, Bourdieu (1984, p. 122f.)
also implied a third axis, namely a “time-dimension referring to trajectories: the
social agents’ history of stability or mobility related to the system of social posi-
tions” (Prieur & Savage, 2011, p. 572). This could imply that in late modern
society, with the prospect of lifelong education and shifting profession, with the
evolution of a normative mindset emphasising changing rather than staying
values, with increasing globalisation and migration and with the rapid develop-
ment of media and technology, the formative period of habitus may be signifi-
cantly extended beyond childhood, thereby refining the practical sense to
sophistication, not least when it comes to symbolic domains like the dynamic
field of music.
The notion of musical gentrification implies ambitions to incorporate the
above complex insights (i.e., linking structure and agency as well as diachronic
and synchronic perspectives) in an overall concept. However, this does not mean
that the concept can encompass anything that has been labelled cultural omnivo-
rousness and/or aesthetic cosmopolitanism. On the contrary, the concept of
musical gentrification may provide a more specific angle to power relations and
historical dimensions concerning social differentiation within the fields of music
and its policies, education and research. As stated in the above precursory defini-
tion, what is included and excluded, as well as the changes that the gentrification
imposes on the music and its practices, are essential dimensions of the concept.
Moreover, musical gentrification is particularly associated with the changes in
the systems of classification, which imply that time-honoured hegemonies are
set aside, while new, subtle distinctions—apparently disturbing the traditional
balance between high and low culture—gain momentum. Compared with the
concepts of aesthetic cosmopolitanism and cultural omnivorousness, the process
of change will be of greatest focus for musical gentrification. What dispositions
24 Petter Dyndahl
are expressed in the search for types of music that can accumulate new cultural
capital? How is this practical sense developed? How is it implemented strategi-
cally? These questions also refer to agents—individuals and/or institutions—
who assume the role of musical gentrifiers as well as the symbolic power they
exert. A substantial portion of the research that has thus far been carried out
within this conceptual framework has been concerned with Norwegian music
academia and how the disposition as gentrifier has been performed by various
agents within this field.
In the Norwegian academic context, Hansen, Andersen, Flemmen and Ljung-
gren (2014) argued that professors and other academic staff members in effect
influence not only what are legitimate research objects or legitimate educational
content but also who and what should be admitted to high-status rank outside of
academia. As such, they argued that professors in particular, represent a kind of
cultural academic elite who exert the power to define and introduce new phe-
nomena and objects of interest within their own fields, in academia and beyond.
By putting capital at the centre, Ljunggren (2014) claimed that for something to
function as cultural capital, it must be legitimised somewhere; someone must
vouch for its quality. Again, the cultural elite in academia, the professors, will
have the greatest classification power over what should count as legitimate cul-
tural capital. They also have the power to influence what should be researched
and how to define and control the contents of education and to regulate access to
high positions in academia. In this way, they manage the academic institutions’
systems of classification, which Regev (2013) denoted as institutionalised pat-
terns of cultural value.
Within the arts, the power of definition might work even more strongly. For
instance, Hovden and Knapskog (2014, p. 56) maintained that being a recog-
nised arts professor implies that one is
clearly better placed than others to influence what types of art and which
artistic artefacts are acknowledged (or at least presented) as valuable and
their chance of being seen and produced, that is, to be cultural tastemakers
and gatekeepers, tastekeepers.
With respect to music academia and higher music education, this means that
music professors may act as tastekeepers, and in some cases as gentrifiers, with
regards to how musical gentrification is enacted in legitimate ways within their
field and to which musical genres and styles are considered appropriate for ele-
vation and institutionalisation in academia (see Dyndahl, 2015a). This is how the
symbolic economy works in society and culture as a whole and, on a smaller
scale, in the university. This is also one way in which the gentrification of
popular music takes place as processes of academisation and institutionalisation.
