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POP MUSIC, CULTURE, AND IDENTITY

Popular
Music Scenes
Regional and Rural Perspectives

Edited by
Andy Bennett
David Cashman
Ben Green
Natalie Lewandowski
Pop Music, Culture and Identity

Series Editors
Stephen Clark
Graduate School Humanities and Sociology
University of Tokyo
Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Tristanne Connolly
Department of English
St Jerome’s University
Waterloo, ON, Canada

Jason Whittaker
School of English & Journalism
University of Lincoln
Lincoln, Lincolnshire, UK
Pop music lasts. A form all too often assumed to be transient, commercial
and mass-cultural has proved itself durable, tenacious and continually
evolving. As such, it has become a crucial component in defining various
forms of identity (individual and collective) as influenced by nation, class,
gender and historical period. Pop Music, Culture and Identity investigates
how this enhanced status shapes the iconography of celebrity, provides an
ever-expanding archive for generational memory and accelerates the
impact of new technologies on performing, packaging and global market-
ing. The series gives particular emphasis to interdisciplinary approaches
that go beyond musicology and seeks to validate the informed testimony
of the fan alongside academic methodologies.
 Andy Bennett • David Cashman
Ben Green • Natalie Lewandowski
Editors

Popular Music Scenes

Regional and Rural Perspectives
Editors
Andy Bennett David Cashman
School of Humanities, Languages School of Arts and Social Sciences
and Social Science Southern Cross University
Griffith University Lismore, NSW, Australia
Southport, QLD, Australia
Natalie Lewandowski
Ben Green Creative Arts Research Institute
Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Griffith University
Research South Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Griffith University
Nathan, QLD, Australia

ISSN 2634-6613     ISSN 2634-6621 (electronic)

Pop Music, Culture and Identity
ISBN 978-3-031-08614-4    ISBN 978-3-031-08615-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
­institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Richard Watson / EyeEm/ Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

This book has been inspired by our work with the Regional Music Research
Group. We would like to acknowledge the support of our RMRG col-
leagues, Cary Bennett, Alana Blackburn, Alexandra Blok, Antonia Canosa,
Lachlan Goold, Ernesta Sofija.
We would also like to thank the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural
Research for their provision of a small publication support grant to assist
with the editorial preparation of this book.
And a very big thank you to Sue Jarvis for her invaluable assistance in
the proofreading, copyediting and indexing of this book.
This book has taken shape during a period of great upheaval. We thank
all of our contributors for their sterling efforts in gracing us with such high
quality and deeply insightful chapters during extremely challenging times.

v
 Contents

Part I People and Place   1

1 Music
 at the End of the Land: Reflections on the
Pembrokeshire Music Network  3
Philip Miles

2 Diamonds
 in the Backyard: Migrant Youth and Hip Hop
in Australian Regional Towns 19
Alexandra Blok

3 From
 the City to the Bush: An Autoethnographic
Reflection on Australia’s Urban and Rural Music Scenes 35
Graham Sattler

Part II Technology and Distribution  51

4 Sounds
 and Peripheral Places: Trajectory and Portrait of
the Rock Scene in Tâmega (Portugal) Over the Last Decade  53
Paula Guerra, Tânia Moreira, and Sofia Sousa

vii
viii Contents

5 Indian
 Electronic Dance Music Festivals as Spaces of Play
in Regional Settings: Understanding Situated and Digital
Electronic Dance Music Performances 67
Devpriya Chakravarty

6 ‘Take
 Me to Church’: Developing Music Worlds Through
the Creative Peripheral Placemaking and Programming of
Other Voices 83
Susan O’Shea

7 The
 Creative Music Networks of Regional Recording
Studios: A Case Study of the Sunshine Coast and Gympie 99
Lachlan Goold

Part III Memory 115

8 Transactions
 in Taste: An Examination of a Potential
Tastemaking Landscape Within Kent’s Blues Club Scene
and the Conception of a Local Taste Accent117
Phil Woollett

9 In
 the Middle of Nowhere: Eisenach and Its Organically
Grown Blues and Jazz Infrastructure131
Nico Thom

10 ‘But
 Do They Know How It Is in Pihtipudas?’ Rural and
Provincial Punk Scenes in Finland in the Late 1970s and
Early 1980s149
Janne Poikolainen and Mikko Salasuo

11 Building
 Scene and Cultural Memory in the Weser Hills:
The Case of Glitterhouse Records and the Orange
Blossom Special Festival163
Robin Kuchar
 Contents  ix

Part IV Industry and Policy 179

12 Participatory
 Belonging: How Tourist Music Workshops
Establish Trans-Local Music Scenes181
Leonieke Bolderman

13 Outsiders
 in Outsider Cities? Expatriates in the DIY
Music Scenes of Nagoya and Fukuoka195
Benjamin Duester

14 Yogyakarta’s
 Jazz Activists: From Regional Scene to Local
Stages209
Otto Stuparitz

15 Fragmented,
 Positive and Negative: Live Music Venues in
Regional Queensland227
Andy Bennett, David Cashman, Ben Green, and Natalie
Lewandowski

Index243
 Notes on Contributors

Andy Bennett is Professor of Cultural Sociology in the School of

Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. He has
written and edited numerous books, including Popular Music and Youth
Culture (Macmillan, 2000); Music, Style and Aging: Growing Old
Disgracefully (Temple University Press, 2013); and Music Scenes: Local,
Translocal, and Virtual (co-edited with Richard A. Peterson, Vanderbilt
University Press, 2004). He is a Faculty Fellow of the Yale Centre for
Cultural Sociology, an International Research Fellow of the Finnish Youth
Research Network, a founding member of the Consortium for Youth,
Generations and Culture and a founding member of the Regional Music
Research Group. He is co-founder and co-convenor (with Paula Guerra)
of the biennial KISMIF conference.
Alexandra Blok is a PhD candidate at Griffith University, Gold Coast,
with a strong professional background in the cultural industries. She
started as a manager, as the CEO of the first Russian World Music Festival,
and has since created and executed a variety of projects built around world
and jazz music and its multiple effects on regional cultural and socioeco-
nomic development. Her current research project canvasses the multiple
roles played by music in strategies of regional migrant’s resettlement in
Australia and the cultural impact of international migration on regional
development. She also is a member of the Regional Music Research Group.
Leonieke Bolderman is Assistant Professor of Cultural Geography and
Tourism Geography and Planning at the University of Groningen, the
Netherlands. Her research concerns the role of music, heritage and tour-

xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ism in urban and regional development, as well as qualitative research

methods. Besides research articles, she has published the monograph
Contemporary Music Tourism: A Theory of Musical Topophilia (Routledge,
2020), and the co-edited collection Locating Imagination in Popular
Culture: Place, Tourism and Belonging (Routledge, 2021).
David Cashman is a pianist, arranger, researcher and Adjunct Associate
Professor of Contemporary Music at Southern Cross University, Lismore,
Australia. David’s research area revolves around live music with a particu-
lar emphasis on regional music and live music pedagogy. He is the author
of Performing Popular Music: The Art of Creating Memorable and Successful
Performances (with Waldo Garrido, Routledge, 2019) and Cruisicology:
The Music Culture of Cruise Ships (with Phil Hayward, Lexington Books,
2020). David is a founding member of the Regional Music Research Group.
Devpriya Chakravarty is a PhD student in the School of Humanities,
Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. She is currently work-
ing on her doctoral thesis, which entails an ethnographic study to under-
stand and assess Indian youth’s motives for attending electronic dance music
(EDM) festivals in India. She is familiar with the field through her previous
experience in her research fellowship, which involved conducting partici-
pant observational research of Indian EDM festival sites. Her research inter-
ests include EDM culture, Indian urban youth culture and popular music.
Benjamin Duester is an affiliate of the Griffith Centre for Social and
Cultural Research and a sessional academic at Griffith University. His
research explores issues related to music, materiality, technologies and
DIY cultures. He is the author of Obsolete Technology? The Significance of
the Cassette Format in Twenty-First-Century Japan (Palgrave, 2020) and
co-author of Cassette Cultures in Berlin: Resurgence, DIY Freedom, or
Sellout? (Routledge, 2019).
Lachlan Goold is a recording engineer, producer, mixer, popular music
educator, researcher and Lecturer in Contemporary Music at the University
of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. His research focuses on
practice-based music production approaches, theoretical uses of space,
cultural geography and the music industry. In his creative practice, he is
better known as Australian music producer Magoo, a two-time ARIA
award winner. Since 1990, he has worked on a wide range of albums from
some of the country’s best-known artists, achieving a multitude of Gold
and Platinum awards.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii

Ben Green is a cultural sociologist with interests in popular music and

youth studies. He is undertaking a Griffith University Postdoctoral
Research Fellowship at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural
Research, investigating crisis and reinvention in the Australian live music
sector. Green’s work explores memory and heritage, cultural policy, youth
and well-being through ethnographic research in urban, regional and
trans-local music scenes. His first book is Peak Music Experiences: A New
Perspective on Popular Music, Identity and Scenes.
Paula Guerra is Professor of Sociology and a researcher at the Institute
of Sociology at the University of Porto. She is also Adjunct Associate
Professor of the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research in
Australia and founder/coordinator of the Network All the Arts: Luso-­
Afro-­Brazilian Network of the Sociology of Culture and the Arts. Paula is
the founder/coordinator of the KISMIF (kismifconference.com and kis-
mifcommunity.com). She is a member of the board of the Research
Network of Sociology of Art of ESA and coordinates several research proj-
ects on youth cultures, sociology of the arts and culture, co-­creation,
methodology and research techniques, and DIY cultures, among other
subjects. She is a member of the editorial council of several national and
international journals, as well as editor and reviewer of several articles and
books at national and international levels.
Robin Kuchar graduated in cultural sciences and holds a PhD from
Leuphana University, Germany. Currently, he works at Institute of
Sociology and Cultural Organization at Leuphana. His main fields of
interest are popular music, underground music scenes and the relationship
of culture and urban space. He is co-editor of Music City: Musical
Approaches to the Creative City (Transcript Verlag, 2014) and co-­initiator
of the Urban Music Studies Scholars Network (http://www.urbanmusic-
studies.org). His PhD analysed trajectories of original DIY and under-
ground music venues within the changing social environments of scene,
city and the music industries. The related book, Music Venues Between
Scene, the City and the Music Industries: Autonomy, Appropriation,
Dependence was published in German in 2020.
Natalie Lewandowski is an Adjunct of the Creative Arts Institute at
Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Her experience working
across government, the arts, academia and commercial industries has
resulted in publications and engagement with film sound, live music,
music sustainability, and music and well-being.
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Philip Miles is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and English Literature at the

