Introduction: Sounds and the City

Abstract

This book is about popular music and place, principally cities. From Charlie Gillett's (1970) The Sound of the City and Iain Chambers' (1985) Urban Rhythms to more recent work such as Krims' (2007) Music and Urban Geography, attention to popular music has allowed various soundings of the often unfathomable aspects of urban life. Cities have been spaces of musical fascination at least since Herman Melville wrote in 1849 of a visit to Liverpool:In the evening, especially when the sailors are gathered in great numbers, these streets present a most singular spectacle, the entire population of the vicinity being seemingly turned into them. Hand-organs, fiddles and cymbals, plied by strolling musicians, mix with the songs of the seamen, the babble of women and children and the whining of beggars. From the various boarding houses…proceeds the noise of revelry and dancing.(Du Noyer, 2007, p. 1)