Music, media and urban mythscapes: a study of the ‘Canterbury Sound’

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, to illustrate how recently developed technologies are giving rise to new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between music and place. Applying the concept of mythscapes, developed from Appadurai’s work, to the ‘Canterbury Sound’, a term recently revived and adapted by a website-centred fanbase to describe a loosely defined back-catalogue of albums, songs and home-recorded musical experiments, the article argues that the city of Canterbury is being inscribed with a series of urban myths relating to its perceived role in the creation of a musical style deemed by fans to be locally specific. Second, through its analysis of the Canterbury Sound’s ‘construction’ on the Internet, the article considers the extent to which the Canterbury Sound can be considered a ‘virtual’ scene, Internet communication replacing more conventional forms of celebrating collective musical taste as these emerge through the sociality of club, concert hall and festival-based scenes.