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Scenes are sites where cultural codes circulate and structure audiences, environments, and interactions. Will Straw’s (1991) analysis provides the basis for much of the recent scholarship within the scenes perspective. While Straw began with an analysis of popular music, the scenes perspective has since broadened to include other forms of cultural production. Straw (2004) advocates the broad (if not extremely vague) study of “the excesses of sociability that surround the pursuit of interests, or [that] fuel ongoing innovation and experimentation within cultural life of cities…[in] one of the city’s infrastructures for exchange, interaction and instruction” (412-413). While Straw advocates for a vague study of the activities involved in the “pursuit of interests,” he specifically defines a “music scene,” which I examine in regards to Pittsburgh hip-hop, as “that cultural space in which a range of musical practices coexist, interacting with each other within a variety of processes of differentiation, according to widely varying trajectories of change and cross-fertilization” (373). Scenes establish sites of interaction and exchange, but also come into being through those interactions and exchanges.

While scenes may focus on one cultural product (e.g., a musical or artistic genre), researchers point out that there are many types of cultural production associated with that product. For example, the rap music scene is made up of rappers, audience members, producers, videographers, managers, DJs, breakdancers, graffiti artists, and graphic designers, among others. Researchers tend to focus on how individuals identify with a scene and how scenes create

66 common bonds among members (the focus of a later section in this chapter). As with an “art world” (Becker 1982), a scene requires multiple forms of labor in order to persist. Likewise, depending on how an individual contributes to the scene, they may have various outlooks on what the scene means and how it is enacted. In this conception, not only do fans, artists, venue owners, band managers, etc., make up a scene, their respective positions give them different points of entry in terms of participation along with different viewpoints on the scene itself. While researchers acknowledge the existence of other positions within a scene, most of the literature that describes the unity within and identification with music scenes focuses on audience members. This, of course, can lead to contention among members (the focus of another later section).

Scenes also are linked to a certain space. Those interested in studying scenes examine how localities influence, and are influenced by, the cultural production in scenes. In addition to a focus on the geographical locality of a scene, researchers also stress the importance of scenes in relation to interaction. As Woo, Rennie, and Poyntz (2014) describe, “Scenes are not only places to do certain kinds of activity, but places to be seen doing them by significant others” (2-3). In their conceptualization, scenes are not just spaces imbued with locally specific characteristics;

spaces scene members frequent become synonymous with the scene itself. CBGB and Studio 54, for example, were important places for scenesters in New York’s punk and nightclub scenes, respectively, not just because scene members congregated there. The places themselves became legitimized to the extent that visiting them helped aspiring scene members also gain legitimacy.

The importance of the Beat Box in the Pittsburgh rap music scene I describe above is an example of how a place can become synonymous with the scene and how a place can be used to legitimize scene members.

67 It is important to note that scenes can link a wide variety of spaces rather than being tied to one specific space. Bennett and Peterson (2004) famously conceptualize local, translocal, and virtual scenes. Their point is to show that scenes create connections through spaces, but are not the places themselves. In what they conceptualize as translocal scenes—“widely scattered local scenes drawn into regular communication around a distinctive form of music and lifestyle,”

members of scene exchange ideas and products with similar local scenes (Bennett and Peterson 2004: 6). The authors cite the “Beatlemania” of the mid-1960s as an example of how fans of The Beatles around the world became linked with one another via the band’s style and music, but also selectively drew from cultural codes associated with The Beatles in order for the band to fit in with the cultural experiences of different localities.

Increasingly relevant today, Bennett and Peterson (2004) point out that scenes no longer need a link to a physical space, either, with the emergence of virtual scenes. Researchers use their concept of virtual scenes to describe and analyze how electronic communications allows for scenes to grow via the internet. Chat rooms, online role-playing games, fan sites, and a plethora of other ways individuals come together online to produce and consume culture all draw attention to the fact that the “space” to which scenes are linked may not physically exist in the analog sense.

Lastly, scenes are tied to a given musical genre, artistic style, or form of cultural production. Music scenes refer to the “contexts in which clusters of musicians, fans, and other participants share their common musical tastes thereby collectively distinguishing themselves from others” (Heine 2012: 201). As I will describe in later sections, scene members engage in a great deal of boundary work surrounding their claims to one music genre over another. For example, McDowell (2014) describes how the artists in the “Taqwacore” punk scene encode

68 their Muslim faith into their music to differentiate themselves from less marginal punk rock scenes.

In summary, scenes, and music scenes in particular, are comprised of a variety of producers and consumers, are linked to a certain space, be it physical or virtual, and are tied to a musical genre or type of cultural production. Consolidating the music scene perspective specifically, Andy Bennett (2004) writes that analyzing scenes “offers the possibility of examining musical life in its myriad forms, both production- and consumption-oriented, and the various, often locally specific ways in which these cross-cut each other” (2004). This specificity mixed with ambiguity has led to critics of the concept (such as Hesmondhalgh 2005) saying:

Collectively, work done under this rubric has offered useful insights into the role of place and space in musical production and consumption. But [I argue] that scene is a confusing term. It suggests a bounded place but also has been used to refer to more complex spatial flows of musical affiliation; the two major ways in which the term is used are incompatible with each other. (23)

Straw (2014) attempts to clarify this in a piece entitled, “Some Things a Scene Might Be,” where he describes six things that a scene might be: collectivities marked by some form of proximity, spaces of assembly, workplaces engaged in the transformation of materials, ethical worlds shaped by the maintenance of behavioral protocols, spaces of preservation, and spaces of mediation that regulate the visibility and invisibility of cultural life (2). Straw’s catalog points to several different aspects of scenes worth investigating. However, Straw’s descriptive list does not respond satisfactorily to Hesmondhalgh’s critique of the concept.

I agree with Hesmondhalgh that the concept of scene is a descriptive catch-all. The goal of the following sections is to demonstrate that, atheoretical incoherence notwithstanding, the concept of scene facilitates the study of musical production and consumption processes. Along the way, I highlight what I see as two major weaknesses in the concept by discussing the

69 concept’s inability to explain a full range of conflicts that may be present in the scene, and how conflicts over social mobility can speed up or slow down a scene’s growth.