University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom. As a cultural sociologist
with specific interests in the sociology of literature (including reception
studies and sociological late modernism); the study of creativity (processes
and spaces); ethnographic methods; and sociological and literary theory,
his research emphasises how culture is experienced and understood by
individuals and groups in society via narratives of personal value, emotion,
variables of geography and intrinsic sociality, and how these criteria may be
utilized and maintained in meaningful ways in contemporary life. He is the
author of an ethnographic account of the creative practices of musicians,
fine artists, and literary authors, published as the monograph Midlife
Creativity and Identity: Life into Art (Emerald, 2019).
Tânia Moreira is a sociologist (MSc), project manager and consul-
tant at INOVA+s International Unit Team (Horizon Programme Area)
and researcher at Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto.
Tânia’s subjects of interest include interdisciplinarity, co-creation, arts+
science+technology crossovers, innovation and its impacts, methodology
and research techniques, research ethics, policies, youth cultures and do-
it-yourself (DIY) ethics, among other subjects. In recent years, she has
been part of S+T+ARTS projects and KISMIF (kismifconference.com and
kismifcommunity.com). She is completing her PhD in sociology at the
University of Porto with a research project focused on an understanding of
the Portuguese electronic dance music scene and its different components.
Susan O’Shea is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and a co-founder of the
research group Music and Sonic Studies, Manchester Metropolitan
University (MASSmcr). MASS Manchester is a group of multidisciplinary
researchers exploring the musical beats and sonic streets of Manchester
and beyond, providing a space to bring together practice-based and
action-orientated research on music, sound and sonic spaces. Susan teaches
undergraduate courses on music, movements and protest, qualitative
research methods, social theory and postgraduate quantitative methods.
Current research interests include applying mixed-­methods social network
analysis (SNA) to investigate festival networks, exploring women’s music
worlds, digital collaborations and music mobilities.
Janne Poikolainen currently works as a university lecturer in the Faculty
of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. He has also worked as a
postdoctoral researcher at the Finnish Youth Research Society. His prior
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xv

research covers various topics related to music fandom, popular music and
youth cultures. In his doctoral dissertation, Janne studied the emergence
of popular music fan culture in Finland from the 1950s to the early 1970s.
He is co-editor of Katukulttuuri: Nuorisoesiintymiä 2000-luvun Suomessa
[Street Culture: Young People in Finland in the twenty-first Century]
with Mikko Salasuo and Pauli Komonen.
Mikko Salasuo is a docent in economic and social history and works at
the Finnish Youth Research Society as a leading senior researcher. He has
written and edited 20 books including Drugs & Youth Culture: Global and
local Expressions (with Philip Lalander), Exceptional Life Courses: Elite
Athletes and Successful Artists in 2000s Finland (with Mikko Piispa and
Helena Huhta) and Katukulttuuri: Nuorisoesiintymiä 2000-luvun
Suomessa [Street Culture: Young People in Finland in the twenty-first
Century] (with Janne Poikolainen). He is an adjunct Fellow of the Griffith
Centre for Social and Cultural Research. Mikko’s research topics include
subcultures, the history of youth culture, young peoples leisure time,
youth gangs and drug cultures.
Graham Sattler is a community music researcher/educator, practising
musician and arts leader who relocated to regional New South Wales,
Australia, from Sydney in 2001. Apart from two years in Melbourne,
Australias second largest city, Graham’s formative educational and perfor-
mance practice took place in Sydney, where he was mainly orientated to
the classical instrumental and vocal scene. With his move to the country
came a reassessment of performance, community attitudes to the con-
sumption of and participation in music, the place, value and valuing of a
local music scene, and the permeable boundary between professional and
amateur music-making. Graham holds a PhD, Master of Performance
(Conducting) and Diploma of Operatic Art and Music Theatre, all from
the University of Sydney, Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He is a mem-
ber of the Regional Music Education Research Group and was appointed
CEO of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Aotearoa New Zealand,
at the end of 2021.
Sofia Sousa is a sociologist (MSc) from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities
of the University of Porto (FLUP). She worked as a research fellow under
the project CANVAS – Towards Safer and Attractive Cities: Crime and
Violence Prevention through Smart Planning and Artistic Resistance
xvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

(2019–21), based at the Centre for Geography and Spatial Planning

Studies. In recent years, she has been part of KISMIF (kismifconference.
com and kismifcommunity.com), and is a member of the Social Media
Committee of the International Association for the Study of Popular
Music and Executive Editor of the Journal All the Arts – Luso-­Brazilian
Journal of Arts and Culture. Currently she is a PhD Student in the Faculty
of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto and a researcher at the
Institute of Sociology of the University of Porto. Her thesis is about the
arts, women and migrations.
Otto Stuparitz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Ethnomusicology,
UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He is currently completing a dis-
sertation titled Java Jazz: Politics of Preservation, which focuses on the
role of Indonesian popular music sound archiving in the historiography of
jazz in Indonesia. He has received numerous grants and fellowships to
conduct fieldwork and archival research in Indonesia and the Netherlands.
His research interests include popular music, archival studies, economic
ethnomusicology, sound studies and South-­East Asian studies. For fifteen
years, he has researched traditional and popular musics of Indonesia and
helped revive UCLA’s Javanese Gamelan Ensemble in 2018. In May
2021, he released an eponymously named recording with a quartet of
West Javanese jazz and traditional musicians called Bluesukan.
Nico Thom is head of the Klaus Kuhnke Archive for Popular Music at
University of the Arts Bremen (Germany). He studied musicology, phi-
losophy, science management and the didactics of higher education at uni-
versities in Leipzig, Halle/Saale, Jena, Oldenburg and Hamburg. He was
awarded his PhD in musicology at Humboldt University, Berlin (The
Drum & Bass Program: A System-theoretical approach). Nico has
researched and taught at universities as well as universities of music in
Leipzig, Klagenfurt (Austria), Weimar, Rostock, Lübeck and Hannover.
His fields of expertise are jazz and popular music studies (with a focus on
Europe), music in higher education, system theory, and the philosophy of
music. Besides his activities in academic research, teaching and administra-
tion, he is also a jazz musician and novelist.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xvii

Phil Woollett is a professional British blues musician, teacher and scholar.

As both a solo artist and a member of the John Doe Trio, he has released
two successful albums and has been active within the British blues scene
for over a decade. In addition to his creative input within the British blues
scene he also takes a keen academic interest, employing deep-­immersion
ethnographic methodology to examine it as one of a very few British
scholars able to employ such methodology from within an active musical
perspective. As a musician, a promotor – co-founding the Kentish blues
club, Bourne to the Blues – and as a participant observer, Phil is able to
provide a rare perspective on the blues landscape of his home country.
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Number of bands per municipalities in 2020. (Source: The

authors)60
Fig. 5.1 Cricket net at EVC campsite 71
Fig. 5.2 The Nataraja-inspired Sunburn main stage 72
Fig. 6.1 Other Voices festival network of events and performers 92
Fig. 6.2 Event sized by eigenvector centrality 93
Fig. 11.1 Villa and garden as festival site. (Photo: Glitterhouse) 168
Fig. 11.2 A typical afternoon scene at Orange Blossom Special festival.
(Photo: Glitterhouse) 168
Fig. 11.3 Collective experience at Orange Blossom Special festival in the
Glitterhouse garden 172
Fig. 14.1 Komunitas Jazz Indonesia jam session with saxophonist
Samuel Robert Samual and pianist Nadine Adrianna at Omah
Potorono in Bantul, 17 November 2018 216
Fig. 14.2 Komunitas Jazz Indonesia, 17 November 2018. (Photo by
Rachmad Utojo Salim) 217
Fig. 14.3 Orkes Kampoeng Wangak playing the Meet and Greet event,
27 October 2018 222
Fig. 14.4 New powerlines being installed near the festival stage 223

xix
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Place codes 91

Table 6.2 Event codes 91
Table 6.3 Other Voices event network – centrality measures 94
Table 7.1 Details of interview participants’ studios 105

xxi
 Introduction: Popular Music Scenes in a
Regional and Rural Context

The concept of the music scene has been in use for many years as a means
of describing’ situations where performers, support facilities, and fans
come together to collectively create music for their own enjoyment’
(Peterson and Bennett 2004: 3). Throughout much of the twentieth cen-
tury, music scene was primarily in use as a vernacular terminology among
musicians, audiences and others invested in live music, such as music pro-
moters and music journalists. Towards the end of the twentieth century
and into the early 2000s, the music scene began to gain traction as a theo-
retical concept, initially in the work of Straw (1991) and later in studies by,
for example, Shank (1994) and Bennett and Peterson (2004). As illus-
trated in much of the scenes literature being published at that time, the
concept of the music scene has characteristically urban roots, with many
cities capitalizing on their strong association with the evolution of a par-
ticular musical style or genre and the crystallization of a distinctive local
scene around this. Although some of the musical genres now strongly
associated with urban scenes, notably blues, have origins in regional and
rural locations (see Guralnick 1977), it was the transition of these genres
to urban spaces that gave them global prominence. In other cases, the
defining characteristics of particular music genres are depicted as distinc-
tively urban, their style and sound bound up with particular aspects of city
life. Examples here include heavy metal’s dark and over-driven sound
being associated with its origins in the British Midlands city of Birmingham
during the industrial era (Harrison 2010) and hip hop’s evolution as part
of a do-it-yourself (DIY) street culture against a background of poverty

xxiii
xxiv INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL…

and youth disenfranchisement in the housing projects of New York’s

Bronx (Rose 1994).
Although existing work on the metropolitan experience of music scenes
has contributed significantly to understandings of both the cultural and
economic importance of popular music, the dominance of its predomi-
nantly metro-centric focus is increasingly out of step with the growing
prevalence of popular music scenes outside urban settings. In many
respects, the evolution of popular music scenes in peri-urban and non-­
urban contexts should not come as a surprise. Given the strongly mediated
nature of popular music as a cultural form, particularly from the 1950s
onwards (Frith 1988), access to popular music via radio, television and
cinema has led to its wide trans-local appeal (Peterson and Bennett 2004).
Irrespective of their location – urban, regional or rurally remote – music
fans have been drawn in by the iconic appeal of popular music artists and
the cultural scenes with which they have been associated. With the advent
of digital media and the increasing connectivity afforded by such technol-
ogy, where one lives has become increasingly less important in many
respects in terms of the practice of music-making and dissemination.
Indeed, an increasing number of commercially successful artists are situ-
ated in locations on the global periphery (e.g. see Prior 2015). The same
applies to the broader music industry, with many record labels, studios,
festivals and so on taking pride in the fact that they are able to sustain a
successful business footing in regional and rural locations. At the same
time, more conventional face-to-face music scene activity also manifests in
regional and rural locations. Live music continues to be a sought-after
form of entertainment, with regional tourism serving to further bolster
this demand in many places. Similarly, just as research on the creative and
cultural industries has demonstrated the integration of music into the cul-
tural economy of cities, so it is becoming increasingly clear that equivalent
trends exist in regional and rural settings (Waitt and Gibson 2013). A
salient aspect of this is that local councils and funding agencies are now
realizing the value of supporting local music and nurturing live music eco-
systems in regional and rural locations (Green and Bennett 2019).
Despite such vibrant growth, however, regional and rural music scenes
remain an under-researched topic (Bennett et al. 2020). However, as
regional and rural settings across the world become increasingly important
as sites of popular music production, performance and consumption, there
is a clear need for research that seeks to understand regional and rural
music scenes in terms of both their distinctive qualities, as non-urban local
 INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL… xxv

scenes, and their points of trans-local and virtual connection (Peterson

and Bennett 2004) to other music scenes both nationally and internation-
ally. This edited collection brings together a series of chapters by scholars
from around the world that offer new insights on both the distinctive
contributions made by regional and rural popular music scenes in Australia,
Asia, Europe and North America, and their connections to national and
transnational networks of popular music production, performance and
consumption. Through invoking the dual concepts of regional and rural
music scenes, we acknowledge the elasticity of such terms, given that the
regional may often embrace smaller cities and larger provincial towns
while the concept of rural may differ depending on proximity to larger
urban conurbations. As such, the exploration of regional and rural music
scenes presented in this book is also an exploration of such complex under-
standings in a context of economic and cultural globalization. The indi-
vidual chapters in this book also reflect how such complex relations
between urban, regional and rural settings in turn produce highly nuanced
discursive constructions of space and place that also reflect back to varying
degrees on the nature of music scenes in regional and rural locations.
This book is divided into four parts. Part I: People and Place focuses on
the spatial aspects of regional popular music scenes and looks at how place
and locality inform the perceptions and discourses of those involved in
such scenes. In Chap. 1, Philip Miles focuses on the music scene in the
county of Pembrokeshire, a regional area in the south of Wales. In particu-
lar, Miles focuses on one particular artist from the region, Gorkys Zygotic
Mynci, an alternative rock band that drew heavily on 1960s-inspired psy-
chedelic influences. Charting what is now becoming an increasingly com-
mon narrative, Miles notes how the rise of Gorkys Zygotic Mynci to
national prominence while continuing to emphasize its local roots and
remaining strongly a part of the local music scene became part of the
band’s core identity while also promoting its home town of Camarthon
and the wider county of Pembrokeshire as a regional centre for music that
promoted a strong sense of heritage, culture, localism, history, language,
musicality, youthfulness and pride.
In Chap. 2, the focus shifts to regional Australia as Alexandra Blok
examines the significance of hip hop for young migrants in regional areas
of New South Wales and Queensland. As Blok notes, for migrant youth in
regional towns such as Wagga Wagga (New South Wales) and Cairns
(Queensland), hip hop provides a rich source of creative expression for
these youth through which to explore issues such as identity, friendship
xxvi INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL…

