Applying Bourdieu’s Theory To The Notion Of Independent

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4.7 Applying Bourdieu’s Theory To The Notion Of

98 reminds to the distinctions between the independent sector and the corporate music industry aforementioned. Even though as Kruse (2003) notices that Bourdieu refers to high or avant-garde art when talking about the field of restricted production, the concept of “production for producers” “ with a perfect circularity and reversibility of the relations of cultural production and consumption” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 118) fits with the independent music scene, as well as the celebration of non commerciality.

As I have already mentioned, independent grass-roots music production is often characterized in its main peculiarity by the closeness of fans and musicians at a point where “spectators become fans, fans become musicians, musicians are always already fans” (Shank, 1994, p.31).

This assumption reminds to Bourdieu’s assumption of the field of restricted production as a field of production for producers.

Bourdieu makes clear that the autonomy in the field of restricted production depends upon its power to define its own criteria for the production and symbolic legitimacy independently to the economic and political field. And at the same time “the state of power relations among members of a field depends upon the overall degree of autonomy of the field, which manages to impose its own rules and values to the all set of producers including those who are closest to the dominant pole of the field and are more responsive to the external demands (i.g. the most heteronomous) (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 41).

This point allows us to understand that the autonomy or independency is a matter of symbolic consecration and legitimization within the field of cultural production.

The dichotomy between the two principles (the one based upon economic and political success and the other upon cultural prestige) implies a continuous struggle for hierarchization and symbolic legitimacy and this struggle explains the tensions and contradictions that we can find in the independent sector. As Bourdieu states:

Producers and vendors of cultural goods who ‘go commercial’ condemn themselves, and not only from an ethical or aesthetic point of view, because they deprive themselves of the opportunities open to those who can recognize the specific demands of this universe and who, by concealing from themselves and others the interests at stake in their practice, obtain the means of deriving profits from disinterestedness (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 75)

What Bourdieu means is that going commercial (or referring to the music industry selling out) is not only a matter of betrayal of ethical principles but rather it’s the loss of power and symbolic legitimacy within the field of restricted production in the long term. Hesmondhalgh (1997) explains Bourdieu’s assumptions by saying:

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The danger for an independent in 'crossing over' is, in the terms of dance music culture itself, the loss of 'credibility': gaining economic capital in the short-term by having a hit in the national pop singles chart (or even having exposure in the mainstream or rock press) can lead to a disastrous loss of cultural capital for an independent record company (or an artist), affecting long-term sales drastically (Hesmondhalgh, 1998, p. 240).

Hesmondhalgh suggests that Bourdieu’s theorization of the complex relationships between economic and cultural capital enables us to understand the contradictions amongst dance music producers between the discourses over the nature of the opposition to the music-industry. The contradiction stands in the fact that what is making the dance music scene economic sustainable is exactly what is in opposition:

Nevertheless, there are clearly contradictions at work here: the very form which sustains the independent sector at the heart of dance music's institutional challenge is widely felt to be a problematic one (Hesmondhalgh, 1998, p. 240).

Bourdieu enables us to understand the contradictions and tensions which we can find in a field of restricted production (the independent music sector) in which the symbolic legitimization is given by the possession of the cultural capital, but then music producers need inevitably to be engaged with the economic capital.

Besides Bourdieu’s perspective explains why the incorporation of the autonomous-independent music production within the music industry can encounter many oppositions and tensions, because it’s the symbolic legitimacy of independent music that it’s at stake.

Maintaining the social discourses gravitating around the independency from the economic and political fields allows to distinct the independent cultural capital and to maintain a symbolical legitimisation in the independent music sector.

As Magaudda (2009) explains referring to the institutionalization of independent music in Italy and to the incorporation of independent music in the national market, Bourdieu’s theory enables us to point out how in the intersections between independent music and the mainstream music industry what is at stake is a symbolic struggle occurring between the symbolic legitimacy of cultural capital of the independent sector and on the other side the pragmatic tendency towards the integration of independent music in the national music industry. In this perspective he suggests: “the concept of ‘independent music’ is not a shared and historically static one, but rather constitutes a battlefield where different stake-holders

100 and interest groups confront each other on symbolic and industrial production levels”

(Magaudda, 2009, p. 276).

