Figure 6. However, in a seemingly contradictory way, this system possessively binds an individual to the scene, in turn creating social boundaries for DIY membership and belonging through the reciprocal expectation of active DIY participation (cf. I start with a quote by a well-known American DIY zine writer Aaron Cometbus, who articulates some of the main issues and concerns regarding the alternative economic practices of American DIY communities: Bands [] when they are successful, its because of how talented they are, how much they care, how hard theyve worked. Furthermore, there exists a tension between these diverse activities within the DIY sphere, since more ideologically oriented DIY participants often foster a resentment towards more pragmatic and market-oriented DIY musicians. Whether you're in a seat on the balcony or dancing on the main floor, you'll have a great concert experience. Named for legendary saxophonist Charlie Bird Parker and Irish novelist Samuel Beckett, Bird & Beckett in Glen Park is a true neighborhood hotspot that features weekly jazz concerts, allowing you to hear and read about jazz at the same time. Accordingly, my central question in this article is: how do American DIY participants manage the tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist systems and worlds? Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: A whole society, with its own economic system: the reciprocal and capitalist configurations of American DIY music scenes, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic, Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value, Noise Records as Noise Culture: DIY Practices, Aesthetics, and Trades, Conceptualizing the Relationship Between Youth, Music, and DIY Careers: A Critical Overview, A Sense of Togetherness: Music Promotion and Ethics in Glasgow, The Growth and Disruption of a Free Space: Examining a Suburban Do It Yourself (DIY) Punk Scene, Volunteering, the Market, and Neoliberalism, Feeling Pain/Making Kin in the Brooklyn Noise Music Scene, Feeling the Vibe: Sound, Vibration, and Affective Attunement in Electronic Dance Music Scenes, Amiguismo: Capitalism, Sociality, and the Sustainability of Indie Music in Santiago, Chile, Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for Other Worlds, The Anatomy of a Dumpster: Abject Capital and the Looking Glass of Value, Post-Punks Attempt to Democratize the Music Industry: The Success and Failure of Rough Trade, Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre, Do It Yourselfand the Movement Beyond Capitalism, Value, Waste, and the Built Environment: A Marxian Analysis, Performing the Common Good: Volunteering and Ethics in Non-State Crime Prevention in South Africa, Local Identity and Independent Music Scenes, Online and Off, Punk Positif: The DIY Ethic and the Politics of Value in the Indonesian Hardcore Punk Scene, The Logics at Work in the New Cultural Industries, Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Construction, Break on Through: The Counterculture and the Climax of American Modernism, Accession and Association: The Effect of European Integration and Neoliberalism on Rising Inequality and Kin-neighbor Reciprocity in the Republic of Macedonia, Seeing Sapa: Reading a Transnational Marketplace in the Post-Socialist Cityscape, If There Isnt Skyscrapers, Dont Play There! Rock Music Scenes, Regional Touring, and Music Policy in Australia, Punk Rock Entrepreneurship: All-Ages DIY Music Venues and the Urban Economic Landscape, Neoliberalisms Moral Overtones: Music, Money, and Morality at Thailands Red Shirt Protests, Creativity, Precarity, and Illusio: DIY Cultures and Choosing Poverty, Theory and Ethnography of Affective Participation at DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Shows in the US. In turn, this approach challenges the widespread assumption that DIY participants often contradict themselves in terms of what they do and what they say or, in other words, that their material realities contradict their ideological demands. Furthermore, alternative DIY socio-economic systems succeed in generating considerable symbolic, affective, material, and political value for DIY participants and scenes. Donations of money for live performances at DIY shows (a form of balanced gift economy) might be seen to function in a similar way, where a marketable exchange commodity (the live performance) is transformed into a DIY commodity with symbolic and material use value through a process of diversion and enclaving. While it is still a great spot to enjoy cheap beer in a low-key setting, the Saloon is now best known as an intimate venue to enjoy some of the best jazz and blues in the city. By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. With a bar built in 1949, Club Deluxe harkens back to San Francisco's live music scene of the 1950s and 60s. Among the oldest venues in San Francisco, The Warfield has hosted a number of great black artists, including Louis Armstrong and Prince. And on the other hand, practical efforts toward, but also failures and difficulties in, embracing the reciprocal social and economic relations, which include collective networks of mutual aid, active participation, and DIY methods. In other words, Levy rejects approaches to collective organising that employ balanced reciprocity, with its obligation to reciprocate, as individualistic and selfish. He also gives advice about how to straddle both worlds, and how to pay up (reciprocally) for what bands owe to the community. A combination of commercial, second-hand, and scrap materials and tools were used in this DIY process. However, since the simple fact of attending shows, or because still and quiet listening to music can also count as valid forms of audience participation at DIY shows (see Figure 2), I argue for an understanding of American DIY communities that is open to a variety of different approaches and interpretations of active audience participation. American DIY participants therefore usually downplay or reject the notion of making it and strive toward community, collectivity, and intimate social cohesion.Footnote14 This is obvious, for instance, also in their willingness to play for small donations at shows, and in their rejection of major labels. We had this