ABSTRACT
Studying musical reception and scenes tends to take scholars outside the field of musicology proper. Of course, there is no reason why this need be so, except that musicology was shaped, and is still largely so, by a model which separates works out from their circulation and inflection in the social world. More than enough ink has been spilled on that point, and yet scholars who study music reception and scenes still by and large tend to do so in disciplines such as sociology, cultural studies, communications, gender (or area) studies and ethnomusicology (although this last rarely deals with Western musics). Thus, an investigation into the post-production social life of popular music (which, of course, will also precede more production in important mechanisms of feedback – discussed later) necessarily treads an uneven road of disciplines, approaches, theories and priorities, all nevertheless united by a series of recurring concerns. This chapter will first trace those concerns, visiting significant monuments and byways along the path; it will then turn to the related literature on ‘scenes’, investigating their sometimes vague definitions and meanings. Finally, the chapter will advance an argument that the developing literature on scenes points to an important dynamic too often missing from discussions of music reception.
