sara cohen, sounding out the place, production of locality (1995)

7/27/2019 Sara Cohen, Sounding Out the Place, Production of Locality (1995)

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Sounding out the City: Music and the Sensuous Production of PlaceAuthor(s): Sara CohenSource: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 20, No. 4 (1995),pp. 434-446Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the

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Sounding out the city: music and thesensuous production of placeSara CohenThe relationship between music and place is explored through biographicalinformation on one particular ndividual and his social activities and networks in thecity of Liverpool. Music plays a role in producing place as a material settingcomprising the physical and built environment; as a setting for everyday socialrelations, practices and interactions;and as a concept or symbol that is represented orinterpreted.This production of place through music is shown to be a contested andideological process, whilst the dynamic interrelationshipbetween music and placesuggests that music plays a very particularand sensual role.key words Liverpool place ethnicity music local identityInstitute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BXrevised manuscript received 10 May 1995

IntroductionWithin the social sciences, studies of the socialproduction of place usually allude to visual rep-resentation;1this paper, however, explores the roleof music and sound. It does so through biographicalinformation on 88-year-old JackLevy, drawn from acase study in which he participated on popularmusic and Liverpool's Jewish 'community'. Thepaper points to connections between some of themusical styles and places, varying in scale fromneighbourhoods and cities to the national andmultinationalor global, that have been particularlyimportant to Jack.The first part of the paper discusses music andplace in terms of everyday social relations,practicesand interactions,looking in particularat the ways inwhich place is 'produced' (defined, represented,transformed)through musical practice. The secondpart emphasizes the fact that this 'production' isalways a contested and ideological process,whilst the third part considers the dynamicinterrelationship between music and place. Itsuggests that music plays a very particular andsensual role in the production of place partlythrough its peculiarembodiment of movement andcollectivity.Trans Inst Br GeogrNS 20 434-446 1995

I first met Jackin 1992. His wife had died twoyears previously, after which he had become bored,depressed and unwell. He found walking difficultand his trips outside were less frequent than hewould wish. He occasionally visited a nearby homefor the Jewishelderly and, when he could manage it,he walked to the synagogue round the comer. Eachweek he attended social activities held at the Jewishcommunity centre a couple of miles away or at thecomplex of flats where he lived which was built andserviced for the Jewish elderly by Liverpool JewishHousing Trust. Through such activities, Jackkeepsin contact with people he has grown up with butfrequently tires of. A friend of his, Les, used to visithim everyday and a volunteer sometimes came tohelp with the shopping but last year Les movedabroad and the volunteer can no longer spare thetime. Jackregularly telephones his sister who livesin a home for the elderly in Southport but he has nochildren,his only daughter having died in the early1970s.Since our initialmeeting, I have visited Jackat hishome on a regular basis. His front room is dingyand cramped. The walls are a dark yellow and thepatterned carpet has faded. There is a table, atelevision which is rarelyturnedon, an armchairanda pale brown sofa. A darkpatch at one end of the

ISSN 0020-2754 ? Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 1995


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The placeof musicsofa marksthe spot worn by the familiarpressureofJack'shead. Beside the sofa is a wooden chairuponwhich sits a small radio and a telephone. Thesideboard is crammed with old photographs. Tohelp pass the time alone in that room, Jack istens tomusic on the radio,particularlydance band music. In1992, he also began to write what he refers to as'stories'. Hei would choose a particular subjectfamiliar to him - a Liverpool Jewish family, street,event or activity - and write a paragraphor severalpages on what he remembered about it. With his lifesavings he published some of his reminiscences intwo small booklets (Levy 1993, 1994).

Talking to Jack has often proved a frustratingexperience. He frequently contradicts himself, hecan appear surprisingly naive and he could not bedescribed as particularlyarticulateor perceptive. Hismemory, however, is phenomenal. He can take aparticularLiverpool street of the 1920s and list bynumber all the houses or businesses along it,describing the Jewish people who lived or workedin them and tracing their family histories. In ad-dition, Jackhas a tremendous sense of humour andhe adores music. Like others, he finds it hard todescribe music, often relying upon commonplacestatements and cliches to explain the way it canmake him feel, but he talks of music and dance witha passion and intensity that colours and animates hisface and gestures. Recalling some of the people andevents he has known, he has introduced me to aworld of music through which places are producedand reproduced.

Living and defining placeRelations of kinship and communityJack was born in London's East End in 1906. Hisparents were part of a wave of Jewish immigrantswho came to Britainfrom eastern Europein the latenineteenth century, many of them fleeing theCrimean War. The port of Liverpool acted as astaging post for hundredsof thousands of Jews whopassed through it on their way westwards. Some,however, remained in Liverpool and, when Jackmoved there with his family at the age of eight, thecity's Jewish population had increased to around11 000, creating what is generally referred to as aJewish 'quarter'around a street called BrownlowHill, a name that retains symbolic significance formany Liverpool Jews. Jack's amily finally settled inthat street after occupying a series of dilapidated