and exclusion. Existing research on hip hop and local identity has estab-
lished how hip hop’s global reach is matched by its capacity for localized
forms of appropriation whereby its signature textures of rhythm and sound
and spoken lyrics take on new local meanings as young rappers adapt the
hip hop style as a means of engaging with local issues and challenges. Blok
extends this discussion to consider how young migrant rappers in regional
Australia are contributing to patterns of cultural transformation in their
regions, drawing on their trans-local connections and cosmopolitan
influences.
In Chap. 3, Graham Sattler offers a rich autoethnographic account of
his own transition from an urban to a regional music scene in New South
Wales, Australia. Sattler notes that such a transition can often result in
significant upheaval for the individual music practitioner, as the availability
of hard and soft music scene infrastructures with which to engage are sig-
nificantly reduced in a regional setting. This, in turn, impacts opportuni-
ties for participation in a local live music scene and presents difficulties in
securing a livelihood if one is coming into a regional music scene setting
as a professional musician or with aspirations to become one. Likewise,
Sattler notes other presenting challenges in terms of access to music edu-
cation and training, which are often a feature of regional settings.
Part II: Technology and Distribution focuses on the technologies and
forms of distribution that pertain whereby regional and rural popular
music scenes exist, and in many cases coexist, in forms of trans-local con-
nection with other scenes. In Chap. 4, Paula Guerra, Tânia Moreira and
Sofia Sousa consider the rock scene in the peri-urban Tâmega region of
Portugal, which includes a number of municipalities that together com-
prise one of the most densely populated regions of the country, with a
relatively young population. Despite a lack of economic and cultural sup-
port, local young people have developed a rock scene (which can be seen
as a patchwork of nano-scenes) with a significant degree of informality
and DIY logic. The authors draw on substantial ethnographic research,
including interviews and online investigations, to consider how Facebook
and other social media platforms have contributed to Tâmega’s musical
(re)affirmation of recent years, including as avenues for distribution and
advertising, without replacing local power and familial relationships.
In Chap. 5, Devpriya Chakravarty explores the regionally located
Electronic Dance Music (EDM) festival scene in India. Multi-day festivals
such as Enchanted Valley Carnival and Sunburn claim regional spaces for
ephemeral gatherings of mostly urban youth around the performance and
 INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL… xxvii

consumption of a global popular music culture. Chakravarty considers

how social media networks are utilized to promote the events, in which
local and regional characteristics are coopted, as well as how they maintain
the connectivity of festival participants between gatherings. This enables
an analysis of how social media networks aid in the formation of affective
communicative ecologies.
In Chap. 6, Susan O’Shea examines Other Voices, a geographically dis-
persed Irish music festival and television series with a 20-year history in the
remote peninsula of Dingle and a more recent presence in Ballina, as well
as international programming in Berlin, London and New York. The fes-
tival contributes to regional economies and builds translocal links using
new performance, distribution and participation technologies, while chal-
lenging stereotypes of Irish music. Using social network analysis, O’Shea
maps the events and performers of Other Voices with close attention to
place. In the core/periphery structure of these social networks, the Dingle
and Ballina Music Trails are shown to be central, providing opportunities
for music mobilities across Ireland and internationally.
In Chap. 7, Lachlan Goold focuses on the recording sector as a regional
creative network and its function within and beyond local music scenes,
presenting a case study of the Sunshine Coast region of Queensland,
Australia. The reduced cost of recording technology and the associated
proliferation of domestic studios has enabled small businesses in the region
to capitalize on their appealing surrounds and to flourish outside the city.
Broadband internet access, which remains unevenly distributed, is vital to
these studios and in particular enables long-distance recording services
and collaborations, including with national and international session musi-
cians, tapping into a virtual global network. However, promotion is more
reliant on word-of-mouth networks than online visibility, which is gener-
ally low.
Part III: Memory considers the importance of collective memory in
how regional and rural popular music scenes, with their issues of isolation
and smaller industry infrastructure, are constructed in both the past and
the present. In Chap. 8, Phil Woollett examines the blues scene in rural
Kent in the United Kingdom. Kent has maintained a flourishing rural
blues scene despite the blues in the United Kingdom originating in the
urban areas of London. Woollett, a professional blues musician, under-
takes an ethnography of the Kent scene in the role of participant-­
practitioner. He finds that while the Kent blues scene comprises an ageing
demographic, the scene is not dying off. Instead, many of his informants
xxviii INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL…

find themselves drawn to the scene later in life. Local identity is important
to the scene, with many passionate tastemakers running local clubs and
festivals. In contrast, musicians are routinely drawn from further afield
than just within Kent itself. Woollett finds that it is the consumers rather
than the producers who maintain control over the scene. They speak of
seeking an alternative to the perceived artifice of the X-Factor musical
generations in a scene grounded in earlier music.
In Chap. 9, Nico Thom considers the jazz scene of Eisenach, a regional
town in the state of Thuringia in the former German Democratic Republic
(GDR). Despite its small size, Eisenach casts a long shadow within the
history of German jazz. During World War II, jazz enthusiasts ran illegal
jazz jams, and the first jazz club of the GDR opened here in 1959, fol-
lowed by the establishment of the International Jazz Archive of Eisenach
in 1999. Thoms ethnographic work focuses on stakeholders and their
cross-generational interaction within this glocalized scene.
In Chap. 10, Janne Poikolainen and Mikko Salasuo examine rural punk
scenes of Finland in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These punk scenes
seemed a world away from the better-known scenes of London and
New York, but they are of particular interest as rural versions of urban
scenes. Their development coincided with the modernization of Finland
in the 1970s. However, this modernization was largely an urban develop-
ment; regional towns and areas were still conservative, sparsely populated,
under-developed and spread over large areas. Poikolainen and Salasuo
consider the social and cultural meaning and the national characteristics of
the first wave of Finnish punk culture in rural municipalities and towns.
Punks DIY aesthetic permitted the development of small local scenes com-
prising those seeking to reach out to the cities. It disconnected with the
conservative past and embraced modernist contemporary youth culture.
In Chap. 11, Robin Kuchar, noting the absence of academic study of
rural German scenes, seeks to contextualize the influential rural record
label Glitterhouse Records and the associated Orange Blossom Special fes-
tival within the German independent music scene. The former was a sig-
nificant mail-order house and record label launched in 1984 in Beverungen
in east Westphalia. It promoted both American independent music and
local artists, and has continued to gain significance within the German
scene. The Orange Blossom Special festival has been held annually in the
garden of the label since 1997, gathering an annual crowd of 2000–2500
festivalgoers. Glitterhouse is a significant German rural-based label, that
 INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL… xxix

has sought to build a community around music, shared attitudes and has
been in existence over three decades.
Part IV: Industry and Policy examines themes of industry and policy in
relation to culture and music, as these impact on the nature and identity
of rural and regional popular music scenes. In Chap. 12, Leonieke
Bolderman explores participation in music-making workshops and how
such workshops form their own trans-local music scenes. Based on ethno-
graphic research across three contemporary music workshops conducted
in Europe in 2016, Bolderman argues that although the workshops them-
selves are temporary, the scenes they create form long-lasting connections
between participants. Music workshops are a niche tourism product, gen-
erating interest and income for geographical areas that may otherwise
have been overlooked by conventional tourism. Perhaps unintentionally,
the workshops offer a unique entry point into a music scene that could
otherwise be unavailable to participants. Bolderman posits that, through
their structure and location, these workshops demonstrate translocality.
In Chap. 13, Benjamin Düster further extrapolates on this idea of trans-
locality through focusing on self-organized and grassroots musicians
around Nagoya and Fukuoka, Japan. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in
2018 and 2019, Düster recognizes that expatriates play an important role
in these smaller music scenes. By drawing on a Western DIY ethos, he sug-
gests that expatriate scene participants allow for the creation of overseas
tour opportunities and song and album releases for Japanese musicians
that may not be considered in the larger milieu of Japanese record labels.
As in Bolderman’s chapter, the role of the tourist is highlighted as an aid
to promote the scene, creating recognition and connection among scene
participants. Düster states that engagement with expatriate communities
in the Japanese DIY scenes, such as those in Nagoya and Fukuoka, pro-
vides meaningful connections between Japan and international indepen-
dent music scenes.
In Chap. 14, Otto Stuparitz also builds on this idea of translocal music
scenes in regional and rural areas. Stuparitz analyses how small jazz festi-
vals held in Indonesia present a way for nationally recognized jazz artists
to play in remote locations while at the same time providing opportunities
for local jazz musicians and organizers to interact with their metropolitan
counterparts. By tracing the establishment of Yogyakarta’s jazz commu-
nity, Stuparitz provides us with a further example of how a place can influ-
ence and serve as a guidepost for smaller and lesser-known music
communities. Similar to the communities discussed in Bolderman and
xxx INTRODUCTION: POPULAR MUSIC SCENES IN A REGIONAL…

Düster’s chapters, Stuparitz highlights that those who engaged in

Yogyakarta’s jazz community continued to be active in the scene, even if
it had physically dissolved or moved on. Stuparitz also touches on the
notion that in regional and rural areas, there are not always the venues and
facilities that typically would be needed to facilitate live music, with hotels
and resorts providing options for musicians and audiences alike.
In Chap. 15, Andy Bennett, David Cashman, Ben Green and Natalie
Lewandowski similarly identify this infrastructure as a common point of
contention for regional musicians and venue owners in Queensland,
Australia. In this final chapter, the authors reflect on how regional and
rural scenes throughout Queensland have been affected by policy, tourism
and the recent pandemic. The chapter highlights that geography and cost
go hand in hand with the kind of live music offerings provided in these
locations and note the practical consequence of the pandemic in forcing
both audiences and artists to think outside the box (as demonstrated by
the Queensland Music Trails festival). Building on the ideas presented by
Bolderman, Düster and Stuparitz, the authors use a broader lens to dem-
onstrate how tourism, infrastructure and lifestyle choices can shape live
music scenes now and for years to come.

Southport, QLD, Australia Andy Bennett

Lismore, NSW, Australia David Cashman
Nathan, QLD, Australia Ben Green
South Brisbane, QLD, Australia Natalie Lewandowski

References
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virtual. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Bennett, A., B. Green, D. Cashman, and N. Lewandowski. 2020. Researching
regional and rural music scenes: Towards a critical understanding of an under-­
theorized topic. Popular Music & Society 44 (4): 367–377.
Frith, S. 1988. Music for pleasure: Essays in the sociology of pop. Oxford: Polity Press.
Green, B., and A. Bennett. 2019. Gateways and corridors: Spatial challenges and
opportunities for live music on the Gold Coast. City, Culture and Society
17: 20–25.
Guralnick, P. 1977. Feel like going home: Portraits in blues and rocknroll. London:
Omnibus Press.
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Harrison, L.M. 2010. Factory music: How the industrial geography and working-­
class environment of post-War Birmingham fostered the birth of heavy metal.
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Peterson, R.A., and A. Bennett. 2004. Introducing music scenes. In Music scenes:
Local, translocal, and virtual, ed. A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson, 1–16.
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
Prior, N. 2015. Its a social thing, not a nature thing: Popular music practices in
Reykjavík, Iceland. Cultural Sociology 9 (1): 81–98.
Rose, T. 1994. Black noise: Rap music and black culture in contemporary America.
London: Wesleyan University Press.
Shank, B. 1994. Dissonant identities: The rocknroll scene in Austin, Texas. London:
Wesleyan University Press.
Straw, W. 1991. Systems of articulation, logics of change: Communities and scenes
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Waitt, G., and C.R. Gibson. 2013. The spiral gallery: Non-market creativity and
belonging in an Australian country town. Journal of Rural Studies 30: 75–85.
 PART I

People and Place

 CHAPTER 1

Music at the End of the Land: Reflections

on the Pembrokeshire Music Network

Philip Miles

In the far south-west of the Principality of Wales in the United Kingdom

is the small, rural, historic county of Pembrokeshire. Occupying a penin-
sula that juts out into the Irish Sea, the geography is undulating, coastal,
and agricultural; this is a place with a dispersed and numerically small pop-
ulation of around 123,000,1 an economy largely dependent on a mix of
tourism and industry, contrasting golden beaches and oil refineries, ferry
ports and rugged wilderness. Despite modernity and technology, this
remains an isolated, remote place named Penfro in Welsh – which trans-
lates roughly as ‘end of the land’.
This chapter is concerned with understanding a musical network in
Pembrokeshire as it has developed over time and into the age of the inter-
net. Analysis of music ‘scenes’ has concentrated on ‘trans-local’ structures
(Straw 1991), ‘clusters’ of creators and associates (Peterson and Bennett
2004), and highly complex networks built and maintained over time and
space (Crossley 2015); however, while there is a generic tendency to

P. Miles (*)
University of Bedfordshire, Luton, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 3

Switzerland AG 2023
A. Bennett et al. (eds.), Popular Music Scenes, Pop Music, Culture
and Identity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08615-1_1
4 P. MILES

perceive a ‘scene’ as being anchored into a physical place or a time, this

need not be the case and ‘borders’ may be crossed (Warden 2017). Place,
as I have argued elsewhere (Miles 2019, 2020), can instead be a ‘state of
mind’ involving tangible creativity, an in-between metaphysical-­productive
state I call the ‘mezzanine’, where – in this instance – creative people con-
template a ‘scene’ as a series of factors that determine their own potential
and their happiness. In Pembrokeshire, this arguably has three strategic,
observable characteristics and, via discussions with some key participants
in the history of the development of popular music in the county, it is pos-
sible to detect how remoteness plays an integral part in the development
of such a strategy.

