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Book Review: Sound tracks: popular music, identity and place

This book is an important landmark in the history of music geography. It marks the first time that scholars have attempted a wide-ranging, theoretically informed, spatially comprehensive look at the production and consumption of music. I would recommend this book as the primary text for anyone teaching a course on the geography of music. The authors manage to cover almost every important topic of concern among music geographers, including much-needed chapters on issues of authenticity and the growing music tourism industry. Connell and Gibson gather together an impressive array of source material, and do an outstanding job of theoretically framing a collection of mini-case studies of various musical genres and scenes. Students without prior knowledge of cultural studies/critical theory approaches should find this a manageable entrée into many of the standard theoretical approaches to cultural production and consumption. The only weakness here may be that Connell and Gibson have been too liberal in their use of source material, relying upon several sources that might have been better left uncited. World music enthusiasts and those familiar with British and Australian music genres will enjoy this book greatly. The authors cover non-American music authoritatively, but are clearly less comfortable writing about blues, soul, country and bluegrass in the United States. Several mistakes will jump out to readers familiar with the histories and geographies of these genres. The only significant weakness of the text seems to lie in the authors’ ambiguous stance on issues surrounding place-based ‘sounds’ among popular music performers. Although the theme of place-based authenticity permeates the text, I would venture to guess that many readers will be left wanting some closure on whether place-based sounds are still possible in the highly commodified world of today’s music market. Since legitimacy, authenticity, and style are essential questions for performers as well as among music fans and music critics, to say nothing of their critical importance to geographers who seek to better understand the power of place, it is curious that the authors did not attempt a more straightforward engagement with this basic question. Slippery as the answers to those issues are, however, perhaps the authors were wise to not force an opinion on the legitimacy of place-based sound.