This article was downloaded by: [CDL Journals Account]

On: 30 May 2011

Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 922973516]
Publisher Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Journal of Cultural Geography

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t790540970

Music Geography

George Carneya
a
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater,

To cite this Article Carney, George(1998) 'Music Geography', Journal of Cultural Geography, 18: 1, 1 10
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/08873639809478309
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08873639809478309

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or
systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or
distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents
will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses
should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,
actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly
or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Music Geography

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

George O. Carney
More than 30 years have elapsed since Peter Hugh Nash (1968)
of the University of Waterloo authored "Music Regions and Regional
Music," the first scholarly article on music authored by a professional
geographer. Two years later, Jeffrey Gordon (1970), a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, completed the first Master's
thesis in geography on music"Rock-and-Roll: A Diffusion Study."
The first full-length article on music geography in an American journal appeared in 1971 with the publication of Larry Ford's (1971)
"Geographic Factors in the Origin, Evolution and Diffusion of Rock
and Roll Music." In 1973, the eminent cultural geographer, Wilbur
Zelinsky (1973), who called for studies on folk music to better understand the spatiotemporal processes in American culture, supported
further research on music geography. A 1974 article, "Bluegrass
Grows All Around: The Spatial Dimensions of a Country Music
Style," was selected for a Journal of Geography award by the National
Council for Geographic Education (Carney 1974). At the first Society
for the North American Cultural Survey (SNACS) meeting in 1974,
music was designated as one of the chapter topics for This Remarkable
Continent: An Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and Cultures
eventually published in 1982 (Rooney, Zelinsky, and Louder). With
this rather inauspicious debut, a new subfield of cultural geography
was born.
Special sessions and individual papers on music geography at
national meetings began in 1974 when a session devoted to music in
the geography classroom was organized for the National Council for
Geographic Education convention in Chicago. Since that time, special sessions on music have been arranged for the Association of
American Geographers in 1982 (San Antonio), 1985 (Detroit), 1986
(Minneapolis), 1992 (San Diego), 1993 (Atlanta), 1994 (San Francisco),
1995 (Chicago), 1996 (Charlotte), 1997 (Fort Worth), 1998 (Boston),
and 1999 (Honolulu). In addition, the "Place of Music" conference
was held at University College of London in 1993 under the sponsorship of the Economic Geography, Landscape, and Social/Cultural
/

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Journal of Cultural Geography

Geography Research Groups of the Institute of British Geographers.

Regional and state geography conferences have also included music
geography papers during the past 30 years.
Over the past three decades, a salient amount of research in the
spatial and environmental dimensions of music has been conducted.
More than 60 articles have been published in 40 different academic
journals, including such highly-respected international geography
outlets as Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, The Cana
dian Geographer, and Progress in Human Geography as well as such
national geography journals as the Journal of Cultural Geography, The
Professional Geographer, and Journal of Geography. Music geographers
also published in a myriad of multidisciplinary international and
national journals. Among the national journals were the Journal of
Popular Culture, The Social Science Journal, and Popular Music and Soci
ety, while international journals consisted of Asian Studies Review,
Asia Pacific Viewpoint, and Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space. As a culmination of the past 30 years, music geography was
featured in more than 80 professional outlets, i.e., academic journals
and conference proceedings. Moreover, acceptance of music geography as a cultural geography subfield was legitimized in the 1980s
and 1990s by an increase in citations in such human geography textbooks as The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geog
raphy, Human Geography: Landscapes of Human Activity, and The Cul
tural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography. In addition, several North American regional texts included material on music geography. Among these were Regional Landscapes of the United States and
Canada, The United States and Canada: The Land and the People, and The
United States: A Contemporary Human Geography. Finally, two major
anthologies focusing on music geography were published, including
the third edition of The Sounds of People and Places: A Geography of
American Folk and Popular Music edited by George O. Carney (1994)
and The Place of Music edited by Andrew Leyshon, David Matless,
and George Revill (1998).
Most of the research has centered on American folk and popular
music, although several notable studies on music in the global arena
have been completed including Nash's (1968) work on world music
regions, Tavernor's (1970) interpretation of regional music in Latin
America, McLeay's (1994) evaluation of the New Zealand rock scene
(1994), Kong's (1995, 1996a, 1996b, 1997) essays on Singapore music,
Waterman's (1998) contribution on music festivals in Israel, and
Lovering's (1998) analysis of the global music industry. Music phenomena that geographers have studied are divided into nine general