435flats in neighbouring streets. His sisters ran amilliner'sshop on the street.Jack eft school at fourteen, after which he had 37different jobs including, for a long time, that ofdoor-to-door salesman selling trinkets and otheritems largely to Jewish people within the city,collecting money for Jewish charities,selling adver-tisements for the local Jewish newspaper and work-ing on commission for other Jewish organizations.Over the years, Jack was also hired by variousJewish tailors whenever work was available. Jack'semployment experiences have been typical of manyJewish immigrants.Throughout the nineteenth cen-tury, Liverpool suffered chronic unemployment; ithad relatively little manufacturing ndustry and, as aport, it attracted large numbers of unskilledlabourers.Fluctuations n trademade for an unstablelabour market, a situation exacerbated by the flowof Irish, Jewish and other immigrants to the cityduring the latter half of the nineteenth century.Most of the Jewish immigrants thus lived inpoverty. About 40 per cent were unskilledand tookto some form of peddling (selling drapery,crockery,furniture, tobacco, stationery, pirated sheet music,etc.). At the same time, there existed withinBrownlow Hill a small-scale industrialeconomy ofJewish tailoring and cabinet-making workshops,many of which were cramped and situated inpeople's homes. (Jack'smother worked as a button-holer, his father was a tailor, his father-in-law acabinet-maker.)There were also quite a few Jewishshops in Brownlow Hill - bakers, butchers, book-sellers, etc. In contrast to Manchester and Leeds,commerce predominated amongst Liverpool's newimmigrant Jews, perhaps largely because of thecity's lack of manufacturing ndustry.The first generation of immigrants, includingJack's parents, aunts and uncles, tended to work,socialize and worship only with fellow Jews andthey spoke Yiddish. They established tightly knitsocial networks based on relations of kinship andfellowship with those from the same country oforigin. Together these groups constituted quite anisolated population. As a young boy, Jack alsoassociated only with fellow Jews. Later,he and hisJewish peers had Gentile friends but never visitedtheir houses or entertained the idea of marrying aGentile. In 1939, Jackeventually had, like his sister,an arrangedmarriage.The impoverished situation of the new immi-grants, and that of Liverpool's labouring classesgenerally, contrasted greatly with the wealth of the


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436city's elite which included a small establishedJewishpopulation. By the beginning of the nineteenthcentury there were already about 1000 Jews inLiverpool, including a middle class of merchants,bankers and shopkeepers (largely of German andDutch origin) which was well integrated into theupper echelons of Liverpool society but, as aminority, was concerned to be seen to be well-behaved and to fit in with wider society. This highlyanglicized Jewish elite lived a few miles outside the'Jewish quarter' in the large mansions situatedaround two of Liverpool's finest parks. They hadlittle in common culturallyor economically with thenew immigrants. In 1906, a lawyer and renownedmember of this elite, Bertram L Benas, gave apresidentialaddress to the LiverpoolJewish LiterarySociety in which he said

a self-imposed hetto is forthe first ime in processofformationn our city. Entire treets arebeing whollyoccupiedby Russo-Polishmmigrantsn theBrownlowHill district .. Thenon-Jewishesidents reremovingto themoredistantoutskirts.. To see themat prayeris quitea revelation o modemLiverpool ewry.Theirservices are full of emphatic,vivid, even uncouthdevotion. To listen to their ready and soulfulresponses, o see the weirdswingingof their bodiesduringtheir orisons, to hear the loud and earnestsounds of their great Amen, theirheartyunison insongsof praise,wantingperhapsn musical ulture, etgiving food for inspiration.Class and other distinctions amongst LiverpoolJews were reinforced in the popular press. A seriesof articles entitled 'The Liverpool Jew' appeared inthe LiverpoolReviewof 1899. The articles were fullof anti-Semitic references to Jewish character andculture. Four classes of Liverpool Jew ('specimens')were portrayed, from the uppermost 'EnglishJew',down to the 'newly-imported Foreign Jew' based inthe 'little colony' as the Brownlow Hill neighbour-hood was referredto, a term which, like 'ghetto' or'quarter',implies a position of powerlessness andincarceration.Second-generation immigrants, com-

prising the second class, were typified as frequentersof music and dance halls: 'exhibiting his "lightfantastic toe" at cheap cinderellasand dances' (ibid.,25 February 1899), whilst the English Jew wasportrayed as much more 'cultured',artistic, literaryand '[m]usical to an acute degree'; 'foundat almostevery concert devoted to the classical productionsof the world's great composers' (ibid., 4 March1899). Such stereotypes illustratethe way in which

AndrewLeyshonet al.music (in this case through writing and verbaldiscourse) is used to distinguish people and placesaccording to class and ethnicity, thereby underliningthe emphasis of Stokes (1994b, 6) on the importanceof turning from

defining he essentialand 'authentic'racesof identity'in'music .. to thequestionof how music s usedbysocialactors n specificocal situations o erectbound-aries, o maintain istinctions etween us andthem.Musical performance,exchange and interactionYet social practices involving the consumption andproduction of music also draw people together andsymbolize their sense of collectivity and place.For the immigrant Jews of Brownlow Hill, music(religious, folk, popular and classical) played animportant role in everyday life and the rituals,routines and discourses that comprised it. Musicwas the focus of many social gatherings, helping toestablish and strengthen the immigrants' relationswith each other or their relationship with God.Such relations were also established and definedthrough other musical practices, such as theexchange of musical recordings. In addition, musicframed particular events such as wedding cer-emonies and religious festivals, setting them apartfrom other daily activities, heightening theirsymbolic significance (Finnegan 1989).Most of the immigrant Jews were indeed veryreligious, and religious music and practice undoubt-edly helped maintain individual and collectiveidentity in a context of considerable uncertaintyand unfamiliarity. The immigrants set up Chevra,societies through which those who had originatedfrom a particulareaster Europeantown or districtmet together to worship and socialize, often insomeone's house. Gradually, they set up their ownsynagogues which contrasted greatly with theaustere opulence and grandeur of those frequentedby the Jewish elite. (They also set up their ownwelfare organizations, assisted by the Jewish elitefor whom charitable activity played an importantrole, as it has done in many Euro-AmericanJewishcircles,acting as a source of collective cohesion andprestige.)Within Judaism,particularly ts eastern Europeantraditions, vocal music is believed to provide theclosest communication with God, with the Hasidicsong or wordless chant possessing 'more powerthan any other prayer; representing pure religiousecstasy' (Werner 1980, 629) and embodying the


