“噪”起来：广州音乐现场的文化地理研究

将广州的音乐现场看作一个承载制造“噪音”的场所,以6个现场音乐酒吧为具体案例,通过定性分析的方法探讨音乐现场如何连结不同人和不同的地方,以及如何被建构成一个“动态”的空间和“越轨”的地方。研究结果表明：音乐现场作为一种动态的物质文化空间,由经营者、组织者、音乐人和乐迷通过社会实践共同建构而成,成为所有音乐演出参与者之间的关系及其与不同地理尺度之间关系的节点;音乐现场作为一个“越轨”的地方,将音乐现场的“局内人”和“局外人”区分。上述结论回应和丰富了现有音乐地理研究的内容和成果,并对中国超越“看的方式”进行文化地理研究提供了新的切入点。

Noise Up! A Cultural Geographical Analysis of Live Music in Guangzhou

The main purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which popular music (live music) in Guangzhou is implicated in the emotive production of performance venues, and how it is located in Guangzhou. The popular music in Guangzhou can be considered to be a noise that has social and political power to challenge the pre-existing place meanings and norms, rather than simply being sounds that lack aesthetics. According to the previous cultural geographical analysis on popular music, how (popular) music is embodied and performs the space and place is the core issues in recent research. Especially, the non-representational side of music is highlighted in current music studies. However, the geographical research on popular music in China is rare and limited to the discussions on the relations between music and place. This shortcoming limits geographers’ understanding of popular music in contemporary urban China, and obstructs Chinese cultural geographies’ focuses on ‘ways of doing/practice’. Drawing on participant observation and life history interviews with 25 informants (3 owners, 4 organizers, 15 musicians and 4 audience members) in 6 live houses in Guangzhou (T: union; C: union; Musician; SD livehouse; 191 Space; and Tek Kwun), this article analyses the function of popular music in performing the identities of different people, creating the mobilizing and transgressive space/place for the participants to form their embodied identities, and modernising traditional social norms. Building up the theories and results from Wood et al.’s (2007) non-representational music study and Revill’s (2000) politics of popular music, the findings of this research indicate that: firstly, music has ‘cultural authority’ in the organization of the socio-cultural, economic, and political spaces. The performance venues, therefore, can be considered as a kind of material culture which is made by their owners, music events’ organizers, musicians and audiences; Secondly, the performance venues are mobilising. They are made by performing music that is on the move, and are empowered by the musicians who create and perform the music, and people who arrange the performance venues; at the same time, these venues are transgressive, they are seen as pollution in Guangzhou, and evade the ‘formal procedure’ of performance, and distinguish the ‘insiders’ from ‘outsiders’. Conversely, the bodies are shaped and restricted by the socio-political contexts in Guangzhou and the physical venues. These findings not only respond to the previous music geographical studies on lyrics and sounds/voices, but also extend the research areas of Chinese popular music. In addition, though the existed music studies have paid attentions on Chinese popular music, most of them are from western or westernized views. Therefore, this musical research with non-western gaze in non-western society provides a new perspective to Chinese cultural geographers to go further the analysis on ‘the ways of seeing’.