Building Communities of Musical Practice in Portland

 

The PDX Music Scene Project Panels I chaired in 2014

This week I have spent a bit of time reflecting on my PhD research and looking at what parts of it could be something to share with you to imagine new perspectives on your practice be in performative, somatic or pedagogical. At the suggest of Helen and Adesola I thought I could talk about building communities of practice as both an act of collaboration as well as an act of sustainability. 

As I musician over time I have built communities of practice around me of people I would collaborate with for a variety of reasons. There are producers I go to if I want my music to sounds a certain way, people who's playing style I like to have on recordings and people I like to sit down and write with. I also socially have many practitioner friends who I know I can communicate with to exchange ideas, seek reassurance on my approaches and to help me step outside the box and innovate. This was something I never did consciously until I studied the music scene in Portland. Seeing how the musical communities in Portland would interact and resource music making to ensure its sustainability was fascinating to connect with. 

Across the city of Portland many kinds of musics are made from Bhangra and Filmi to Balkan Brass bands but only certain genres are successful around the world, most notably jazz and indie rock. As a researcher naturally I wanted to find out why and if it was to do with community structures. 

Jazz had been deep rooted in Portland, mostly because of the migration of African-American workers to work on grand infrastructure projects in the city. The city used to be spilling over with jazz clubs with whole quarters of venues. When I visited the city for fieldwork I could see jazz culture was well rooted with jazz venues, jam nights and also school education programmes specifically developing jazz talent. This led to the success of jazz artist Esperanza Spalding who had been through several jazz programmes for young people. Older successful artist would invest in young talent and pass on their skill to a new generation to ensure potential was fulfilled, many felt it their duty to do so to ensure jazz would carry on in the city. 

Indie rock has been a more recent phenomenon that was closely linked to the more recent cultivation of the city as a DIY kind of place. In Portland there are many makers working in different crafts, citizens will often bake their own bread, grow their own veg and live sustainable lifestyles that outsiders view as 'hipster'. This lifestyle enabled the music that came next with the sheer concentration of creativity feeding into a twee folksy image of the city often referred to as 'Portlandia'. Indie Musicians didn't so much create infrastructure as connecting pre-existing dots and repurposing spaces for their use. Suddenly record labels, record stores, recording studios, venues and festivals were more linked up around the genre. Indie rock from Portland became successful nation wide with people coming to the city to seek a 'Portland sound' bringing in new talent to reinforce and invest in the music. 

Jazz built the roots. Indie rock connected the dots. Hip Hop is the future. 

Whilst indie rock has maintained acclaim it has been Hip Hop that is on the ascent from remarkable circumstances. Hip Hop has faced institutional racism and oppression in the city, and in defiant response the hip-hop community have created their own infrastructure. If venues would book hip hop acts they build venues, if media won't write about them they create their own media and so on. There are film makers, record labels, producers all defying the systematic oppression to make Hip-Hop happen. This infrastructure is connected in a joint mission of defiance. Artists have thrived as a result and have grown success. 

So what can be taken from the lessons of Portland? How might you reflect on this for your own practice? 

The starting point is to take stock of the communities of practice built around you. Why are they there? How were they forged? Do they have a shared/vision and purpose?

Then consider how you can consciously be part of that community building can you share your practice with others? Can you resource your community of practice to keep it sustained? 

Suggested Reading: When reflecting on this I thought of Bourdieu's forms of capital particularly social capital and the idea of investing in connections as well as resourcing them you can check this out here.