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Theplaceof musicnotion that, while the life of a text is limited, themelody lives on forever. The chanting is tradition-ally done by and for men. The Hasidic song has lefta strong imprint on eastern EuropeanJewish musicas a whole. Today, synagogue attendance hasdeclined among Liverpool Jews but the symbolicmeanings and ritual imagery of the synagogue aredeeply interalized. Jack'sstories often incorporatereligious references and synagogue music has greatemotional significance for him. It 'shows you yourplace', he explains, and it is

traditional. hey daren'talter it. That musicgoes onandon and on. Fathers lay to sons,and sons play tosons. Always the same. It never alters ... that music isthereforever.He thus depicts the music as a timeless (andgendered) tradition, representing security andstability.When Jackwas young, his parents used to listenon the gramophone at home to recordings of thegreat chazansimported by a nearby record retailerfrom a Jewish wholesalers in London. They alsolistened to recordings of Yiddish folk music.One ofJack'smemories of music as a young child is of hismother and aunts sitting together to sing Yiddishsongs and weeping to theirmournfulsounds as theyreminded them of Poland, their homeland (derheim).Such songs typically depict aspects of daily life -songs about separationand parting,work, children'ssongs, women's songs, etc. Jacksaid of the women,'They loved to weep, that was their pleasure'.Manypeople maintain a link with their past throughattachment to specific places and music is often usedto remember such places. The Yiddish music pro-voked and structured particularemotions in Jack'sfemale relatives, through which they expressed theirfeelings about their country of origin and therelations and practices they had left behind. Themusic brought them together and symbolized theircollective identity. Listening to that music today,Jack is reminded of those women and the femaledomestic space or home that they represented.Referring to the recordings that his relativeslistened to, Jacksaid

And somehow those recordscame around.And onepersongot holdof one,and t waspassedallround ..And bit by bit we used to have records.

This description conforms with Jack'sdepiction ofLiverpool Jews as living 'in one circle', a spatial

437metaphor for neighbourhood that incorporatesJewish records and songs as part of the circle andpart of the process of defining it. Likewise, thereexisted for a short period a Liverpool Yiddish bookpublisher, Ghetto Press, and a regional Yiddishnewspaper that Jackalso described as being passedaround the neighbourhood from house to house.But what Jacktalks about most in relation to thepast is popular culture,particularlymusic and dancewhich he describesas 'the whole life and soul of (his)generation'. As a young man, he attended thecinema on a weekly basis and the films and music hesaw and heard there greatly inspired him. He hassung, for example, the songs of Al Jolson for me,demonstrating through his voice and the movementof his arms the emotional intensity that they evoke.Jolson was also the son of Jewish immigrantsstruggling to find their place in a new country andGabler (1989, 145) wrote that he was 'Caughtbetween the old life and the new ... of both andof neither'. Jolson's on-screen performances oftenarticulated this experience, which is perhaps partlywhy his music appealed so strongly to Jack.2Since he left school in 1920, Jack's majorobsession has been the music and dance of thedance halls. 'Dancing',he said, 'was my life'. At onetime he was dancing six nights a week at Jewishfunctions, at the tailor's club and at various dancehalls in the city. During his early twenties, hestarted running dances himself and acted as MCin various local dance halls. Jack's reminiscencesindicate the attraction that dance-hall culture had forhim, the sense of excitement and occasion, as well asthe anticipation and preparation that a dance pro-voked, and the escape it offered from the worriesand routines of everyday life. He describes in vividdetail the women he danced with, their beauty andglamour,and the fashionable dress of both them andthe men.3 Sitting on his sofa, he sways his torsoand arms, closing his eyes in an expression ofblissful engrossment, attempting to convey to methe physical attraction of the dance and the height-ened sensuality and pleasure it evoked, displaying asense of pride in the talents he had as a dancer andthe proficiency and skillwith which he mastered thesteps.For Jack'sbar mitzvah, his parents bought him apiano and, although none of his family could play it,there was always someone in the neighbourhoodwho could. Jackremembers social gatherings in hishouse when people would stand around the pianoand sing popular songs of the day (Ramblingrose,


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438for example). Others in the neighbourhood playedinstrumentson a semi-professionalbasis and duringthe 1920s and 1930s there were quite a few Jewishdance bands based in the Brownlow Hill neighbour-hood. Jack was close friends with these musiciansand he refers to them with affection and pride as'local musicians', local here meaning not just mu-sicians from the Brownlow Hill neighbourhood butthat neighbourhood's Jewishmusicians(i.e. claimingthem as the community's own). Similarly, Jacksometimes talks of 'Liverpool' or 'this town' whenhe is referringonly to its Jewish community. Hence'local' is a discursive shifter or variable determinedby factors such as ethnicity and class.Jackyearned to perform in a dance band himselfand later, during the 1940s, he took the plunge andspent all his savings on a saxophone. He joined aband but eventually decided that he wasn't goodenough. Likemany of his peers, he also dreamed ofbeing a professional dancer but again decided thathe wasn't good enough:

And the only placeto be a professionalwas London,and all my familywas in Liverpool. wouldn't eavethemfor the world to go to London.However, the beginnings of the modem Britishentertainmentindustry coincided with Jewish immi-gration from eastern Europe and attracted manyenterprisingimmigrants.Access was relatively easycompared with other industries due to lower finan-cial barriers and less discrimination.It was an areanot yet dominated by Gentile talent and capital,partly because it was considered risky and dis-reputable. Consequently, Jews entered the industryat every level. Close inspection of reports andpublications on Liverpool's theatres and cinemas,for example, and of local Jewish archives, revealspassing references to Jewish performers, entertain-ment agents and owners, managers and promotersof clubs andcinemas.(This situation was mirrored nother Britishcities, particularlyLondon, Manchesterand Birmingham. It was magnified in America.)On the music retail side, there have been severalJewish-owned music instrumentand record shops inLiverpool.4Music and the social, cultural and economicproduction of placeThe above account of the social and cultural life ofthe immigrantJews of Brownlow Hill has been brief,fragmented and rathersuperficial.It has promoted a

AndrewLeyshonet al.view of music and place not as fixed and boundedtexts or entities but as social practice involvingrelations between people, sounds, images, artifactsand the material environment. It has also high-lighted the importance of place in defining Jewishethnicity5 and indicated some of the ways inwhich music is involved in the social, culturalandeconomic production of place.Jack is very proud of Liverpool and its history.Explainingwhy he feels so strongly about the city,he said

I live here.My home'shere.My motherand ather,mydaughter,hey'reburiedhere.So wherethey'reburiedis my home.Places thus reify or symbolize social relationshipsand kinship relations are obviously of particularemotional significance.6 Although Jack has fewliving relatives in Liverpool, he is bound to the citythrough relations with dead kin and relations ofaffinity with fellow Jews. Music is one meansthrough which such relations are established, main-tained and transformed. For Jack, it is sound aswell as sight and smell that conjures up images,emotions, memories of Brownlow Hill. His attemptsto demonstrate the physical pleasures of music andthe way in which it is experienced within the body,stimulating movement and emotion, emphasize theintensity of experience evoked by music and itseffectiveness in producing a sense of identity andbelonging. The musical practicesand interactionsofthe immigrant Jews helped to define the particulargeographical and materialspace within the city thatthey inhabited and, at the same time, they investedthat space with meaning and a sense of identity andplace, thus distinguishing it from other places withinthe city.Hence, places are socially produced as practicalsettings or contexts for social activity but, throughsuch activity, places are also produced in aconceptual and symbolic sense. Appadurai (1993)has thus described locality as both figure andground, representing a combination of the materialand the conceptual,and Stokes (1994a, 4) underlinesthe importance of turning from the notion of musicin a place to look at the ways in which place isevoked through music:

Music does not then simplyprovidea marker n aprestructuredocialspace,but the meansby which hisspacecan be transformed.


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The placeof musicComparativematerial on Liverpool's Irish and blackpopulations emphasizes the role of music in thepracticaland symbolic organization of space, in thespatial politics of everyday life and in the expressionof ethnic identity. One musician, for example,describes how, in the 1930s, a black neighbour ofhis would play his records loudly and open all thewindows so that the sound would travel andpublically proclaim his status as the owner of agramophone player. Meanwhile, a colour bar oper-ated in many of the city's clubs and dance hallswhich led to a situation where black musiciansperformedin 'white' spaces and the leisure activitiesof blackpeople were restricted to one particularareaof the city. Elsewhere in the city, marching concer-tina bands acted as a focus and trigger for Irishsectarian conflict, representing an appropriation orinvasion of public space and a marker of territory(McManus 1994).Whilst music defines a sense of 'this place', it alsomarksrelations of kinship,alliance and affinitywithplaces elsewhere. Yiddish music, for example, wascommonly used by the immigrantJews to maintainrelations with eastern Europe and, from the 1920sonwards, various Hebrew songs were used to forgerelations with another home or promised land andto express Jewish nationalism.7 Zionism and otherpolitical movements have used music to reify par-ticular places in the pursuit of common goals sothat those places come to embody the future andalternative ways of living. Many songs of EretzIsrael represent a synthesis of elements from eastEuropean and middle eastern folk song. They areusually about the land and those who work on itand many have an assertive, patriotic ring, thuscontrasting with the Yiddish songs that conjure upimages of everyday life in homelands like Poland.Jackfinds it hard to relate to songs of EretzIsrael,partly perhaps because - unlike his contemporarieswho have established connections with other places(especially London and Israel)through their middle-class childrenand grandchildren Jackhas few suchconnections. The songs are in a language he cannotunderstand and he sees them as belonging toanother generation.