Strategy for social positioning 25
The gentrification of popular music in higher music
education and research
In an academic context, it would probably be most common to think that the
expansion of popular music genres and styles in higher music education would
be initiated from below; from the budding academics—the students—who
experience that their music tastes and interests are not appreciated in academia.
To some extent, there was some pressure from a minor fraction of Scandinavian
music students from the 1970s onwards. However, in line with the arguments
stated in the previous paragraph, it is interesting to note that younger professors
or professors-to-be contributed greatly to opening the academic doors for jazz,
popular music, folk and vernacular music in the Nordic countries, seeing them-
selves as activists against the conservative establishment of higher music educa-
tion and research (Dyndahl, 2015a). Although it may at first glance appear as
somewhat surprising that an activist base that aims to better understand and help
to improve situations of inequality, marginalisation and oppression might also
serve as a power base from which to achieve and maintain a new academic hege-
mony, it is nevertheless a striking example of one of the paradoxes of musical
gentrification: whoever has developed a practical sense of what is possible to
gentrify at a given time within a given social field will also be able to reap the
benefits in the form of cultural capital.
However, it is important to emphasise that this should not be seen as a delib-
erate, cynical action but as the symbolic, economic logic that the university as an
institution and its individual agents are subject to (Bourdieu, 1988), which is
embodied in habitus, and the disposition to evolve a practical sense or strategic
action ability. Also worth remembering is that the outcome of musical gentrifica-
tion is just as paradoxical as the idea, and that power—according to Foucault
(2001)—is not only repressive but also productive:
This form of power that applies itself to immediate everyday life categorizes
the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him that he must recognize and others
have to recognize in him. It is a form of power that makes individuals sub-
jects. There are two meanings of the word “subject”: subject to someone
else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience
or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power that subjugates
and makes subject to.
(p. 331)
Conclusion
Based on the previous sections, the concept of musical gentrification may now
be described as holding the potential to address both the destabilisation and
restabilisation of social positions as well as systems of classification in educa-
tion, culture and society. First, musical gentrification denotes processes for
incorporation of popular culture elements into the dominant status-group culture.
Second, these processes tend to be strategically selective in the sense that there
will be something and someone marginalised, omitted or excluded. Third, the
gentrified musical objects and expressions are not only included but are also
changed and adapted to the new purposes and contexts. This may involve alter-
ations that are so extensive that some of the social and cultural ties to the musical
cultures in question can be weakened or broken for the first-hand cultural practi-
tioners. Thus, musical gentrification presupposes differences as a dynamic force
of power in society and culture, maintaining and redefining hierarchies of hege-
mony. However, although power makes individuals subject to someone else by
control and suppression, it may also afford empowerment. In this context,
musical gentrification is executed by gentrifiers, who have developed an agentic
disposition or practical strategy to sense what is capable of gentrification at a
28 Petter Dyndahl
given time within a given social field and who will thus be able to benefit
from it.
Disposition is a key concept in Bourdieu’s work. It can be conceived as a
sense of the game or—more precisely—as a skill that is partly conscious and
rational but that is also partly an intuitive, practical mastery of social fields and
systems of classification which appears to be spontaneously expressed. However,
the dispositions are conditioned responses to the social world formed over years,
and it follows that the individual habitus is always a mix of multiple engage-
ments in the social world throughout the person’s life.9 Further, since the social
fields are put into practice through the agency of the individuals, no social field
or system of classification can be completely stable, but instead it is possible to
adapt or alter them according to specific initiatives and interests. In other words,
the concept of the practical sense holds the potential to connect the poles of the
dichotomy between structure and agency.
