The sound of street corner society: UK grime music as ethnography

Barron, Lee (2013) The sound of street corner society: UK grime music as ethnography. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16 (5). pp. 531-547. ISSN 1367-5494

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367549413491937

Abstract

This article explores the ways in which popular music can be linked to ethnography. While there is a tradition of connecting popular music with sociology, this article posits a further resonance that is not so much theoretical as methodological. The article suggests that forms of contemporary popular music parallel key facets of ethnography, not simply in terms of sociological analysis, but with regard to popular music as an ethnographic resource, as ‘data’, and as the reflexive expression of Paul Willis’ conception of the ‘ethnographic imagination’; and the article argues that contemporary British hip-hop in the form of ‘grime’ is a potent exemplar. This is due to the resolutely cultural, spatial nature of grime music: a factor that marks out grime as a distinctive musical genre and a distinctive ethnographic form, as it is an experientially rooted music about urban locations, made from within those urban locations.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Emic, ethnographic imagination,grime, hip-hop, music, space, urban
Subjects: L600 Anthropology
W300 Music
Department: Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Design
Depositing User: Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited: 11 Oct 2013 09:28
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2021 13:00
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/13883

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