Me and Deb recently gave our testimony at our local church. A few people have messaged saying they wish they could have seen it, so I have tried to capture the essence of it here. At the bottom of this post I have put a link to a video which captures the essence of our journey to Christianity – but before we get there – a few notes on our backstory.
We both became Christians 19 years ago, so neither of us were brought up in the faith. We are both of the generation when state schools were strongly engrained with Christianity. In my own case – my school had a Christian service at the start of every day, where we said the Lords prayer and sang traditional hymns. Also, my Religious Education class was all based on the Bible – mainly the New Testament as I remember. Although my grandmother was a lapsed catholic, my great grandmother was an obvious believer – and I have early memories of her taking me to some Salvation Army services as a child. She also started to attend a more modern church service on a Sunday evening near Newcastle city centre- with the church sending a bus around many of the local streets to pick up attendees – we lived around 4-5 miles from the centre of Newcastle, so the church was working hard to encourage attendance from the various estates around Newcastle.
When I was around 14, this somehow intrigued me and a friend- so for around a year – we attended this church – taking the weekly bus ride with a group of people who were at least 60 years older than us! When we got to this church for the first time – I remember being amazed to see a lot of young people there – and the worship band featured guitars – this was before I had picked up a guitar. When I think about it – this was one of the seeds that influenced my future life as a musician. More importantly, It was also part of my journey as a Christian – although I did not realize it at the time. In terms of the progress I made during these times – I do remember getting off the church bus one Sunday – I must have gone on my own that night – and I recall saying the words ‘I am a christian’! These seeds however were quickly forgotten – to quote Matthew 13:4 –
“And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them”.
So I was destined to spend the rest of my young adulthood not really thinking about Christianity at all. I went to music college, practiced a lot of guitar and then moved to London – where me and Deb were to eventually meet in 1985. However – I do think that God used these early experiences as part of my journey.
Deb had a different background to me, although not being brought up a Christian, she came from a strong Methodist tradition, so she regularly went to Sunday School. So when we met in 1985 in London, neither of us were Christians. We got married in 1988 and moved to Dorset in 1994 with our then one year old daughter Harriet. Due to God’s providence, we ended up moving next door to a church in Three Legged Cross and started attending the Mother and Toddlers group there. Due to this connection, we started attending this church and became good friends with the paster and wife, who invested a lot of time in us. However, when Deb’s dad died in 1996, we lost any momentum we had gained. We ended up moving to a different part of Dorset and lived the next several years without God in our lives – eventually moving to Wales in 2003
So onto the video below. Although we did not realize it at the time – our individual backgrounds and our time in the Church at Three Legged Cross did indeed have an impact on our lives—God uses things that we don’t even realize for good. We became Christians in 2006 and in 2009 – that very church in Dorset that we moved next door to asked us to give our testimony as part of their 75th ‘birthday’ celebrations. As we could not attend in person – we recorded our testimony using a trial version of some software I downloaded – so it is poor quality and has a crazy few minutes before the testimony actually starts – you will have to watch it to see. It was not made for public consumption, but we feel it nicely displays our journey up to this point – which was 16 years ago!
Anyway – here is our 2009 testimony of our conversion- three years after being saved. We hope it blesses some of you.
In 1990, I made the decision to end my time as a professional musician. Lots of reasons fed into the reasons why – ranging from not liking the repetitiveness of some of the work that paid me decent money, to realizing I hated touring (i.e being away from my wife) to most importantly – realizing that there were so many players that were just far better than me! It was a really tough decision – but it was a decision that evenly led me into my career as an academic. The great irony about the year I decided to go back to university was that I actually landed some interesting gigs – including a week at Ronnie Scotts promoting an album I wrote a few tracks for. In one of those tracks, the record company (via Steve White) managed to pursued the great late Bob Berg to record one of my tracks – a blues based on a ’12 tone scale’. It as actually a piece I had wrote several years ago when I was still at music college and my original idea was for the improvisation section to be based on the chords derived from the tone row. However, when Bob Berg got to the studio after a gig he had just finished with Mike Stern – he suggested just playing a blues – which is how it ended up. Anyway – here it is – 12 tone row, mixed with 12 bar blues and ‘noise’ music.
When I was thinking of what pieces I would play regarding my ‘personal nostalgic’ list – this one is an odd one. It is included because not long after I started playing a musical instrument, I remember watching Judy Collins singing this song on top of the pops in the mid 70s when I was still a school kid. Although I did not really understand its melodic or harmonic structure at that point – there is something compelling about how the home chord pivots in the A section, before being ‘slightly lost’ in the B section, prior to ‘coming home’ again in the final A section. These resolutions I would argue are something that even people who don’t play an instrument feel – we can sense the feeling of ‘tension and release’. The song also reminds me of my time living in my childhood home in the north east – this is what songs can do!
Anyway – here is a demo version of how my solo arrangement is shaping up at the moment – I just need to figure out an improvisation section somewhere in there.
When I was writing my book last year, I became interested in two types of nostalgia that come under what I consider to be ‘personal nostalgia’ – songs that are nostalgic to us – but maybe not others. They are called ‘anticipated’ and ‘anticipatory’ nostalgia. With the former, you foresee yourself looking back on events that have not yet happened and expect 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. 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!