The practical sense is rooted in habitus, which is formed throughout a per-
son’s life. Thus, “referring to trajectories: the social agents’ history of stability
or mobility related to the system of social positions” (Prieur & Savage, 2011,
p. 572) is necessary to see in light of the characteristics of late modern develop-
ment of society and culture. Sociologists like Bauman (2000) and Beck, Giddens
and Lash (1994) argued that in late modernity, a liquid or reflexive modernisa-
tion process is occurring. This means that while in classical or high modernity,
the concept of modernity was defined in opposition to traditionalism, in late
modernity the concept tends to be more or less self-referring. This is one of the
reasons why both highbrow and lowbrow cultural forms can now be detected on
a sub-level or more specific level within social space (Frith, 1996; Thornton,
1995) than what Bourdieu (1984) maintained with his opposition between high
and low culture to denote the consecrated classical versus the vulgar popular
culture. This adds a historical basis for justifying the notion of musical gentrifi-
cation as a concept that may hold the potential to address new distinctions and
consecrations within the field of popular music (i.e., between its different genres,
styles and modes of expression rather than between the popular and traditional
cultural systems of classification and sets of values).
Notwithstanding, although musical gentrification can operate as a nuanced
conceptual device for popular genres, subgenres, styles and sub-styles, it is prim-
arily a cultural sociological concept. Its strength lies therefore in saying some-
thing relevant about music’s social and cultural significance and not in
expounding the ontologies of music or investigating in-depth sophisticated ways
of interacting aesthetically with musical matters and materials. However, Frith’s
(1996) demand to understand popular music in its composite socio-cultural and
aesthetic whole implies an ontological approach to music, emphasising precisely
that music is both an aesthetic and a socio-cultural matter. But to pursue this
further, the concept of musical gentrification must be complemented by other
theoretical contributions. Prior (2013), in this regard, asked whether Bourdieu-
sian claims about social stratification and music consumption are still relevant
and whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with the specific ways that
Strategy for social positioning 29
people interact with musical forms. Thus, he called for developing “something
like a ‘post-Bourdieusian’ sociology more faithful to music’s material prop-
erties” (Prior, 2013, p. 181), pointing out theoretical contributions from DeNora
(1999, 2000, 2004), Hennion (1999, 2007, 2008) and Born (2010). Nevertheless,
considered from the theoretical perspective constituted by musical gentrification,
such contributions must not be incompatible with the concept’s specific socio-
logical approach, which aims to see social and institutional structures as well as
cultural and individual agencies in context. Here, Regev’s (2013, p. 177) pro-
posal to develop the actor-network theory to a notion of sonic embodiment and
material presence represents an interesting outline, illuminating actants as
material-semiotic elements that mediate “new ways of experiencing the body,
new styles of consciousness and modes of embodiment, new designs of the
public musical sphere”. Another idea could be to develop a discursive approach
that might capture discourses in music as well as discourses on music, as
Folkestad (2017) advocated. This would enable the understanding that music
itself might be regarded as a discourse, as musical discursive actions and activ-
ities, including the formation of musical identities. That way, both Frith’s dual
perspective on music and Bourdieu’s interconnection between structure and
agency could be consolidated.
However, such contributions to the development of theory are beyond the
scope of this chapter, which has attempted to address the significance of the
concept of musical gentrification for the understanding of social positioning in
late modern culture. In sum, this has explained that what seems like inclusive
and democratising tendencies may in subtle ways mean that inclusion takes place
only in specific forms and under certain conditions, through which some groups
and classes gain higher status and power while others are still marginalised or
excluded. Furthermore, this time they could be excluded by means of what was
originally their own culture, which due to the processes of musical gentrification,
has changed in character and been adopted by a new audience. This may lead to
particular classes and groups experiencing school and education as less relevant,
leading to suspicion of social groups and cultural institutions that have deprived
or closed access to one’s culture. Ultimately, this might create a breeding ground
for contempt for the cultural elite (Ljunggren, 2014) and a rejection of know-
ledge, education and research that could threaten the knowledge society and the
welfare state. Therefore, it is hoped that the insights provided by the concept of
musical gentrification may have implications for the politics of culture and aes-
thetics, for music education and research and for people’s agency in society,
culture, education and their personal lives.
Notes
1 Of course, there are music education scholars who oppose such a view, such as Philpott
(2012) and Boeskov (2019), but they are relatively few.