From this perspective we can see that there is not a common subjective representation of independent but rather different people will have different definitions depending on their level of interactions with the music industry.

That’s why for Bourdieu the researcher is not aimed at imposing an operational definition of independent music but rather “to describe the state of the struggles and of the frontier delimiting the territory held by the competing agents” (Bourdieu, 1993, p. 42).

The narratives of the independents tend to overestimate the autonomy of the independent sector because it allows a process of distinction but in fact the independent music scene lives as a site of forces in the tension between autonomy and heteronomy from interconnections to the political and economic fields.

Bourdieu’s analysis is interested in pointing out different principles of hierarchization, and the struggles among them and the way they can caused tensions among the fields. And Bourdieu’s model is more interesting, as Kruse (2003) suggests, in the theorization the restricted field of cultural production is meant to be never fully autonomous from the economic and political fields, but always being influenced by them.

The strength of Bourdieu’s model is of having theorized interconnectedness of the field of cultural production with other political and economic fields. Bourdieu’s analysis enable us to look at the interconnections between different fields, and the level to which they are independent or autonomous from each other.

Bourdieu allows therefore to look at the notion of independent not only in the opposition between independent labels and corporate recording industry, but rather to look at how the independence can be seen in its tension with the economic and political fields. This enables to understand that the notion of independent is determined by the narratives gravitating around the independent DIY culture but at the same time the independent music scene cannot be understood without looking at what it portrays to be independent from.

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Conclusion

In this chapter I have tried to analyze the complexity of the notion of independent. I have not tried to give an operational definition of what independence means, but rather to look at the different and contradictory elements that allow to understand independent music. I have not looked at independent from an aesthetic point of view, as a genre based category. I have instead tried to analyzed how independent is a discursive and intellectual construct which has been highly influential in the common sense representations, and in the practices of music production and consumption. My attention has been therefore given to the social discourses of the independent culture. I have seen how these social discourses depict the independent attitudes, emphasizing the opposition to the mainstream music industry and celebrating the cooperative, authentic and innovative nature of the grassroots activities.

I have then suggested that some of the assumptions about the notion of independent are related to its theorization especially in music scene studies. As Strachan (2003) has pointed out, these studies have looked at grass-roots music making as something disconnected from the music industry. I have instead emphasized that the music scene perspective has not investigated enough the modes of music production, and how the independent DIY culture needs to be understood by looking within the economic system. Following Strachan (2003) I have suggested that the focus upon the subjective representation and the sense of belonging to the DIY ethic is not sufficient because musicians and music producers are involved in music production, that’s why: “a central crux in understanding the relationship between industrial practice and group identities again rests upon the interplay between the industrial and ideology” (Strachan, 2003, p. 35).

Looking from this perspective, I have analyzed the approaches of Negus (1992) and Hesmondhalgh (1997, 1998, 1999), that look at the interactions between independent and major labels.

These approaches have suggested that interactions between independent and corporate music industry are often happening in processes of incorporation and of licensing or distribution deals, or of creation of semi-independent labels. However there are independents managing to maintain a level of autonomy from the music industry. Therefore it’s useful to look at indies versus majors not in pure oppositional terms but to see them in continuous process moving between the independency and the interdependency, in which the narratives gravitating around the culture of independent still play a crucial role.

102 It’s exactly in the interplay between several ideologies existing in the independent music scene, and industrial and economic dimensions of the music industry that we need to situate the notion of independent

Besides this opposition between indies versus majors is understood in the strict sense in relation to the recording industry, while I think that the notion of independence or interdependence can be used to analyze the relationships in much broader sense to include the whole music industry, including the live music industry, but even other cultural industries, the media, and politics.

There’s a need for a new conceptualization of the notion of independent which allows to take into account changes taking place not only in the recording industry, to which the traditional definition of independent is referred, but even to broader economic, technological and political changes that can affect the independent music sector.

The next chapter will try to conceptualize a model to understand how an independent music scene needs to be explained in the interconnectedness among different dimensions.

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