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Mus/'c Geography 3
categories: (1) styles, (2) structure, (3) lyrics, (4) performers and composers, (5) centers and events, (6) media, (7) ethnic, (8) instrumentation, and (9) industry. More than one-half of all music geography
output has concentrated on American country music and its various
substyles, lyrics, and instrumentation. Rock music and its myriad
spin-offs accounted for roughly 20%. The remainder of the scholarly
works has explored a variety of music genres, including classical,
folk, gospel, jazz, blues, ethnic, and popular.
As with the diversity of music phenomena studied, a multiplicity of approaches and themes have been employed by music geographers (Carney 1990; Nash and Carney 1996). Most research falls into
ten general taxonomies:
1. The delimitation of music regions and interpretation of
regional music (e.g., the substyle variations of country music
in the American South, reggae music in Jamaica, Cajun music
in southern Louisiana, and polka music in the American
Upper Midwest).
2. The evolution of a music style with place, or place-specific
music (e.g., Vienna and classical, Nashville and country,
Detroit and Motown, Mersey Beat and Liverpool, Seattle and
grunge, and bebop jazz and 52nd Street in New York City).
Tom Bell and Roger Stump cover the latter two place-specific
examples in this special issue.
3. The origin (culture hearth) and diffusion of music phenomena (e.g., the country blues hearth in the Mississippi Delta
with blues musicians serving as diffusion agents in the
spread of the music along its diffusion path to Chicago).
4. The spatial dimensions of music dealing with human migration, transportation routes, and communication networks
(e.g., transnationalization of music with the exchange of
artists between countries as well as the import/export of
vinyls, cassettes, and compact discs resulting in the popularity of American genres of country in Japan and jazz in
Russia). Another example of this subdivision is road songs,
such as Route 66, reflected in this special issue with Arthur
Krimm's contribution.
5. The psychological and symbolic elements of music pertinent
to shaping the character of a placeimage of place, sense of
place, and place consciousness(e.g., perception of places
via music lyrics such as the surfer rock depiction of southern
California in the 1960s). Blake Gumprecht's essay on images
of west Texas falls into this category.

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Journal of Cultural Geography

6. The effect of music on the cultural landscape (e.g., concert

halls, polka ballrooms, and rock festivals).
7. The spatial organization of the music industry and other
music phenomena (e.g., marketing divisions of recording
companies and broadcast areas of radio stations programming music).
8. The relationship of music to the natural environment (e.g., an
outdoor concert at Wolf Trap, the use of wood in the construction of a Native American courting flute, or the lyrical
content of a Woody Guthrie ballad focusing on the physical
landscape). John Gold's article in this special issue treats the
latter topic.
9. The function of "nationalistic" and "anti-nationalistic" music
(e.g., music's catalytic role in promoting nationalism as
expressed in the compositions of Dvorak, Bartok, and
Smetana as compared with the anti-patriotic sentiment
depicted in the punk rock Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen."
10. The interrelationships of music with other culture traits in a
spatial sense (e.g., religion, dialect, politics, foodways, and
sports in the American South).
Like much of cultural geography, music research can be characterized by several adjectivesempirical, descriptive, humanistic,
atheoretical, nonanalytic, and subjective. Occasionally, music geographers have flirted with various theories, such as diffusion and structuration (Carney 1979; Gill 1993; Graves 1999), as well as the "new"
cultural geography (Moss 1992), but by and large research results
have been more idiographic than nomothetic.
Although music geography research has been criticized for its
diverse approaches, unscientific methodologies, and scattered
results, one could argue that the pluralism exhibited in this subfield
reflects the discipline as a whole. Diversity, after all, remains one of
geography's distinctive and enduring characteristics. Marvin Mikesell (1978) described this lack of consensus as one of the profession's
unifying principles and a tradition that makes our discipline attractive. Thus, music geographers, like so many in our profession, do not
necessarily "hear the same drummer" or "march under the same
banner."
What does the future hold for music geography? While the literature is fairly impressive, a number of research questions go unanswered and several social/cultural theories beg to be tested. Much
remains to be accomplished whether the research foci are nonanalytical or theoretical. Even after 30 years, geographers have not yet

