ABSTRACT
Introduction Grime is an oral narrative that exhorts the perspectives of ‘the ends’. Grime, a cultural form that navigates and articulates experiences of curtailment, bordering and exclusion in inner-city east London, had an established footprint in the UK and Europe. By the summer of 2009, UK funky had emerged as a new genre, and many luminaries of the grime scene became actively involved. For young people planning holidays, a variety of factors come into play, but the desire to pursue musical tastes abroad is a key motivation. For a number of years, tour operators have put together packages to attract this audience. Social media and radio stations, both pirate and licensed, also promote the hype that accompanies and encourages participation in the international party arena. Far from being a highly localised, niche creative practice, the act of creating grime music propels its practitioners into the world and away from ‘the ends’. During the interviews, and while I was exploring the artistic output of the grime scene online and on radio, it became apparent to me that although the respondents were grounded in east London through residence or performance or both, their reach and influence extended far beyond this locale. In the UK I found evidence grime had an audience and a steady demand for live performance outside of London. In Swindon and Bristol, for example, the Sidewinder events provided a platform for MCs and DJs (Sidewinder 2006, 2007),2 and Eskimo Dance occasions took luminaries of the grime scene to Watford and beyond (NuthingSorted.com 2006). In this chapter, I use the Ayia Napa experience as a case study to explore how urban music has further enabled markets and primary and secondary business activities to be created and developed in a national and global context. A key location for the participants in the informal urban music economy was the summer season in the resort of Ayia Napa in southern Cyprus.