2 Latour borrowed the notion of actants from Greimas (1983), for whom it referred to
integral structural elements around which narratives, such as storytelling, revolve.
30 Petter Dyndahl
3 For a further discussion on the significance of parenting for the formation of habitus,
see Vestad and Dyndahl, this volume.
4 See also Vestby, this volume.
5 This is probably where Bourdieu exhibits the closest kinship with Saussure and Derrida
(see Dyndahl, 2015b, p. 33ff.).
6 For an idiosyncratic perspective on the relationship between musical gentrification and
agency, see Karlsen, this volume.
7 For more details about the research project and the research group, see the opening
chapter of this volume.
8 For a detailed discussion of gender-related issues concerning musical gentrification, see
Nielsen, this volume.
9 Lahire (2003, p. 329) emphasised that dispositions are not just general and homogen-
eous by nature, but “that social agents have developed a broad array of dispositions,
each of which owes its availability, composition, and force to the socialization process
in which it was acquired”.
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3 Exploring the phenomenon of
musical gentrification
Methods and methodologies
Sidsel Karlsen, Mariko Hara, Stian Vestby, Petter
Dyndahl, Siw Graabræk Nielsen and Odd Skårberg
Introduction
One of the main characteristics of research and of scientific conduct, whether it
is theoretically or empirically inclined, is rigour connected to the definition of
concepts and to the materialisation of such concepts into philosophical or empir-
ical realities. Even though a particular concept might be adequately defined, its
operationalisation might occur in different ways due to dissimilarities in theoret-
ical or material contextualisations. As for the concept central to this book,
namely musical gentrification, it is coined by the research group, by which it is
developed, in the following way:
As with the UK study (Bennett et al., 2009), the Danish researchers found this
phenomenon to influence, in particular and in a negative way, the data collection
among the participants categorised as belonging to “the lower [social] classes”
(Faber et al., 2012, p. 69).
The Danish and UK researchers’ grappling with finding suitable methodo-
logical solutions within the field of cultural sociology might be understood as
struggles to operationalise grand theory—a highly abstract theorising of the
organisation of the social world—which is one possible way of characterising
Bourdieu’s work (Walther, 2014, p. 7). In their case, the operationalisation
Methods and methodologies 37
c onsisted of one step mainly, namely, the translation from theoretical concepts
and into practical research tools, as already mentioned above. In the context of
our project, this process of translation has contained yet another step, since we
have mainly been occupied with utilising, and also constructing, what might be
viewed as middle-range theory; in other words a form of sociological theorising
which is slightly less abstract and in itself closer to the empirical world. Since
Bourdieu’s work still forms a backdrop for our project, the first step has con-
sisted of a translation (or perhaps rather a bridging) of grand theory concepts,
such as “cultural capital”, “habitus” and “social class” (Bourdieu, 1984) into the
middle-range theoretical notions of “cultural omnivorousness” (Peterson, 1992;
Peterson & Kern, 1996) and “musical gentrification” (Dyndahl et al., 2014).
Secondly, our next step has been to operationalise musical gentrification so that
it makes sense and can be used for the purpose of collecting, producing and
constructing research data of various kinds and in various social and cultural
contexts. As Søndergaard (2002) reminds us, there is no one way to go about
such processes, and prescriptive models or universal techniques for how to do it
simply do not exist. Rather, researchers must find their own way through this
theoretical-empirical landscape—learning as they go, and also from each other,
in and through collaborative efforts. This calls for even more complex layers of
researcher reflexivity than exemplified above, and also for developing reflexive
methodologies (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2000). In the following, we will exem-
plify three such processes and attempts, all characterised by individual as well as
collective learning, by explaining the routes of operationalisation connected to
each of the three Musical Gentrification sub-projects: one conducted by four
senior researchers (Petter Dyndahl, Sidsel Karlsen, Siw Graabræk Nielsen and
Odd Skårberg), one PhD project (conducted by Stian Vestby), and finally one
sub-project conducted by a postdoctoral researcher (Mariko Hara).
