naively trying to reclaim public space, after the dramatic ending of the anni di piombo (the years of lead, a 1970s era of political violence) and the middle-class retreat into the private sphere. Torino is the case with the least bibliographical material, apart from some articles in music magazines and fictionalised memoirs. Interviews and ethnographic observations are therefore more abundant in this chapter than in the others.
Chapter 6 is about Tampere, known in Finland as the country’s own Manchester and nicknamed Tampester and Manse. In the 1980s, bands such as Bastards, Riistetyt, Kohu-63, and Kaaos were playing fast and furious hardcore punk, which one musician described as känninen saundi (drunken sound). Their work was mostly based on independent, oppositional and DIY ethics, and some of these bands were the first Finnish bands to tour continental Europe and the United States. I focus specifically on issues such as the relationship between sound and place in the specific context of Tampere as an industrial town. I consider the soft and hard infrastructures that allowed bands to proliferate in Tampere more than in other Finnish centres, and I outline the international networks that made touring and distributing music outside Finland possible. I also consider the soft deindustrialisation happening in the city as a result of social democracy. In conclusion, I look at the legacy of these bands on a local, national and global scale. This chapter is also based on interviews and first-hand observations.
Chapter 7 addresses the ongoing heritage-making of European industrial landscapes, both at the individual/local and at the national/supranational level. It addresses the existence of industrial cities’ lieux de memoir and examines the leading or ancillary role of popular music within the intangible cultural heritage category. It also problematises the heritage-making of popular music because of the latter’s embedded cosmopolitanism. It also considers its risks to a city, including the creation of inequalities and gentrification, and the fetishising of decline.
Chapter 8 revises the main lines of analyses and methods presented in the book to achieve a nuanced and complete understanding of the relationship between sound, space, and place, mostly based on the use of Jameson’s concept of the ‘vanishing mediator’. This is achieved by a comparison of the four case studies. In addition, it shows how a comparative analysis can overcome limitations based on a one-scene or one-city approach or on the adoption of a superficial ‘global’ scale.
In the conclusion I discuss the issues arising from examining the popular music cultures of deindustrialising cities. I recap the main arguments I examined in the central chapters. I also reflect on the difficulties of working across nations and languages and offer some ideas about possible continuations and extensions of this research.
This book has some clear temporal and spatial limitations. I am aware that industrial cities are a global phenomenon, and so is popular music. By following contemporary music media, I became aware of the extent and variety of cases still reflecting the elective affinity of industrial settings and cultural production, especially outside Europe, and the continuous influence that the ‘industrial paradigm’ in music still exerts. As Tony Mitchell puts it, ‘identity formation through music is an active, fluid process of production, creation and construction, not a question of mere reflection of nation state, place, landscape or environment’ (Mitchell, 2009, 187–88).
Notes
1.
I use the Italian Torino instead of the English Turin. Both have been widely used in English texts, including during the 2006 Winter Olympics, when the municipality decided to consistently use the Italian version of its name.
2.
I am using several first-hand interviews in these chapters. All details of an interview are shown at its first occurrence, in text. Then, subsequent references to the same interview are simply shown as ([surname, if needed], interview, year). The name of the interviewed is shown in full in the first occurrence and later I adopt just the first name, surname, or nickname, according to the most common use within the scene and for readers’ clarity.
Chapter 1
The Industrial City
Looking at a European industrial city today might be a bit like looking at a Sony Walkman TPS-L2 cassette player. They both bring back memories of a recent past. We all know that they both used to be very popular; they shaped innovative ways of production and consumption for a certain period of time, and they both involved mass production, each one of them looking not dissimilar from others. As many individuals wanted a Walkman, many governments needed a city or an urban region that could produce wealth through industrial production and manufacturing.
With the invention of the CD and its portable player, the Walkman lost its value and turned into technological trash or a cheap, out-of-fashion flea market item. Its colour, shape, and composition suddenly looked shabby, depressing, and a bit dirty, weak in technical qualities and producing a sound that was poor in comparison to the new arrivals.
The same could be said about industrial cities. The post-industrial discourse, together with the transfer of industrial manufacturing premises beyond the West, had the same effect that technological advances had on the Walkman and made industrial cities look anonymous, shabby, depressing, and a bit dirty. During the 1980s, they became places that were waiting to be updated for a new era, where culture—
rebranded as creativity—would take the place of the economy, similar to the way laser discs replaced magnetic tapes. Also in capital cities, in centres with mixed work division, and in port towns, former industrial districts were reshaped to lodge new forms of work, in connection to services, information technology, education, and culture, or a combination of them. This process also had social consequences: new inhabitants with new jobs often invaded the most appealing working-class parts of towns, looking for authenticity and picturesque housing with industrial atmosphere. This process was labelled gentrification, and it capitalised on industrial spaces as fetishised commodities.
This happened under different circumstances in the Lower East Side (NYC), in Neukölln (Berlin), in Kallio (Helsinki), and elsewhere, and it continues to happen around the world. But it is not merely gentrification as a sociological phenomenon that interested many former industrial districts around the world. Christopher Mele, in reference to New York’s Lower East Side, refers to the tendency of the new inhabitants ‘to gesture toward and even mimic the look and feel of the very social elements they threatened to displace’ (Mele 2000, vii). This process cannot be described merely as a social and physical upgrade, as a flow of capitals, or as aesthetic sanitation; it implies an aesthetic command, appreciation, and fetish of a certain kind of atmosphere.
With the 1970s economic crisis, industrial cities stopped understanding and imagining their futures as sites of manufacturing and production and preferred to emphasise services and consumption. Industrial cities began marketing themselves as distinctive, cool places where people could both have fun and do business. All material elements that offered a reminder of the industrial past were emphasised, individualised, and aestheticised. However, this did not happen with the same level of success in all ‘pure’ industrial cities (only Bilbao and Manchester come to mind), many of which often did not experience gentrification and simply became desolate, shrank, or had to rely on state intervention to see premises reconverted so as not to completely lose their real estate value.
The Walkman did not disappear, thanks to a second cycle of fetishisation (McRobbie 1989); it turned into some kind of retromania icon, its picture to be ironically worn on a T-shirt, for instance, or reproduced on protective cases for mobile phones. At the same time, cassettes are still produced and used by specific scenes as an element of differentiation, responding to a logic related to the subcultural capital of certain groups of consumers. The Walkman may well be sought after as a nostalgic fetish of one’s own
