Off the beaten path in the Outer Richmond and only a few blocks from Lands End, saxophonist Danny Brown and his family operate one of the citys best record stores and art galleries that features live jazz and jam sessions every Sunday afternoon. The music regularly turns the bar into a dance party. Furthermore, there exists a tension between these diverse activities within the DIY sphere, since more ideologically oriented DIY participants often foster a resentment towards more pragmatic and market-oriented DIY musicians. Founded by the Ambassador of the American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, Feinsteins at the Nikko presents top Broadway artists, cabaret singers, and todays best interpreters of the Great American Songbook. underground market, co-op exchange, barter, informal economy (for alternative economies), and gift giving, state appropriations, gleaning, and poaching (for non-market economies). A hideaway on Fell Street, Mr. Tipples presents live jazz nightly alongside inventive cocktails in a dark and sophisticated space. Catch a show at one of San Francisco's legendary music venues, gems with a rich history and a lineup boasting fresh local artists and music's biggest names. They wouldnt be anything without the punk rock network of independent distributors, independent promoters, independent fanzines, all operating for mutual benefit, usually with little hope (or desire) for personal gain [] [Bands, y]ou owe punk rock something, so start paying up. They are just consumers. The Boom Boom Room hosts local and international blues, funk, jam bands, and everything in between. (Richard the Roadie, in Biel Citation2012: 28, 29), Thus, many DIY participants accept the limits of DIY reciprocity and espouse a more independent and autonomous, small-time or ethical capitalism (Biel Citation2012: 28, 29). Lesh had developed his style on the foundation of having studied classical, brass-band, jazz, and modernist music on the violin and later the trumpet.[10]. However, not all DIY bands ascribe to the same idea of DIY while many see it as an ideological principle to live by, others regard it as a pragmatic strategy that enables them to acquire skill, shows, and social connections in the beginning stages of their musical careers.Footnote15 Nevertheless, not all independent cultural activities should be seen as proto-markets (Toynbee Citation2000: 2532), but instead, as heterogeneous assemblages of diverse, non-market and proto-market, possibilities. Wehr Citation2012: 146). On similar lines, Marshall Sahlins differentiates between balanced reciprocity, defined by a tacit obligation to reciprocate, and general reciprocity or sharing, usually practiced among closer family members, where the reciprocation is non-obligatory (1972: 1939). And so I understood the difference between supporting something and liking it. This kind of rejection of the capitalist system, on the one hand, and the embracing of the DIY production and autonomy, on the other, is also apparent in a further quote by Jennings: by selling you things I make, I can avoid getting a real job, or at least minimize the work I do for the system, and therefore how much money they make from my effort. [Chris's friend added:] You could be naked, and no one will arrest you [i.e. February is Black History Month that celebrates the contributions and present-day existence of a community that remain unapparelled in the collective victory of humankind. Today, the music continues with a packed event calendar that combines new talent and seasoned performers. My argument draws on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (Citation1986), and other scholarship focused on the social implications of the co-existence of, and of contradictions between, different economic systems.Footnote2 Moreover, I ground my interpretations in the materialist, political-economy approach to the study of culture, which also seeks to understand the complexities within and between particular economic systems, and in their relation to the sphere of cultural production and aesthetics (Mige Citation1987; Ryan Citation1992; Hesmondhalgh Citation1997, Citation1999, Citation2018). It is always advisable to contact the venues directly if you want to make the most of these cultural and musical avenues during your stay in San Francisco. And its time to show that creativity is still valued over money. Quality often does not matter as much as community and fucking family and the ways, like being emotional and playing [i.e. Waffle house residents therefore engaged in collective gardening, and collective use of the various spaces of their compound (comprising a house and large separate garage) as a wood shop, art studio, welding area, bike shop, music rehearsal space, small greenhouse, and screen-printing area. San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. They're smaller, more intimate, your gear is at stake because of this, but its worth it because were fucking punk [] Its louder, youre in the crowd, its in your face. San Francisco's dearly departed nightclubs and music venues. SCRAP) that co-constitute late capitalist circulation of money and commodities (Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014). However, the above examples demonstrate that at least some DIY participants in the US do not so much contradict themselves as consciously embrace their material condition, often