I don'twant to know.They'renot inmy era.Oncewebecamea land of our own, a State,the whole thingchanged. The youngsters took over ... and it wasdifferent hen.Thus Jacksometimes expresses a sense of alienationfrom his contemporaries and from the younger

439middle-class Jewish establishment in Liverpool, yetsays at the same time, 'I knew their parents',againexpressing a sense of community and belongingthrough kinship ties.Relations between Liverpool Jews and Jews inIsrael, America or elsewhere are reinforcedthrough visiting musicians and other musicalexchanges. Jack's reminiscences frequently alludeto Liverpool Jews now, in his words, 'scattered allover the world'. Like other Jews of his gener-ation, he discussed the music of Jewish immi-grants from eastern Europe, such as Irving Berlinand Sophie Tucker based in America, in a man-ner that suggests a sense of affinity with thosesharing similar heritages and experiences. Inaddition, however, Jackfrequently cites Irish songsand songs of black slaves in America, acknowl-edging through them a sense of unity with otherimmigrant or oppressed peoples. He said of thelatter

They all had theirsongs ... they've got their rootshere, their roots there ... Nobody wants them.They'rea misfit.Theyget out,but wherecanyou go?They'vegot no home.The images and information that Jackhas acquiredabout such people have been obtained largelythrough popular song and film. He talks withaffection about the 'black mammy women' fromthe American South, describing the little spec-tacles they wore and their warm-heartedness. Healso quotes at length from the song Danny boy,linking the lyrics to Irish experiences of oppres-sion and linking that to Jewish experience andhistory, thus suggesting the marking of 'familiesof resemblance' through music (Lipsitz 1989,136).This highlights the way in which music enablesJack to travel in an imaginary sense to differenttimes and places. Illustratinghow music inspireshisfantasy, transporting him from one place andimmersing him somewhere else, Jack describedhis Monday afternoons at a Liverpool ballroomduring the 1920s. Monday, he explained, wastraditionally washing day. The women used totake off their aprons after a hard morning's work,do their hair, put on their finery and take the busto the city centre, arriving at the ballroom for the2.30pm start. Jack once danced there to a tuneentitled In a gardenin Italy and he enthused abouthow the music made him picture that garden and


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The placeof musicon the Church Lads' Brigade - whose letterheadedpaper states that its object

is to train ts members n loyalty, humour,disciplineand self respectthat they shallbecome worthy andusefulcitizensandbe a credit o theircountryandtheircommunity.

The Brigadewas backedby a number of social clubs,including the Jewish Lads' Club, the Jewish BoyScouts, and the Jewish Girls' Clubs. The processof anglicization continued in the Hebrew schoolfounded in 1840. Pupils were encouraged to changetheir names, mark British celebrations and enterchoral competitions and similarevents.These societies and clubs represented leisure andentertainmentbut they were also highly politicized,combining both power and pleasure. Music wasused to mould particular dentities and allegiances,whether it be the military brass band music of theJewish Lads' Brigade, the choral and orchestralsocieties of the Jewish working men's club, or songsand anthems which acted as symbols of Englishnessand expressions of national loyalty and unity. Theprogramme indicates pressures of assimilation butalso the simultaneous concern with maintainingdistinctiveness as Jews. Jewish societies, clubs anddances were regarded as safe contexts in whichJewish people could meet and form suitable friend-ships with people of their own kind. The pro-gramme was extremely successful. Within a singlegeneration, Yiddish had practically disappearedfrom the culturalscene.

Yet the production of national or other place-bound identities is always a contested process andnot all the immigrants were totally influenced bythe social and educational programme instigated bythe elite. Many kept to their own more informalleisure activities based around their homes. Some,like Jack, attended rambles, played football andparticipated in other activities organized by Jewishsocieties but also attended 'outside' functions suchas local dance halls frequented by Gentiles andforbidden to many Jewish young people. Mean-while, the Jewish elite patronized differentclubs andvenues, and Jacknever mixed with them. They alsohad their own social and cultural institutions -literary societies, for example, which graduallybegan to encourage the more up-and-coming ofthe new immigrants to join their activities, untilmembers of this nouveau riche started setting uptheir own similarorganizations. Most such societies

441organized regulardances, concerts and gramophonerecitals in addition to dramatic, sporting andfundraising activities, and debates and lectures.According to their minute books, many talksfocused on politics and high culture.8 Debatesaddressed issues such as the division between estab-lished and immigrantJews, and the generation gapbetween immigrants and their 'English children'.These societies gradually died out in the face ofgrowing competition from the newly flourishingentertainment industries.

Music, stability,securityLike many other immigrant Jewish populations,Liverpool's immigrantJews experienced rapidsocialand economic advancement, and within two gener-ations a significant transformation of the classposition of the immigrantshad occurred. This wasdue to a mixture of social, cultural and economicfactors, including the fact that the city's high rate ofunemployment discouraged further Jewish immi-gration. Most of the pedlars progressed as entre-preneurs. They came into contact with Gentilesbecause they moved around a lot and did bettereconomically than the masses of skilled cabinet-makersand tailors who worked long hours in smalloutfits for a fixed wage. However, the latter'soccupational structure also eventually shifted,towards clothing, drapery and furniturebusinesses,and towards the professions into which many wereencouraged as a means of improving themselvesand their families.

Biographical information on some of the Jewishindividuals and families involved with the Liverpoolentertainment ndustriesillustratesthe way in whichthey were able quickly to establish themselves inthose industriesbut also indicates the culturaltrans-formation that enhanced status and respectabilitymight demand. Mal Levy, for example, had arecording contract in the 1960s and toured thecountry as a performer until he succumbed toparentalpressure and returned to Liverpool to jointhe family tailoring business:I think t was 'don'tput your son on the stage'.Youknow the old fashionedJewishoutlook- it's not agood job, it'snot a decentjob ... They looked downon music n those days.