Reaching the point where the (qualitative) descriptions of musics in the 1,695
theses could be converted into and analysed as statistical data required substan-
tial and multi-layered processes of hermeneutical work, which should serve as a
reminder that clear-cut distinctions between qualitative and quantitative research
rarely exist.
As is evident from the above, the research group engaged in extensive discus-
sions in order to build up the thesis register as well as the spectrum of generic
and stylistic categories, and in this work, they drew both on prior generic know-
ledge of the musical fields in question, acquired through professional experience,
and a range of tools borrowed from the musicological discipline. In this way,
they implemented what Bourdieu calls a “reflexive sociology” (Bourdieu &
Wacquant, 1992). An important methodological point in this regard, is that the
researchers in a field are also agents within the exact same field. Consequently, a
thorough study of the academic field must therefore be made part of the actual
research and thus a part of the researchers’ self-reflection. Bourdieu and Wac-
quant’s (1992) notion of “epistemic reflexivity” locates this hermeneutic insight
and responsibility with the researchers, who inevitably will impregnate the
research object with their pre-understanding in a social and cultural context.
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for anything except a dog-fight, but they flops down in their chairs
at the front of the stage and acts like they meant business.
Scenery recovers his sawed-off shotgun and sets down on the
corner of the stage, where he can watch them disgrunted husbands.
Me and Dirty follows Magpie to a place he’s got partitioned off for
a dressing-room. Through the curtain we can hear Yaller Rock
County beginning to come in. Me and Dirty are just sober enough to
kinda be indifferent to death or taxation.
Magpie gives us our costumes, which consists of cowhide pants
with a tail tied on, and a jigger made like a cap, with yearlin’ calf
horns sticking out the side. He also gives us each a little whistle
made of a willer.
“Where’s the shirt?” asks Dirty.
“Fauns don’t wear shirts.”
“What do you wear, Magpie?”
Magpie holds up a mountain-lion skin and a breech-clout. Dirty
looks things over and then says to Magpie:
“If you escape, Magpie, will yuh do me a favor? In my cabin—in a
old trunk, is a suit of clothes. I paid sixteen dollars for it the year
Bryan run for free silver, but I never wore it. Will yuh see that they
lays me out in it? Lawd knows I don’t want to be buried in a outfit
like this.”
From outside we hears “Fog-horn” Foster’s voice—
“We-e-e-ll, come on, you mockin’-birds!”
“The house must be full,” opines Magpie, fastening his lionskin.
“Full of hootch and ⸺” sighs Dirty, sliding into his cow skins.
“I’m goin’ to die like a ⸺ cow, I know that.”
“My gosh!” grunts Magpie. “I’ve plumb forgot we ain’t got no
announcer since the judge quit. Ike, will you do the announcin’?”
“Then I won’t have to dance?”
“Sure you’ll have to dance, but all you’ve got to do, Ike, is to tell
’em what is comin’ next. The first thing on the program is a solo
dance, which is knowed as ‘The Gatherin’ Storm,’ by Mrs. Smith; and
then she gets assisted by the five ‘Raindrops,’ consistin’ of Mrs. Holt,
Mrs. Tilton, Mrs. Steele, Mrs. Gonyer and Mrs. Wheeler. Mrs. Smith is
doin’ the solo in place of the departed champeen dancer of the
world. Will yuh do this for me, Ike?”
“Do it for Magpie,” urges Dirty. “Do anythin’ to get it over.”
If Mrs. Smith knew anything about dancing she forgot every step.
She trots out on the stage and starts something like Kid Carson used
to call “shadow-boxing.” Then she turns around about three times,
stubs her toe and falls down. Standing in a line across the stage is
the rest of them females, with their hands up in the air like they was
being held up by somebody with a gun.
“A-arabellie!” wails Wick. “My ⸺, woman, git out of sight!”
