I had the pleasure of doing my final conference as a full time academic in Newcastle last week. Who would have thought that after 30 years – this would be the final location – and also – I was speaking about ‘home and nostalgia. I have copied the transcript below for those that are interested in a more detailed slant on the forthcoming book.

Home, Song and Nostalgia

I would like to start with a Personal Story

I am from Newcastle and in February 1984, after leaving music college, 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 40 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 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 musician, met my wife, moved to Dorset, 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 over 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 birthplace. It just won’t go away. 

Of the 40 years that I have lived away, 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 emotional 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 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—before eventually desiring to return. The songs on The Last Ship are Sting’s attempt to come to terms with his home and heritage—it is an imaginary nostalgic return perpetrated via his songwriting skills. 

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’, it somehow seemed possible for me to become what Moore 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 Sting’s character – Gideon Fletcher’s rebellion against the expectations of his working-class father, I was able to resonate with Sting’s personae and experience the nostalgic narrative from both protagonist and antagonist perspectives—I could be the ‘father’, the ‘son’—or both! I was both singing the song and having it sung to me. As this particular song is so autobiographical, it also forged a deeply ‘prescribed’ authentic connection to the songwriter. 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 (due to be published next year), the industrial, philosophical, psychological and creative interrelationships between nostalgia, home and song. 

Mine and Sting’s personal stories are not exceptional, with it being far more common to leave hometowns in the post globalisation age. This greater proclivity to leave home triggers nostalgia for some and I would argue, has resulted in important sources of inspiration for songwriters, which can be articulated via the subject matter of songs; the use of ‘vintage’ production techniques and sounds; fashion; musical instrument and equipment choices, comeback tours, or overt influences and tributes to previous artists—all of which effectively ‘capture the past’— leaving what Nattiez (1990) describes as a ‘trace’ in the text. 

As I experienced via the song ‘Dead Mans Boots’, these ‘traces’ also have the potential to act as nostalgic triggers on listeners—and the music industries know this. It is now accepted practice to use nostalgia as a marketing tool, either via artists attire, persona, publicity techniques or musical output.  As Phil Tagg (2013) notes—music has the potential to convey complex information to its listeners that the logocentric nature of word-based narratives simply can’t portray. Indeed, Tagg argues it is not the music that one listens to that has vague meaning when conveying emotion, but the language we use to articulate our response to it: despite knowing its impact—we just don’t have the words to describe the way some music makes us feel. Indeed when describing the nostalgic condition known as Akenside Syndrome to my wife, I have often Joked it would be easier for me to perform my nostalgia rather than describe it (Akenside Syndrome is an ailment that afflicts Geordies who have left the region, who despite feeling ambivalent towards the area retain a strong emotional bond with it).  With this in mind, songs can become the perfect medium to accompany the ambivalent ‘bittersweet’ feelings one sometimes experiences when feeling nostalgic. Like nostalgia, the impact of songs are often difficult to articulate, but when they work together either symbiotically or dialogically, they have the potential to frame our complex feelings of home—what many of us Geordies refer to as hyem. 

Home and Song

Regarding notions of ‘home’, although many examples in the book are propagated by songwriters or indeed listeners’ ‘yearning’ for literal geographical regional or national places, these feelings can also be broader and more complex—being more related to notions of a need to return to a spiritual home, or a personal loved one. In reality, what we consider as ‘home’ is complex, fluid, often contested and is influenced by our life experiences. For example, speaking personally, when I was a young child my sense of home was centred around regional people and the neighbourhood I grew up in. As I matured, this changed, as I moved to various parts of the UK—my wife and children became my ‘home’, so wherever we lived was almost inconsequential. As I have alluded to, more recently, my connection to Newcastle unexpectedly became strong again, despite also maintaining my broader sense of ‘home’ with my friends and family within Wales. I also have a Christian faith, which has added a spiritual dimension to my sense of home. So, in the context of this book, ‘home’ is considered both fluid and multidimensional—consisting of not just bricks and mortar but also often juxtapositioning time and space with place, people and spirituality. I don’t have time to discuss regional, national and personal types of musical nostalgia here, so what I will do is briefly discuss spiritual nostalgia, prior to overviewing some of the theoretical underpinnings and introducing my two colleagues – Chris and Anna – who will focus on regional and National types of nostalgia.