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Music Geography 5
begun to tap the wide range of music data and ask geographical
questions about them.
Little is known about the vast array of music around the world,
or for that matter, in the United States. One need only contrast ragas
to reggae or blues to Bach to hear the stylistic variations that exist on
the Earth's surface. As with many facets of nonmaterial culture,
styles are difficult to map because of their ephemeral nature and the
problem of establishing precise boundaries. This dilemma, however,
has not prevented many cultural geographers from delineating religious, linguistic, and architectural cores, domains, and zones.
The geographic knowledge of ethnic music is practically nil
despite the fact that anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists have for years studied variations in both rural and urban contexts. And it is not a failure of cultural geographers to study ethnicity
(Nostrand and Estaville 1993). Yet almost nothing has been published on the music of Asian-, African-, Hispanic-, Irish-, German-,
Scandinavian-, and Jewish-Americans. Where are the geographical
studies on the rich and variegated music traditions of the Hispanic
Southwest, French of southern Louisiana and Upper New England,
Germans and Scandinavians of the Upper Midwest, and African
Americans of the Deep South?
Little is known about religious music ranging from Gregorian
chants to gospel. Nor has much attention been given to martial
music despite the fact that America abounds with marching bands in
local communities, armed services, and university campuses as well
as "fight songs" associated with college and university athletic
teams.
Stage and film music likewise has been geographically
neglected. Music geographers need to produce monographs on the
various forms of place-specific music; for example, New Orleans and
jazz, Memphis and blues, Detroit and Motown, Nashville and country, and southern California and surfer rock. Recent studies by nongeographers on place-based music (Booth 1993; Lichtenstein and
Danker 1993; Koster 1998; Nager 1998) indicate a variety of opportunities for music geographers in this research arena. Additionally,
music geographers ought to examine the geographic implications of
music technology and the music industry (e.g., Lornell and Mealor
1995; Graves 1999), including the recording and radio industries as
well as compact discs and even MTV (Music Television). Finally, a
multitude of geographic data exists on music clubs and organizations, music festivals (e.g., Waterman 1998), and music-oriented magazines, such as Rolling Stone and Spin. Thus, the wedding of cultural

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Journal of Cultural Geography

geography with the study of music still constitutes an important

research frontiera frontier complete with ready-made questions, a
more-than-ample database, and a seemingly endless future.
In addition to the proposed research agendas, one of the
avenues that music geographers need to follow is a more aggressive
attitude in sharing their research results with academics both within
and outside the discipline. While not advocating the employment of
a public relations consultant, it has been suggested that music geographers should adopt a higher profile at regional and national geography meetings as well as increase their involvement with multidisciplinary organizations such as the American Popular Culture Association and American Folklore Society. To the ethnomusicologists,
folklorists, music historians, and anthropologists, notice should be
given that cultural geographers, who specialize in music, offer a different perspective to music and that they have a unique contribution
to make in understanding music as an element of culture.
Finally, teaching methods and learning strategies using music as
an instructional resource in the geography classroom should be
advanced. One of the first articles produced in this context was
Steven Drum's (1971) short overview of country music as a form of
educational media. Since then, a number of geographic educators
have focused on this important facet of music geography (e.g.,
Kracht 1989; Paterson 1991; West and Kearsley 1991), however, more
studies are needed for instruction at all levels (Carney 1999).
In conclusion, music geographers should be pleased with the
increased amount of research in this relatively new subfield and the
growing number of cultural geographers in their ranks, including
representation from nine countries and 37 states. After 30 years, it
appears that music geography has achieved credibility. More importantly, ample evidence suggests that music is a significant surrogate
measure of culture and, therefore, is of importance to cultural geographers. Wilbur Zelinsky (1992, 144), who has provided steady
encouragement to study music from a geographic perspective,
stated in his updated version of The Cultural Geography of the United
States:
The recent accomplishments of the cultural-geographic community
have been substantial. . . . We have begun flashing light into hitherto shadowy corners of the cultural cosmos.... A few of the new paths along which
promising starts are visible include the geography of sport, foodways, and
music
[Italics added]

