Abstract
This chapter examines the Austin music scene as a site of contested meaning for the musical field known as Americana. Focusing on the practices and experiences of three groups of Austin scenesters—countercultural survivors, marginalised musical voices, and creative class actors— Robinson examines the ways in which both residual and emergent cultural practices have shaped the Americana scene locally, and how this corresponds with a contestation of meaning between survivalist and revivalist musical discourses more widely. So too, the continuing sustainability of a vibrant grass-roots music scene is considered in the context of Austin’s shift from university town to technology hub, and the concomitant shift in demand for more accessible cultural attractions which provide only the feeling of the alternative.
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Notes
- 1.
The origin of the magazine title No Depression (founded in 1995) is a song entitled ‘No Depression in Heaven’, which was first recorded in 1936 by country music’s much venerated Carter Family. The song was later recorded by urban folk revivalists the New Lost City Ramblers (Songs from the Depression, 1959) and more recently by alt.country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, on their debut album entitled No Depression (1990). The term ‘No Depression’ subsequently came to describe a branch of alternative country inspired by Tupelo’s mix of country, punk, and roots-rock influences, and the name for an early AOL Internet discussion group (‘No Depression – Alternative Country’) in 1994 (see Ching 2004, pp. 181–2).
- 2.
The term ‘Millennial Cool’ brings together contemporary meanings of the term ‘hipsterdom’ with the notion of ‘cool capitalism’ as primarily developed by Thomas Frank (1997) and Jim McGuigan (2009), describing the processes through which countercultural artefacts and bohemian style have been co-opted as ‘hip’ consumerism in neoliberal economic systems. Millennial Cool refers to a generationally defined aesthetic expression of ‘cool capitalism’. It embraces commodified manifestations of hipster style and lifestyle, but is more craft beer than kombucha.
- 3.
The term ‘conjunto’ refers here to a style of music and performance which emerged on either side of the Texas–Mexico border during the 1930s and gained popularity amongst the working-class Hispanic community of South and Central Texas during the 1950s. It is part of a family of musical styles which are collectively referred to as ‘Tejano’ (or ‘Tex-Mex’) music and which characteristically form a fusion of Mexican folk styles with the polka and waltz rhythms introduced to Texas by Middle-European settlers. ‘Conjunto’ also describes the mode of performance, in which the accordion and the bajo sexto (twelve-string bass guitar) are featured. It is a musical form and practice which is particularly associated with the culture of poor rural communities. For an authoritative study of conjunto’s role as a ‘cultural system’, see: Pena, M. (1985) The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music (Austin: University of Texas Press).
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Robinson, D. (2019). Austin and Americana Music: Sites of Protest, Progress, and Millennial Cool. In: Lashua, B., Wagg, S., Spracklen, K., Yavuz, M.S. (eds) Sounds and the City. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94081-6_19
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