Mrs. Smith gets to her feet and yelps back at Wick:
“Git out of sight yourself—if you don’t like it! I’ll teach you to flirt
with a dancer. Start the music over again, Bill.”
“Em-m-m-i-lee!” shrieks Sam Holt. “Ain’tcha got no modesty? Go
put on your shoes and socks!”
Bill Thatcher starts squealing on his instrument again, and Mrs.
Smith starts doing some fancy steps.
Wow! Here comes Judge Steele, Art Wheeler, Pete Gonyer,
Testament Tilton, Wick Smith and Sam Holt, climbing right over the
top of folks.
“Git ba-a-a-ck!” squeaks Seenery, waving his shotgun. “Stop it!
Whoa, Blaze!”
“Look at the wild man!” howls somebody, and here comes Magpie
across the stage hopping high and handsome.
“Stop ’em, Scenery!” whoops Magpie. “Dog-gone ’em, they can’t
bust up my show!”
Man, I’ll tell all my grandchildren this tale. Them outraged
husbands came up on that stage, while Yaller Rock County yelled
itself hoarse and made bets on whether it would be an odd or even
number of deaths. Magpie hit Pete in the neck and Pete lit with one
leg on each side of Bill Thatcher’s head. Wick Smith got hold of his
wife and them two started a tug of war.
Me and old Sam Holt got to waltzing around and around, which
wasn’t a-tall pleasant, being as I’m barefooted and Sam ain’t. I seen
Mrs. Wheeler and Art locked in mortal combat, and just then I hears
Dirty Shirt Jones yelp—
“Heavy, heavy hangs over your head—”
I whirls just in time to see what’s coming, but I can’t escape. Dirty
Shirt has turned the atmosphere loose. Them four he-sheep—four
ungentlemanly woollies, with corkscrew horns, are buck-jumping
across that stage, seeking what they may hit. I swung around to
meet the attack, and I reckon the leading sheep hit him a dead
center, ’cause I felt the shock plumb to me.
Maybe it hit Sam a little low, because it knocked all four of our
feet off the floor, and the next in line picked us in the air and stood
us on our heads.
I seen Wick Smith, braced against the edge of the stage, trying to
pull his wife over the edge, the same of which is a invitation to a
sheep, and the old ram accepted right on the spot. Mrs. Smith
grunted audibly and shot into Wick’s arms. Scenery Sims starts to
skip across the stage, but a ram outsmarted him, and I seen
Scenery turn over gracefully in the air and shoot, regardless, with
both barrels of that sawed-off shotgun.
Them load of shot hived up in the chandelier, the same of which
cut off our visible supply of light.
I heard the crashing of glass, and I figures that the hallway is too
crowded for some of the audience. I lays still, being wise, until the
noise subsides, and the crowd has escaped. Then I moves slowly to
my hands and knees. I feels a hand feeling of my legs, and then a
hand taps gently on my horned cap.
“I—I thought,” whispers old Sam’s voice kinda quavering-like, “I—
I thought they was all old ones, but a sheep’s a sheep to me.”
Bam! Something landed on my head, and I seen more bright
lights than there is in a million dollars worth of skyrockets. Then
things kinda clear up, and I hears old Sam saying to himself:
“Well, I killed one of the ⸺ things. If I go carefully⸺”
I can dimly see old Sam sneaking for the front of the stage. I’m
mad. I got up and sneaked right after him. No man can mistake me
for a sheep and get away with it. I jumps for old Sam’s back, and
just then he seems to kinda drop away from me. I reckon he forgot
about the five-feet drop from the stage, and I know danged well I
did. I reckon I sort of lit on my head and shoulders on top of
somebody. There comes a squeak from Bill Thatcher’s instrument,
and then all is quiet.
I wriggled loose and starts to get up, but a strong hand grabs me
by the ankle, yanks me off my feet, and I hit my head on a chair. I
kinda remember being dragged down them stairs, and then I feels
my carcass being dragged over rough ground. It was a long, hard
trip, and I reckon I lost about all the skin on the upper half of my
body. Finally I bumps over a step, gets yanked inside on to a carpet,
and then I hears a voice very dimly—
“Sweetheart, I brought thee home.”
