You dont feel that communion. (Cometbus Citation2002). DIY shows in the US are underscored by a complex conjunction of two economic regimes overlapping in one space and time. Thornton Citation1996). By closing this message, you are consenting to our use of cookies. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. underground market, co-op exchange, barter, informal economy (for alternative economies), and gift giving, state appropriations, gleaning, and poaching (for non-market economies). San Francisco has a long history with jazz music. creativity], and could be one of the band [i.e. The strong reciprocal relations between different houses of the DIY community was emphasised to me in an interview with Jai and Dylan from Glitterdome house, who explained that they had friends visit pretty constantly. Located in the Fillmore District, Sheba Piano Lounge is an intimate bar and lounge where you can enjoy live music nightly to go with some of the areas best Ethiopian cuisine. 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. 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. Taylor Citation2016: 15476). (Personal communication, 28 February 2012; see Figure 6; emphasis in original). This zine is a business but its the idea of people running their own business, bands, labels, zines, etc. Local DIY scenes often work as collective efforts, achieved through reciprocal relations between the venues, houses and organisers that sustain them. 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. 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). DIY shows and records, bartering, borrowing, and DIY production of goods). Every discussion of the San Francisco music scene eventually turns to The Fillmore, which has hosted such legends as James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. The new music was loud and community-connected: bands sometimes presented free concerts in Golden Gate Park and "happenings" at the city's several psychedelic clubs and ballrooms. Black History Month at the best music venues in San Francisco. 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. A whole society, with its own economic . DIY economics of reciprocity, collective participation, and DIY practice, DIY tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist economic systems, https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2180050, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/the-paradox-of-life-affirming-death-traps/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. While it is possible to see a connection in given examples between the DIY socio-economic relations of reciprocity and the DIY ideas and aesthetics of support that reject the dominant values of quality (good vs bad performers), it is also important to extend the analysis beyond the simplistic (homologic) interpretations of the cause-and-effect links between material (socio-economic) and cultural (aesthetic) levels (cf., Hesmondhalgh Citation1999: 36; Toynbee Citation2000: 1105). 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. Furthermore, I draw on Arjun Appadurais perspectives on the complex interrelationships between different economic systems and regimes of value, often connected through the movement of the same kinds of commodities between them (Citation1986). 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). 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. This work was supported by Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague, under grant SVV 26060702. It doesnt feel as a community so much when you have a show, when a bands a bunch of millionaires, and you have a bunch of people that just idolize them. 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). 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. Here, Scott describes the basic theory of reciprocity, as outlined by anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his classic study The Gift ([Citation1925] Citation1990). SFJAZZ has been at the helm of the city's jazz scene since its founding in the 1980s. And so I understood the difference between supporting something and liking it. I felt I was sort of a tourist in everybody elses scenes, when I was touring. [18] Donahue was uniquely qualified, being savvy and enthusiastic about jazz, R&B, Soul, and ethnic music, besides the then-current rock music. 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. Rather, the two interact in complex, contradictory, and co-determining ways, as well as operating on multiple levels: ranging from DIY rejection of the dominant system, or the creation of temporary DIY enclaves, to various forms of partial co-dependence (pragmatic, hybrid, lateral, or tacit co-dependence). 3 The research included several years of fieldwork in Davis, CA; nine months in Portland, OR; five days in Washington, DC; and 14 days each in Olympia, WA, Los Angeles, and Oakland, CA. Note the bands offer to exchange their records and merchandise either for money, or for a good conversation and a hug!!!!!!. This summer, the city, and region will host jazz and blues concerts, festivals, and numerous free outdoor events including: The award-winning SFJAZZ Center opened in Hayes Valley in 2013 and boasts the 700-seat Robert N. Miner Auditorium and the 100-seat Joe Henderson Lab, showcasing the biggest names in international music and the best of the Bay Areas local jazz scene. By contrast, some groups only organise DIY house shows, and not much more (cf. DIY zines, comic books, and blogs from the whole US).Footnote3 This particular DIY culture is an outgrowth of late 1970s British and US punk culture, which later expanded into more transnational and heterogeneous scenes that today also encompass aspects of indie rock, experimental music and certain singer-songwriters.Footnote4 It also has ties to other similar formations, most particularly 1960s counterculture, and various historical and contemporary anarchist, feminist, and sustainability movements (cf. For more information please visit our Permissions help page. The many bands that formed signalled a shift from one subculture to the next. Apart from the discursive dimensions embedded in Cometbus quote, I have observed how the notion of collective reciprocity has materially permeated both cultural and economic aspects of American DIY communities. Appadurai terms these kinds of processes rituals of decomoditization (Citation1986: 26). With a bar built in 1949, Club Deluxe harkens back to San Francisco's live music scene of the 1950s and 60s. Pier 23 Cafe is a time-honored restaurant and bar located right on the Embarcadero and San Francisco Bay. Quality often does not matter as much as community and fucking family and the ways, like being emotional and playing [i.e. In jazz it had been exuberantly pioneered by numerous musicians. For example, participants funding of DIY shows and recordings is laterally supported by the larger capitalist framework, exemplified by their utilisation of consumer goods (computers, phones, music instruments, cars, gas), public infrastructure, and part-time jobs that help them cover the costs. It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. For example, Gilman incorporates all-ages, non-alcohol, and safer space policiesFootnote5 alongside volunteer, collective, and consensus-based approaches to organisation. Nicks and Buckingham went on to bring that San Francisco sound to established British rock band Fleetwood Mac when they both joined in 1975. Because San Francisco had an especially vibrant and attractive countercultural scene in the latter half of the 1960s, musicians from elsewhere (along with the famous hip multitude) came there. Really thats just a fraction of why theyve been noticed. 