The Blurred Canvas: Pembrokeshire’s ‘Embedded’

and ‘Parallel’ Scenes

In the 1990s, a chance discovery by the late music industry manager Philip
Hall launched the career of Blackwood band Manic Street Preachers
(MSP)2 and consequently initiated an intensification of interest in rock
and eclectic material broadly labelled ‘Welsh pop’ (Owens 2000). A ‘scene’
transmogrified into a ‘national’ popular musical identity, despite having an
otherwise localized venue-driven focus, with Clwb Ifor Bach (Little Ivor’s
Club) in Cardiff and TJ’s in Newport being examples of urban live music
hubs that amalgamated the identity of bands. In areas in Wales that did
not have a notable vibrant, exclusive club dedicated to live rock music, a
local recognized (English language) scene did not develop sufficiently,
instead seeing bands drawn to urban hubs for recognition and exposure,
adding to the already colourful canvas onto which the ‘Welsh scene’ was
transposed, merging influences together in a variety of styles, genres and
languages (Hill 2007).
Embodying the eclectic, esoteric and psychedelic, Gorky’s Zygotic
Mynci (GZM) added Pembrokeshire to the litany of geographical origins
of those bands comprising the wider scene. In the 1990s, the band had
ostensibly emerged from a Welsh-language popular music scene (backed
by north Welsh record label Ankst) that had little cultural connectivity
with its native south Pembrokeshire, perhaps characterizing the county as
a place where music originates but does not remain, or produces
musicians (such as Jeremy Hogg of Automatic Dlamini, Grape and
 1 MUSIC AT THE END OF THE LAND: REFLECTIONS… 5

P.J. Harvey’s band) who participate in wider, less geographically defined

artistic output.
However, origins are important, leaving an imprint on material that
emerges. John Lawrence (a founding member of GZM) described the
influence of the county, in parallel with GZM’s desire to connect with a
Welsh-language scene, as being driven by the dynamics of passive situa-
tion; this is a place that embodies a lack of distraction, developing sense of
determination, destiny and an inevitable departure for wider exposures.
GZM’s origins were basic and incremental, founded among school friends
with mutual interests in comedy, art, film and music, framed by the con-
straints of geography, embracing natural facilities around them via foster-
ing of musicality and lyrical imagery while playing guitars on the nearby
beaches. Thus, some music that emerges from Pembrokeshire may be
connected to the kind of psychosocial investment that we place in the
spaces of our childhoods, suggestive of the thesis of Gaston Bachelard
(2014), but also of the shared experiences of the environment and how we
consider ourselves shaped by it. It is in striking contrast with an image of
an urban alternative, with leisure time and formal education combining to
shape the trajectory of a band:

John Lawrence (JL): We would go down and write tunes on the beach
with an acoustic guitar; something about being out
in the landscape … using that to nurture the song
writing process … down on the beach, recording
songs with a portable tape recorder and stuff, sea in
the background.
….
 [Someone] organized a coach to go a Welsh
Language Society gig … so suddenly, … as we were
forming the band, we were amongst the Welsh music
scene bands like … Melys, Ffa Coffi Pawb, and that
was very exciting at the time, like real bands on stage.

Nurtured by their immediate environment, the members of GZM were

also attracted by a cultural alternative to the perceived slow-paced and
conservative artistic culture of the Pembrokeshire scene, arguably finding
moorings in an exciting pan-Welsh network of bands that were committed
to excitement, success and a radical loyalty to the entrenched linguistic
tradition of the nation. That said, while connected to a wider cultural
6 P. MILES

structure of music and performance, the band did continue to create in

Pembrokeshire, and remained attached to the county of origin via experi-
ence and thematic output. While gaining traction within the broader
musical scene, transitioning from a ‘school band’ via the radio exposure of
Neil Melville’s show on BBC Radio Wales, it did occasionally try to tap
into the local scene, especially via the legendary Miracle Inn:

there wasn’t really very much going on for us in Pembrokeshire

JL: 
itself … there was a bit of a local scene; I remember … a pub in
Freshwater East, The Miracle Inn, some legendary rock’n’roll, heavy
metal gigs there … when we were going out for the first time … We
would try and get the odd gig in a pub; I remember we managed to
get a gig in the pub where I drank … The Alma Inn … a kind of
‘working man’s pub’ in the Dock … I don’t think anybody really got
off on what we were doing!

While GZM was beginning its transition away from Pembrokeshire and
towards artistic and commercial recognition, some musicians were already
both in situ and happy to remain there. Discussing the origins and devel-
opment of a Pembrokeshire scene, or even a ‘Pembrokeshire sound’, The
Miracle Inn venue features heavily in recollections of participants. Richard
Lloyd, songwriter and guitarist with established local band Angelfish and
active in the creative musical community of the county for nearly five
decades, mentioned the Miracle Inn immediately. Dragging back his long
black hair and smiling, Lloyd summarized its importance as an otherwise
unremarkable ‘shack down in Freshwater East … we used to go down
there in the summer of ‘76 … a magical place in your memory you know?’
The Miracle, since immortalized in the title of Euros Child’s first solo
album post-GZM and recalled in Lloyd’s own song ‘What We Need is a
Miracle’, figures as a legendary place of communion among the older gen-
eration, encompassing detectable nostalgia and recognition of the shift
away from the ramshackle, make-do, happily rustic and unconventional
towards the myopic orthodoxy of the modern entertainments industry.
The Miracle – a ‘sort of nightclub’, as Richard Lloyd explains – existed as
an antidote to the lack of mainstream bands visiting the region and inter-
minable waits for the latest records and films to arrive in the locale in the
1970s and 1980s, functioning as a little escape pod from local
 1 MUSIC AT THE END OF THE LAND: REFLECTIONS… 7

conservatively inclined culture, giving a fledgling ‘scene’ something of a

lifeline and embodying, by its very existence, how ‘cultures rub up against
each other and how dynamic the entertainment scene can be’. Richard
notes that elders were ‘only get[ting] a picture of it from a distance’ and,
in time-­honoured fashion, were naturally ‘dismissive of things that they
don’t understand’. Doing it yourself was the way to create distance
between the traditional and the contemporary, making space for the own-
ership of music, style and defiance of norms. Richard remembers Pembroke
punks dressing for a Stranglers gig in Carmarthen in 1977 ‘on the train,
there and back!’ and, many years later, watching GZM at The Alma Inn
and noting the bewilderment within those present relating to what
appeared – and was heard – on stage, embodying the challenge that it
presents to the artist to be understood and the audience in attempting to
understand. ‘Doing your own music,’ added Richard soberly, ‘that’s the
courage of it, isn’t it?’ John Lawrence concurred:

JL: the scene in Pembrokeshire at time [late 1980s/early 1990s], there

were bands playing but, you know, it wasn’t a counterculture scene
really; I don’t think they would have really got what we were doing …
we weren’t a good band that would appeal to Joe Public, we weren’t
good like that, we weren’t playing rock covers … [thus] we weren’t
that interested in playing in Pembrokeshire!

GZM played in the odd youth club – sans rock covers – accompanied in
performance by ‘the sound of ping pong tables and people playing pool’,
but the band’s interest lay predominantly in ‘the Welsh language pop scene’
rather than attempting to convert the locals to a form of pastoral psychede-
lia – later described by Mojo magazine as ‘crepuscular’ (Irvin 2000: 726) –
that arguably mixed the sophisticated jazz styles of Soft Machine and Gong
with the developmental innocence of a quirky DIY punk essence. This was
not de rigueur in Pembrokeshire; success lay elsewhere:

JL: I don’t think we wanted to dislocate, but I just think there wasn’t
anything in Pembrokeshire for us as a band … something to give the
band a bit of momentum … You wouldn’t have got us, at the time,
into some busy pub in Pembrokeshire that has bands on because no
one would get what we were doing.
8 P. MILES

While not the springboard for GZM’s ascent, Pembrokeshire impressed

itself upon the band’s art, developing a sense of intrinsic rootedness.3
Richard Lloyd suggested that the lived experience of the county may
‘stain’ music audibly with texture and permanence, influence being mea-
sured not as social or performative, but cultural, experiential, educational,
and circumstantial. For ‘situated’ bands and artists such as The Boneshakers,
Bikini State, Joe Rawlings, Elephant Gerald, Rumpus and others, regular
performances on Fridays at The Rectory, a pub in the village of Nash, iso-
lated and free to pump up the volume, raised a challenge as this was a
scene dominated by covers, emphasizing the problem of creating original
music as a ‘draw’, and getting the punters in (and money over the bar).

Richard Lloyd: It’s still a challenge, to be honest, to play original music in

a pub because that’s the only venues that we [Angelfish]
ever get and that’s why I tend to not play now – I prefer
to record – because playing live … we don’t play cover
versions at all, we play our own music, and that can be a
big ask sometimes. People shout for covers … Pub rock
informs your writing … thinking ‘if we play this live, how
is this going to go down’?

If GZM’s manager’s remark that ‘very few people over 20 seem to go out’
in Wales was true, the die was cast somewhat conventionally in
Pembrokeshire (Thompson 1998: 50). A generational difference between
Richard’s material and the music being created by local singer-songwriter
Rob Parker’s contemporary alt-rock band Down With The Enemy
(DWTE) is possible, but it is also possible that a latent anxiety creates
conservatism, reproducing the scene in the image of the embedded con-
ventional audience taste.

Rob Parker (RP): Life is so much harder for your ‘originals’ bands … A
cover band … is going to pick up gigs easier than an …
originals band because venues want people to be enter-
tained … you can go along, get drunk and sing to
Oasis and Coldplay.

These days, venues are driven by the serving of food; in the past it was the
problems of licensing itself that limited performances to duos – usually
 1 MUSIC AT THE END OF THE LAND: REFLECTIONS… 9

acoustic and adjustable to the venue – and created a strong foothold for a
continuing trend of light, occasionally folk entertainment that is sup-
ported by a vibrant Pembrokeshire folk network and associative online
community.4 It was harder for rock bands: the old Haggars Cinema on
Pembroke Main Street initially seemed to have the potential to challenge
the Narbeth Queens Hall or Tenby De Valence Pavilion, but the chance
was lost to more conventional nightclubbing (now Paddles), sending rock
back to the local pubs where it remains in places such as The George in
Pembroke, The Tiddley in Freystrop, The Lifeboat and The Lamb (both
Tenby) and the continually vibrant Eagle in Narbeth. This is pub rock by
necessity, the loudness and the audience shoehorned into bars away from
the more fertile commercial opportunities of folk, acoustic, duos, and
cover bands for hire. The ‘scene’ therefore has tended, over the years, to
concentrate on survival on its own terms. Nowadays, bands that wish to
play rock have split characteristics, forced out of Pembrokeshire for expo-
sure and experience like GZM before them, but also committed to their
own scene in parallel in a way that embodies a survival technique. With
rehearsal spaces temporal and scarce, the available venues limited and
recording facilities rarer still (Nick Swannell’s Studio 49 in Narbeth being
a notable success), a scene makes way for the necessity of exposure and
experience. Rob Parker of DWTE stated early in our first meeting that his
band had been forced to be creative with its self-identity, embellishing the
tag of its origins to be noticed:

RP: Tagging yourself as a ‘Swansea-based band’ is good for opportu-

nity – it works – and I’m ashamed to say that it works because I have
always been very proud of being local, being from Pembrokeshire,
but the second we pretended – shall we say – to portray ourselves as
a Swansea-based band we got opportunities … We went from
‘Pembrokeshire-­based band’ to ‘west Wales-based band’ to ‘Swansea-­
based band’ and then eventually you just call yourself a Welsh band
and there’s almost like there’s shame and embarrassment in being
from the rural area.

