This article was downloaded by:[University of Leeds] On: 27 September 2007 Access Details: [subscription number 768509729] Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Cultural Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713684873 INDIE: THE INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF A POPULAR MUSIC GENRE David Hesmondhalgh Online Publication Date: 01 January 1999 To cite this Article: Hesmondhalgh, David (1999) 'INDIE: THE INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF A POPULAR MUSIC GENRE', Cultural Studies, 13:1, 34 - 61 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/095023899335365 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/095023899335365 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article maybe used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. David Hesmondhalgh INDIE: THE INSTITUTIONAL POLITICS AND AESTHETICS OF A POPULAR MUSIC GENRE Abstract This article is concerned with the complex relations between institutional politics and aesthetics in oppositional forms of popular culture. Indie is a Downloaded By: [University of Leeds] At: 10:36 27 September 2007 contemporary genre which has its roots in punk’s institutional and aesthetic challenge to the popular music industry but which, in the 1990s, has become part of the ‘mainstream’ of British pop. Case studies of two impor- tant ‘independents’, Creation and One Little Indian, are presented, and the aesthetic and institutional politics of these record companies are analysed in order to explore two related questions. First, what forces lead ‘alterna- tive’ independent record companies towards practices of professionaliza- tion and of partnership/collaboration with major corporations? Second, what are the institutional and political-aesthetic consequences of such pro- fessionalization and partnership? In response to the rst question, the article argues that pressures towards professionalization and partnership should be understood not only as an abandonment of previously held ideal- istic positions (a ‘sell-out’) and that deals with major record companies are not necessarily, in themselves, a source of aesthetic compromise. On the second question, it argues that collaboration with major record com- panies entails a relinquishing of autonomy for alternative independent record companies; but perspectives which ascribe negative aesthetic con- sequences directly to such problematic institutional arrangements may well be awed. Keywords aesthetics; institutions; music industry; independent record companies CU LT U RA L S T U D I E S 1 3 ( 1 ) 1 9 9 9 , 3 4 –6 1 © Routledge 1999 I N D I E : A P O P U L A R M U S I C G E N R E 35 N D I E I S A P O P U L A R M U S I C G E N R E which, in the 1990s, has consider- Iably outgrown its original audience among students and (lower) middle-class youth. It was at rst a British phenomenon, and is often subsumed under the cat- egory ‘alternative rock’ in the United States and elsewhere. The mid-1980s’ coining and adoption of the term, an abbreviation of ‘independent’ (as in inde- pendent record company) was highly signicant: no music genre had ever before taken its name from the form of industrial organization behind it. For indie pro- claimed itself to be superior to other genres not only because it was more rele- vant or authentic to the youth who produced and consumed it (which was what rock had claimed) but also because it was based on new relationships between creativity and commerce. The discourses of fans, musicians and journalists during the countercultural heyday of rock and soul in the 1960s and 1970s saw ‘inde- pendents’, small record companies with no ties to vertically integrated corpora- tions, as preferable to the large corporations because they were less bureaucratic and supposedly more in touch with the rapid turnover of styles and sounds characteristic of popular music at its best. Such companies were often, in fact, even more exploitative of their musicians than were the major corporations (Shaw, 1978), but punk activists took the idea of independence and politicized it more rigorously (see Laing, 1985; Hesmondhalgh, 1997). Post-punk companies, Downloaded By: [University of Leeds] At: 10:36 27 September 2007 often started by musicians or by record shop owners, saw independents as a means of reconciling the commercial nature of pop with the goal of artistic autonomy for musicians. Creative autonomy from commercial restraint is a theme which has often been used to mystify artistic production by making the isolated genius the hero of cultural myth. Indie, however, emerged from a hard- headed network of post-punk companies which made signicant challenges to the commercial organization of cultural production favoured by the major record companies (Hesmondhalgh, 1997). Given the long-standing, if muted, concern in cultural studies and the political economy of communication with efforts to transform the nature of cul- tural production, the lack of attention paid to this network of alternative pro- duction is remarkable. Its penetration went far beyond that of the ‘small media’ institutions often surveyed as examples of alternatives in academic work on the cultural industries (e.g. Herman and McChesney, 1997: 189–205). Such alternative media activism is usually concerned with the provision of small-scale alternatives ‘outside’ commercial popular culture, as it were. My concern here, though, is primarily with the historical trajectory of indie as a case study of what happens to oppositional moments ‘within’ popular culture. I focus on two important British independent companies, Creation and One Little Indian, to explore two related questions. First, what forces lie behind the move of such alterna- tive independents towards professionalization, and towards partnership/collaboration with institutions which these companies had previously de ned themselves strongly and explicitly against? In the case of One Little Indian, such collaboration took the form of partnership with an entrepreneur who had no background in the punk 3 6 C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S ethics and aesthetics of the company and, later, with the Dutch-based multi- national corporation, PolyGram. In the case of Creation, it took the form of a particularly controversial sale of a stake in the company to Sony. I want to suggest that the motives involved in such professionalization and partnership are more complex than is implied in two discourses which have been prevalent in the indie sector as a means of explaining these processes: ‘sell-out’, which assumes that independents abandon previously held political and aesthetic com- mitments for nancial gain; and ‘burn-out’, which is slightly more generous to independents and which assumes that institutional alterity can only be main- tained for a short period before human and nancial resources run dry.1 The two companies make for an interesting comparison, because both came to be part of a boom in the popularity of indie in the 1990s via partnership with entre- preneurial and corporate capital, but they began from political and aesthetic positions which were markedly different from each other. One Little Indian pro- vides the opportunity to examine the legacy of the most politically active role of punk, inspired by anarchism, rather than by the socialist politics prevalent in other companies such as Rough Trade. Creation Records, by contrast, through- out most of its history, showed little or no interest in political engagement, until its well-publicized links in 1996–97 with Tony Blair’s Labour Party – and such Downloaded By: [University of Leeds] At: 10:36 27 September 2007 links with a formal political party would have been scorned by the anarchists at One Little Indian. Creation was, instead, a company built very much around a set of aesthetic concerns: in particular, a reverence for a certain ‘classic’ pop/rock canon; and this fact is signicant for my account, as will become apparent below. The second question is: in terms of institutional and aesthetic politics, what losses and gains are involved in the move towards such professionalization and corporate partner- ship/collaboration? This type of question is at the heart of much debate about attempts to achieve difference in contemporary popular culture. Again, I am interested in complicating a discourse common within some sections of indie culture itself (especially its more politicized wing) which sees aesthetics as an almost inevitable outcome of certain institutional and political positions, whereby maintaining an institutional separation from corporations, or a place on the margins, is felt to guarantee aesthetic diversity and stimulation. As we shall see, this position was held by some former associates of One Little Indian. In fact, I want to suggest that the very basis of this second question is somewhat awed, in that it assumes that institutional positions have traceable aesthetic out- comes. But I also want to criticize an aesthetic position which is characteristic of a much less politicized type of indie discourse (though, of course, aesthetic pos- itions are always, if indirectly, political positions) and which is to be found at work at Creation Records.