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. The above examples demonstrate how certain economic models and regimes of value can be refashioned into hybrid assemblages that combine approaches from two different economic spheres, and thus optimise the dominant system for the needs of local DIY participants (Sahlins, in Eriksen Citation2010: 185). In the above account he notes how he was inspired by the alternative economic systems of various communal DIY houses, which he visited on his early music tours around the US. 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. The history of San Francisco is deep-rooted in its bond with the Black community. Figure 6. 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 . We had this idea that it was a three-way tie [also the title of one of their albums] and not some hierarchy or aristocracy of guitar. A louder, more prominent role for the electric basstypically with a melodic or semi-melodic approach, and using a plush, pervasive tonewas another feature. 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. (Jennings Citation1998; see Figure 5)Footnote17, Figure 5. (Personal communication, 22 November 2011). And I feel the same about house shows. Here are a dozen things to experience at Fort Mason Center right now. Some of the most important black artists of the 20th century have played on this stage, including jazz legends Duke Ellington and Sarah Vaughan. Learn about our history and where to find it now, from festivals to clubs and bars. 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. "[8] The Beats tended to be cagey, keeping their lives discreet (save for the few who published, in literary bursts, about their perceptions, enthusiasms, and activities); in a word, they generally kept cool. The young hippies were far more numerous, less wary, and had scarcely any inclination to keep their lifestyles concealed. By being discarded, they often either create scarcity and consequently contribute to market demand and supply patterns, or they enter alternative economic business models (small, grassroots, sustainable, eco, ethical, and/or community-oriented niche business entities, e.g. Great American Music Hall (859 O'Farrell St.). While some houses (and DIY spaces) hosted festival shows, others provided shelter for out-of-town visitors and musicians (some guests erecting tents in the backyard of the Glitterdome house), and some collected and distributed donated or dumpster-dived food.Footnote8 Members from most of the DIY houses also either helped with cleaning, cooking for guests or with other small organisational tasks (see Figure 3), as well as actively participating as audiences at festival shows. A seminal venue in this regard is Gilman 924 (known also only as Gilman) in Berkeley, California. How much would you pay to hop into a time machine and visit San Francisco's long-gone Winterland Ballroom on Jan. 14, 1978, the night . 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. For several years now, Teague and his wife Melissa have run a small grassroots local urban farm business from their house, named Winslow Food Forest. For instance, group solidarity, as a socio-musical pattern, is also manifested in blues, 1960s psychedelic rock, heavy metal, and other popular music genres that are not necessarily rooted in the ideas and practices of American DIY communities.Footnote11 Thus, DIY notions and approaches to musical group solidarity might partially be understood in terms of residualFootnote12 practices from 1960s counterculture (folk, folk-rock, psychedelic rock, jam rock), to which punk and DIY culture, while discursively often rejecting it, owe many of their stylistic and socio-cultural traits.Footnote13. A DIY approach, therefore, functioned both as a means to an end, and as an end in itself. 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). It is the oldest nightclub in the neighborhood, and the dcor is reminiscent of turn-of-the-century splendor. [Chris's friend added:] You could be naked, and no one will arrest you [i.e. Your guide to one of San Francisco's biggest LGBTQ community events outside of Pride. Therefore, both the side of socio-economic factors, and the side of cultural practices and aesthetic expressions in this equation should be seen as diverse and multidimensional. While this may not involve bonds of calculated economic exchange or one-for-one favours, it nonetheless creates a social bond (debt to the scene) and thus also sustains a community. For example, in the Glitterdome house in NE Portland, these included sharing, borrowing, and exchanging items, goods and even spaces between houses and participants, be it food, free box items (clothes, shoes, books), tapes, or music equipment. In other words, Levy rejects approaches to collective organising that employ balanced reciprocity, with its obligation to reciprocate, as individualistic and selfish. All Rights Reserved. 19 See also Jennings Citation1998; Chrysagis Citation2017; Threadgold Citation2017; Bennett Citation2018; Garland Citation2019; Seman Citation2019; Holt Citation2020: chapters 4 and 5; Pearson Citation2020: 183, 185. 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. 11 See, for example, Forns, Lindberg, and Sernhede Citation1995; Berger Citation1999: 67; Toynbee Citation2000: 111, 112; Moore Citation2014a. This can include anything from the production, distribution, and promotion of music and arts, and self-organisation of spaces and concerts, to other social and daily activities such as making food and clothing, repairing or remodelling vehicles, and social and political self-organising (Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Metre Citation2007; Wehr Citation2012; Debies-Carl Citation2014). do-it-together (seattle diy.com Citation2009: 1). Both emphasise that gift-giving is not a free activity, but that it bonds an individual to reciprocate (returning the favour). While it is still a great spot to enjoy cheap beer in a low-key setting, the Saloon is now best known as an intimate venue to enjoy some of the best jazz and blues in the city. Due to the gradual musical and social diversification of punk and post-punk scenes in the last 40 years, and the redirection of attention from genre and sound to particular (DIY) ethos within these scenes, the DIY label started to be more commonly used as a synonym or a substitute for the term punk in reference to these scenes (ibid.). In addition, factors that shape more egalitarian music practices and sounds can be diverse. I am immensely grateful to all of the participants of this research, for accepting me in their spaces and scenes, and for their invaluable insights on the matters discussed herein.