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Music Geography 7
With the above quote in mind, this special issue of the Journal of
Cultural Geography continues to explore the "new path" and fulfill the
"promising start" of the geography of music.
One of the "new paths" is Roger Stump's intriguing contribution that focuses on the importance of place and its role as a source of
musical innovation. More specifically, he examines the emergence of
the bebop form of jazz in the broad context of New York City, but
pinpoints distinct locales within the city. He first looks at Harlem
where bebop was created in a number of venues, such as Minton's
and Monroe's. Stump concludes that bebop was forced to move to
52nd Street and sections of Broadway in order for the genre to
achieve popularity.
The timely essay by Tom Bell also investigates the relationship
of a place (Seattle) with a popular music innovation (alternative
rock). Exploring the rise and fall of Seattle as a music center, he
argues that Seattle's emergence as a culture hearth for alternative
rock was based on a dynamic musical infrastructure consisting of
creative local talent, ambitious recording company agents (A&R personnel) seeking new artists, and numerous independent recording
companies ("indies"), particularly the Sub Pop label. Bell attributes
the demise of the Seattle music scene to alternative rock's assimilation into mainstream rock, a decline in creativity among local groups,
and a decreased interest by the media as they moved on in search of
the next new popular music center.
As one of the few American road songs, "Get Your Kicks on
Route 66!" provides music geographers an opportunity to interpret
the "Mother Road" of America. Through the use of lyrical cartography, Arthur Krimm analyzes the pre- and post-history of the Bobby
and Cynthia Troup composition based on their transcontinental trip
from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Los Angeles, California, in 1946 as
well as the subsequent recording by the Nat King Cole Trio the same
year. This musical map of postwar migration to California presents a
defining moment in the geography of American popular culture.
Blake Gumprecht's essay emphasizes the evocative place images
of West Texas created by three native-born composers. The lyrical content of their music presents a vivid description of the cultural and
physical phenomena unique to Lubbock and the surrounding area;
thus, providing listeners with a strong sense of place as well as reflecting the power that music can have on our perceptions of a place.
John Gold discusses the geographical significance of Woody
Guthrie's Pacific Northwest ballads. In this provocative piece, the
author investigates the lyrical content of Guthrie's compositions

Journal of Cultural Geography

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

k n o w n as the "Columbia River Collection." In these 26 ballads written for the Bonneville Power Administration in 1941, Guthrie focuses
on migrant stories and the importance of electrification for the region
and its inhabitants. Gold examines the lyrics in terms of three different perspectives from which Guthrie composed: folklorist, radical
minstrel, and social documentarist.
To Lou Seig, Alyson Greiner, and the editorial board, it gives me
great pleasure to serve as guest editor. It is m y sincere hope that the
articles in this special issue will stimulate other researchers to explore
m o r e fully the cultural fabric and dimensions of the geography of
music.

References
Booth, Stanley. 1993. Rhythm Oil: A journey Through the Music of the American
South. New York: Vintage Books.
Carney, George O. 1974. Bluegrass Grows All Around: The Spatial Dimensions of a Country Music Style. Journal of Geography. 73(4): 35-48.
. 1979. The Diffusion of the All-Country Music Radio Station in the United
States, 1971-1974. Columbus: Ohio State University, Department of
Geography, Diffusion of Innovations Discussion Paper Series No. 38.
. 1990. The Geography of Music: Inventory and Prospect. Journal of Cul
tural Geography. 10 (1): 35-48.
, ed. 1994. The Sounds of People and Places: A Geography of American Folk
and Popular Music. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
. 1999. Cowabunga! Surfer Rock and the Five Themes of Geography. Pop
ular Music and Society (forthcoming).
Drum, Steven L. 1971. Country and Western Music as Educational Media.
Journal of Geography. 70(8): 314.
Ford, Larry. 1971. Geographic Factors in the Origin, Evolution, and Diffusion of Rock and Roll Music. Journal of Geography. 70(8): 455-64.
Gill, Warren G. 1993. Region, Agency, and Popular Music: The Northwest
Sound, 1958-1966. The Canadian Geographer. 37:120-31.
Gordon, Jeffrey J. 1970. Rock-and-Roll: A Diffusion Study. Unpublished
Master's thesis, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Geography.
Graves, Steven. 1999. A Historical Geography of Popular Music in the
United States. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Illinois,
Department of Geography.
Kracht, James B. 1989. Perception of the Great Plains in Nineteenth Century
Folk Songs: Teaching About Place. Journal of Geography. 88: 206-12.

