Popular music often conveys impressions of place, origin and belonging that affect the ways in which musical identities are constructed and meanings are perceived. Sound is embedded in place but also represents place – thus states Giacomo Bottà in the foreword to Invisible Landscapes: Popular Music and Spatiality, a collection of essays born out of a seminar on the city experience in popular music held at the University of Freiburg. Mirroring the theme of trans-local representations, the book features chapters in both German and English (five chapters each) by authors of various nationalities. Its range of topics spans various genres and touches upon matters such as national identities, urban development, scene formation, multiculturalism and political protest in mostly European locales.
As a book that considers musical traditions in light of their local (and often temporal) positioning, Invisible Landscapes presents a transdisciplinary account on musical spatiality that is not only rooted in popular music studies, but also draws on the views and methods of cultural studies, urban studies and ethnomusicology. A growing interest in the local dimensions of popular music making has in recent years led to an increase in writings about the meaning of cities or national backgrounds in the careers of certain artists or development of genres and vice versa. The book promotes this analytical angle and offers a particularly diversified point of view that combines different national and multicultural perspectives. The wide range of methodologies applied by its authors presents fascinating insights into changing notions of the concept of spatiality and illuminates the complex relations between popular music and place on various levels.
Invisible Landscapes is divided into 10 chapters that focus on various artists or genres and provide different analytical approaches that serve to emphasise the flexibility of spatial concepts. Bottà’s foreword sets the pace for what proved to be a most engaging read by positioning the collected chapters against the background of a common European framework and paying attention to the transnational and continent-wide angles of musical practices. He claims that the book presents new perspectives on musical place from both multicultural and multilingual positions and it is certainly true that the diverse range of narrative positions offers particularly interesting insights with regards to the topic of place in culture and nationwide musical representations. Revolving around the idea that popular music plays a significant role within the European understanding of cultural heritage, Bottà’s own take on the topic is discussed further in a separate chapter that deals with popular music in industrial cities. The chapter focuses on the role of popular music in terms of urban branding as well as representations and establishes that industrial cities often utilise musical mythmaking to construct what is often understood as authentic connections. He concludes that popular music heritage is often preserved through the means of digital archiving and communicates a variety of meanings that directly respond to the economical and material needs of contemporary urban settings.
The variety of topics covered by the book contributes to the understanding that musical spatiality can be incredibly versatile. Apart from the role of music as a historiographical means relating to the concept of cultural heritage, Invisible Landscapes touches upon such matters as national identities, political and postcolonial expressions as well as issues surrounding urban planning and performance space in individual cities. Talking about the origins and current developments of dubstep in London, Philipp Rhensius not only highlights the role of the city, local clubs and record stores for establishing a genre specific scene but also discusses the impact of musical corporality in creating an artificial acoustic space that rivals the city's dense housing situation. Rhensius argues for the relevance of corporal forms of musical reception and ultimately positions the music as a way of counteracting the daily sensory overload experienced in central London with a shift from visual to aural constructions of space. His chapter also touches upon matters of trans-local reception by incorporating virtual communities and it is noteworthy that the book acknowledges the importance of virtual spaces.
A particularly interesting chapter on the topic of sonic resistance in the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul in 2013 emphasises the crucial role of social media in articulating and organising public and auditory protests. The authors, Meri Kytö and E. Şirin Özgün, reconstruct the events by discussing different forms of sonic resistance such as football chanting, cacerolazo (protest with pots and pans) and performance art that were re-appropriated in the socio-political context and actively shaped the soundscape of the protests. By challenging established social norms, different forms of sonic resistance bestow places with new meaning, and the chapter presents a fascinating example of how musical spatiality can afford a look at contemporary history that is tinged with the sentiments and motivations of a political counterculture.
Invisible Landscapes succeeds in bringing together a variety of debates that open up a multifaceted dialogue on spatiality: Christina M. Heinen talks about artistic presentation and performance space in the dense urban settings of Berlin, while Leonard Nevarez discusses the relations between the Simple Minds European touring adventures and musical imagery. In his chapter on the rhetoric of reconciliation in postcolonial South Africa Carlo Nardi addresses processes of ‘othering’ and the effects of a shift towards a multicultural repertoire within Rhodes University Chamber Choir. Daniel Tödt's discussion of French rap music offers insights into the construction of authenticity that is affected by genre ideologies and the adaptations of a ghetto narrative. Representations of national identity and language-based processes of dissociation in post-Soviet Russia are addressed in David-Emil Wickström's chapter on ‘Ukro-Ska Punk’. Meanwhile, Fernand Hörner offers insights into the video production for the Kessler twins’ song ‘Sag mir Quando’ and its representation of Rome.
A common thread that runs through the book is the concept of a musical identity that is shaped by different places and social backgrounds. Each chapter contributes to the construction of a spatial concept that not only includes geographical places or performance spaces, but also relates to the presentation of musical images, ideologies, stereotypes and authenticities. Invisible Landscapes is particularly convincing in conveying and advertising a multicultural and diversified discourse on spatiality that takes into account various different facets of popular music. In his chapter on music in Switzerland Thomas Burkhalter makes a point of emphasising the impact of transnational musical representations and conveniently sums up one of the book's main points by stating that, through the adaptation and ‘processing of musical references musicians are able to position themselves in the world’ (p. 175).
