4. Independent To What? Investigating The Complexity Of
4.6 Theorizing Independent. Looking At The Interplays Between Independent Cultures,
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4.6 Theorizing Independent. Looking At The Interplays
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By examining the contexts and ideologies of small-scale production, this thesis seeks to examine whether we can simply assume that these smaller labels should be viewed unquestioningly as failures within the popular music production process. Whilst it is true that they do not compete with the majors on their own terms (that is, with regard to the major companies’ principle goals of achieving as many sales as possible and achieving the highest possible financial turnover), it should also be questioned whether these are actually the primary objectives of independent labels working at a different level. (Strachan, 2003, p.32)
According to Strachan (2003), this actually depends upon the different definitions of failure or success that these authors have given which cannot be limited to its understanding in pure economic and industrial terms in relation to the corporate music industry. If we look only in economic terms, there is a kind of presumption that labels working on a smaller financial scale are somehow failures in comparison to corporate labels.
Strachan is right in recognizing that the interrelationships between the independent and corporate music industry are not the only possible situations which need to be analyzed.
Exactly as it’s wrong to consider independent music as necessarily independent to the music industry, at the same time it’s wrong to consider independent music as necessarily incorporated within the mainstream music industry.
Rather we could point out that there are more complex processes that need to be explained and which are connected to a broader understanding of the circuit of music and more generally cultural production. It’s true that the processes that especially Negus (1992) described are the mutual interrelationships that can explain the circuits of culture.
A fundamental assumption, I have aforementioned, to analyze the existence of an independent sector to the culture industry, is contained in Morin(1962)’s critics to Adorno and Horkeimer’s (1947) perspective. On the contrary to Adorno and Horkeimer’s (1947), Morin (1962) suggests that the cultural industry needs an oppositional force: this oppositional force is the autonomy of the creative roles within the rigid structures of production.
This issue is tackled by Jason Toynbee (2000) who theorized that music production cannot be completely incorporated in the music industry but instead there has always been a certain degree of “institutional autonomy” (2000, p. 19) which implies that companies traditionally cede control over production to musicians.
These assumptions enable to better understand how autonomous or independent productions are in fact mutually interrelated to the music industry and need to be explained in their complex relationships.
94 As Colombo (2001) suggests in the book I Margini della Cultura (Culture and its Margins) there are four processes that enable us to understand the interrelationships existing between the cultural industry and its margins (or its independent sector). To understand these processes we need to look at their origins within or outside the cultural industry and to their developments within or outside of cultural industry. From this perspective it’s possible to see the dynamic relationships that we can find in the independent music as regards to music styles and products, music producers, production systems, technologies and audiences.
The first process is the ‘maintenance’, which refers to music styles, music producers, audiences which have always been part of the cultural industry. This is not actually the case which I’m trying to talk about but it’s the one of major labels with products specifically aimed for a mainstream market. Secondly we have the process that Negus (1992) and Hesmondhalgh (1997, 1998, 1999) have analyzed which refers to the incorporation or ‘assimilation’ of independent grass-roots music production within the mainstream music industry. This shift has several consequences in terms of organizational and commercial skills, modes of production, and market.
Then we have the process of ‘rejection’ which refers to the case of the music contents or music producers pushed out or pushing themselves out from the mainstream music industry.
This process which has not been very much analyzed in the literature, it’s was quite common in the life trajectories of my respondents who had signed with majors and then came back to independent production. The experiences in the music industry had an influence in their organizational skills, productions but even in their understanding of the relations majors versus indies20.
At last we have the fourth process of ‘interdiction’ or exclusion which refers to those music products, producers and audience which stay at the margins of the music industry.
It’s important to notice that the marginality is not directly dependent from the lack of interest of the audience but may be due to production systems that reject in the media and cultural industry products and producers at the margins. Besides in this process we need to include those music producers who are not accepted in the industry but even those who decided to be outside of the mainstream music market. The margin can also be a conscious choice, as in the case of those music producers who develop their professionalism and their creativity outside of the mainstream (Colombo, 2001, p.31).
