The Local Music Scene in Reykjavik

Music is an important aspect of all cultures. Studying the music created by another culture allows us to learn about other peoples’ values and belief systems, their religious practices, and their social interactions with each other and with their social institutions (Hood, 1971; Titon, et. al, 2008). Analyzing the music of another culture also expands our general knowledge of other people which is especially important in an age of globalization where the achievements of one culture may influence the values, beliefs, and social institutions of another. On the globalization of popular culture (see Barber, 1995, discussing McWorld), music as a cultural artifact, is not produced in isolation, but rather as a collaborative process influenced by a number of factors which occur at the local, trans-local, and virtual levels; each of which relates to the scene perspective used by sociologists to study popular music (Bennett, 2004).
The concept of scene, as expressed by Bennett involves the collection of musicians, promoters, and fans who create a particular genre of music (2004, p. 223). For example, New Orleans jazz, Chicago blues, or Nashville country music are all well-known examples of popular music (Bennett, p. 223). But with advancements in information technology, and globalization of culture, what were once isolated communities are now thriving local music scenes and sources of creativity for popular music. On this point, starting in the 1980s, Reykjavik, Iceland, has produced a music scene where internationally acclaimed artists such as Björk, Sugarcubes, Mugison, Múm, Sigur Rós and Gus have emerged (Boas, 2013). In this paper, the scene perspective is used to describe the local music scene of Reykjavik, and particularly the work ...

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...local scene may no longer be bounded by geography but by bits. In fact, the concepts of scene based on ‘land space’, may be transferred to virtual space. A case in point is that just as people gravitate to each other in real space to form local music communities; now days, chatrooms, youtube, and other social media sites allow similar interactions to occur online. Thus, it is not surprising that Román-Velázquez (1999) challenged sociologists to examine how it is that particular music and groups become linked.
So what do we learn about culture from analyzing local music scenes? That local scenes are rich sources of culture, and through them, we learn how other people view issues such as social justice, gender roles, and how people form communities. The scene perspective for analyzing culture has merit, and can be extended to study other aspects of culture as well.