The Spiritual Nostalgic Song 

Feelings of the need to return to a ‘spiritual home’ have been prevalent for thousands of years, being outlined at the start of the book of Genesis for example, where Adam and Eve are ‘cast out’ from the Garden of Eden, with both Christians and Jews consequently spending millenniums ‘returning’—yearning to be ‘home’ in the presence of God once again. Abraham’s quest to take his people to the Promised Land, which is described in the book of Genesis, was effectively a journey to a spiritual home—in which Abraham and his people are depicted as facing many trails over a 40-year period in their quest to get to their future home. In a nonreligious context, Homer’s The Odyssey depicts another long journey home, in which Odysseus faces many trails in his 10-year quest to return from the Trojan War. Building on the notion of nostalgia for a ‘Promised Land’ inherent in Afro-American spirituals such as ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’, within a contemporary Christian context, examples of songs depicting this journey to a spiritual home are numerous, with ‘Grace Will Lead Me Home’ by David Dunn, ‘Home’ by Hillsong Worship and ‘Homecoming’ by Bethal Music being indicative examples. All of these songs are nostalgic for a future spiritual home, that doesn’t have any of the trials which are prevalent in the current life. 

There are also of course examples of biblical allusions of ‘home’ in more mainstream popular music, with an indicative example being Bob Marley’s ‘Exodus’, which alludes to Moses’ journey to the ‘promised land’ via linking the biblical narrative with the Rastafarian’s hopeful return to Africa, which is seen as the way to end the suffering of Jahs people. 

Some psychologists believe that it is possible to be nostalgic for the future, phenomena’s which are often described as ‘anticipated’ and ‘anticipatory’ nostalgia. With the former, ‘anticipated nostalgia’ is the capacity to foreseeyourself looking back on events that have not yet happened and expecting to feel nostalgic for them—for example the thought of moving to a new city, missing the old one and believing you will experience regret. This is often considered to be a precursor to the more traditional ‘personal nostalgia’ one experiences when looking back in time, when one is actually missing a departed city. Anticipatory nostalgia on the other hand is related to “missing what has not yet been lost” or “missing the present prematurely before it has become past”. Although the actual event one is nostalgic about has not happened in both instances, in anticipated nostalgia one expects to be nostalgic in the future, with anticipatory nostalgia you experience the emotion now—you are nostalgic for the place you are leaving despite the fact you still live there and have not yet moved! 

Although not considered a ‘spiritual’ song in the traditional sense, Roger Whitaker’s ‘Durham Town (The Leavin’)’ (1969) is an interesting example of an ‘anticipatory nostalgic song’ with a spiritual dimension, featuring a protagonist who is repeatedly lamenting that he has to leave his town (via a repeated chorus), whilst the verses reflect on his past life, sitting on the bank of the River Tyne, his father leaving for the war effort and his mother passing away.  Although through the song, the protagonist is clearly experiencing ‘anticipatory nostalgia’ (missing his town whilst still living there), Whitaker himself never actually lived in the North East of England—making this also a form of anomea—feeling nostalgic for a time one has never known. Whitaker is however noted as having a deep affection for the north of England, stating that “if [he] had not been born in Kenia, this is where [he] would like to have been born” —it appears to be his spiritual home. 

            Whilst Whitaker’s nostalgia for his missing ‘home’ can be described as ‘personal’ and the protagonist’s of ‘Durham Town ‘anticipatory’, C.S. Lewis, paraphrasing Kant’s use of the term ‘thing in itself’ (1783)) consider this type of nostalgia to be ‘delusional’—merely being earthly shadows for a future spiritual home. Lewis notes the following – and I quote.

The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; for it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a far country we have not yet visited. End quote.

So from Lewis’ Christian perspective, music and other art forms act as a conduit to articulate and realise nostalgia for both the composer and the listener, but it is not the physicality (i.e. places, people, events) of the past we are really longing for, but for a future spiritual home. According to Jason Baxter (2017) this disjuncture can only be reconciled by a union of the physical and the spiritual. Baxter describes this pursuit of a spiritual home as “nostalgia of the future”. When regarded from this perspective, all nostalgic songs can be considered to have a ‘spiritual’ dimension. 