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

Music Geography

Kong, Lily. 1995. Music and Cultural Politics: Ideology and Resistance in Singapore. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 20(4): 447-59.
. 1996a. Making Music at the Margins? A Social and Cultural Analysis of
xinyao in Singapore. Asian Studies Review. 19: 99-124.
. 1996b. Popular Music in Singapore: Exploring Local Cultures, Global
Resources, and Regional Identities. Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space. 14: 272-92.
. 1997. Popular Music in a Transnational World: The Construction of
Local Identities in Singapore. Asia Pacific Viewpoint. 38(1): 19-36.
Koster, Rick. 1998. Texas Music. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Leyshon, Andrew, David Matless, and George Revill, eds. 1998. The Place of
Music. New York: Guilford Press.
Lichtenstein, Grace, and Laura Danker. 1993. Musical Gumbo: The Music of
New Orleans. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Lornell, Kip, and Ted Mealor. 1995. A & R Men and the Geography of Piedmont Blues Recordings 1924-1941. ^RCS Journal. 26(1): 1-22.
Lovering, John. 1998. The Global Music Industry. In The Place of Music, edited
by Andrew Leyshon, David Matless, and George Revill. New York:
Guilford Press, 31-56.
McLeay, Colin. 1994. The "Dunedin Sound": New Zealand Rock and Cultural Geography. Perfect Beat. 2(1): 38-50.
Mikesell, Marvin. 1978. Tradition and Innovation in Cultural Geography.
Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 68 (1): 1-16.
Moss, Pamela. 1992. Where is the "Promised Land?" Class and Gender in
Bruce Springsteen's Rock Lyrics. Geografiska Annaler. 74B(3): 167-87.
Nager, Larry. 1998. Memphis Beat: The Lives and Times of America's Musical
Crossroads. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Nash, Peter Hugh. 1968. Music Regions and Regional Music. The Deccan Geo
grapher. 6 (July-December): 1-24.
, and George O. Carney. 1996. The Seven Themes of Music Geography.
The Canadian Geographer. 40(1): 69-74.
Nostrand, Richard L., and Lawrence E. Estaville, Jr., eds. 1993. Special Issue
of the Journal of Cultural Geography. 13(2): 1-148.
Paterson, John L. 1991. Putting Pop in its Place: Using Popular Music in the
Teaching of Geography. New Zealand Journal of Geography. 92:18-19.
Rooney, John E, Jr., Wilbur Zelinsky, and Dean R. Louder, eds. 1982. This
Remarkable Continent: An Atlas of United States and Canadian Society and
Cultures. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Tavenor, Jean. 1970. Musical Themes in Latin American Culture: A Geographical Appraisal. The Bloomsbury Geographer. 3: 60-66.
Waterman, Stanley. 1998. Place, Culture and Identity: Summer Music in
Upper Galilee. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 23(2):
253-67.
West, Richard, and Geoff Kearsley. 1991. The City in Popular Music: Bringing Popular Culture and Geography Together in the Classroom. New
Zealand Journal of Geography. 92: 20-21.

10

Journal of Cultural Geography

Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1973. The Cultural Geography of the United States. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall.
. 1992. The Cultural Geography of the United States: A Revised Edition.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall.

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 04:30 30 May 2011

George O. Carney is regents professor of geography, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater 74078-4073.