i Town All Day: A Vibrant and Affective Ecology of Sound By Megan Wurster B.A., Seattle Pacific University, 2009 A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Communication 2013 ii This thesis entitled: Town All Day: A Vibrant and Affective Ecology of Sound written by Megan Wurster has been approved for the Department of Communication _______________________________ John Ackerman, PhD _______________________________ David Boromisza-Habashi, PhD _______________________________ Kenneth Foote, PhD Date ____________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we Find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards Of scholarly work in the above mentioned discipline. iii Wurster, Megan (M.A. Communication) Town All Day: A Vibrant and Affective Ecology of Sound Thesis directed by Associate Professor John Ackerman This thesis presents an urban ecology as a semi-bounded and permeable way of conceptualizing cities that encompasses the symbolic, material, and embodied while embracing vibrancy and affectiveness. By taking a communicative approach, and drawing on theories of publics and counter-publics, culture, sound, place, and the everyday, I argue that it is imperative that we understand the interplay between human and non-human agents. Using Seattle hip hop as a case study to demonstrate a sonic urban ecology, this project also forwards that sound is woven throughout urban ecologies as a tie that binds them together, holding fast in its many forms. It is not simply music, but the intrinsic rhythms, resonances, and intensities of sound that enable it to act as a uniting force amongst the human and nonhuman. iv CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY……………………1 II. THE GEOGRAPHY OF SEATTLE HIP HOP………………………………….38 III. DISCURSIVITY IN THE CONTEXT OF AN URBAN ECOLOGY…………..56 IV. AN ETHNO-RHETORICAL RETURN AND THE TRANSFERABILITY OF A SONIC URBAN ECOLOGY…………………………...……………………….81 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………109 v FIGURES Figure 1. Locational mentions in Seattle hip hop songs…………………………………………...43 2. Live music venues in Seattle, WA………………………………………………………47 3. Fieldwork conducted during December 2012…………………………………………...51 4. Fieldwork conducted during December 2012, larger scale………………………...……52 1 CHAPTER 1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY Introduction The first day of my career as a graduate teaching assistant, I stepped into my first class of the day and anxiously began introducing myself to the students. Feeling out of place, both geographically and professionally, I found myself rambling a bit out of nervousness. Unsure of how much to tell them, I mentioned that I was from Seattle, and that I had spent time after college working in the music industry. Hardly expecting a response to these brief comments, I was startled when a student immediately yelled out, “Do you know Macklemore!?” I certainly knew who Macklemore was (a Seattle rapper), and I had in fact worked indirectly with him while living in Seattle, but I did not know him on any level that would warrant answering yes to that question. Moreover, I was surprised by the fact that I had managed to move nearly 1,500 miles from the place I had lived and worked in, only to be immediately reminded of what I had left behind. I had no idea that Macklemore was so well-known outside of the Northwest (a funny thought now, given his platinum status and recent Grammy nomination), nor did I think for a second that my students would be fans of his work. Upon reflection, I said that I was aware of who Macklemore was, and in fact we shared many friends. Without elaborating much, I mentioned that many of my friends were deeply involved in the Seattle hip hop community, and that they represented a place I missed very much. When I had time to think for a moment after class, I smiled at the thought that something I was so fond of, even proud of, had managed to make its way halfway across the country. The place I 2 came from felt so connected, so tied together by music. My life had, in many very literal ways, been orchestrated by the symbolic, material, and embodied nature of music (Endres & Senda- Cook 2011), and it was all very specifically located in Seattle. The triad of the symbolic, material, and embodied is used by Endres and Senda-Cook to explicate a theory of place, and will be used as a framework for this project, as it is able to encompass the theoretical framework behind the three-fold methodology to follow in this project. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my support for local music was place-based in social, cultural, and sonic ways. The idea that my sense of place was, and continues to be, symbolic, material, and embodied will carry on throughout this project. In the symbolic sense, the music I associated with Seattle was not contained to Seattle and traveled to Boulder as a means of identification, appreciation, and shared meaning. Materially, the city of Seattle is used as an artifact for this project- a place I lived in, remember, and visit. Though it is gestured to through images, art, and maps, it still stands in its own right with elements like buildings, roads, and parks. This fusing of the human and nonhuman, of language and matter, will appear throughout this project, and is explained further in this chapter. For the purposes of this project, the embodiment can be found in my body, those who remain in Seattle, and the researching body that revisits the city and connects with other bodies. This project reflects on my own history and how my experiences might translate to other cities and neighborhoods, and what it might look like to see cities as ecologies constituted by sound. There are social implications of the binding properties of sound that are applicable to other places. The goal of this project is to consider an ecology of sound that speaks to the cohesiveness of an urban community, drawing on theories of publics and counter-publics, culture, place, and the everyday. In using the term ecology, as opposed to simply importing 3 theories of place, publics and counter-publics, culture, and the everyday, this project will emphasize the overlapping and interplay between the human and the non-human, as well as the vibrancy and affect that are integral to an understanding of sound as constitutive of an urban ecology. Though the term has not been used much by communication scholars, especially as anything other than a reference to its biological meaning, I hope to explicate the rhetorical potential of an urban ecology premised on sound, which will be articulated throughout this chapter. Urban ecologies have been theorized by an interdisciplinary confederation that includes, but is not limited to, urban planners, designers, geographers, land use experts, and ecologists. Ecologists have defined the field writ large as, “The scientific study of the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms, the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transformation and flux of energy and matter” (Likens 1992, p. 8). This type of study is not limited to any particular scale, though until recently the idea of an “urban ecology” was largely rejected by ecologists because of the dominant role that humans played in it (McDonnell 2011). Currently, ecologists and others accept the study of the development of cities as a legitimate topic of ecological study, since the human impact on ecosystems is now undeniable. As ecologist McDonnell says, “…human actions have altered the distribution of organisms as well as the transformation and flux of energy and matter at global scales” (McDonnell et al. 2009, p. 8). The scientific approach to an urban ecology is applicable to this study so far as it provides a tangible, embodied understanding of the interplay between living organisms, and incorporates humans and nonhumans into the same ecosystems. What it does not include, however, is space for object agency, as its nonhuman actants are still living organisms. McDonnell offers the following definition of urban ecology, “Urban ecology 4 integrates both basic (i.e. fundamental) and applied (i.e. problem oriented), natural and social science research to explore and elucidate the multiple dimensions of urban ecosystems” (McDonnell 2011, p. 9). This project aims to incorporate not only living organisms, as urban ecologists do, but material objects as nonhuman agents as well. Where urban ecologists have focused on the importance of bodies, though perhaps not framing it that way themselves, this project will also include the material objects of an urban environment, as well as the symbolic ways in which urban ecologies are represented. This thesis will argue that one way that cities are symbolically represented is through sound. The role of nonhuman agency (of both the living and non-living) will be explained throughout this chapter. Political scientist Jane Bennett offers a helpful way to think about the composition, implications, and complexity of political ecologies premised on vibrancy in matter, bodies, and symbols. In her book Vibrant Matter, as well as her larger project, Bennett emphasizes the importance of intersections where the human and nonhuman interact, overlap, and coexist. She compares political systems to natural ecosystems, and uses the term political ecologies to consider loosening “the tie between participation and human language use, encountering the world as a swarm of vibrant materials entering and leaving agentic assemblages” (Bennett 2010, p. 107). In the following passage she explains the importance of considering nonhuman agency within the larger context of political ecologies. Where Bennett’s focus is on the political implications of this perspective, my focus is on sound as the vibrant element that unites the ecology of a city.