The ‘Welsh scene’ has moved back from prominence to ordinariness and
periphery, and is engaged in a battle for survival as a distinct offering. The
10 P. MILES

ephemeral circulation of tourists in Pembrokeshire masks an embedded

sense within the indigenous population that a binary choice is present to
‘stay or go’, the ‘exit’ being eastwards only. Such transience appears to
have a subconscious effect on the structure of music making in the
county – the influences are ‘inward’, but the requirement to succeed in
cultivating such influence and progression towards a desired goal is ‘out-
ward’. The impermanence of the population is mirrored in the imperma-
nence in musical participation and this was acutely observable in 2020.

The Present: The Ephemeral Essence of the Network

Defining a ‘scene’ is not without difficulties because an observer often
grapples with dynamics of environment as well as people, the perception of
the network as well as the practicalities of space, functionality of commu-
nications, acceptance of shared spaces and the fluctuating desire to pursue
creativity. Is research considering creative processes, geographical practical
functionality, perceptions of togetherness, or the dynamic of what I term
remoteness? The ‘scene’ in Pembrokeshire is not necessarily driven by cre-
ative labour and the ‘aura’ of music-making (Benjamin 2008), or social
participation, but framed by distance from the urban, effects of low popu-
lation on creativity, and strategies of coping with remoteness. Acceptance
of limitation, and – most interestingly – the freedom to create without
boundaries, sees impermanence as positivity.
Despite being just 28 years old, Rob Parker has seen a lot of change over
time, including many bands practically decimated by human transience. He
sees Pembrokeshire music, via a footballing metaphor, as ‘a feeder club’ for
bigger bands elsewhere, poaching talent from the local ‘brotherhood’, a
‘support network’ that is constantly under existential threat:

RP: One of the main [problems encountered] with this area – and one of
the hardest things to keep a band together – is, once you get to an
age, you have a choice to make as a young man in Pembrokeshire,
and this is whether you stay local and try to make it in whatever you
want to do or you go to pastures new. We’ve … lost quite a few band
members to moving up to Bristol, Cardiff or further afield to go to
uni … We seem to have a never-ending conveyor belt of young talent
 1 MUSIC AT THE END OF THE LAND: REFLECTIONS… 11

and when it gets to a point they move further afield and you are left
then with kind-of half a band.

Richard Lloyd also acknowledges this, noting that, ‘you’re constantly

making adjustments and getting people to sit in and it’s never the same.’
This causes worry about gigging, no-shows and irreplaceability. ‘You get
tight and then you are less tight,’ he concludes. It is an ongoing matter of
continuity. Those who have moved on are in search of other things: career,
success, alternative lives. Those who remain continue creating as modes of
individualization, conversely encountering less risk than the leavers and
driven by a sense of empowerment. Rob notes that ‘you end up connect-
ing with bands a lot easier, but it’s what you do with that connection that
is difficult.’ Strategies involve pooling resources to stage multi-genre gigs
that involve creating bespoke ‘phases’ that manipulate the diversity within
the audience. It is an impressive approach, and not hierarchical.

RP: You start off … with an acoustic act, you build up then to some indie
and rock and then you end with quite heavy music … you would not
have a ‘headliner’ as the best, biggest band; usually one of the most
popular people there would be an acoustic artist opening or second
or third on.

This shared, traditional form of performance and assembly is both offset

and augmented by the shift towards technological facility: modern record-
ing capabilities and the rise of the internet as a tool of promotion and
dissemination. The choice to publicly participate – or the need to do so for
exposure – is now in decline. The development and success of a commu-
nity radio station, Pure West, bolstered by local music shows of DJ’s BB
Scone and Rob Parker himself, help to showcase the endeavours of local
artists, thus elevating exposure above the old ‘analogue’ requirement to
promote gigs and releases, an era that John Lawrence recalls as being
defined by ‘putting posters up’ and that has now become ‘a lot more digi-
tal … more saturated’, perhaps providing unbounded exposure while
simultaneously taking the novelty of live performance away.
This ‘ecosystem of connective media’ (Van Dijck 2013: 22) does not
just comprise interfaces, but also infrastructure, embodying technological
inclusion with tiered social closure. However, such detachment can lead to
12 P. MILES

the empowerment of a localized creative culture, resulting in it being

largely free from judgement and open to uncensored ideas. Thus, the rise
of the internet doesn’t necessarily damage a local scene or the generation
of artistic novelty. As Martina Löw (2016: 83) suggests, where the ‘global’
can be understood as the potential muscle of the internet and its possibili-
ties for artistic propagation, promotion and commerce, the global is still
merely a messenger for local action. The ‘local’ remains where things are
made – decisions and artefacts – so, thus, all the internet does is illustrate
and disseminate. Arguably, Pembrokeshire has an in-between music
scene – neither ‘local’ (as it was in the 1970s and 1980s) nor ‘global’ –
despite the prevalence of the internet. A balance exists, incorporating two
dynamics of music scene identity-formation and exposure, an interplay
between freedom and conformity, but also eroding some localized influ-
ences in musical style. Rob states that people were previously influenced
by music that they were ‘accessing in real time, in a venue’, but nowadays
via YouTube and Facebook:

RP: you can now access any music from anywhere in the world … we are
now not just influenced by the bands that we are watching … I think
that the music has evolved; we’ve almost lost a lot of our Celtic
roots … your musical gene pool is far greater and therefore the evo-
lution of your music knows no bounds.

Nowadays, Pembrokeshire’s ‘scene’ is beyond local or trans-local net-

works, sitting in a mezzanine that envelops the micro-local and the world-
wide boundless expanses of the web. Rob Parker and his colleague Ian
Davies are at the forefront of this interconnectivity, founding and running
Stargazer magazine, initially dedicated to Pembrokeshire bands and events
but now with a global reach. Utilizing entrepreneurial spirit that combines
Davies’ journalistic and music industry past and Parker’s local music
knowledge, the online enterprise aims to conceive a scene and its connec-
tion with the outside world, shrinking geographical, psychosocial and cul-
tural spaces:
 1 MUSIC AT THE END OF THE LAND: REFLECTIONS… 13

Ian Davies (ID): Wales is the land of song … but I’m still waiting [for
suitable reactions] … it’s like the Pembrokeshire prom-
ise, isn’t it? There is fantastic talent here …
RP: … but no urgency.
ID: … they’re not coming forward …
PM: Is that insularity holding some people back?
ID: Yeah, they can’t see across the border.

The ‘Pembrokeshire promise’ is an idiom meaning a relaxed approach to

getting things done, a mañana attitude that contributes to an easy-going
demeanour but also occasional potential for damaging lack of progress.
However, some artists do see ‘across the border’. Rosie Cale, a local art-
ist/vocalist, is someone, according to Ian, who chooses to use the internet
to project her music out of Pembrokeshire to a wider audience, beyond
the scene, the place, and its cultural boundaries. Recognizing remoteness
can be all about embracing its limitations. As John Lawrence states, GZM
‘wouldn’t try to be “city cool” or do anything like “urban” or “modern”’.
There was, he continues, ‘this effort and consciousness about being time-
less’ that drove the band’s ambition and approach, interposing a problem-
atic into Will Straw’s (1991) idea that trans-localism can somehow make
scenes ‘whole’. By recognizing the embedded difference caused by rural
upbringing – as John does here – it seems that, rather than becoming
whole by negotiation, instead it occurs by appropriation, a set of unwritten
rules relating to acceptance. GZM sought compromise by being ‘out of
time’, so to speak, elevated beyond the constrictions of any scene, but the
pressures are evident in his appraisal – ‘city cool’, ‘urban’ and ‘modern’ are
bywords for acceptance and assimilation. It is a testimony to GZM that it
resisted; maybe Rosie Cale is doing the same.
Remoteness may therefore empower bands to resist such absorptions
and make up the rules to suit their own agendas, to disengage from cul-
tural assimilation in their bounded locales. John Lawrence suggests that
being based in Pembrokeshire permits a creative space that provides free-
dom to musicians in being distanced from urban scenes and pressures to
conform to dominant fashions and participate in established networks. ‘I
think that’s what it is about remote places,’ he said. ‘There’s no
14 P. MILES

established scene there so you’ve got to do what the hell you want or make
your own.’ This, however, does not make things easy:

JL: because you haven’t got that scene … it’s harder to make contacts …
it’s harder to find places to play, places to be heard, so yeah I think
initially, when you’re not established, it’s much harder – it’s like
you’re playing to no one … On the other hand, that’s a two-way
thing: if you’re in a city there’s a lot more people competing … you
have to be even better to stand out.

This mezzanine is not exclusively metaphysical, but simultaneously theo-

retical and practical: remoteness is an in-between state of geography, time-
space and the attentive/inattentive distraction from everyday life
(Highmore 2011: 116). Beyond the geo-physical, it is also tactically
exploitable as a strategy of innovation; on one hand, the fear of losing
members causes bands to work hard – as Rob says, ‘cramming in a bit
more’, instrumentally exploiting music as a project of the self but working
together, detecting that structure of feeling that the music is owned by
everyone as part of ‘Pembrokeshire’ (Williams 1961) – and on the other
hand, the artist may disengage, become ‘virtual’ and resist relying on, or
being defined by, the vagaries of others (this latter approach reminds one
of the career trajectory of Penboyr’s Cate Le Bon). It is clearly a genera-
tional thing. Rob Parker signed off with a defining comment, separating
the embedded and parallel and ephemeral dynamics of the scene with a
glance to technology and time:

RP: Lots of bands, older people, still rockin’ – like the Penny Thousand
and Persona B – are more eccentric, more ‘Pembrokeshire’ … For
me, growing up with social media and the internet, … my influence
was changed and adapted by social media. For those older gentlemen
in bands, they have their influence ingrained in them … less influ-
enced by what they see from the outside.

Time passes, and music and geography remain constant while strategies
and methods of artistic creativity embrace the age of liquid modernity
(Bauman 2000). The rural ‘scene’ is gradually situated further away.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 V.
(A második rovás.)

Mi volt akkor még Pest?