20 This issue will be developed in the next empirical chapter talking about independent music in Milan.
95 These four processes enable us to conceptualize the notion of the margin and of independent as a mobile and complex terrain. The author uses the metaphor of the water’s edge in order to explain the fluid, changing and ambiguous nature of interrelationships between the culture industry and its margins in which the boundaries are continuously renegotiated and exist in a state of tension between different economic and organizational issues, modes of production and distribution, and a set of dynamics of the cultural industry21 and of the socio-cultural context and finally the social discourses, values and believes, “ the self-perception of the actors, who assign themselves social mandate and who want to defend, deny or determine a certain social membership” (Colombo, 2001, p. 41).
In this sense the terrain of the margins, which corresponds to the independent music scene, has to be understood as a dynamic and mobile space of interconnections, in which the discursive constructs of its members still play a certain role.
From this assumption, I will move to the second issue that I have left out from the previous analysis and that enables to better conceptualize the ambiguity and contradictions which are entailed in the notion of independent.
The second point, coming back to Strachan (2003)’s assumptions, is that, even though interactions with the corporate music industry take place, the independent DIY culture is still rooted in the social representations of independent music producers.
Even though the independent narratives are depicted in a celebratory ways and need therefore to be critically evaluated and pondered, it’s important to point out that they still affect people actions and interactions.
Strachan (2003) suggests that motivations and expectations for remaining independent need to be understood in terms of the ideologies and in looking at the independent music sector not only from the perspective of musical production but even considering “the ideological construct relating to shared values and their place within scenes and networks” (Strachan, 2003, p. 33).
As Street (1993) explains it clearly, referring to the oppositions of a group of people against the closure of an independent music venue:
Whether or not indie music is truly independent, its rhetoric pretends that it is. And those who campaigned for a venue saw their music careers and their musical tastes as existing outside the national network or the
21 The author refers to a set of dynamics through which cultural products and producers, and audiences are integrated or rejected within the cultural industry. These are for the centralization and specialization of cultural production, organization of cultural products, the organization of cultural products in genres (Colombo, 2001, p.
30-40)
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mainstream. Indeed the sense of otherness was crucial to the development of a sense of group identity, itself important for the creation of a group cohesion (Street, 1993, p. 50).
Street (1993) mentions the importance of the sense of belonging which is created in opposition to the mainstream culture.
The point is to try to understand why, even though the interconnections exist, independents give such importance to these narratives and to the opposition to the mainstream culture.
Especially it’s important to understand why in a situation of great interconnections between independent and corporate music industry, these interactions caused tensions in the independent sector.
We could say, following Becker (1982), that the independent narratives are valuable because they function as a set of conventions which are established in the independent music scene and which enable a better coordination of music production in the independent sector. Becker allows to understand how these conventions inform the way in which independent music scene members manage to produce music making sense of the art world and of the art work, and of regulating the coordination of activity. However for Becker is not clear why certain conventions and principles in different art worlds make this art world distinctive. On the contrary for Becker:
Art worlds typically have intimate and extensive relations with the world from which they try to distinguished themselves … in some sense art worlds, worlds of commercial, craft, and folk art are parts of a larger social organization. So even though everyone involved understands and respects the distinctions which keep them separate, a sociological analysis should take account of how they are not so separate after all (Becker, 1982, p.36)
Becker enables us to consider how different art worlds cooperate but not why there are distinctive practices among them. It is not clear from this quotation if there are oppositional and power relations between one art world and another, but rather he seems to imply that there is a common agreement that other art worlds’ conventions need to be respected.
What’s left out from this explanation is the role that symbolic legitimacy and power relations can play in making the art worlds distinctive. I will now move to explain how Bourdieu’s approach can help in understanding why oppositional practices serve as a symbolic legitimization of independent music.
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