working or negotiating with it creatively, in order to achieve and optimise their ideological and political goals. Some DIY participants live in collective houses and engage in everyday sustainable and alternative economies, others open collectively run businesses, stores, coffee shops, and restaurants, and/or take part in collective grassroots political organising (Wehr Citation2012). The long-term ethnographic research on which this article is based was conducted between 2010 and 2014, mainly on the West coast of the USA. You can request songs from a library card catalog system. However, several problems, complexities, and contradictions also emerge. Music City San Francisco, home of the Music City Hotel and SF Music Hall of Fame, creates a guide of all guides of local music venues in SF. 16 See, for example, Hesmondhalgh Citation1997, Citation1999; Gibson-Graham Citation2008; Eriksen Citation2010: 160, 161, 201, 202, 216; Giles Citation2014; Tausig Citation2014; Dean Citation2015; Otten Citation2015; Graham Citation2016; Taylor Citation2016: 15476; Kirsch Citation2017; Simoni Citation2019; Rawitsch Citation2020. 6 For further discussion of the practices and ideologies of audience participation within American DIY scenes, see Verbu Citation2018. We use cookies to improve your website experience. They explained that the area had a big enough pool [of houses] to be able to spread [the shows] out, so that no individual venue was made to feel overloaded (personal communication, 28 February 2012). 2 See for example Gibson-Graham Citation2008; Eriksen Citation2010: 160, 161, 201, 202, 216; Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014; Tausig Citation2014; Dean Citation2015; Otten Citation2015; Graham Citation2016; Kirsch Citation2017. Moreover, some houses were more oriented towards drinking and partying than the needs of hosted performers, and sometimes the provision of meals, event promotion, or collection of donations were neglected (see also Makagon Citation2015: 13741). Appadurai uses the term tournaments of value to refer to those, often calculative, movements of paths and diversions that actors instigate in order to negotiate the value of circulating commodities (Citation1986: 20, 21). In this article, I examine the alternative economics of reciprocity in American DIY (do-it-yourself) culture. For more information please visit our Permissions help page. For example, the aesthetic and cultural notions of quality and individualism still remain present to some degree within American DIY scenes (i.e. Examples include the Sir Douglas Quintet, whose music took on more of the character of the San Francisco sound, while yet retaining some of its original Texas flavor, Mother Earth, fronted by female lead singer Tracy Nelson, who relocated to the Bay Area from Nashville, and the Electric Flag, bringing Chicago blues to the Bay Area care of former Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Ralph Gleason became one of the founders of what would become the rock-scene fan journal, Rolling Stone. autonomy]. [19] An important departure in this new era of "album oriented radio" (AOR) was that show hosts felt free to play lengthy tracks or two or more tracks at a stretch from a good record album. It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. A louder, more prominent role for the electric basstypically with a melodic or semi-melodic approach, and using a plush, pervasive tonewas another feature. It features a house Hammond B-3 organ, played by the areas best organists, along with a huge record collection. "[4] 17 See also Ryan Citation1992: 53; Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Meter Citation2007; Taylor Citation2016: 155, 173. On the one hand, the ideological objective to reject the capitalist mode of organising cultural and social practices (individualism, consumerism, and profit- and success-oriented approaches). [9] This questing bass quality has been wryly characterized as a "roving" (rather than the conventional "stay-at-home") style. I was able to study this phenomenon ethnographically through focusing on a variety of local American DIY scenes and touring practices, permitting me to encounter a plethora of reciprocal activities. This work was supported by Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, under grant SVV 26060702. Fun and fascinating trivia about San Francisco's most indelible icon. [2] According to journalist Ed Vulliamy, "A core of Haight Ashbury bands played with each other, for each other"[3]. 2023 Hyderabad Media House Limited/The Hans India. there is a diversity of possible causal factors that extend beyond the influence of the DIY system), as it is also implicated in the examples above. ABSTRACT. Hence, it could support a 'scene'. Here, Scott describes the basic theory of reciprocity, as outlined by anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his classic study The Gift ([Citation1925] Citation1990). For example, as I also experienced, not all DIY house members helped organise shows or other activities in their spaces. Specialties: About the San Francisco Symphony: The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas present more than 220 concerts each year from September through July in a variety of genres, with SFS musicians performing classical concerts, holiday favorites, summer pops events, free outdoor concerts, special series for families and children, plus presentations of visiting guest artists and . This article is about the alternative economic system that underscores American DIY (do-it-yourself) music scenes, and about how it relates to the American dominant capitalist economy. SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY - 699 Photos & 289 Reviews - Yelp These included sharing of food and equipment among DIY houses, local and translocal exchange of venues, the system of free boxes (see Figure 1),Footnote1 donations at shows, and participatory organiser-performer-audience interactions practices that enabled the creation of alternative cultural DIY worlds, and which in turn informed DIY sounds and aesthetics. The history of San Francisco is deep-rooted in its bond with the Black community. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. Get out your pens and spraypaint. A whole society, with its own economic system even. Therefore, to end this section I wish to highlight one more contradiction regarding the coexistence of DIY and capitalist economic systems, as it relates to practices that seemingly reject capitalism, while simultaneously and tacitly reinforcing it. Mr. Gleason believes the San Francisco rock groups are making a serious contribution to musical history. Thereby, various goods and articles can, for example, be temporarily or permanently diverted from the capitalist market into enclaved non-capitalist zones, where they are often voided of market value while they simultaneously gain in symbolic value. "Rock & roll" was the point of departure for the new music. The San Francisco bands' music was everything that AM-radio pop music wasn't. Finally, this study highlights the value of a dialectical scholarship that approaches social phenomena, such as music scenes, as constituted in contradictory and non-deterministic ways, which operate on multiple levels, and which are riven with socio-cultural difference. A few blocks from Union Square, Le Colonial serves French-inspired Vietnamese cuisine against the backdrop of live jazz, Monday to Friday, featuring music from the Django Reinhardt-influenced group, Le Jazz Hot, and the sultry soul sounds of Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. American DIY participants therefore usually downplay or reject the notion of making it and strive toward community, collectivity, and intimate social cohesion.Footnote14 This is obvious, for instance, also in their willingness to play for small donations at shows, and in their rejection of major labels. What is gained in this way is an experience of intimate and affective community (real interchange), creativity, active participation, and autonomy, and also a sense of active and productive opposition to a presumably non-effective and exploitative capitalist economic and social model existing in the larger society. Until a few years ago no bands sold T-shirts, people would just make their own. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Phil Lesh, bassist with the Grateful Dead, furthered this sound. According to Jai we have people over to eat all the time, we make a lot of food for people, we get a lot of free food too, people will come and donate (personal communication, 28 February 2012). (Personal communication, 28 March 2012; see Figure 4 for an example of DIY make-shift spaces). DIY participant Ben Wiesel, for example, observes that the DIY approach to the show/touring economy, where anything above gas money [as a payment to performers] is immoral, constitutes a twisted DIY ethics (Wiesel, in Makagon Citation2015: 56). Figure 4. Named in honor of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and located off an alley near Jackson Square, BIX has been described as a civilized speakeasy, a supper club, and an elegant saloon, offering modern American cuisine served in a soaring two-story dining room to the strains of live jazz nightly. They contain freely available discarded items that DIY participants desire to redirect into reuse by other DIY participants, who visit or pass by their houses. He refers to the circulation of commodities in the dominant regime as paths, and to divergences from such paths to the alternative regimes of value as diversions. Yet I also highlight how these alternative economic systems of reciprocity coexist with capitalist ones. I show in this article how American DIY participants establish a whole alternative and parallel society with its own economic model, but which also reveals itself as very heterogeneous and in different ways interconnected with the dominant capitalist one. 8 Dumpsterdiving is a practice of salvaging edible food from the garbage dumpsters of large stores and supermarkets. Named for legendary saxophonist Charlie Bird Parker and Irish novelist Samuel Beckett, Bird & Beckett in Glen Park is a true neighborhood hotspot that features weekly jazz concerts, allowing you to hear and read about jazz at the same time. Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? For Teague and many other DIY participants in the US, music and other forms of reciprocity go hand in hand, each one engendering the other. In jazz it had been exuberantly pioneered by numerous musicians. They not only organised house concerts, but also recorded their music projects in their own bedrooms, and organised art shows for the local DIY community on their premises. I still, I am returning the favour. Sly & the Family Stone, a San Francisco-based group that got its start in the late 1960s, was an exception, being a racially integrated hippie band with a hefty influence from soul music, hence making use of brass instrumentation. However, on the other, various DIY participants also often advocate for a more balanced strategy that acknowledges the impossibility of completely rejecting capitalist logic within American DIY scenes: The whole world runs on business, exchanging money for goods and services and a lot of people are going to try to sell and buy a lot of everything. Jai Milx performing at her house, Glitterdome, in Portland, 4 February 2012. It is important to note here that any act of gift-giving (for instance, organising shows) is always also an act that ties individuals to community. Enjoy a show and a cocktail at B-Side, the lounge in the SFJAZZ Center. Participation between different houses was further emphasised by doing things collectively, such as traveling together to shows, festivals, swimming trips, and karaoke nights, or through collective listening to music, work activities, or music and social event organising (see Figure 2). All Rights Reserved. In North Beach, Comstock is a pre-Prohibition cocktail bar experience. Furthermore, Cometbus also identifies contradictions within American DIY scenes regarding the coexistence of both alternative (reciprocal) and dominant (capitalist) systems within the same communities and scenes, where DIY individuals and bands often not only engage in collective and reciprocal relations, but also act as capitalist producers and consumers. Additionally, there are numerous Jazz Festivalsthroughout the Bay Area during warmer months. The house also incorporated four additional makeshift living spaces in the form of liveable rooms, three in the basement, and one in the garage. 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. Celebrate San Francisco's deep-rooted black history at these music venues that have hosted some of music's most legendary black artists. A DIY approach, therefore, functioned both as a means to an end, and as an end in itself. And on the other hand, practical efforts toward, but also failures and difficulties in, embracing the reciprocal social and economic relations, which include collective networks of mutual aid, active participation, and DIY methods. Its [also] like that for fans, you know. In Jennings account and Figure 5 we see how commodities such as records are diverted from the path of capitalist exchange and voided of market value during DIY shows to be transformed into objects of personal and collective use value (cf. Really thats just a fraction of why theyve been noticed. Several scholars have discussed how DIY methods of music production result in lo-fi (low fidelity) sounds and aesthetics that reflect a DIY materiality of scarcity, independence, self-reliance, and amateurism (Fonarow Citation2006: 3950; Kruse Citation2010: 633). Reciprocally, these local participants (i.e. Secondly, I discuss the cultural and aesthetic levels of this phenomenon, before finally focusing on the complexities and contradictions surrounding the coexistence of both alternative and dominant economic systems within American DIY scenes (highlighting some of the co-dependencies involved with italics, for greater conceptual clarity). Figure 1. By giving me your money, you are giving your money directly to the producer of the thing, and since the relationship is closer you get to give feedback right to the source. Your guide to one of San Francisco's biggest LGBTQ community events outside of Pride. Thats what they think. Dylan, who lived in Northeast (NE) Portlands Glitterdome house during my research there in 2012 (see Figure 2), similarly talked about reciprocal collaboration between the various NE Portland DIY houses (I estimate there were around 13 there at that time). For example, Gilman incorporates all-ages, non-alcohol, and safer space policiesFootnote5 alongside volunteer, collective, and consensus-based approaches to organisation. 5 Safe space policy, common within American DIY communities, usually refers to a spatial policy through which DIY participants endeavour to create spaces free of racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, ageism, and any forms of violence or oppression. American DIY venues and performers also form a translocal network of reciprocity, which is created through the reciprocal relation of playing and booking each others shows across the US (and beyond). Appadurai terms these kinds of processes rituals of decomoditization (Citation1986: 26). San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or . The early band venues, while the new SF scene was emerging from folk and folk-rock beginnings, were often places like the Matrix nightclub. It involved recording interviews, attending concerts, living in DIY houses, touring with bands (through West Coast and Midwest), and analysing DIY literature (e.g. In addition, factors that shape more egalitarian music practices and sounds can be diverse. san francisco music venues 1980's - befalcon.com Its insulting to the other people in the community who volunteer to put a lot of the work in. Moreover, it fosters reciprocal relations between the venue, bands, and audiences. San Francisco always honors its jazz and blues history while listening for what will push the music forward. 