I was going to start looking for well known tracks that had been written with these influences- but then I realized I had actually experienced it myself. I wrote the piece ‘Going Away’ a couple of weeks before going away on my first tour with the James Taylor Quartet. I had just got married and knew I was going to miss my wife when I was away – this piece just ‘popped out’ one lunch break when I was teaching guitar in a school in North London. I actually got the opportunity to record it for Polydor records in 1990 – but I recently started to experiment with it on solo guitar – which is what you can hear below. It is only the theme – but it is a piece that was influenced by what can only be described as ‘nostalgia of the future’.
I have been listening to Pat Metheny since I was 18 or 19 years old. For me, alongside Allan Holdsworth – he is the greatest guitar player to have graced the earth. They are different players – but for me – Metheny maybe just pips it – because he is also a great composer. When I was thinking through which pieces I would play for my nostalgia book launch – Pat Metheny had to be in there somewhere. His music not only evokes nostalgia it its textures, melody and harmonic structures (which I presume comes from a nostalgic tendency in Metheny himself) – but his music is massively nostalgic for me – it is ‘personal’. Metheny’s music takes me back to my days at music college, through my years as a budding professional musician living in London – through to my later years – where I have simply admired the craft of this great musician. So – here is a ‘one take’ version of a piece of his entitled ‘Travels’. For me, this piece is a musical version of its title – it plays with the ‘home’ key of G major in the initial A sections, before taking the listener on a journey through a variety of non diatonic keys in section B (where the piece ‘travels’) – before being followed by a repeat of section A – where we are once again encourage to engage with the regular resolution of the home key. It seems to follow the journey of a nostalgic such as myself and my complicated relationship with Newcastle.
I spent some time a couple of weeks ago recording a publicity video for a forthcoming talk and performance I have at Rhosygilwen. This will be the first public talk I have done since I retired as a full time academic – so I am looking forward to it. What is particularly exciting is that I will be demonstrating some of the power in nostalgic popular music by not only talking about it – but also playing it on guitar. As I have mentioned a lot of my writing – I feel music has the power to communicate emotions that words simply can’t – so this is a chance for me to put this into practice – I am hoping the music complements the words. Also – I will be playing these pieces on acoustic guitar – which is a first for me.
Here is the promo I recorded, followed by an image of the book. In the promo I talk about some of the ideas underpinning the book and the forthcoming talk. I will be posting some more acoustic guitar pieces over the coming weeks.
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 geographicalregional 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’.
I have a new edited collection out next year – related to my long standing interest in musical nostalgia. I have posted the info about the book at the bottom of this post – but to give you more of a flavor – I have copied the draft contents page below. I will be speaking about the project alongside two of the contributors at Newcastle University on Sept 4th as part of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music Conference – I will post about this later.
Introduction
Home, Nostalgia and Song. Paul Carr
History, Postmodernism and the Music Industry. Paul Carr
Production, Text and Reception. Paul Carr
Production
‘Tales from the Surrey Countryside’: Paul Weller’s Wild Wood and Modernist Nostalgia as Hypochondria of the Heart. Peter Hughes Jachimiak
Navigating the Ties That Bind: Nostalgia, Bruce Springsteen, and the “Long Walk Home” Carlee Migliorisi
A Lifetime, One Day: Nostalgia and Dream in the Latest Album of Silvia Pérez Cruz Julia Escribano Blanco
Nostalgia of the Frontier: Baja Mali Knindža and the Songs of Serbian Diaspora
Ondřej Daniel
Sound Resignifications and Technostalgic Incursions: the Revival in Music Production. África González
Text
When You Come Back Home: The Front Lawn and their Dream Home in New Zealand Matthew Bannister
Narrating home in times of war: Ukrainian Popular Music after the Russian Full-Scale Invasion Anna Glew
Hanyangmen Garden: Nostalgia and solace in dialectal folk song during Covid-19 Yangke Li
Reception
Back Where We’ve Never Been: Daniel O’Donnell and the Country ‘n’ Irish Imaginary. Stan Erraught
‘Let’s Win Another Trophy Like We Did in ’55’: Representations of the North East throughout Makina Music. Chris Inglis.
“Abba Were my Constant and my Saviour”: How Nostalgia, Memories, and Notions of ‘Home’ Shape Peoples Favourite ABBA Songs. Shanika C.S Ranasinghe
It is a while since I last posted, but I am entering a phase of my career where I am going to be posting more (more on this later). So for the moment, I am pleased to announce that over two years since I originally started the project, Welsh Government have eventually posted my research on Welsh music venues on their website. This work has a massive backstory and has faced many barriers and I need to thank everyone who helped not only gather the data, but also make the technology work – you know who you are.
Most importantly, I need to be clear that this is only the start – not the end. There are many venues to add now the background infrastructures are in place. So, if I can ask everyone to please share this map with all interested parties. You will see that the Creative Wales website not only features the venue map, but also the research I done with Bop Consulting into the economic impact of the Welsh music industries – which is well worth a read.
Moving forward, I have handed over the leadership of this project to two of my colleagues at the University of South Wales as I move on to other things – more on this later…..
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 TheSoul 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.
Professor Paul Carr Music Consultancy 