A mostani «Angol király»-nőn fölül, hol most a harminczad áll,
nádas volt; a legnevezetesehb vendéglő volt a hét választó; a
legnagyobb úr elment a Kemniczer-kávéházba, a belváros egy
kőfalhoz támaszkodott a mostani széna-tér felül, s ha valaki nagyon
elunta magát Pesten, elment «kuglizni» a Beleznay-kertbe; ilyen volt
akkor Pest.
Egy rongyos fiú, kit öreganyja, a vén Buda, nem tudott úgy
eltakarni, hogy mosdatlan képét más is meg ne lássa; hanem azért
édes kedves és nagyreményű gyermeke volt az országnak, s habár
szégyenlette is, midőn éppen kiállt a Dunapartra, hogy a fiatal óriás
képe a lefolyó vízben csak oly kuszáltnak látszik, mintha a legjobb
tükörbe nézne; de mindegy, közel a víz, egyszer majd csak tisztára
mosdatjuk.
– Idehaza van a méltóságos úr? – kérdi Baltay a czifra ruhás
huszárt, ki N… úrnak, akkori híres szeptemvirnek előszobájában
volt.
– Igenis, nagyságos uram, – nincs itthon; hanem egy órakor
megjön.
– Már csak itthon találtam volna!… töprenkedék az öreg, s újra
kérdé: – Vajjon hol lehet most?
– A lábát fájdítja, nagyságos uram – lőn rá a felelet – lement a
Dunára, a doktorok az kommendálták neki, ha éppen nem restel
utána menni a nagyságos úr, ott találja a hidon felül.
 Baltay megvigyázta a szót és utasítás szerint kiment a
Kemniczer-kávéház felé, s ott a hidon fölül kereste a méltóságos
urat a Dunaparton.
– Tehát ott volt akkor a Dunafürdő? – kérdezi valamely fiatalabb
olvasó, ki Pestnek akkori külsejéről nem sokat tud; s éppen azért
megsugjuk, hogy akkor sehol sem volt, hanem azért a Duna vize
akkor is használt sokról: és semmit se essünk kétségbe, a
szeptemvir urat megleljük a Dunaparton, s a mint éppen találni
fogjuk, azonképen fogjuk bemutatni.
No már nem messzire vagyunk, a Dunának partján látunk egy
öreg urat, mentéje csak úgy nyakba van vetve, bőszájú inge
hátralökve, s egy pár ezüst sarkantyús csizma a szárazra kitéve ő
méltósága mellé, ki egy tarka vászonkendőt egy ott felejtett kőre
terített, s ezen ülőhelyről lógatta a Dunába fájós lábait, melyeknek a
víz csakugyan jót tett.
Persze, ezt ma már az utolsó csizmadia sem tenné meg, hanem
az öreg N… megtette, s ha éppen valaki figyelmeztette, hogy: «Mit
gondol?» igen kurtán ezt felelte: «Én csizmában is szeptemvir
vagyok, meg csizma nélkül is!»
Az öreg úr ülőhelyében bizony ráért körülnézegetni, tehát ezzel
ölte az időt, s midőn egyszer a Kemniczer-kávéház mellől látta
kijönni Baltayt, már messziről integetett neki, hogy jöjjön le hozzá a
partra.
– No hiszen, éppenséggel úgy is téged kereslek itt.
– Lábaimat szívatom a vízzel – mondja a szeptemvir, elfogadván
a vendéget, ki szintén egy kőre ült le, s minthogy a nap nagyon
melegen sütött, ő is levetette a mentét, s vállára vetve, beszédbe
eredt régi jó barátjával, kit tizenkét év óta nem látott.
– Az öcsémet hoztam föl! – kezdi meg a beszédet Baltay azon
gondolatban, hogy a másik majd mond rá valamit.
 Már messziről integetett neki.

– Remélem, csak nem bizod másra, mint rám?

– Várj már egy kicsit, hadd könyörögjek is legalább!
– Nem tudom, mi a patvart könyörögnél, hisz talán csak nem
szoptatni hoztad föl?
– De barátom – mondja Baltay – tudom én, mi az emberség;
aztán te meg most már szeptemvir vagy!
– Meg egyúttal hatvanhat esztendős vén ember, ki a
szeptemvirségből is engedne, ha a hatvanhatból is elengednének
vagy huszonötöt, talán nem kellene akkor a Dunába lógatni fáradt
lábaimat!
– Tyhű!… huszonöt esztendővel ezelőtt! – sóhajt föl Baltay.
– Akkor otthon első aljegyző voltam, tudod, mikor a nagygyűlés
napján főtt kukoriczát vettünk az utczán, s aztán kardosan mentünk
s úgy ettük; no hiszen volt is ám beszéd!
– Azt mondták, hogy elment az eszünk!
– Pedig dehogy ment – mondja N… meglubiczkolván lábával a
vizet – te egy derék fiút neveltél föl, mint hallom; engem meg
szeptemvirré tettek; tehát a kukoriczától, ha meg nem híztunk,
bizonyosan nem is soványodtunk meg.
– De hát igazán magadhoz veszed öcsémet?
– Mégis könyörögsz!… neheztel a szeptemvir – most mindjárt
megbánom, hogy főtt kukoriczát ettem veled.
– Bizony bolondos ember vagy te most is! – mondja Baltay,
kitörvén belőle a régi bizalmasság.
– No, csak hogy igaz nyelveden beszélsz már egyszer! – nevet
amaz, felhúzván csizmáját, s megindulván a város felé, s minthogy a
nap melegen sütött, mentéjét még mindig lógva hagyta a vállán, mire
aztán a másik ember sem akart külömb lenni, hanem hagyta lógni ő
is a mentét, s így keresztül a mostani nagyhíd és váczi utczán
szépen elballagtak, s azért mégis alig győzték a sok süvegelést,
mert minden nyomon került egy tisztelet.
Útközben szemközt jött Imre, kit a bácsi azonnal bemutatott
kedves barátjának.
– Van-e már szeretőd, öcsém? – kérdi a szeptemvir első szóra a
fiút, ki vörös lett, mint a rák, azt gondolván, hogy egy szeptemvir
legalább is országos kérdést teszen hozzá.
– No csak az kellene! – mondja Baltay szörnyű komoly képpel,
mintegy figyelmeztetni akarván barátját, kitől fiatalabb korában
nagyon sok furcsaság kikerült.
– Nem tőled kérdeztem, – vág közbe a szeptemvir – mi már rég
kivástunk, most már ezeken a sor.
– Ráér még!
– Most mindjárt kivetem az esztendő számról – okoskodik
amaz,… mikor K… ban együtt voltunk – tudod – hány esztendős is
lehettél, mikor az a kis sző…
Megint köszöntött valaki, s így félbenmaradt a szó, különben a
szeptemvir előlről elmondta volna Baltay uramnak egykori dolgait,
pedig az öreg úr maga is szivesen elmondta minden kalandját, csak
az asszonyokról nem akart beszélni, mert ő az asszonyokról csak
úgy félvállról beszélt – s nem szerette volna, hogy olyat mondjanak
róla is, mint a mesebeli rókáról, hogy savanyú volt neki a szőlő,
mikor el nem érte.
Nem akarom most már a további beszédet folytatni, – elég annyit
fölemlíteni, hogy az öreg elment haza, Imre pedig itt maradt Pesten,
a szeptemvir gondja alatt, hol bizonyosan nem a legrosszabb helyen
volt.
Dunayék a szeptemvirékkel nagyon összejártak, s itt már
lehetetlen volt egymást kikerülni, mit igazán megvallva, egyik sem
akart; hanem engedte magát a sorsnak, hogyan és merre vezetgeti
őket?
Hanem akárminek inkább kell vezető, mint egy szép leánynak, s
egy igen csinos fiúnak, kivált ha olyan viszonyban vannak, mint
Etelka és Imre, mikor egyiknek az öreganyja, másiknak pedig a
bátyja minduntalan azt mondja: neked azt nem szabad meglátnod.
Ezen tilalomfélének legeslegelső hatása az volt, hogy a két
gyermek már azért is kiváncsi volt egymást megösmerni, hogy
legalább tudja, kit kell kerülnie? s midőn ez a kis alkalom
szeptemviréknél a kezükre játszott, – a tilalomnak az lőn a
következménye, mi minden tilalomé: hogy azt meg kellene szegni!
 Kótaforgatás, zsebkendőelejtés, székadás, vízhordás,
köpenyegfeladás mind igen alkalmas szükségben segítőszer, kivált
mikor egyik sem kiván egyebet, mint hogy a másikat közelebbről
lássa.
Akkor nem lehetett máskép, az embereket ölte az unalom, tehát
egymás nyakára jártak, a barátságos összejövetelek egymást érték,
s a két fiatal már mégis találkozott annyi szóra, hogy ők semmi
esetre sem haragusznak egymásra, s ők ezt egymásnak nagyon is
elhitték.
– Édes apjukom! – mond a szeptemvirné egy ebéd után, mikor
az öregek még az asztalnál maradtak, s a fiatalok eltávoztak –
mondok valamit.
Ez a hang ösmeretes volt az öreg úr előtt, – tudta, hogy az
asszonyság nem tudja megállni a szót, s már az is kínjára volt, hogy
egész ebéd alatt hallgatnia kellett: – mert hisz, engedelmet kérek,
van-e a nőnek nagyobb élvezete, mint azt megmutatni, hogy ő olyant
mondhat, a mit még más nem tud?
– Mit akarsz, édes anyjukom? – felel a szeptemvir, ki erkölcsében
sehogy sem birt megváltozni, s a mai napon csak olyan egyszerű
tettében, szólásában, mint mikor a főtt kukoriczát az utcza hosszán
ette.
– Tudod, mit akarok mondani?
– Tudom! – mondja kötekedve az öreg, nem birván leszoktatni az
asszonyt arról, hogy azt kérdezzék tőle, mit bizonyosan nem tud.
– Tudod a ludvérczét! – kottyant bele az asszony – hisz magam
is most tudom még.
– No hát nem tudom. – Engesztelé ki a nőt, ki csakugyan megint
a csapdába jő.
– Ez az Imre, meglásd, beleszeret Dunay leányába.
– Nem hinném! – mondja a férj, mintha csakugyan azon
meggyőződésben volna, hogy nem hiszi.
 – De már szereti is! – mondja az asszony egy hanggal fölebb,
nem tűrhetvén, hogy a férj kételkedni akar.
– Dehogy szereti! – beszéli megint az öreg, éppen azt akarván,
hogy az asszony hamarabb mondja el a dolgot, különben olyan nagy
feneket kerít a dolognak, hogy majd a vacsorával is ott érik őket az
asztalnál; tehát tagadni kellett.
– Ugyan már hogy tudsz ellentmondani, – zörög a nő, – mikor én
azt jobban tudom, mint te.
– Csak gondolod, hogy tudod, édes anyjukom, aztán azt
gondolod, hogy az igaz.
– No hát tudd meg, ha másként nem hiszed, – türelmetlenkedik