18 It is important to note that DIY economy in itself is not a homogeneous system, but consists of various alternative and non-market economies. DIY shows and records, bartering, borrowing, and DIY production of goods). The Church warehouse in Oakland, during a DIY show (14 December 2012). All rights reserved. Moreover, they are also seen to engage in rituals of decomoditization by diverting capitalist products into enclaved zones of DIY spaces and shows. Therefore, these scenes have to consequently be understood as both challenging and co-constituting the dominant capitalist regime, and at the same time, being challenged and co-constituted by it. KCSM is one of the few 24-hour non-commercial jazz radio stations in the country. These socio-economic relations, I argue, also shape DIY sounds and aesthetics, as well as contribute to distinct musical values, discourses and practices. From the psychedelic sounds of the '60s to the boundary-breaking DJs of today, the City by the Bay has a treasured history of performances with a significant lineage to black influences. Whether you're in a seat on the balcony or dancing on the main floor, you'll have a great concert experience. DIY organisers who are often also musicians), may later seek out the return of the same favour when they, in turn, go on tour. Moreover, some venues and houses often collectively organised festivals and larger multi-venue events. Brasses and reeds, such as trumpets and saxophones were rarely used, unlike in contemporary R&B and soul bands and some of the white bands from the U.S. East Coast (e.g., Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago). (Personal communication, 23 January 2011). It would be make-shift [spaces]like, divide room in half, [] cubbies that people are living in, and so this house it supposed to be for a couple, like a small studio apartment, [but] divided into like eight or nine [liveable] spacesand just insane things like that. Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. Acoustic music had had an avid following far and wide, but it was "a fading world of traditional folk and Brechtian art songs. Thats as much of an end goal to them, just as it is for fans. DIY performers therefore usually approach and sustain the DIY scenes through the practice of communal reciprocity, by playing for their own fun, and for the interests of the DIY community (horizontal approach), and not for their own individual interests in financial gain and mainstream success (vertical approach). Donations of money for live performances at DIY shows (a form of balanced gift economy) might be seen to function in a similar way, where a marketable exchange commodity (the live performance) is transformed into a DIY commodity with symbolic and material use value through a process of diversion and enclaving. Here are a dozen things to experience at Fort Mason Center right now. DIY shows in the US are underscored by a complex conjunction of two economic regimes overlapping in one space and time. The Most Legendary Music Venues In San Francisco - Culture Trip Established in 1986, it has served as a template and inspiration for many other DIY venues across the US and internationally (Hannon Citation2010: 37). Pier 23 Cafe is a time-honored restaurant and bar located right on the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay. See international artists in state-of-the-art auditoriums or local artists in historic cocktail lounges, unique dive bars, iconic restaurants, modern art galleries, and off-the-beaten path record stores and bookstores. When I asked what else they do communally, they mentioned collective chore charts, monthly cleaning days, and their communal craft supplies (sowing stations, craft materials, collage materials), which other DIY participants could borrow from them or use in Glitterdomes collective spaces (living room, kitchen, front porch, or backyard). 4 See Oakes Citation2009: 45; Threadgold Citation2017: 7, 8; Farrow Citation2020: 11; Haddon Citation2020; Pearson Citation2020: 7; Rogers and Whiting Citation2020: 6; Verbu Citation2021; cf. (Jennings Citation1998; see Figure 5)Footnote17, Figure 5. 1 Free boxes are often found in DIY and punk houses, or on the sidewalks next to them. A combination of commercial, second-hand, and scrap materials and tools were used in this DIY process. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco-based rock groups of the mid-1960s to early 1970s.It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. This community defines itself through active participation (at shows, and otherwise), therefore distinguishing itself from passive, apathetic, consumerist society (personal communication with a DIY participant from Oakland, 14 September 2012), or from lazy hipsters within the scene (see above). However, since the simple fact of attending shows, or because still and quiet listening to music can also count as valid forms of audience participation at DIY shows (see Figure 2), I argue for an understanding of American DIY communities that is open to a variety of different approaches and interpretations of active audience participation. Food not bombs), DIY participants thus also enable the neoliberal premise of outsourcing of public services and governmental responsibilities to private entities and individuals (Dean Citation2015: Kirsch Citation2017).
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