Such attitudes help explain why Liverpool Jewshave tended to work in music business and manage-ment ratherthan performance,although there arefar


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442fewer now than there used to be, and why rock andpop music have received such little attention fromthe city's Jewish institutions.Brian Epstein came from a respected Liverpoolfamily that ran a lucrative furiture business. Heopened a record retail branch within this businessbefore taking up management of the Beatles andsetting up his own music-management company.According to Coleman (1989, 83), Epstein's father,along with other relatives, wasn't too thrilledabout Brian's association with the Beatles ('thoseyobbos'), and persuaded him to take on hisbrother, Clive, as joint director. Although Epstein'ssuccess eventually earned him respect fromLiverpool's Jewish community, his obituary in theJewishChronicle tated

The sad thing is that Brianwas never completelyaucourant ith the music hathe was so much nvolved n... His strengthof character amefromthe solidarityof his upbringing ndthe integrityof hisbackground.It was this strength hat he reliedon whenhis artisticjudgement ailed. ibid., 15)During Epstein'sfuneralin Liverpool, the officiatingrabbi ignored his achievements and fame anddescribedhim as 'a symbol of the malaise of the 60sgeneration' (ibid.,410). News of Brian'sdeath in theLiverpool ewish Gazettewas limited to a few shortlines in the obituary notices at the back. It began,'Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles' and wentstraight on to mention his donations to Jewishcharities.

Whilst the firstpart of the paper pointed to musicas a fundamentalpart of everyday life and to its rolein the production of identity, belonging and place,the second part has emphasized the ideologicaldimension to this process. Particularmusical stylesand activities come to symbolize particularvaluesand they can be used as a tool to transformnotionsof place and identity in order to maintain orchallenge a particular hierarchical social order.Music is thus bound up with the struggle for power,prestige, place. It reflects but also influences thesocial relations, practicesand material environmentsthrough which it is made.Place, image, statusAs the immigrantsmade their way up the economicand social scale, they gradually moved out of theBrownlow Hill neighbourhood. During the 1930sthe area underwent massive slum clearance which

AndrewLeyshonet al.hastened the Jewish exodus. By the late 1930s onlya small minority remained in Brownlow Hill. TheJews moved along Smithdown Road to settle in themore affluent neighbouring suburbs of Allerton,Woolton and Childwall where the overwhelmingmajority of Liverpool Jews are now based. As oneinformantput it, 'it is easier to be Jewish when youlive with other Jews'. During Jack's ifetime a greattransformation n Liverpool'sJewish population hasthus takenplace. It has involved a shift from notionsof Russian or Polish Jews to Anglo Jews; fromnotions of a Jewish 'quarter'or 'ghetto' to a Jewish'area' or 'district';from a split between the elite,more established Jews and the immigrantJews to asingle middle-classJewish community based in thatarea or district. Notions of being inside, outside or'on the fringes' of the community have strength-ened as socio-economic homogeneity amongst theJewish population intensified, increasing pressuresfor conformity.

Many young Liverpool Jews describe the com-munity as 'incestuous' and 'traditional'.The head ofmusic at the Jewish school told me that Jewishreligious 'rules'make it impossible for many of theJewish children to join in some musical events andactivities and that, even if they aren'treligious, theyhave to be seen to be. 'That'swhy it's such a closeknit community', she said, 'because they make theirfun together'. When Liverpool'seconomic situationworsened after the 1960s, young Jews, along withthose from other social groups, began to leave thecity in search of economic and social opportunitieselsewhere. This, along with emigration to Israel, adrop in the birth rate and the high rate of inter-marriage, led to a significant decline in the Jewishpopulation. At present there are around 4000 Jewsin Liverpool and the Jewish authorities recentlylaunched a 'Come back to Liverpool' campaign andvideo to encourage younger people to stay in, orreturn to, the city. The video emphasizes theuniqueness of the Jewish community and the area inwhich it is located. The smallness and safeness ofthe community is also emphasized,pointing out thatit is easier to be someone in such a context ratherthan be a small fish in a big pool somewhere else.The video features leisure amenities that project animage linked to classical music, emphasizing, forexample, long-standing Jewish associations with theRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Notionsof 'community' and 'Jewishness'have thus becomemore commonly defined through so-called 'high'culture.


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The placeof musicEmbodying placeTraveland migrationThe story of Jewish migration is a familiar onethat features strongly in Jewish collective memory.Judaismhas been likened by one Liverpool Jew to a'mentalmap by which we find each other as Jews inevery part of the globe' (Kokosolakis 1982, 199).Jack's mental maps of the world, of Britain, ofLiverpool, are partly based upon collective knowl-edge and experience of the geographical globalmovements of Jewish people, especially the move-ment of Jews from eastern Europe to particularBritish and American cities, and the movement ofLiverpool Jews from the city centre to the suburbs.In contexts of change and mobility, the produc-tion of place is often intensified. Writing aboutTurkish and Irish migrants, Stokes (1994b, 114)points out that

