I am in the process of putting together a new edited collection about song, nostalgia and its relationship with home. Here are a few words from the Introduction which I hope will give readers an idea what the book is about.

A Personal Story

In February 1984, I left the North East of England to undertake my first professional job in music—a five month contract playing guitar in a Dubai hotel—over 4000 miles away from home. Little did I know that this somewhat impulsive decision, would result in me spending the next 38 years away from Newcastle Upon Tyne—effectively nearly all of my adult life. Although I was not aware of it at the time, this excursion away from the North East of England was to result in me watching from a distance as relatives grew old and passed away; close friends became memories; familiar places became unfamiliar, in addition to the realisation that regular family, friendship and community gatherings, once taken for granted, were now logistically impossible—I became an ‘outsider’ to my roots, gazing into my homeland through the lens of time, place and space.

After returning from Dubai, I promptly moved to London to earn a living as a professional musician, met my wife, got married, moved to Dorset on the south coast of England, had children, then gradually transitioned from a professional musician into an academic, eventually moving to Wales—where me and my family still live. Having lived in various parts of the country for 20 years now, Wales has become our ‘second home’. We love the people, the landscape, our village and our friends. However, despite these positives, I still feel a nostalgic gravitational pull towards my birth town. It just won’t go away. 

Of the 38 years that I have lived away from Newcastle Upon Tyne, around 28 of them had little complexity in terms of me ‘missing’ ‘home’, indeed I was initially pleased to escape the cultural and sociological expectations that surrounded me. However, as time progressed, my perspective changed—a newfound appreciation for Newcastle emerged as I matured. I can’t remember this ‘happening’, but what I do recall is being tearful when listening to Sting’s 2013 album The Last Ship, which is steeped in his own experiences of being brought up in the working class North East town of Wallsend. Set near the shipyards, the album and its accompanying Broadway production depicted the character Gideon Fletcher’s desire to escape his hometown—then eventually desiring to return. As Sting previously articulated on his album The Soul Cages (1991), the songs on The Last Ship are an attempt to come to terms with this his north east heritage—they are an imaginary nostalgic return perpetrated via his creativity and imagination. 

When listening to the album, I noted how Sting’s simultaneous juxtaposition of ‘escape’ and imaginary ‘return’ were very similar to my own—realising that the nostalgic power of a song and its relationship to ‘home’, for both the songwriter and the listener was a phenomena I needed to explore. Via a song such as Sting’s ‘Dead Mans Boots’ (The Last Ship, 2013), it somehow seemed possible for me to become what Allan Moore (2013) has described as ‘the possessed protagonist’—where the listener can ‘become’ either the person singing the song, or the person who the song is being sung to—what Moore calls the ‘Antagonist’. Via ‘Dead Man’s Boots’, a song which discusses Gideon Fletcher (i.e Sting’s) rebellion against the expectations of his working-class father, I was able to experience the narrative from both protagonist and antagonist perspectives—I could be the ‘father’, the ‘son’, or both. I was the person both singing the song and having it sung to me. As this particular song is so autobiographical for Sting, it also forged a deeply ‘prescribed’ authentic connection to the songwriter (See Moore 2002). This song not only resonated with my northern identity and my sense of ‘home’, but was also profoundly nostalgic, being the trigger for me to begin re-evaluating my relationship with my own past. More importantly, it inspired me to begin considering the subject matter of this book, the industrial, philosophical, psychological and creative interrelationships between nostalgia, home and song.

This book will explore a neglected aspect of scholarship surrounding the study of song—its relationship with nostalgia and notions of ‘home’.  All of the chapters will examine these factors from the perspective of ‘production’, ‘text’ and/or ‘reception, as alluded to by scholars such as Longhurst (1995) and Nattiez (1990). Potential contributors are encouraged to explore these themes either individually or dialogically. 

Examples of the Production theme include questions such as:

• What are the relationships between nostalgia and creativity in songs about home?
• How are nostalgic production techniques used in song construction?
• How is nostalgia used as a form of commercialism in songs about home?
• How are post Marxist ideas used to ‘haunt’ songs about home?
• How has covid influenced the construction of nostalgic songs about home?

Examples of the Text theme include questions such as:

• Case studies of nostalgic songs or albums about home
• Musicological analysis of the nostalgic trends of songwriters, songs or albums
• ‘Escape and return’ narratives in songs or albums about home 
• Examinations of nostalgic dysphoria songs about home
• Post Modern and ‘virtual’ considerations of nostalgic songwriting about home – for example the nostalgic impacts of merging time, place and space 

Finally, the Reception theme facilitates authors to examine song via more nostalgic narratives from the perspective of audiences, or indeed more personally, via more subjective perspectives. 

The book will be divided into three sections as outlined above and scholars are invited to submit proposals of 300 words that address the given themes. 

Accepted chapters will be no more than 6500 (including bibliography and footnotes)

Timeline:

• Proposals submitted by October 10th 2023, to paul.carr@southwales.ac.uk.
• Decisions communicated by November 7th 2023
• Accepted and edited chapters finalised by October 7th 2024
• Proposed date of publication –  Early 2025

A book proposal (including 2 substantive chapters) has already been sent out to Bloomsbury, who have expressed enthusiastic interest with the intension of sending it out for peer review. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me.