az asszony, – hogy a fiú tegnap este vallotta ki nekem.
– Ez még csak a fele! – volt reá az ellenvetés, a mi megint egy új
töltés volt, hogy az aknát egészen föllobbantsa a legrövidebb idő
alatt, minthogy az asszony bizonyosan többet is tud még, különben
már eddig azt mondta volna: aztán hitted volna ezt édes apjukom?
S minthogy a méltóságos asszony ezen mondásig még nem ért,
kétségtelen, hogy még többet is tud.
– A másik fele pedig az, hogy a leány is szereti, ma vallotta meg
nekem, mikor reggel velem a szentegyházba jött.
– Ejnye! ejnye! – csodálkozék a szeptemvir majdnem hosszú öt
perczig, mikor aztán azt mondja az asszonyság egész fontossággal:
– Aztán hitted volna ezt, édes apjukom?
– Eszem ágában sem volt! inkább hittem volna, hogy rám dül a
ház. (Ennek aztán volt hatása, az asszony tökéletesen ki volt
elégítve, s a szeptemvir fölkelhetett az asztaltól, hogy írószobájába
menjen.)
Midőn már künn volt a szeptemvir, elmosolyodott s
megelégedetten gyujtott pipára, mintha egy ütközetet nyert volna
meg szoros kombináczió után, hol gyalogság, lovasság és tüzérség
jól kiszámított mozdulattal egyszerre meglepi az ellent.
Hanem midőn később eszébe jutott, hogy a Baltay-pör
nemsokára végitéletre kerül, nagyon elszomorodott, mintha félne,
hogy e viszonyt a pörnek kimenetele agyon fogná verni.
Minthogy a méltóságos asszony így elárulta a dolgot, s a
méltóságos úr sem kételkedik benne, adjuk meg magunkat, fogadjuk
el kész dolognak az egészet, s várjuk el, hogy Imre miben töri a
fejét, minthogy ő is nagyon jól tudta, hogy olyan viszonyba került, hol
egy kéznek sok megoldani valója akad.
Imre bizonyosan azon korban élt, mely legalkalmasabb arra,
hogy a fiatal ember a csörgedező patak mellett egy kunyhóval, s egy
sült burgonyával megelégedjék, csakhogy ő sokkal többet tanult,
mint hogy azt is ne tudná, hogy a második szakaszban már a
burgonya mellé más is kell, a kunyhó pedig nagyon szellős lakás
lesz; de hát mit csináljon?
Galiba úr meglátogatta az urfit, s bejelenté, hogy a pörnek
kivonatát elkészítteti, s e végett az illető kir. táblai ülnök kiadójával
már értekezett is.
– Mennyi függ attól a dologtól? – kérdi Imre Galiba urat.
– Minden! – válaszol reá Galiba.
– Úgy hagyja rám a dolgot! – mondja Imre – magam fogom a
kivonatot megcsinálni, s mikorra szükségünk lesz reá, itt lesz.
Galiba megnyugodott, hisz jobb kézben nem lehet a dolog, tehát
engedett a fiatal jogtudós kedvének, annál inkább, minthogy néhány
nap óta tövéről hegyére kikérdezett mindent, s a vén prókátor
bámulta a türelmet és avatottságot, mit ily fiatal embertől nem várt;
de végre azzal nyugtatá meg magát, hogy itt nagy összegről lesz
szó, s a fáradtságot nagyon megérdemli.
Imre magához kéreté a fiatal embert, kire a kivonatkészítés bízva
volt, s kiadván neki a megszabott díjt, magára vállalta a munkát,
mely rá nézve oly nagy kérdés, – mire a fiatal kiadó nem győzött
köszöngetni, Imre pedig a munkához fogott.
A ki ezt a mesterséget nem érti, talán érti a vegytant, s látott már
egy gyógyszerészt, ki egy pár itcze ásványos vizet főző fazékába
tesz, s egy pár óra mulva külön edényekben kitálal sziksót,
haméleget, szikéleget, mészéleget, keseréleget, agyagot, kovacsot,
szénsavat és az ég tudja mit, hanem már most tessék belőle kitalálni
hamarjában, hogy az együtt valóságos budai keserű-víz volt, milyent
üvegszámra tíz krajczárért minden pesti füszeresnél kaphat.
Tessék ebből némi hasonlat útján megérteni, hogy egy pár száz
ívre fölhizott pört, midőn három ívre lesoványkodtatnak, s a felpörös
a legnagyobb szorgalommal kifeled belőle minden bizonyítékot, míg
az alpörösét mind fölhordja, valóban nehéz lesz kitalálni, hogy a
felpörös miért czivakodott ennyi ideig? és senki sem csudálkozik rajt,
ha okvetetlenül elbukik.
Midőn a kivonat készen lőn, Imre egy példányt átadott a
szeptemvirnek, ki azt ismét Dunaynak adta, hogy ügyének állását
tudhassa, – s a nemeslelkű férfiú közölvén a dolgot, könnyen átlátta,
hogy itt Imrének keze működik, tehát figyelmeztette Galibát, hogy új
kivonatot készíttessen, nehogy e hiányos értesítés neki, a grófnak és
Galibának számíttassék be.
Galiba szerencséjére nyakig be volt gombolva egy vastagon
zsinórozott attilába, különben kiesik belőle a kuria előtt, hol ezt a
levelet az alperes-prókátor neki kézbesítette. Nem elég, hogy a pesti
házból kimaradt, hanem még a pört is elveszítse, ez már két olyan
csapás lenne, minőt el nem viselhet egy olyan ember, kinek az
egész vastag corpus juris a legkisebb ujjában van, s daczára annak,
a legzsirosabb pörét elveszítené, nem egyszer, hanem kétszer.
A szerencsétlen kiadót majd agyonverte a csonka munkáért;
hanem az kivallotta, hogy Imre úrfi dolgozott a pörben, s így Galiba
valamelyest lecsendesedett; hanem most már Imre urfi után
szaglászott, s nem sokára kisütötte, hogy itt olyan kérdések
fordulnak elő, hova nem prókátor szükséges, hanem pap.
 Meg kell ezt írni a nagyságos úrnak.
Az illő czím után valóságos prókátori pontossággal az egyes
vessző alá mellékelte Dunay levelét, a kettős vessző alá a pörnek
Imre által készített kivonatát, fölül reá pedig elmondá, hogy a rossz
nyelvek szerint Imre úrfi nem vevén tekintetbe a család közt fenforgó
pörös viszonyokat, Dunay gróf leányának legelső tisztelői közé
tartozik.
Galiba most már tökéletesen hitte, hogy az öreg úr e fontos
közleményeket aranyhalmazzal méri vissza, azonban nézzük meg,
hogy az öreg úr mit csinált.
– Nagyságos uram – mondja András – levél érkezett Pestről.
– Csak hamar ide! – mondja örvendve az öreg, azon jó hitben,
hogy Imrétől jő; – hanem midőn meglátta, hogy Galiba irása,
valamint a külső alak is mutatta, hogy mily vastag a tartalom, az
asztalra lökte.
– Hát el sem olvassa a nagyságos úr?
– Majd én fél mázsás levelet olvasgatok, hallja kend.
– Ha dolga nem volna, hát nem írna, véli András, mire aztán
mégis engedett, s feltörte a levelet, melynek tartalma nagyon is
meglepte.
Mindenesetre három fontos ujdonságot írt Galiba úr, csakhogy
aligha gyanította azt a hatást, melyet okozni fog, mert az öreg úr az
illető tanulevelek mellé kivett egy harmadikat, mit igen régen
zsebében hordoz, s melyet oly vidám képpel teszen ismét vissza,
mintha e három darab papirból kerülne ki az a boldogság, a mit ő
leginkább óhajt.
Dunay levelét elolvasván, látta, hogy itt nem közönséges
emberrel van dolga, tehát az öreg úr sem szégyenlé hibáját
megvallani, azért elment a másik szobába, hogy előkeresse a régi
rovásokat.
 Andrást nem vette észre a nagy buzgóságban, pedig az ódon
épület ablakmélyedésében volt, s kinézegetett a kertbe, midőn a
nagyságos úr bejött, s egyenesen a rovásokhoz ment. András egy
szót sem szólt, várta, mit csinál az uraság, ki már előkereste a mit
akart, s midőn meglelte a rovást, a kis asztalon heverő kertészkést
vette föl, hogy a második rovást is lefaraghassa.
Mielőtt hozzáfogna, még egyszer megnézi, vajjon ugyanaz-e,
melyet ő keres, és éppen az ablak felé fordult, hogy a régi irást
elolvassa; de e figyelemben úgy elmerült, hogy a rováson feledvén
szemét, Andrást nem vehette észre. András még mindig nem szólt,
megösmerte a rovást, azonban a nagyságos úr is megszólamlott,
mintha maga magát kérdezné:
– Vajjon ez-e az a rovás?
– Persze hogy az, csak faragjon le egyet a nagyságos úr! –
mondja András, – mintha őt kérdezték volna.
– Ki hívta kendet ide, úgy-e? – szólamlik meg az öreg a váratlan
feleletre.
– Én előbb is itt benn voltam, nagyságos uram.
– Úgy… az már más! – teszi hozzá egész ügyetlenséggel, –
egyszersmind leeresztvén a rovást.
– Soha se röstelje a fáradságot, kedves nagyságos uram, – kéri
András szokatlan nyájassággal, – csak faragjon le megint egyet;
majd a harmadiknak is elkövetkezik a napja.
– Tudja is kend, hogy mit akarok?… csak azt akartam megnézni,
hogy megvan-e?
– Hát a kertészkés, minek a nagyságos úr kezében?
– No hát itt van!… mondja Baltay, lefaragván egy rovást, aztán
pedig a fát oldalzsebébe tette, s most már mindig magánál hordozta.
Ezen naptól fogva mindig vidámabb lőn az öreg. Galibának
megirta, hogy a pört ő rá bizta, nem pedig Imrére, ki az ilyen
dolgokban járatlan, azt meg pedig, hogy Imre mit csinál, ne firtassa,
fiatal emberek ráérnek bolondot csinálni, s ezzel az egygyel több
vagy kevesebb.
Ebből átláthatják olvasóim, hogy az öreg nem azért kapaszkodott
a régi haragba, mert csakugyan haragudott; hanem már vén legény
volt ahhoz, hogy ő kérlelgessen mást, hanem azt ő mástól várta, bár
már igen régen várja.
Hány magyar család veszett így össze, és hány békélt volna meg
réges-régen, ha meg nem volna bennünk az a furcsa szokás, hogy a
jó szót nagyon is megvárjuk?
Jó barátaim, fogadjuk meg, hogy minden ostobaságért nem
haragszunk össze, mert bizony, bizony mindkettőnknek egyfélekép
ártalmunk a harag.
 VI.
(Füred.)