idea that it was a three-way tie [also the title of one of their albums] and not some hierarchy or aristocracy of guitar. San Francisco's dearly departed nightclubs and music venues - SFGATE These included sharing of food and equipment among DIY houses, local and translocal exchange of venues, the system of free boxes (see Figure 1),Footnote1 donations at shows, and participatory organiser-performer-audience interactions practices that enabled the creation of alternative cultural DIY worlds, and which in turn informed DIY sounds and aesthetics. Other DIY participants I interviewed talked about similar approaches included in the roster of DIY reciprocal and collective activities. A few blocks from Union Square, Le Colonial serves French-inspired Vietnamese cuisine against the backdrop of live jazz, Monday to Friday, featuring music from the Django Reinhardt-influenced group, Le Jazz Hot, and the sultry soul sounds of Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. do-it-together (seattle diy.com Citation2009: 1). Drawing on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (1986), alongside other authors who examine the co-existence of different economic systems, I chart how DIY practitioners tactically navigate the boundaries between these reciprocal and capitalist economic systems and worlds. Located in the Fillmore District, Sheba Piano Lounge is an intimate bar and lounge where you can enjoy live music nightly to go with some of the areas best Ethiopian cuisine. Lesh had developed his style on the foundation of having studied classical, brass-band, jazz, and modernist music on the violin and later the trumpet.[10]. When I give you $5 for a record, I am exchanging something of value (my money/effort) for something else of value (your record). By being discarded, they often either create scarcity and consequently contribute to market demand and supply patterns, or they enter alternative economic business models (small, grassroots, sustainable, eco, ethical, and/or community-oriented niche business entities, e.g. "Rock & roll" was the point of departure for the new music. DIY reciprocal economic relations described above not only materially support DIY communities and scenes, but also inform alternative types of culture, music, and aesthetics (Rice Citation1994). In Jennings account and Figure 5 we see how commodities such as records are diverted from the path of capitalist exchange and voided of market value during DIY shows to be transformed into objects of personal and collective use value (cf. Thats what really contributes to that communal feeling you get at shows. "[15] In San Francisco, musical influences came in from not only London, Liverpool and Manchester, but also included the bi-coastal American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, the Chicago electric blues scene, the soul music scenes in Detroit, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, jazz styles of various eras and regions. As audiences grew, and audience dancing became customary, performances moved into venues with more floor space, such as the Longshoreman's Hall, the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, and the Carousel Ballroom (which was later renamed Fillmore West). [9] This questing bass quality has been wryly characterized as a "roving" (rather than the conventional "stay-at-home") style. Therefore, both the side of socio-economic factors, and the side of cultural practices and aesthetic expressions in this equation should be seen as diverse and multidimensional. Thats as much of an end goal to them, just as it is for fans. Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tr | Courtesy of Focus Features Films about classical music go back to at least the 1930s. Both James and Chris thus emphasise the added value of such enclaved DIY shows. san francisco music venues 1980's - ritsolinc.com SCRAP) that co-constitute late capitalist circulation of money and commodities (Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014). As regards music, these processes emerged somehow organically through social and economic relationships established between DIY musicians and organisers. They wouldnt be anything without the punk rock network of independent distributors, independent promoters, independent fanzines, all operating for mutual benefit, usually with little hope (or desire) for personal gain [] [Bands, y]ou owe punk rock something, so start paying up. For instance, group solidarity, as a socio-musical pattern, is also manifested in blues, 1960s psychedelic rock, heavy metal, and other popular music genres that are not necessarily rooted in the ideas and practices of American DIY communities.Footnote11 Thus, DIY notions and approaches to musical group solidarity might partially be understood in terms of residualFootnote12 practices from 1960s counterculture (folk, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, jam rock), to which punk and DIY culture, while discursively often rejecting it, owe many of their stylistic and socio-cultural traits.Footnote13. If you have an inclination towards music, you will be startled to visit these music venues which were formed on the foundation of African-American culture. Some stayed and became part of the scene. they potentially contribute to social change, albeit in implicit, gradual, and/or piecemeal ways), even if often perceived by outsiders as insignificant, ineffective, or as conflicting fringe social phenomena. Furthermore, DIY performers also usually reject the notion of making it, which is a concept that refers to musicians efforts to succeed in the competitive capitalist music market. The many bands that formed signalled a shift from one subculture to the next. This tendency is highlighted in the liner notes to a 1987 compilation of Gilman bands entitled Turn it Around!, published in collaboration with Maximum Rockandroll, an internationally renowned DIY zine from San Francisco: These bands were chosen [to be on the compilation] because of their support of the [Gilman] Project [] The people in these bands can be found at Gilman at any given night [] They come to the meetings, work the shows, play the benefits and put just as much, if not more, into the club than they get out of it. Dylan from Glitterdome