Overlapping Networks: “I don’t think I can just like lock myself into

My interviewees talk about scenes in ways that suggests they see them, like scholars do, as dynamic, overlapping, and activity focused networks. They identify with multiple networks, a common aspect of the grassroots music and art scene.

Through active involvement in diverse scenes, participants bind multiple scenes together.

When I ask Lori, an event organizer, if she identifies with a specific scene, she replies, “Hmm…I like to discover everything so I wouldn’t necessarily say that I identify with a particular scene…I don’t think I can just lock myself into one.” Similarly, Kim, a musician, argues there is not “A scene” because “It depends on where you are. Some people just like to go to a certain bar and they’ll see what’s there because they like to go there. That’s kind of a scene.” In pointing out there is not “A scene,” Kim asserts that scenes are flexible, rather than totalizing social structures of experience (Bennett & Peterson 2004; Haunns & Leach 2004; Irwin 1977; Unruh 1980). By going to a “certain bar” to see “what’s there,” people “plug into” (Irwin 1977) scenes and

become involved in unique social experiences that are particular to networks, place and activity.

Jess’s involvement in arts, poetry, punk and hip hop scenes demonstrates how scenes are formed by dynamic networks that overlap thematically. She explains,

There are awesome artists, performers, and poetry. I think it’s really crazy to identify it. I mean there are different genres. Like a punk music community and like a rock and hip hop scene. I could name different people in different genres of music but I don’t think our music community is large enough to say that there’s a community that I identify with because I really enjoy it all.

Jess also indicates the music community is small, which she suggests makes for intersecting rather than discrete scenes. Angela, a musician, has a similar take on her involvement in grassroots music scenes:

I feel like the band I’m in now is definitely in the kind of experimental, rock genre, but I’ve been in pop bands and I’ve known a lot of people who’ve been in kinda straight ahead rock bands, metal bands, so I’m not, I don’t feel like I identify…I like all kinds of music, I go see all kinds of bands, and I have friends that are in various different things, so, personally, I’m in kinda of an Indie scene, but it’s not any particular genre.

Like Jess, Angela gives a response that diverges from most music scene scholarship that analyzes music scenes as fixed categories such as “Goth,” “straightedge,” and “hardcore.”

Angela says there is a lot of overlap among people engaged in grassroots music scenes. She notes that the Indie scene encompasses multiple music genres. Angela enjoys being

simultaneously involved in a variety of scenes concerning music and emphasizes that grassroots music scenes often interconnect under the same umbrella.

Paul plays music in two different bands and says that although a younger crowd

appreciates one of the bands more than the other, the crowds “do overlap.” He explains, “There’s a very strong creative scene here of musicians and artists and we support each other more than anybody else supports us. It’s what we do.” Grassroots music and arts networks do overlap, because, as Paul put it, these networks “support” each other. That is what they “do.”

Overlapping networks cultivate, as one put it, a “feeling of family.” Monica and Laura explain,

Monica: There’s definitely an element of permeability where you can just go from here to here, where you can host this event at your house that used to be at this other person’s house.

Laura: But I would say that, like, I wouldn’t want to say that like there isn’t a strong sense of like…I don’t know, I definitely feel like I have a family in that larger group of like people who I am especially close to.

Monica and Laura indicate that network permeability makes for a friendly social scene that gives them a sense of familiarity and closeness. Laura emphasizes the fluid nature of scene networks when she says,

I feel there’s a blurring between one community and another community. Like you can just say “the community” as a whole entity but I mean when you break it down, there are the activists, there are the art kids, the punk kids, the hardcore kids, the bike kids. I don’t know, it’s all over the place. But arguably, I would say we’re under the same umbrella.

Laura argues that a blurring between one community and another occurs in the larger community because groups engage a variety of networks such as the “hardcore,” “bike” and “activist” scene.

She argues that these networks are “under the same umbrella,” and in doing so, qualifies her point that this “larger group” feels like a “family.” Paul says that one time he played a show in Lawrenceville at an art gallery and all these “East Sider creative people showed up” that he had

not seen before. He says that “since that time, we’ve [the band] been seeing a lot more people, but eventually, they’re close enough that they are friends.” He goes on to say, “It’s not like a lot of strangers popping in the scene.” Paul points to the overlapping familiar character of grassroots music and art networks and events. Through network affiliation and participation in music and arts events no one stays a stranger for long.

I find that the loose overlapping character of scene networks makes it easy for

participants to engage various events. These permeable boundaries are situated in recognizable meeting locations around particular music and arts activities. The overlapping quality of scenes generates a social arena in which various networks intersect under the same “umbrella.” This umbrella is central to the familiar “small town” feeling participants in these intersecting grassroots music and arts networks describe.