place, for many migrantcommunities,s somethingconstructedhroughmusicwithanintensitynot foundelsewhere n theirsocial lives.9Of today's global mobility, Stokes wrote that'the discourses in which place is constructed andcelebratedin relation to music have never before hadto permit such flexibility and ingenuity' (ibid., 114).Musical sounds and structuresreflect but also pro-voke and shape such movement. Hebrew songs, forexample, helped inspire the Zionist movement,whilst Irish traditional music has developed throughcontinual movement between Ireland (the 'homecountry')and the more distant countries adopted byIrish emigrants. Irish music influenced and blendedwith differentmusicalstyles in America,for example,and some of the resulting hybrid styles and soundswere then reimported to Ireland and treated asauthentic, traditionalexpressions of Irishness.Many musical compositions address the exper-ience of migration or travel more directly throughlyrics or through the culturally specific semioticcoding of musical sounds and structures. Americancountry and blues musicians, for example, havewritten about the experience of being on the road'0and Jack sings songs about leaving and returningwritten by Irish and other migrants. Such songs areprevalent in ports like Liverpool with their mobileand displaced populations, for whom concepts of'home' and 'homeland' can evoke strong emotions,although relations with, and notions of, homelanddepend on the particular circumstances of thoseinvolved, e.g. whether they emigrated individually

443or, like the Jews, in family groups. Today inLiverpool, songs from Fiddler on the roof areoften played at social gatherings of elderly Jews likeJack, songs that remind them of their collectiveorigins and experiences of homelessness andemigration.Place is also produced through the shorterjourneys, routes and activities of everyday life. AllJack'sstories are about the city and the people andplaces within it. Sitting in his front room, he hastaken me on a tour of parts of the city, house byhouse, dance hall by dance hall, street by street,"pointing out relevant events, individuals,family andother relationships as we pass by and transformingmy own view of the city. Jack's phenomenalmemory of, and emotional investment in, thesebuildings, locations and social networks may be duein part to the daily door-to-door journeys heconducted around the city by foot as a travellingsalesman.l2 His leisure activities as a dancer, whichtook him on a nightly basis to various parts of thecity, have added to his perspective on the city andits spatial geography.

I've been roundthis town for the last 70 yearsandIknow it backwards. know everybody,and almosteverybodyknowsme,exceptthe growing generation.In this sense, places can be seen to be literallyembodied. Through their bodies and bodily move-ments (whether through long-distance travel,walking or conversation), people experience theirenvironment physically. Depending upon the cir-cumstances surrounding them, some movements,such as long-distance travel, can be quite stressful.Other more repetitive movements, such as theday-to-day journeys involved with work or thesensual and expressive movements of dance, can be

particularlymemorable or intense. All can have adeep impact upon individualand collective memoryand experiences of place, and upon emotions andidentities associated with place.Bodies, sounds, sentimentsMusic can evoke or represent this physical produc-tion of place quite well. There is no space here toexplore evidence for this in detail but personalobservations supported by the work of severalcriticalmusicologists indicate,without essentializingmusic, the particularway in which music producesplace.


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444First, music is in a sense embodied. Musical

performances represent repetitive physical move-ments, whether through the fingering of instrumen-talists or the gestures of dancers. Music movesbodies in a way that distinguishes it from everydayspeech and action and from the visual arts and,although it is part of everyday life, it is alsoperceived as something special, different fromeveryday experience (Finnegan1989). Hence, manypeople in Liverpool and elsewhere have prioritizedmusic, making enormous financial sacrifices so thattheir children might lear and create it.In addition, we listen to music and hear thepresence and movements of the performing mu-sicians. Hence, Tagg (1981, 1) describes music asan 'extremely particular form of interhumancommunication',involving

a concerted imultaneityf non-verbal oundeventsormovements .. [whichmakesmusic]particularlyuitedto expressingcollective messages of affective andcorporeal dentityof individuals n relation o them-selves,eachother,and theirsocial,as well as physical,surroundings.ibid.,18)Music also creates its own time, space and motion,taking people out of 'ordinary time'.l3 Blacking(1976, 51) points out that

We often experiencegreater ntensityof livingwhenournormal imevaluesareupset... musicmayhelptogenerate uchexperiences.Furthermore, as sound, music fills and structuresspace within us and around us, inside and outside.Hence, much like our concept of place, music canappear to envelop us.The images and experiences engendered bymusic are, of course, dependent upon the particularcircumstancesin which the music is performed andheard, and upon the type of musical style andactivity involved. But, through its embodiment ofmovement and collectivity, and through the peculiarambiguity of its symbolic forms,l4 music can appearto act upon and convey emotion in a unique wayand it represents an alternative discourse to every-day speech and language, although both areideologically informed and culturally constructed.Hence, male working-class rock musicians inLiverpool use music to express sentiment in amanner that is discouraged in other public settings(see Cohen 1991). Their music is very personal,although, at the same time, it is created for public

AndrewLeyshonet al.performance. For the general listener, just onesimple musical phrase can simultaneously representa private world of memory and desire and acollective mood or a soundtrack to particularpublicevents (hence, the contrasting use of music in BBCRadio 4's Desert islanddiscs and BBCl's Thegoldenyears).For Jack,sitting and listening to music alone onthe radio, or simply talking about music, can evokesome of his most intense feelings and experiences.His musical tastes and experiences are individual,reflectinghis personal biography. At the same time,however, his reminiscences have been shown tobe shaped by the social relations, networks, collec-tivities that he has been a part of. All this indicatesthe effectiveness of music in stimulating a sense ofidentity, in preserving and transmitting culturalmemory and in the sensuous production of place.Individuals can use music as a cultural 'map ofmeaning', drawing upon it to locate 'themselves indifferent maginarygeographies at one and the sametime' (as Hall 1995, 207, has written of 'diaspora')and to articulate both individual and collectiveidentities.