house, making a CD cover for their band Potsie (26 April 2012). Therefore, these scenes have to consequently be understood as both challenging and co-constituting the dominant capitalist regime, and at the same time, being challenged and co-constituted by it. Located in the Mission District, The Royal Cuckoo Organ Lounge is a kitschy bar that is both swanky and divey in just the right proportions. Exploration of chordal progressions previously uncommon in rock & roll, and a freer and more powerful use of all instruments (drums and other percussion, electric guitars, keyboards, as well as the bass) went along with this "psychedelic-era" music. Jessica from Arcata, describing the local DIY scene there as reciprocal, assured me that when particular houses get busted [are forced to close down], different [other] people open their houses [for shows] (personal communication, 20 June 2012). American DIY shows similarly function as enclaved zones and rituals of decomoditization. Its insulting to the other people in the community who volunteer to put a lot of the work in. I am also thankful to both anonymous reviewers for their astute comments, as well as to Henry Stobart for his generous help with the editing process. My argument draws on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (Citation1986), and other scholarship focused on the social implications of the co-existence of, and of contradictions between, different economic systems.Footnote2 Moreover, I ground my interpretations in the materialist, political-economy approach to the study of culture, which also seeks to understand the complexities within and between particular economic systems, and in their relation to the sphere of cultural production and aesthetics (Mige Citation1987; Ryan Citation1992; Hesmondhalgh Citation1997, Citation1999, Citation2018). Today, the music continues with a packed event calendar that combines new talent and seasoned performers. (Cometbus Citation2002). To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. However, while the link between DIY practice and lo-fi sound exists, it is also important to recognise that lo-fi aesthetics can reflect other causal factors, such as advanced studio manipulation, market calculation, and/or nostalgia for pre-modern simplicity (Hesmondhalgh Citation1999: 56; Oakes Citation2009; Sanden Citation2013: chapter 4). This article is about the alternative economic system that underscores American DIY (do-it-yourself) music scenes, and about how it relates to the American dominant capitalist economy. You dont feel that communion. Much has been written about the historic jazz clubs from the 1950s and 60s Jazz Workshop, The Blackhawk, Basin Street West, Todd Barkans Keystone Kornerand the classic jazz albums recorded in the city, including Thelonious Monks 1959 albumAlone in San Francisco,the 1961 Miles Davis albumIn Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk,Complete, and Duke EllingtonsConcert of Sacred Musicat Grace Cathedral from 1965. All Rights Reserved. Because there is no place for local bands to play, or what else [sic]. Every discussion of the San Francisco music scene eventually turns to The Fillmore, which has hosted such legends as James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. The city also continues to celebrate jazz and blues as an art form that is best experienced live and in the moment. San Francisco offers live jazz and blues each and every night of the week in various settings. The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco-based rock groups of the mid-1960s to early 1970s.It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. E.g. Accordingly, in order to avoid foreclosing the discursive and material space from alternative openings and possibilities, some authors emphasise a need for the ontological reframing and creative re-reading of these alternative economic practices in their relations with capitalism and neoliberalism (Gibson-Graham Citation2008). Third, the co-existence and interrelatedness of DIY/reciprocal and dominant/capitalist systems extends beyond a simplistic resistance vs power dichotomy. [18] Donahue was uniquely qualified, being savvy and enthusiastic about jazz, R&B, Soul, and ethnic music, besides the then-current rock music. However, there are also other ways in which DIY people enter into the relationship with capitalist modes of production. Beyond preserving the history of this musical form so tied to the African-American experience, SFJAZZ now blazes a trail for the artists of the future in its permanent home on Franklin St. Few performance venues in the city have the sound quality of the SFJAZZ Center. Soon after, Ralph J. Gleason and Jann Wenner, based in San Francisco, established Rolling Stone magazine (first issue's date: November 1967). A DIY culture of reciprocity and collective action can be found in most places around the US. Dylan, who lived in Northeast (NE) Portlands Glitterdome house during my research there in 2012 (see Figure 2), similarly talked about reciprocal collaboration between the various NE Portland DIY houses (I estimate there were around 13 there at that time). 4 See Oakes Citation2009: 45; Threadgold Citation2017: 7, 8; Farrow Citation2020: 11; Haddon Citation2020; Pearson Citation2020: 7; Rogers and Whiting Citation2020: 6; Verbu Citation2021; cf. Celebrate San Francisco's deep-rooted black history at these music venues that have hosted some of music's most legendary black artists. All rights reserved. 16 See, for example, Hesmondhalgh Citation1997, Citation1999; Gibson-Graham Citation2008; Eriksen Citation2010: 160, 161, 201, 202, 216; Giles Citation2014; Tausig Citation2014; Dean Citation2015; Otten Citation2015; Graham Citation2016; Taylor Citation2016: 15476; Kirsch Citation2017; Simoni Citation2019; Rawitsch Citation2020. 18 It is important to note that DIY economy in itself is not a homogeneous system, but consists of various alternative and non-market economies. This community defines itself through active participation (at shows, and otherwise), therefore distinguishing itself from passive, apathetic, consumerist society (personal communication with a DIY participant from Oakland, 14 September 2012), or from lazy hipsters within the scene (see above).