Then a light is lit, and I sees Mrs. Smith putting the chimney on a
lamp. Without turning she says—
“I reckon you’ll confine your love to me after this, eh?”
Then she turns and looks at me, setting there on the floor with
my back propped up against a chair. I looks around. Just inside the
door, sitting on the floor, is Wick. Mrs. Smith looks at me and then at
him. Then she wipes her lips and stares at Wick.
“Sweetheart, eh?” grunts Wick, getting to his feet. “Arabellie, ain’t
you got no shame? Dancin’ up there without nothing on to speak of,
and then you has the gall to bring your sweetheart home with yuh.”
“Did—did—didn’t I—bring you home, Wicksie?”
“You—know—danged—well—you—didn’t. I always knowed you
was kinda sweet on Ike Harper.”
“On that!” She actually yelped, and pointed her finger at me.
“Sweet on him?”
I gets to my feet, but my legs ain’t very strong. I says:
“Lemme a-alone. I don’t want no man’s wife’s love—especially one
what hauls me home by the ankle. When I git married I want a
clingin’ vine—not a pile driver.”
I never did have much sense. A feller in my condition ought to
keep his mouth shut and sneak away soft-like. I turns my head
toward the door, and just then the weight of the world hit me from
behind, and it was a lucky thing for that house that the door was
open.
I landed on my hands and knees in the yard, with all the wind
knocked out of my system. Wick has got some rose-bushes in his
yard. Like a animal wounded unto death, I reckon I tried to crawl
around on my hands and knees to find a spot to die in.
All to once I sees one of them ⸺ sheep. It’s only a short
distance from me. I know if I move it’s going to hit me sure as ⸺
so I remains still. I’ll bet that me and the sheep never moved a
muscle for fifteen minutes.
Then all at once the sheep spoke.
“For ⸺’s sake, if you’re goin’ to butt—butt and have it over
with!”
I got to my feet.
“Get up, Dirty Shirt Jones,” says I. “What kind of a way is that to
act?”
Dirty weaves to his feet and stumbles over to me.
“Ike, thank the Lord, we’re alive!”
“Don’t presume too much. Medical science says that a man can
live after losin’ a certain amount of skin, but I’m bettin’ I’ve passed
that certain limit. Let’s sneak home and save what life we’ve got
left.”
We sneaked around the Mint Hall and Wick’s store, and at the
corner we stumbles into somebody.
“Who goes there?” asks Dirty.
“Go ⸺!” wails Magpie Simpkins. “Help me, will yuh? I wrastled
all the way down here with one of them ⸺ sheep and now I’m
afraid to let loose.”
“You and your ⸺ atmosphere!” groans Dirty.
“I’m settin’ on it,” wails Magpie, “I’ve got a kink in my neck. Will
yuh hold it down until I can get up?”
Just then a voice from under him starts singing very soft and low
—
“There’s a la-a-a-nd that is fairer than this⸺”
Magpie gets to his feet and takes a deep breath.
“Testament,” says he, “what made yuh blat like a sheep?”
But Testament’s mind is not dwelling on sheep—not the kind of
sheep that Magpie meant.
Then the three of us starts limping toward home.
“Mebbe,” says Magpie, kinda painful-like, “mebbe we progressed
too fast. Piperock don’t appreciate it, gents, but this night the old
town jumped ahead at least fifty years.”
“Jumpin’,” says Dirty, reflective-like, “Jumpin’ don’t hurt nobody,
but, holy hen-hawks, it sure does hurt to jump that far and light so
hard.”
We pilgrims along, everybody trying hard to make their legs track.
Finally Magpie says—
“Personally, I think that interpretive dancin’ has anythin’ skinned I
ever seen.”
“Me too,” says I, “and parts I never have seen.”
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the April 30, 1922 issue
of Adventure Magazine.
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