Fogyni kezdett a somogyi oldalon az erdőség, és annál inkább

szaporodott a jólét, melynek külső bizonyítványai valának azok a
rendezett fasorok, melyek a terményfiókokat körülszegélyezék.
A jó lassan haladt, de haladt; s a műértő szem ma már biztosan
megleli a nyomot, mely Keszthelyről Somogy- s Veszprémmegyén
keresztül még Fehérmegyén is átért a Dunáig, s megtermé
gyümölcsét az a fa, melyet György grófnak mélyen érző lelke a
Balaton legalsó végén ültetett le a földbe.
Füred akkor még csak tengődő fészek volt, hova unalmában
vetődött el néhány zalamegyei család, a veszprémiek meg is
fürödtek ott, s egy pár üveget megtöltögettek; mert ezt ingyen
kapták, míg a rohicsit pénzért. – Somogyból azonban már csak úgy
akadt vendég, ha a füredi háztulajdonos Szent-Györgyi Horváth
Zsigmond vörös nadrágos és zöld mentés czigányait lerendelte, s a
lányok bizonyosan tudták, hogy lesz nagy mulatság, csak ne
resteljenek átjőni a szántódi réven.
Keszthely már nem volt elég, egész Füredig kiért a vágy, hogy
csoportokba gyülhessenek s a négyes fogatok egy pár hétre
megszaporodtak a savanyú forrásnál, melyből olykor már a beteget
is kezdték kinálgatni.
A sétány sarkánál volt egy nagyon kicsiny imaház, melyből még
a ministráló gyermek lába is kiért, ha térdepelt, a mostani szinház
helyén trágyadomb volt, s minden oly szegényes állapotban, hogy
bizony nagy becsület volt a fürdőnek, ha annyi úri vendég
meglátogatta két hétre, akkor is a legnagyobb rész rászánta magát,
hogy szénán vagy szalmán fekszik, csak tető alá jusson, s a kinek
ott nem jutott hely, még a fák alatt is megfeküdt az angol kert
hűsében, tudniillik, ha nem esett az eső.
Hanem azért nem unták el magukat, volt akkor is már kártya,
megválasztották azt közös akarattal birónak, az aztán elitélte, hogy a
nagyságos úr ezer forintja azé a lókupeczé, ki előbb levett sapkával
alkudozott egy pár rossz gebén a szomszéd faluban, most pedig a
kártyaasztal mellett szedi a nyereséget, hisz mindegy, akár a kártyán
nyer, akár egy sánta lovon, csak nyerjen.
A nádort várták Füredre, hova mindenfelől tódul a vendég, s
időtöltésül a kártyát választották.
– Imre, velünk tartasz? – kérdi egy jó pajtás az ifjú Baltayt.
– Nem tudok kártyázni, – lőn rá az érthető válasz.
– Egy pár forinttal több vagy kevesebb, az mindegy! – mondja
rábeszélőleg az első.
– A többet nem kivánom, a kevesebbet pedig sajnálnám, – felel
Imre – nem megyek.
– Te! – szólítja meg őt a pajtás egész bizalommal félre hiva, – én
jó barátod vagyok, s figyelmeztetlek, hogy ilyenekből óvatosan húzd
ki magadat; mert azt mondják –
Nem folytathatá a beszédet a fiatal ember; mert a fehérvári
égettek számára kéregettek, minthogy három utcza égett le, s a
szerencsétlen népnek nyomora irtóztató vala.
A hír már szétfutott, s a kiküldött segélyszedők Füredre is elértek,
hol a gazdag urak közt bő segedelmet vártak, mit részben kaptak is,
ámbár elég savanyú arcz akadt a többi között, kivált mikor azon
asztalhoz értek, hol a kártyázni akarók ültek.
– Jaj, – megint koldusok, – mondja az előbbi verbunkos fiatal
ember, nagy kínnal nyulván zsebébe, s kivett belőle egy huszast
ezen szóval: itt van minden pénzem!
 – Itt van az enyém is mind, – teszi hozzá Imre kivévén tárczáját,
melynek egész tartalmát a kéregetők kalapjába üríté, s aztán hirtelen
karonfogva a pajtást, az angolkertben tűnt el.
– Hát mit is akartál mondani, barátom? – kérdi a fiatal barátot, ki
úgy is fülig vörösödött.
– Már elfeledém, barátom! – mondja még mindig pirulva a másik,
s egész alkonyatig sétált Imrével a nélkül, hogy a kártyát elő merte
volna hozni, s midőn estefelé a társasághoz visszamentek, annyira
megtért, hogy ezt a történetet bizalmasan minden embernek
elbeszélte, s így ment szájról-szájra, úgy, hogy végtére az öreg
Baltay is megtudta.
De várjunk még egy kicsinyt, majd találkozunk velük később,
most kisérjük el Kisfaludyt, ki egymaga járta körül kora reggelen a
fürdőhelyet, elábrándozék a nyugodt tükrű vizen, hol akkor csak
néhány halász-sajka járt, s a gőzhajónak eszméje még mesében
sem volt meg, annál kevésbbé a Balatonon, hol most az ő nevével
jár szét.
Fölkerült a sétánynak éjszaki oldalára, hol trágyadombok álltak, s
addig-addig nézett és tünődött, míg kigondolta, hogy egy szinház
mily jó volna ide, csak volna rávaló pénz, hanem egy pár séta után
azt is kigondolta, hogy majd lesz.
Sokat, igen sokat gondolkozott, hisz az ő agyában egész multunk
megvolt, s hordta elő a példákat, hogy jobbá és lelkesültebbé tegye
kortársait, kiknek a füredi szinház eszméjét még nem merte
megmondani, s birt annyi türelemmel, hogy tíz évnél tovább
érlelgesse titkon, míg azt egykor csakugyan kivitte.
Lassankint összecsődültek a vendégek, hogy a nádort
fogadhassák, a gyönyörű fogatok megindultak Felső-Örs felé,
honnét már kiindult a nagy vendég, mint azt néhány taraczklövés
éppen jelentette, tehát ki-ki elfoglalta helyét.
Megjött a vendég, körülnézte a látni valókat, gyönyörködött a kies
tájék szépségein, aztán pedig elfoglalta a szállást, mely kényelmére
szolgált, s a röviden tartó ünnepiesség után Kisfaludyt fogadá, ki már
rég nem találkozott a nádorral.
– Segítsen papirjaimat kikeresni, Kisfaludy, – kezdi a szót a
nádor, – egy nevet kell megtalálnom, melyről én igen régen
elfeledkezém.
– Miről ösmerhetnénk a névre? – kérdé tisztelettel a költő.
– Önnek ösmernie kellett az embert, kinek nevét keresem, önre
legemlékezetesebb lehet, hisz ön állitá őt ki az erdő szélére, midőn a
nagy visszavonulás volt.
– Fönséges uram, – a halottak nem támadnak föl itéletnap előtt.
– Igaza van önnek, hanem ez az ember megmenekült s én saját
szemeimmel láttam, mikor Keszthelyen valék, hol egy hosszú sora
volt a vitézeknek.
Sokáig keresgélék együtt a bizalmas jegyzeteket, midőn
csakugyan meglelték Szapárynak jegyzékei között e nevet: Kajáry
István.
Ekkor a nádor röviden közlé Kisfaludyval, mi körülmények közt
találkozott ez emberrel, s hogy okvetetlenül Zalamegyében kell
tartózkodnia, tehát az alispáni hivatal útján tudakozódjék utána, s a
mint nyomába jön, rögtön tudósítsa a nádort, ki az előbbeni zajos
időkben e dolgokról megfeledkezett.
A kis fürdőt ellepte a sok vendég s mint mindig, úgy most is a
feltünő dolog szájról-szájra járt, s az öreg Baltayt minden ember
karra vette, hogy megdicsérje Imrét, ki a kártya helyett a kárvallottak
ügyével foglalkozik s ekkép mindenik elmondá a fönnebbi történetet.
Ha nyakig gombolva nem lenne rajta a mellény, most mindjárt
nagyot hiznék az öreg, azért alig várta, hogy a fiúval egyedül
maradjon; mert a jó öreg annyira gyarló lőn saját boldogságában,
hogy tökéletesen hitte, miszerint a fiú maga fog dicsekedni a furcsa
történettel.
 A fiú azonban épenséggel nem kivánt találkozni; mert már rég
észrevette, hogy az öreg nem elégszik meg az örömmel; hanem
most szemben is megdicséri, sőt másoknak is szivesen eldicsekszik:
ez pedig a fiúnak kellemetlen vala.
Andrást eleget lóttatta, futtatta az öreg, hogy ha valahol meglátja,
hivja haza Imrét, – csakhogy András most már nagyon
meggazdálkodta a lépést, Imre pedig gyanítván a dolgot, mindenütt
kerülte Andrást, ki csak későn este találta meg, s minthogy tovább
elmaradnia nem igen lehetett, haza ment az öreg úrhoz, ki már
estebédre várta.
Megkivánta Imre a «jó estét», az öreg szivesen elfogadta, s alig
várta, hogy a fiú beszélni kezdjen, egy csipetnyit sem kételkedett,
hogy majd maga beszéli el; de hisz hasztalan várta az öreg a szót,
Imre beszélt már mindenről, még arról is, hogy mit álmodott; de csak
arról nem, mit az öreg úr várt.
– Együnk már no! – türhetetlenkedék az öreg András felé, – ki
még mindig nem jelenti az estelit.
– Eddig már el is fogyott volna, ha szól a nagyságos úr! – lőn a
felelet.
– Miért nem szólt kend?
– Mert nem akartam a beszédbe kiáltani! – fejezi be András a
beszédet, – egyszersmind kimenvén, hogy a szakácsné adja be az
ételt, mert a nagyságos úr már nem várhatja.
Az esteli is elfogyott; hanem a két ember még mindig az asztalnál
ül, Imre nem tudott elszabadulni jó módjával, az öreg pedig látszék
még valamire várni, mintha nem lakott volna jól; mert minden
sürgölése mellett is keveset evett.
– Nincs több? – kérdi szórakozottan az öreg a bejövő Andrást, ki
már azt várta, mikor szedheti le az asztalt.
– Egy tálat sem vittem ki üresen, – behozhatom megint?
– Egye kend meg maga!
 – Hozzak sajtot?
– Hát egy kis heringet nem hozna kend? – zsörtölődik az úr,
eltolván az abroszt, mi megszokott jele volt annak, hogy a terítéket el
lehet vinni, s azért ő még az asztalnál maradt.
A terítéket is hamar elszedték, a két ember az asztalnál maradt, s
az öreg most már látta, hogy az nem fog dicsekedni; tehát nincs más
mód, mint oldalról kerülni, – talán majd mégis eloldózik a nyelve.
– De sok gyenge legény van e fiúk közt! – mondja az öreg,
rákezdvén a szót.
– Legalább a java könnyebben kilátszik a sok közül.
– Könnyű volna a javát kiválogatni, – azt tartom, a legtöbb a
kártya mellett virraszt. – Elakadt itt a szó; mert Imre nem akart odáig
menni, hova az öreg úr tuszkolta, hanem hagyta felelet nélkül a szót
annál inkább, minthogy nem volt kérdéskép téve.
Az öreg itt is bensült, tehát hosszan elgondolkozott, miképen
tudhatná meg legalább azt, hogy mennyit adott; tehát egy másik
kerülőt csinált, s azon oldalról legbiztosabbnak hitte a támadást s így
fogott hozzá:
– Imre öcsém, holnap én haza megyek, azért ha maradni akarsz,
mint mondád, most szólj, kell-e még pénz? vagy hogy van-e még?
– Egy fillérem sincs, kedves bátyám, – rosszul gazdálkodtam.
– No ugyan, hogyan gazdálkodtál volna rosszul, – számítsd
össze, aztán meglátod, mire mennyit adtál?
– Könnyen összeszámlálhatom, – felel Imre, – kihúzván tárczáját,
s a jegyzékpapirokból kihuzván egy oldalt, néhány perczig
foglalkozott az összeszámítással, míg a bácsi pipára gyújtott s föl-
alá járta a szoba hosszát s itt-ott mosolygott magában, hogy
denique, az öregnek is van esze s a mit a fiú eddig egyenesen meg
nem mondott, majd kimondatja vele máskép.
 Szegény öreg, bizony rosszul számította ki ezt, a mint tüstént
meg is látja.
Imre készen lőn a számadással, az öreg úr elé tette az egész
jegyzéket, melyben pontosan meg volt írva hány ezer forintot kapott
a legközelebbi félévre? mennyit költött el és mire?
– Itt van, kedves bátyám, – terjeszti elő Imre a számlát, – ezekre
költöttem el.
– Na, – gondolja magában az öreg, – tehát írva könnyebb lesz
megvallani.
– Tessék! – mondja Imre egészen az öreghez nyujtva az írást,
mit az pápaszemmel néz meg,
Pontról-pontra nézi a számadást, de hiába keresi a kivánt
fölvilágosítást, azonban se baj, mert a sorozat elég hosszú, majd
rákerül a sor, s a mint az egyes pontoknak megfelelő összegeket
nézi, könnyen láthatja, hogy a legnagyobb összeg még hátra van,
azért ujjával minden soron végig megy és csak az hiányzik, hogy
úgy tegyen öcscsével, mint egykor vele is tettek, hogy vonalzóval
mérje ki, melyik szónak micsoda összeg felel meg.
Végre már a legutolsóhoz ér, hol tisztán olvashatólag ezen szó
áll: «Subiczkra 2000 frt.»
Az öreg most már átlátta, hogy a fiú tettével nem akar semmikép
dicsekedni; tehát nem nyaggatja tovább és csak az esett most már
nehezére az öregnek, hogy már most nem illik dicsekednie azzal,
hogy az öcscse nem dicsekszik.
– Sokalja urambátyám? – kérdi Imre a tünődő bácsit, ki még
most is az utolsó pontot nézi.
– Nem én, öcsém, – hisz elég piszkos ember van még.
 VII.
(Keszthelyi Helicon.)

Elhiszem, hogy hajdanában jobb volt, még azt is elhiszem, hogy

jobb lesz jövendőben; hanem ha már én ennyit elhiszek, legalább
más meg annyit higyjen el, hogy csakugyan elől vagyunk most.
*
Ha becsületes élő emberek nem mondanák, alig hinné az ember,
hogy harminczhat vagy negyven esztendővel ezelőtt volt
Magyarországon egy város, abban egy gróf, ki azon törte a fejét,
hogy vendéget hívjon mindazon eleven és megholt embereknek
tiszteletére, kik egyebet nem cselekedtek, hanem míg a többi elment
a franczia háborúba zabbal kereskedni, vagy rakatott magának egy
kastélyt az országút mellé, hogy lássa hányat lép a szegény ember
gyalog, míg a hintó kereke huszonnégyet fordul és unalmában
ráfeküdt őseinek dicsőségére és elhitte, hogy csak az az ember,
kinek hetvenhét öregapja volt, míg más szegény ember rettentően
megszégyenlené, ha azt mondanák neki, hogy több apja volt egynél,
– mondom, azon emberek nem tettek egyebet, hanem írtak olyanféle
dolgokat, hogy közös örökségünk ez a nyelv, – eladóra nem
tehetjük; mert ez olyan, mint a szabott ruha, más ember meg sem
viselheti.
Halódni akart a nemzet s ez egyszerű emberek mondták azt,
hogy annyi millióra szaporodtunk, hogy az irgalmas szomszédok
egyenkint eltemetni is alig birnának.
Ők mondták: ne hagyjuk e nyelvet, melyet megőrzeni szent
kötelességünk, hisz ha szomszédból kértük volna kölcsön ezt a
nyelvet, még akkor is az volna a rendje, hogy az ember adná vissza
becsülettel.