should still remain as a question for investigation. It is easy to think that we already know or agree on what is most ‘important’ about music, how it should be defined and judged, how people value and experience different aspects of our culture, or how far people’s lives are determined by, say, governmental decisions, the mass media, socio-economic class – or the practice of music. But these questions need both further thought and empirical investigation on the ground before we can accept the sometimes unquestioned conclusions of, say, the mass society theorists or the class-dominated visions of some social scientists, at least as far as local music goes; for when these and similar assumptions are investigated at the local level, the reality turns out to be rather different.
This study therefore is not intended to contribute to some great Theory of music, but rather to be a more modest social study based in the first instance in the local ethnography but also moving out to wider questions and drawing inspiration from a broad if somewhat unsystematic range of sources across several disciplines, in particular anthropology, sociology, urban and community studies, folklore, the study of ‘popular culture’, the more anthropological side of ethnomusicology, and social history. These ethnographic findings and the theoretical approaches which I found useful to elucidate them illuminate some central questions in the social study of both urban life and musical practice. These to some extent underlie the exposition throughout (specially in parts 4 and 5) and are taken up for more explicit discussion in the two final chapters. Their end result is sometimes to build on but also often to reject the emphasis and conclusions evident in a number of other studies of music by the test of the facts as discovered in this case study of musical practice.
The approach in this book thus follows a rather different line from that of the majority of studies of music.12 A focus on the existence and interaction of different musics, on musical practice rather than musical works, and on the amateur rather than professional side of music-making reveals the hitherto unsuspected scope of music-making, with far-reaching implications for our lives today. One revelation was the sheer amount and variety of local music: far richer, more creative and of more significance for people’s lives than is recognised even in the participants’ own consciousness, far less in much conventional social science wisdom about English culture. Many of our valued institutions are pictured as just floating on invisibly and without effort. On the contrary, as will become clear, a great deal of work and commitment have to be put into their continuance: they do not just ‘happen’ naturally.13 Local music, furthermore – the kind of activity so often omitted in many approaches to urban study14 – turns out to be neither formless nor, as we might suppose, just the product of individual endeavour, but to be structured according to a series of cultural conventions and organised practices, to be explained in this book, in which both social continuity and individual choices play a part. The patterns within this system may not always be within our conscious awareness, but nonetheless play a crucial part in our cultural processes.
This study will therefore, I hope, enhance our understanding of British cultural institutions, a subject on which social science writing is relatively sparse compared to the huge number of treatments of, for example, social stratification, industrial employment, or macro-studies of society or state. Artistic expression and enactment are also important to people, perhaps as significant for their lives as the traditional concerns of social theorists – or, at any rate, it seems often to be a matter of mere assumption rather than objective evidence that they are not. I hope my treatment may help to redress the balance of social science work on Britain as well as lead to greater understanding of the nature and implications of local music.
One final point. It is hard to write at once with the social scientist’s detachment and at the same time with a full personal appreciation of the human creativity involved in artistic expression and performance.15 The constant temptations are either to fall into the reductionist trap of, say, seeing music as just the epiphenomenon of social structure or alternatively to be swept away by the facile romanticising of ‘art’. By considering mainly musical practice and its conventions rather than musical works, I hope to some extent to have avoided the second of these temptations. As for the first, a written academic account can probably never totally avoid giving a faceless and reducing impression of what to the participants themselves is rich and engrossing artistic experience; I am also aware that by comparing the many different musics in the area I am depriving myself and my readers of the full understanding that a deeper search into just one musical group or tradition might have provided. I hope, though, that despite all this my genuine appreciation for the real (not merely ‘reflective’ or ‘secondary’) musical achievements of local musicians will still shine through the attempt at objectivity and reveal something of a reality that has too often remained unnoticed.
2
‘Amateur’ and ‘professional’ musicians
Before the more detailed account of local musical practice I must comment briefly on one key term in this book: ‘amateur musicians’. The word ‘amateur’ is of course widely used and, more or less, understood. But it is also surprisingly elusive, and some discussion of the complexities involved is a necessary preliminary to the later description.
Many different kinds of musicians operate in localities up and down Britain. Some can be described – and would describe themselves – as professionals in that they make their living from music. In Milton Keynes, for example, there was the music professor who commuted daily to his London music college and performed with players outside the area, or the singer-guitarist who belonged to a nationally famous rock band but did not perform locally. There were also the members of bands and ensembles who regarded themselves as locally based but were prepared to travel through the region or beyond to perform for a fee; or again, the musicians who earned only small fees but played on in the hope of more and better bookings or just for the love of music. In addition there were the music teachers who lived and taught locally, thus depending on music for their main livelihood but sometimes also performing from time to time for a fee. There were also local residents for whom musical activity meant just one or two evenings out a week at the local choir or in the local band or orchestra – the kind of activity that people perhaps associate most readily with the term ‘amateur music’. And there were those who in the past had lived from their music – singing in cabaret, for instance, or round the working men’s clubs – or had been ‘professionally trained’, but now just engaged in it for a pleasurable leisure pursuit or the occasional engagement. Among the various musicians, then, some regard music as their only real employment (with varying success in terms of monetary return), some value it as an enjoyable but serious recreation outside work, and some treat it as a part-time occupation for the occasional fee.
Among all these variations, which are the ‘amateur’ musicians and groups on which this study claims to focus? Unfortunately there is no simple answer, nor are the ‘amateur’ always unambiguously separated from the ‘professional’ musicians. The reasons for this as well as the complexities surrounding these at first sight simple concepts need to be explained not just to clarify my own presentation but also because the complex amateur/professional interrelations form one essential element in the work of local musicians. This point is worth stressing because most studies of modern musicians either confine their interest to the more professional practitioners (though often without saying so) or else take the amateur/professional distinction as given and so not worth exploring.1 In local music, however, the interrelationship and overlap between these two is both highly significant for local practice and also of central interest for the wider functioning of music as it is in fact practised today.
The term ‘professional’ – to start with that one – at first appears unambiguous. A ‘professional’ musician earns his or her living by working full time in some musical role, in contrast to the ‘amateur’, who does it ‘for love’ and whose source of livelihood lies elsewhere. But complications arise as soon as one tries to apply this