Conclusion 

All of the chapters in the book examine the dialogical relationship of song, nostalgia and home from the perspective of ‘production’, ‘text’ and/or ‘reception’, as alluded to by Longhurst (1995) and Nattiez (1990).

Using the terms ‘production, text and audience’, Longhurst views these categories through a sociological lens, considering them both independently and dialogically, with musical analysis often regarded as having to account for all three in order to understand how a piece of music functions holistically. When considering the various parties who can be involved in the production of a musical text, Longhurst has a broad perspective, including 

record companies, copyright and publishing processes, imperatives of globalisation, technological determinants and the social and cultural environments surrounding musicians

However, when placed in the even broader context of Becker’s Art Worlds, these music industry ‘actors’ would also include ‘producers’ such as musical equipment design and music industry marketing, in addition to creative impulses such as musical influences and songwriting techniques. There are chapters in the book that would suggest that many of these production subcategories have the potential to be driven by nostalgia—either sentimentally/authentically or through an industry driven motive.

Longhurst’s final category,  considers the relationships of ‘texts’ and ‘producers’ to audiences. Although acknowledging the work of Adorno, in addition to consumers being ‘brainwashed’, Longhurst is keen to point out that some audiences have the capacity to forge their own meanings and understandings from musical texts, via using the text for their own purposes. The reception section of the book notes how these interpretations can be nostalgic in nature. 

Building on the work of Molino, who first used the classic communication model of ‘producer’®‘message’®‘receiver’ in the mid 70s, Jean-Jacques Nattiez (1990) employs the terms and lineage of ‘producer’®‘trace’¬‘receiver’. Nattiez regards the artwork, not to be an intermediary used by producers to convey a message to the receiver (audiences), but more the result of a complex process which he entitles the poietic, where the producer is in dialogue with the artwork during the creative process. From the perspective of ‘nostalgia and home’, this poetic process can take place between a songwriter and a song, or indeed between the songwriter and any of the elements of production alluded to thus far—record companies, technologies, social and cultural environments, etc. I would suggest that this two-way poietic process, can be fuelled by nostalgia and has the potential to leave ‘clues’ for analysis of the text, such as biographical information, retro production techniques, or personal social and/or cultural reasons behind a song’s nostalgic narrative. Nattiez is clear that what he describes as the ‘trace’ is the starting point for an equally complex esthesic process—where the listener can interpret the ‘message’. However, in a process Phil Tagg (2013) has described as ‘codal incompetence’, it is important to remind ourselves that the intended message is not necessarily the one the receiver understands—with the esthesic process very much a reconstruction of a polysemic text. Although the poietic process may leave a series of clues in the song—“they cannot always be perceived”—“the poietic process and the esthesic process do not necessarily correspond”. So for example, a listener may not necessarily recognise the deliberate nostalgic references to the 1980s employed by an artist such as Ariel Pink—despite the fact that the creative poietic process intended them. Conversely, a listener may superimpose nostalgic references on this piece which the songwriter did not intend—such as memories of marriage, going to university, etc. For me, many songs I experienced during my ‘reminiscence bump’ between the 1970s and early ‘90s fall into this category—they were not intended to be nostalgic when they were written—but they are. 

When putting out a ‘call for papers’ for this collection, I asked contributors to consider how their proposed song analysis would resonate theoretically not only with nostalgia and ‘home’, but also with the production-text-reception paradigms I have outlined here. Although all authors have prioritised one of these three categories, inevitably, there is a certain amount of overlap, however, each chapter has a focus on one area.

So to kick off, I would like to introduce Anna Glew, whose chapter is in the ‘text’ sub section. Her chapter is entitled ‘Narrating home in times of war: Ukrainian Popular Music after the Russian Full-Scale Invasion Anna Glew’. 

To finish off – I would like to introduce Chris Inglis,  whose chapter is positioned in the ‘reception’ section. His paper is entitled ‘Let’s Win Another Trophy Like We Did in ’55’: Representations of the North East throughout Makina Music’.