ConclusionThis paper has explored the relationship betweenmusic and place through a specific biography boundup with specific social relations and situations ratherthan through more abstract discussion. Place hasbeen presented as both concept and materialreality,representing social and symbolic interrelationsbetween people and their physical environment.Music reflects social, economic, political andmaterialaspects of the particularplace in which it iscreated. Changes in place thus influence changesin musical sounds and styles (hence the gradualanglicization of eastern European synagoguemusic brought to Liverpool). The discussionhas highlighted, however, ways in which music notjust reflects but also produces place. First, music isbound up with the social production of place. Thediscussion has illustrated ways, for example, inwhich music acts as a focus or frame for socialgatherings, special occasions and celebrations;pro-vokes physical movement or dance; and involveseveryday social interactions such as the exchangeof records and other musical artefacts, as wellas business and industrial activity. Such musicalpractices have been shown to establish, maintain,transform social relations and to define and


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The placeof musicshape material and geographical settings for socialaction.

At the same time, music has been discussed asconceptual and symbolic practice. Music can, forexample, be intentionally used to represent place.Lyrics might refer directly to specific places butmusical sounds and structuresmight also representplace, either through culturally familiar symbols(accordions,for example, to representFrance,or theaugmented fourth to represent the Orient (Stokes1994a)), or in more particularways, as illustratedbythe musical stereotyping of Brownlow Hill (the 'littlecolony') in the Liverpool press. Such collectivemusical symbols associate places with particularimages, emotions, meanings and they provoke orshape social action. Hence, anthems and Zionistsongs inspirenationalist sentiments and movementswhilst other musicalstyles might be linked in similarways with issues of class and hierarchy.Music is not only bound up with the productionof place through collective interpretation, it is alsointerpreted in idiosyncratic ways by individuallisteners, with songs, sounds and musical phrasesevoking personal memories and feelings associatedwith particularplaces, as revealed by Jack'sinter-pretations of Yiddish music and the songs of AlJolsen. Places like Liverpool, Poland and parts ofAmerica have been shown to have emotional andsymbolic significance for Jack because of therelations of kinship, affinity and alliance that theyembody. Such relations are maintained, strength-ened and transformed through social practice andcultural interaction. This includes listening to andproducing music, the verbal discourse and physicalmovements surrounding such practices and theideology informing them.Music thus plays a unique and often hidden rolein the social and cultural production of place and,through its peculiar nature, it foregrounds thedynamic, sensual aspects of this process emphasiz-ing, for example, the creation and performance ofplace through human bodies in action and motion.Stokes (1994a, 3) suggests that

Themusical vent,fromcollectivedances o the act ofputtinga cassette or CD into a machine, vokes andorganises ollectivememories ndpresentexperiencesof place with an intensity, power and simplicityunmatched y any othersocialactivity.

The production of place through music is always apolitical and contested process and music has beenshown to be implicated in the politics of place, the

445struggle for identity and belonging, power andprestige.

AcknowledgementI would like to thank the Leverhulme Trust forfunding the researchproject that enabled the studyto be carriedout.

Notes1. See also Jackson(1989); Stoller (1989) and others onthe visualistbias in 'western' ulture.2. Thiscommonexperienceof being caughtbetweendifferentplaces,or of 'bifocality',has, of course,been widely studied.Much has been written,forexample,on the dual allegianceexperiencedby

Anglo-American ews, with a Jewish nationalityexisting alongsidea Britishor Americanone (e.g.see GoldsteinandGoldscheider 985).3. Fashionplayedanimportantole nthe lives ofJewslikeJack, argelyperhapsbecauseof theirdomina-tion of the local tailoring ndustry.An emphasisupon being fashionablydressedmight also havegiven them a sense of status and prestige.Gabler(1989), writing on the immigrant Jews ofHollywood, frequentlyrefers to their smart andfashionable ttire,as do the satirical rticles n 'TheLiverpoolJews'published n the Liverpool eview(1899).

4. Hence the Jewishnessof the entertainmentnfra-structure urroundinghe Beatles, ncludingclubs,agents,managers, etailers ndsolicitors.5. See Hall(1995)for a reconception f ethnicityas apoliticsof location.6. See Werlen 1993)writingon Pareto 1980).7. Zionismwas broughtto Liverpoolby immigrantJewsearlyin the centurywhen anti-Semitism asrife throughoutEurope.The movementwas op-posedby the Jewishelite who saw it as a threat otheiracquired espectability,tatusandEnglishness.8. One, for instance,was on Mendelssohn as anexampleof a fineJewishcomposer.

9. See also Clifford1992)on 'Travellingultures'.10. Metaphorsof roads,trains, tc. have infusedmuchof Euro-Americanpopularculture,whichmay alsobe attributedo fantasies f escapeandcelebrationsof distanceor modernity.II. He is particularlyroudof the fact thathe can listevery dancehallthatever existed in the city.12. Lynch(1960) and other humangeographershavestudiedpeople'smentalmaps of their immediatelocality in relation to their habitualmovementsthrough,he locality.13. See Tagg (1979)on musical ime.14. See Tagg (1981)on the non-referentialityf music.


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