Canons and Compilations: The Role of Cultural Anchors in the Evolving Definition of Electronic/dance Music

• In Event: 228 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14. Sociology of Music

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to assess the effects of the early legitimating activities of the UK media industries on the long-term development of the definition of the field of electronic/dance music in the UK. Using two digital archives and utilizing new techniques of content analysis such as named entity recognition, this paper assesses how different legitimating acts by UK recording labels and music press in the period between 1985 and 1989 affected the long-run appeal of a population of 17.201 acts in terms of their inclusion on the canon of electronic/dance music as indicated by inclusion rates on compilation albums between 1989 and 2010. Positive effects are found for early inclusion on compilation albums, inclusion on ‘genre-place’ compilations, the size of discursive attention by UK media magazines and discursive framing in relation to specific geographic locations. Results show not only that the efforts of the UK media between 1985 and 1989 have successfully defined the cultural anchors of the emerging field of electronic/dance music but also that use of the cultural narrative of ‘place-based origins’ increased chances of long-term canonization.

Author

• Alex van Venrooij, University of Amsterdam